Registration for this event is required as space is limited. Please note: This program is offsite and leaves from the South Broadway Baptist Church at 211 S Broadway, Baltimore, MD 21231.

Ashley Minner, a community-based artist, scholar, and an enrolled member of the Lumbee Tribe of North Carolina, will lead walking tours based on her critical project, Mapping East Baltimore’s Reservation.

Join the Enoch Pratt Free Library and Maryland Humanities for an exploration of the book There, There by Tommy Orange. FREE copies of the book are available at branches on a first come, first served basis as sponsored by Maryland Humanities.

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More information from the tour guide: 

Hello,

I look forward to walking with you through East Baltimore's Historic American Indian "Reservation" on Saturday, October 7th, 2023! 

We will meet in front of South Broadway Baptist Church (211 S. Broadway Baltimore, Maryland 21231) at 10 AM. The church is located between Pratt and Gough Streets. It is a wide brick building with a black, wrought iron fence along the front. 

Parking: There is street parking in the neighborhood. Parking on the 100 block of S. Broadway is free. Pratt and Lombard streets are free. The 200 block of S. Broadway is metered. Do not leave any valuables visible in your car.

What to Expect: You will be visiting a very diverse and lively urban neighborhood in transition. Please wear comfortable clothing and walking shoes. We will walk approximately 1 mile, 2 blocks of which will be slightly uphill. The entire tour should take about 1 hour.

Some Background Info:

Baltimore is part of the ancestral homelands of the Piscataway and the Susquehannock. A diverse host of American Indian folks from many nations have passed through or lived here at different times and still do. In the mid-twentieth century, thousands of southern American Indians migrated to Baltimore seeking jobs and a better quality of life. On the east side of town, in an area that bridges the neighborhoods of Upper Fells Point and Washington Hill, they created a vibrant, intertribal community which they affectionately referred to as their "reservation." In the decades since, due to a complex set of factors ranging from upward mobility, to Urban Renewal, to gentrification, most American Indian people moved away from the area, which continues to transform. Recent generations never experienced the reservation as such, and most Baltimoreans are surprised to learn it ever existed, but this is changing. Ashley Minner Jones will share some of the story of an intergenerational team’s process to reconstruct the reservation and reactivate heritage through oral histories, archival research, mapping, and walking.  

Tour Guide:

Ashley Minner Jones is a community-based visual artist, curator, and folklorist from Baltimore, Maryland, where she has lived on the same block her entire life. Her interdisciplinary practice is deeply rooted in place—usually within the context of the U.S. South—and is focused on honoring and celebrating everyday people by lifting up their stories. Ashley is an enrolled member of the Lumbee Tribe of North Carolina. She earned an MFA in Community Arts from Maryland Institute College of Art and a PhD in American Studies from University of Maryland College Park. As an artist, she has exhibited widely and her work is represented in many collections. Her research is being archived as "the Ashley Minner Collection" in the Albin O. Kuhn Library of the University of Maryland Baltimore County. 

In 2016, Ashley began to formalize a very brief walking tour of the historic heart of the American Indian community of East Baltimore. In conversation with her elders, she came to realize there were many sites of significance that are no longer recognizable on the landscape or prominent in public memory. Through continued conversation with elders, other community members and stakeholders, archival research, generous support from funders, and artistic collaboration, a print guide to the "reservation," a dedicated website [baltimorereservation.com], and a cell phone walking tour app were released to the public as free resources in November of 2021. This work is collaborative and ongoing.

Links of Interest:

baltimorereservation.com
The print Illustrated Guide to East Baltimore's Historic American Indian "Reservation"
Baltimore Reservation Project Instagram account (@baltimorereservation)
Safety in Numbers photo exhibition (2023)
The Guide to Indigenous Baltimore mobile walking tour app for Apple
The Guide to Indigenous Baltimore mobile walking tour app for Android

If you have any questions or concerns, please feel free to reach out. I look forward to meeting you soon!

Ashley