A post from Memorial Episcopal Church in Baltimore.
Earlier this year the church posted a study of its name and its role in segregation. Find that study here. Among the findings:
-
The men for whom this Church is a Memorial enslaved people and, as did several rectors to come, actively supported the Confederacy and the institution of slavery.
-
The fact that our church was founded, in part, as a breaking up with the abolitionists in our ‘mother church’ down the hill in Mt. Vernon
-
Our longest serving rector, William Meade Dame was an avowed segregationist who sought to keep the Church, the neighborhood, and the city, white.
-
Historical vestry minutes clearly show our ancestors promoted discriminatory real estate and neighborhood design practices that were designed to “protect the whiteness of Bolton Hill” and they even fired a rector who tried to welcome our African American neighbors.
The Baltimore Sun reports:
[The Rev. Grey] Maggiano said the North Baltimore church would also study removing a triptych that was offered as a memorial to Dame, “a confederate veteran and leader of Jim Crow and Segregation efforts in Baltimore and here in Bolton Hill for more than 40 years.”
