Bernard Demczuk, Ph.D., recounts the stories of the first men of African descent to populate the Eastern Shore of the Chesapeake Bay, their rights to hold land and how those rights were reinstated for men of color who fought in the Civil War.
"Heaven and earth never agreed better to frame a place of man's habitation," wrote Captain John Smith as he sailed the Chesapeake Bay. Yet Bernard Demczuk explains the stories unfolded differently for men of color on the Bay's shores. Endentured servants and slaves cleared the land to produce first tobacco crops. When fewer whites immigrated to the American colonies, slave labor and its Atlantic trade grew. Listen to Professor Demczuk recount the codification of laws, codifying prejudice ways.
Unionville, a town just outside of Easton, Maryland was created through the generosity of a Quaker family to right those wrongs during the Civil War, a testament to a spiritual journey that continues today, one of love of country and brotherhood of man.