Red Emma’s

The transatlantic slave trade kidnapped and trafficked Africans into the Americas based on specific knowledge, skills and abilities. While agricultural plantations are dominant sites of memory of enslavement in the South, Maryland and other northern states gained wealth through their industrial production.

The story of Maryland can't be told without these iron plantations. With elaborate iron-making technologies developed in their homelands, people from West and Central Africa were enslaved to build and run prominent ironworks in and around Maryland during the 18th and 19th centuries.

Many remain buried at these historic sites across the state, while details about their lives largely missing from recorded history. Join us in Baltimore, MD as we restore the stories of ancestors who’ve been lost and found in iron furnace cemeteries in Maryland.

During this two-hour workshop we will:

• engage the Catoctin Furnace Historical Society archive and other research around Maryland's Catoctin Furnace African American Cemetery
• explore speculative eulogy as a genre
• use critical fabulation to write eulogies for the enslaved iron workers in Maryland At the end, participants will have the chance to contribute their eulogy to collective zine which will be printed and available for free at Red Emma's zine library.

RSVP today!