Marking a Maryland legacy in Freetown, where freedom arrived before Juneteenth

On a springtime stroll through Freetown, a small, historic Black enclave in Anne Arundel County, history’s footprints are all around.

In every direction are street signs that bear the names of the town’s 19th century settlers, who were freeborn Black citizens, the formerly enslaved and indentured servants.

The town’s moniker reveals the social status of those early residents. They were free.

One of them was James Spencer. Born free around 1817, the farmer and entrepreneur was fondly known as “captain” because he owned several vessels.

“He would sail from Spencer’s Wharf to Baltimore’s markets, where he sold fruits and vegetables,” his descendant Anthony J. Spencer, a historian and preservationist who lives in Annapolis, said. “During the Civil War, he served in the Union Army as part of the U.S. Colored Troops.”

On Dec. 26, 1845, Spencer’s great-great grandfather purchased a tract of land, which was deeded the following year.

“The 56 acres he owned established what became Freetown.” As fellow Black pioneers acquired neighboring tracts for their families, the community thrived, building churches, schools and homes.

By the 1880s, records show, Black Americans owned some 1,000 acres in what is present-day Glen Burnie. Today, 170 years since its inception, Freetown embodies the spirit of Juneteenth, the nation’s newest federal holiday.

Juneteenth harkens to June 19, 1865, when the enslaved in Galveston, Texas, learned belatedly that freedom had arrived: two years, five months and 19 days, to be exact, after President Abraham Lincoln’s seminal decree on Jan. 1, 1863.

While the news of the Emancipation Proclamation took years to reach the westernmost Confederate state, the bells of freedom had begun to toll in Maryland.

Historical documents, newspaper accounts, correspondence and art illustrations reveal how liberty reverberated from the cobblestone streets of Baltimore to the shores of the Chesapeake Bay and beyond.

“Maryland had already abolished slavery,” said Christopher E. Haley, director of the Study of the Legacy of Slavery at the Maryland State Archives in Annapolis.

A new state constitution codified on Nov. 1, 1864, he said, banned what was often euphemistically referred to as “the peculiar institution.”

At the time, Article 24 of Maryland’s Constitution stated in part, “there shall be neither slavery nor involuntary servitude, except in punishment of crime, whereof the party shall have been duly convicted; and all persons held to service or labor as slaves, are hereby declared free.”

Yet emancipation was a complicated proposition in a border state like Maryland. Some residents, Black men among them, had enlisted in the Union Army, while others had joined the Confederate cause.

Moreover, documents in state archives describe “partisan” bickering. There was a “class opposed to the secession of Maryland from the Union, but which sympathized with the South …” as well as “those who sympathized with the South [but] had no disposition to take arms against the Union so long as Maryland remained a member of it.”

Amid this fraught backdrop, Maryland marked the nation’s monumental act of emancipation.

In Baltimore, where the federal government had set up encampments and hospitals in area parks as the Civil War began, local officials formally addressed newly liberated Black denizens.

“The City Council actually passed a resolution,” said Robert Schoeberlein, a historian and state archivist assigned to the Baltimore City Archives. “There is also correspondence from the Mayor of Baltimore that speaks to emancipation.”

Schoeberlein is among the scholars whose essays are featured in “The Civil War in Maryland Reconsidered.” Speaking by phone, he read excerpts from the City Council’s resolution.

“It speaks of a people ‘freed from a barbaric custom of a feudal age’ taking their ‘proud position among the free…’, ” he said. Elsewhere in the document, it states that the people of Maryland have been “redeemed regenerated and disenthralled,” by abolishing slavery, he noted.

Along with the resolution, then Baltimore Mayor John Lee Chapman had a council committee organize a 500-gun salute. Archival documents termed it “evidence of [the] joy felt by the people of Baltimore for the Salvation of Maryland.”

Chapman, a Harford County native, even requested that church bells ring at sunrise across Baltimore.

“It was meant to greet the dawning of a new day,” said Schoeberlein.

Emancipation ushered in a societal sea-change across Maryland, particularly for the state’s sizable Black population. Haley cited the 1860 U.S. Census, which listed 87,189 enslaved Black residents statewide; and another 83,942 who were free.

“Maryland had one of the largest populations of free Black people in the country,” notably in Baltimore and Annapolis, said Maya Davis, a historian and vice chair of the Maryland Commission on African American History and Culture. “There were also high concentrations — about 50/50 on the Eastern Shore — and small Black enclaves that are still in existence today.”

Along with Freetown, historically Black settlements dotted the map across Maryland pre-and post emancipation.

Founded in 1788, The Hill neighborhood in Easton is one of the oldest free Black neighborhoods in the country. Other Black communities in Maryland which date back to the 1800s include: Unionville in Talbot County; Pondtown in Queen Anne’s County; and Rossville in Prince George’s County.

Anne Arundel County’s Freetown was established in what is present day Glen Burnie. The neighborhood, bordered by Mountain Road and Baltimore-Annapolis Boulevard, is still revered by its residents.

On a warm spring day, Spencer, along with fellow descendants Kevin Kess, and town elders George and Patricia Caldwell, offer an informal tour, pointing out familiar landmarks.

The group notes street signs — Spencer Road, Kess Circle, Caldwell Road, Howard Road and Addison Drive — that honor some of Freetown’s founding families.

Another stop is a converted two-room schoolhouse listed on the National Register of Historic Places that now houses the Freetown Improvement Association. Dating to 1925, the nearly 100-year-old structure is among schools in 15 states that Julius Rosenwald, a Sears & Roebuck executive and philanthropist, helped build in tandem with Booker T. Washington, to educate Black students.

The tour concludes with a visit to Freetown Park along Freetown Road, where a marker was installed in 2021 by state and county agencies, and the Maryland Historical Trust. It touts Freetown as “a safe haven for freedom.”

“We are proud of this community that our ancestors built,” said Kess. “It’s American history.”

When Union soldiers arrived on horseback in Texas to enforce Lincoln’s decree, the clarion call of freedom yielded jubilant celebrations.

Today, the national holiday that President Joe Biden signed into law in 2021 is becoming more widely observed heading into its second anniversary.

“Juneteenth is a moment of liberation and jubilation, but it is also a moment where we lament,” said Michelle D. Commander, deputy director of the Smithsonian’s National Museum of African American History and Culture in Washington D.C.

“As we celebrate….we reflect on what independence means and recognize that the intolerance that sustained slavery resonates in our contemporary society,” Commander said. “Yet, the resilience of the Black community abounds, continuing to make a way out of no way, overcoming trials and celebrating triumphs while honoring the place and price of freedom.”

In Baltimore, the Black population welcomed the news of emancipation with gratitude and glee, according to clippings that Schoeberlein unearthed from the now defunct “Baltimore Clipper” newspaper.

“The colored portion of our community converted [the first of November] into a day of holiday, Thanksgiving, and prayer….,” the publication reported. “They donned their best attire, and social reunions were indulged in… various churches were thronged during the entire day, and at the church on Saratoga Street [Bethel A.M.E.]… the place was crowded, and at times it was impossible for a vehicle to pass… so dense was the mass of persons.”

Frederick Douglass, the famed abolitionist and orator born enslaved on Maryland’s Eastern Shore, returned to Baltimore to deliver a speech at Bethel AME Church on Nov. 17, 1864.

He marveled, “that Maryland is now a glorious Free State,” and recalled that he’d departed “in a hurry” decades earlier. Douglass, who had spent intermittent years hired out in Fells Point, self-emancipated in September 1838. Disguised as a sailor, he traveled from Baltimore to Delaware via train, then onto Philadelphia by boat and finally to New York City.

“I did not leave because I loved Maryland less, but freedom more,” Douglass told the church audience.

His speech went on to extol the virtues of Black and white citizens alike, urging unity and common purpose for all. Douglass advocated for “absolute civil and political equality,” while declaring the “monster” of slavery “dead.”

Despite his full throttled embrace of emancipation, he did issue a warning.

“Don’t put this new wine of liberty into the bottles of slavery. Don’t mend this new garment with old cloth,” he said, later adding, “You don’t need the smoke when the candle has gone out.”