At first glance, the Commemorative to Enslaved Peoples of Southern Maryland (“The Commemorative”) appears out of place, a one-room cabin alone in a field outside a stadium. But if the sun is shining the cabin will reflect the light from its mirror-like clapboards, and if it is night the cabin will glow hauntingly, revealing its meaning.
The Commemorative is a monument to enslaved people who once worked much of the land in southern Maryland, including the land on which the campus of St. Mary’s College is built. The names and lives of enslaved people are often forgotten to time, and their homes erased by subsequent development. To reverse that erasure, the ghost house was built of highly polished steel with the names of the enslaved cut out so that, when illuminated from within, their names project onto the ground they once worked. In addition to names, the Commemorative includes “erasure poetry,” poems based on historical documents from the former Mackall-Brome plantation that once stood on the site.
The Commemorative is intentionally placed in the middle of a busy section of campus, adjacent to a sports stadium steps from where the slave cabins historically stood, making it impossible to ignore. The shape of the cabin is based on archaeological studies by faculty and students of St. Mary’s College at the nearby St. Mary’s City Historical Park, where the first “ghost cabins” were erected to show the placement of significant buildings.
