Digitization and Interpretation Plan for Four Centuries of Black History in a Chesapeake Bay Community

FAIN: PW-285207-22

Washington College (Chestertown, MD 21620-1197)
Adam Goodheart (Project Director: July 2021 to April 2025)

Planning further development of Washington College Starr Center’s “Chesapeake Heartland: An African American Humanities Project” through an expansion of its digital collections and community engagement activities. Identified contributing partners would include four repositories that hold materials related to more than two centuries of African-American history on the Eastern Shore of Maryland. 

In 2019, Washington College's Starr Center for the Study of the American Experience, with an $800,000 grant from The Andrew W. Mellon Foundation, launched "Chesapeake Heartland: An African American Humanities Project," an innovative collaboration among Washington College, the Smithsonian's National Museum of African American History and Culture, and a broad array of community partners in Kent County, MD. Chesapeake Heartland collects, preserves, digitizes, and makes accessible artifacts and oral histories related to the area’s African American heritage. With NEH support, the Starr Center can expand significantly the project's reach by bringing in items that are scattered in institutional repositories across the Chesapeake region, including the Maryland State Archives (Annapolis), Maryland Center for History and Culture (Baltimore), American Antiquarian Society (MA), and the National Museum of African American History and Culture (DC), broadening the project's scope to four centuries.