FYS: Abolition in the Urban South: Baltimore’s William Levington

3 Credits.

This First-Year Seminar will use the tools of the historical and literary archive to etch a social history of African American life in Baltimore between roughly 1790 and 1860, focusing on the historical figure William Levington. The founder of the first black Episcopalian church in the slaveholding South, Levington was also the third seminary-trained black priest in America. Students will explore classic narratives revealing the lives of the enslaved in American cities and in the Chesapeake. The course will also consider the role of the black church as the principle independent institution and mass movement for antebellum African Americans. We will make a class visit to St. James in Lafayette Square, the church Levington founded, and also visit the Maryland Center for History and Culture, and the Library of Congress in Washington, DC.