The Maryland Historical Society has long possessed two nearly inexhaustible collections of primary source material from Baltimore’s civil rights era. One, the Paul Henderson Photograph Collection, consists of more than 6,000 photo negatives and hundreds of prints by Henderson, a longtime photographer for the Baltimore Afro-American. It has quietly resided at MdHS since 1997. The other, the McKeldin-Jackson Oral History Project, made up of 87 lengthy interviews with civil rights activists and opponents, was completed in the late 1970s. It has been at MdHS ever since. Yet few Baltimoreans know that either of these rich collections exist. This week, MdHS brings both of them into the light with Seen and Heard: Maryland’s Civil Rights Era in Photographs and Oral Histories, a panel discussion and exhibition.

“It’s kind of a multipurpose thing,” says Jennifer Ferretti, curator of photographs. “It’s to celebrate the collections, but it’s also to say ‘This happened here.’ . . . [I]f someone leaves with a sense of pride in their city and what happened here, and learned about what happened, then I would be so satisfied.”

While both collections have technically been available to the public before now, Seen and Heard represents years of work on the part of MdHS staff: Most of Henderson’s photos lacked useful identification labels, and the oral history collection had to be digitized and inventoried. Now made more accessible, the collections often complement one another, creating a vivid, multifaceted portrait of the civil rights era in Baltimore, one that is likely to yield surprises for years to come.

MdHS kicks off the unveiling with a panel discussion on Feb. 23, accompanied by a small exhibition of Henderson’s photos. The panel, which will focus on the civil rights era, will feature both experts and direct participants in the movement: Larry Gibson, a law professor who chairs the state Commission to Coordinate the Study, Commemoration, and Impact of the History and Legacy of Slavery in Maryland; Michelle Scott, a University of Maryland, Baltimore County (UMBC) associate professor specializing in African-American history, black music culture, and women’s studies; William Zorzi, former reporter and editor for The Baltimore Sun; Helena Hicks, a participant in the 1955 Read’s Drug Store sit-ins (for a Q&A with Hicks, Click here); and Barry Lanman, director of the Martha Ross Center for Oral History at UMBC.

Lanman will talk about his experience back in the ’70s as an interviewer for the McKeldin-Jackson Oral History Project. The interviews, which took place from 1975 to 1977, sponsored by MdHS, were an effort to examine Maryland’s civil rights movement through the lens of two iconic figures: Lillie May Carroll Jackson and Theodore McKeldin. Jackson presided over the Baltimore branch of the NAACP for more than three decades, starting in 1935. Often known as “Ma Jackson,” the mother of the civil rights movement, Jackson greatly increased membership in the organization, held voter-registration drives, and was famous for fearlessly badgering politicians into granting civil rights to African-Americans, long before the broader movements of the 1960s. McKeldin, a white man who was Baltimore’s mayor twice, once in the 1940s and once in the 1960s, was Maryland’s governor from 1951 to 1959. He was an outspoken advocate for civil rights, working to end segregation in numerous spheres of daily life, including theaters, stores, state ferries, and beaches, and played an important role in ending school segregation.

Interviewees for the project were asked about their relationships with and impressions of these two individuals, but the conversations are wide-ranging, touching on organizations such as the NAACP and CORE (Congress of Racial Equality), state politics, lynchings, riots, desegregation, employment, education, and everything in between. The subjects include many illustrious figures: former congresspeople and governors, judges, ministers, and mayors. They include McKeldin’s son and Jackson’s children (Juanita Jackson Mitchell, the first African-American woman to practice law in Maryland, among them). The Grand Titan of the state’s Ku Klux Klan in the mid-1960s participates as well. But many of the interviews are with unknowns: Theodore McKeldin’s personal secretary, the supervisor of the snack bar at Goucher College, a pianist active in the civil rights movement.

The interviews, which often last an hour or more, are raw and unedited, complete with every cough, “um,” and “uh.” Personalities, so often obscured in history texts, quickly emerge in these interviews. Virginia Jackson Kiah, Lillie May Carroll Jackson’s daughter, frequently expresses irritation with her interviewer, for example. “Three years. That’s all I can say, Mr. Exact Years,” she says at one point, in answer to a question about a date. Telling details about the historic figures under examination are also revealed. Jackson’s forceful demeanor comes through in a story Kiah, an artist, tells about her mother approaching local ministers on her behalf. “My mother would say, ‘You need a portrait painted of yourself. You know good and well that they’re not going to think about you at all after you’re gone. . . .’ And so, ‘Yes, Mrs. Jackson. All right, Mrs. Jackson.’ I got one order after the other like that,” Kiah says.

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