To commemorate Black History Month, join author James H. Johnston to learn about differing historical perspectives on slavery in Maryland and the District of Columbia.

The word “slavery” brings up a mental image of the “peculiar institution” as it existed in the Deep South right before the Civil War. Slavery in the Washington area was different. It began the same – in the late 1600s. By the time of the Civil War, DC still had slaves, but they lived among a population of free African Americans.

Author James H. Johnston will discuss the differing perspectives on slavery that emerge from his two books, The Recollections of Margaret Loughborough, about a daughter of the Old Dominion of Virginia, and From Slave Ship to Harvard, which follows six generations of an African American family in Maryland.

This program is being offered in collaboration with Montgomery History Speakers Bureau.

Sponsored by the Friends of the Library, Montgomery County.