The Barber Family: From Slavery, Through Segregation and the Civil Rights Movement.
Four Generations in St. Mary’s County.
Author: Barber, Donald M. and David G. Brown.
Publisher/Date: Leonardtown, Maryland: Printing Press, Inc. (2024).
Format: Book
Description: 102 pages with illustrations.
Access: The Southern Maryland Library System at COSMOS
Key words: Historic Sotterley, Civil Rights, slavery, segregation, emancipation, St. Mary’s County, rural life,
Time period: 1860 – through to present time
Themes:
- African American People and Culture
- Civic Ideas and Action
- Rural Life in Southern Maryland
County: St. Mary’s
Summary:
The Barber family story is the story of one African American family’s striving for prosperous, fulfilling and dignified lives. Their struggle over four generations took place in St. Mary’s County in Southern Maryland. Like much of the rest of the South, the county experienced an economic decline following the abolition of Slavery. For many decades after emancipation, the county remained a rural backwater with few opportunities for poor families, Black or White. White elites were characterized by racist attitudes and conservative nostalgia for preserving the old Southern way of life. Whites in St. Mary’s had opposed the ending of slavery in Maryland. The Maryland assembly voted not to ratify the 14th Amendment on equal protection under the law nor the 15th Amendment on the right to vote. Significant change only began with the opening of the Naval Air Sation Patuxent River in 1942 and later as the influence of the national civil rights movement gradually spread to the county.
Each family’s story is different. Nevertheless, the Barber family story seems typical of other Black families in St. Mary’s County emerging from slavery in the last decades of the 19th Century. During the period roughly 1910 to 1970, three generations of the family worked and lived at Sotterley. Living at Sotterley gave the family a distinct experience with both benefits and limitations. Living relatively isolated lives at Sotterley also meant that the family did not experience the same extent of racial discrimination and segregation that other African American families living in the society at large felt. But they did experience it when they ventured out to go to school, to church, to the hospital, or shopping.
(Summary drawn from page 81 of the book)
Additional Resources:
Book is available through the Southern Maryland Regional Library System or through MARINA – the state-wide interlibrary loan service. MARINA allows library card holders to request materials not owned by the local public library from another Maryland library system. Go to COSMOS
Historic Sotterley Home – Sotterley – More information is available on the Sotterley website regarding the history of the region where the Barber family lived.
Descendants – Sotterley The author is a part of the Descendants program which is an official registry of all people whose ancestry is connected to the site’s 300-year history, whether enslavers, the enslaved, workers, free and allied families.
Common Ground 2 – Sotterley More can be learned about the Barber family and Sotterly through Common Ground. Established in 2018, Historic Sotterley’s Common Ground initiative, is more than a program, it is a mindset and spirit where we all learn, grow and heal together to achieve an equitable world, building hope and heritage for all, now and for the future.
