What began as a quiet search for a writing retreat on the Eastern Shore has evolved into a deeply personal and ambitious effort to preserve the African American history of Bay Hundred communities before those stories disappear.
For Georgetown University professor and performing arts scholar Dr. Anita Gonzalez, the journey started almost by accident.
After purchasing a small house in Wittman several years ago, Gonzalez noticed activity at a nearby church and eventually learned local residents were restoring an African American cemetery. Curious, she stopped to ask questions. That conversation changed everything.
“I said, ‘Oh my God, I’ve been working with students at a cemetery at Georgetown,’” Gonzalez recalled during a recent interview with the Spy. “That’s how it became a huge project.”
Today, the project has expanded far beyond cemetery restoration. Working with Georgetown students, local residents, historians, and researchers, Gonzalez has helped document oral histories, trace genealogies, map historic work sites, and identify connections among African American communities in Sherwood, Bozman, Claiborne, Bellevue, and Wittman.
The effort operates through the Family and Friends of Asbury and Greene organization, a nonprofit focused on preserving local Black cemeteries and history.
One of the project’s most innovative aspects involves “counter mapping” — a process in which community members gather around historical maps and identify places missing from official records: crab houses, farms, churches, work camps, fishing spots, and forgotten gathering places that shaped daily life for generations of Black families on the Eastern Shore.
“We wanted people to tell us what was wrong,” Gonzalez said with a laugh. “And they did. They told us what was wrong, and they told us what was right.”
Students working with the project have documented gravestones, researched family histories, and developed digital mapping tools through Georgetown’s Center for Mapping and Public Humanities.
But for Gonzalez, the project is ultimately about more than scholarship.
“What I want the community to know is how important it is to understand that there are people still here who have been surviving and thriving for hundreds of years,” she said. “There’s a real sense of mutual aid in these communities.”
That spirit profoundly affected some of the Georgetown students who visited the region.
“They started crying,” Gonzalez said of one community gathering. “They said they had never seen communities come together to support each other in that way.”
Gonzalez worries, however, about the future of many small rural churches and communities as younger generations move away.
Community members often tell her, “We’re a dying community,” she said.
But Gonzalez believes preserving local history can become part of a larger renewal effort — one that may eventually include local archivists, educational programs, and even a regional African American cultural center.
“If I had a grand vision,” she said, “it would be a place where people could come and learn their own history.”
For now, Gonzalez continues building the archive one conversation, cemetery, map, and memory at a time — helping ensure that the stories of Bay Hundred’s African American communities are no longer overlooked.
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