Tag william g thomas

February 3, 2021
in American History, History

The Meeting at White Marsh, 1789

February 3, 2021
in American History, History

William G. Thomas III— The poplars swayed high above Edward Queen and Charles Mahoney on that May morning. The summer heat crawled up from the Patuxent River, summoned from its slack banks and slow bends, drawing its oppressive punch from the Chesapeake Bay and the Atlantic Ocean beyond. To the

February 15, 2012
in African American Studies, American History, Current Affairs, Economics

Been Working on the Railroad

February 15, 2012
in African American Studies, American History, Current Affairs, Economics

While we typically associate slavery in America with the plantation economies of cotton, sugar, and tobacco, by the middle of the 19th century, Southern railroad companies were actually some of the region’s largest slaveholders. Indeed, men like Samuel Ballton, a slave born in Virginia in 1838, spent years of their