underbelly
African-American History
Sunday Best: a volunteer reflects on photo crowdsourcing
Last week the Maryland Historical Society opened a satellite photograph exhibit, “Paul Henderson: Maryland’s Civil Rights Era in Photographs,” at Baltimore’s City Hall. The show marks our latest efforts to identify the people and locations in the Henderson Photograph Collection. Earlier this year, MdHS hosted an event to kickstart this process. The following is a reflection [...]
Morris A. Soper Papers – Coming Soon! (or 25 years late…)
Several months ago while pulling a collection from our sub-basement, or coal cellar, under the south end of the Keyser building here at MdHS, I became intrigued by a box labeled Soper Papers. Most curious were the words “Don’t catalog until 3/88” scrawled on it. Being quite familiar with the fact that most archives—including MdHS—have [...]
Everyday People: Paul Henderson Collection Goes to City Hall
It’s been a crazy couple of weeks here in the Imaging Services Department at MdHS. Through some wild confluence of ambition and scheduling, I agreed to curate and deliver a 48-piece photography exhibition the very week of the debut of my new documentary, HIT & STAY, at the Maryland Film Festival. I can’t really [...]
Lost City: The Regent Theater
The theaters, night clubs, and restaurants that once made Pennsylvania Avenue Baltimore’s center for African-American entertainment are today a receding memory. In the segregated Baltimore of the early to mid twentieth century, the Avenue was where African-Americans went to see the latest films, have a drink at one of the many nightclubs and bars, and hear [...]
Paul Henderson Collection: Who or Where?
The Paul Henderson Photograph Collection contains over 6,000 photographs of mostly unidentified African Americans from ca. 1935-1965. When the Paul Henderson: Baltimore’s Civil Rights Era in Photographs, ca. 1940-1960 exhibition opened in 2012, several people from the media asked why it was important for MdHS to identify the people Henderson photographed in and around Baltimore. If you’ve ever [...]
A Short History of Hoes Heights
Ever wonder about Hoes Heights? The hidden and oft-overlooked north Baltimore neighborhood of Hoes Heights bears the name of Grandison Hoe, a freed slave in Antebellum Baltimore who once owned and operated a farm on the location. Nestled between its more renowned neighbors—Hampden to the south and Roland Park to the north— this neighborhood remained [...]
Sitting on Top of the World
When one thinks of arctic exploration, the state of Maryland does not immediately come to mind. But Maryland’s connection to the history of polar exploration is more than tenuous, as two of its native sons occupy prominent places on the list of travelers to the northernmost point of the earth. When Baltimorean Herbert Frisby flew [...]
An American Tragedy
Many who devote their lives to bringing about social change can recall a single incident or episode that altered their perceptions and determined their path in life. Civil rights activist Rosa Parks recalls that one of the first ways she realized the difference between “a black world and a white world” was when, as a [...]
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