Quakers, Blacks and Adams Morgan

The Baltimore Yearly Meeting’s Working Group on Racism announces the following special event:  On Saturday, March 20, 2010, tour guide Mary Belcher will lead a 90-minute walking tour through the Adams Morgan neighborhood of Washington D.C., examining black history there from 1839 to 1890.

 

Friends and others will gather at 10:00 am at the Sun Trust Bank Plaza at 18th St & Columbia Rd, and walk to Kalorama Park, where, in 1861, an enslaved young woman named Hortense Prout made a daring bid for freedom from a lifetime of bondage on the cattle farm of John Little. We'll then walk to Walter C. Pierce Community Park, the site of Washington's first Quaker cemetery and the city’s largest African American burial ground following the Civil War. During the 1890s, the land now known as Walter Pierce Park was used as a cemetery for free and enslaved black Americans.  As the neighborhood began to develop, the cemetery was forced to close.  Finally, in the 1980s, the one-time burial site was turned into a park. After learning about its background, Belcher, a resident of Adams Morgan, decided that she would work to alert Washingtonians to the park’s historical significance.

 

The walking tour is free and will take place rain or shine.  For those who wish to stay on, we will go to a nearby restaurant for lunch.  Following lunch, we will gather at Friends Meeting of Washington for a further conversation about the history of Quakers and African Americans within Baltimore Yearly Meeting.  The day’s events will end at 4 pm. 

 

For more information, contact Gail Thomas at 301-530-3628 or quakergail@gmail.com, or David Etheridge at 301-320-3470 or David.Etheridge@verizon.net.