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MECCA LEWIS: It's been a minute since I've seen you.
ANTHONY COHEN: Likewise.
(meditative music)
MECCA: Yeah, so nice to see you. Hello, and welcome to Rooted Wisdom. I'm
Mecca Lewis, and in this episode, we visit historian Tony Cohen at Button Farm, a living history center that depicts 1850s plantation life and explores the legacy of slavery in Maryland.
Well, we're here at Button Farm, and I've heard a bunch about this space, and you've told me to come out before and didn't get a chance to camp here this summer like I wanted to, but I'm really happy to be here today.
(meditative music fades)
TONY: Well, welcome. And I'm glad you came. And yeah, let the tour begin.
MECCA: What is button farm?
TONY: Button Farm is a 40 acre farm tucked inside of Seneca Creek State Park, in Germantown, Maryland. So we're on public land. And the farm interprets the story of enslavement in Maryland, plantation life, and the Underground Railroad.
So it's an all hands on history experience and actually hands on history experiment, because we like putting objects in people's hands and having them tell us what history is being transmitted, whether it's through physical artifact or the land itself. We use tactile experiences to inform of the past.
MECCA: Is that like programing that you run or people able to come on and kind of self steward?
TONY: So a lot of the experience here is guided, mainly aimed at youth, but also some for adults and tours for adults. We are creating a self-guided tour and that should kind of expand the visitor experience.
MECCA: Can I ask like what program you're excited about offering and around what object?
TONY: Right now we are working on interpretation around the 250th commemoration of our nation's founding. The county we're located in, Montgomery County, Maryland, was also founded in 1776, so we're as old as the nation. There were two landowners in what is now Button Farm who served in the Revolutionary War from Maryland and we’re researching the people they enslaved. And of course, the paradox of liberty, as it's often referred to being lofty ideals about freedom, but not so lofty ideas about who is entitled to that freedom, which is America's ongoing struggle even to this day.
MECCA: I'm curious if there's an object or any resources that you found on this site that have helped provide context to this story that you're revisiting.
TONY: Yes. In fact, tobacco was the major cash crop in this area. Tobacco is a very greedy plant. It sucks the nitrogen out of the soil, and then the ground has to lay fallow for years before a new crops can be planted. Even in the founding of this plot of land is the story of how people use that land. And of course, that story directly connects with enslavement.
So, right here is a bed of tobacco. This is Orinoco tobacco. It's the closest thing to what was being cultivated by Europeans in this area. This ties directly into this period of history. Let's listen.
(gentle chimes)
WREN (from Button Farm Almanac Self-Guided Tour recording):
I was born in the state of Maryland, which is one of the smallest and most northern of the slaveholding states. The products of this state are wheat, rye, Indian corn, tobacco, and some hemp, flax, etc. By looking at the map, it will be seen that Maryland, like Virginia, her neighbor, is divided by the Chesapeake Bay into Eastern and Western shores.
My birthplace was on the Eastern Shore where there are 7 or 8 small counties. The farms are small and tobacco is mostly raised. At an early period in the history of Maryland, her lands began to be exhausted by the bad cultivation peculiar to slave states, and hence she soon commenced the business of breeding slaves for the more Southern states.
This is given an enormity to Slavery in Maryland, differing from that which attaches to the system in Louisiana and equaled by none of the kind except Virginia and Kentucky, and not by either of these in extent.
(gentle chimes)
TONY: That was an account from a slave narrative by a man named James Pennington, and it was read by a student who we recorded for an audio tour, self-guided audio tour, we're working on here.
MECCA: That’s awesome. I guess I'm curious if you could tell me a little bit more about how tobacco is harvested, and it's grown, and how it impacts the other beds around it as well?
TONY: Absolutely. Let me show you. I'm reaching up here and grabbing this pod. I'm grabbing THIS pod here. Okay, open that up, but keep it in your hands because there's something inside that you'll discover.
MECCA: Oh. Whoa! a million and one seeds.
TONY: That's right. So those are the seeds. Nearly microscopic. Each smaller than a ground flake of pepper. We’ll grow the plant so that we can collect the seed. And then we'll use the seed for future crops. We also trade with other living history sites and whatnot. We try to help spread, preservation of what we call heirloom crops.
Another interesting thing is you can see in places here and there, these holes, those are signs of what's known as the tobacco horn worm. It's, a worm that's green. It kind of camouflages itself to look like the plant, so it's very hard to see at its longest, it’s about the size of maybe your index finger and looks like a big, green, wiggly mozzarella stick.
It can be devastating to the crop because it bores these holes through the leaves. But on the plantation, deworming the plant was one of the most important jobs. As you can see, these things are really big. Sometimes the plants can, you know, reach the height of seven or eight feet. And if you're pulling up these leaves to view the underside, for the worm, they can easily snap off.
So, on a plantation you would have children go down the tobacco rows because they're looking up. They can see what's under the leaf by
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looking up. Right. And so their first job would be to pull off the worms and crush them. So imagine sent down the tobacco rows. You're pulling off worms and you get to the end, and then the overseer follows you and he's double checking your work.
What do you imagine he might do if he discovers worms on the plants that you overlooked?
MECCA: I imagine that he might make the parents, punish them in order to ensure that they, like, teach their children better strategies for just having more accuracy with their work.
TONY: That could be the case. But what if the overseer himself gave the instruction to the child?
MECCA: Gulp. Um, well, I guess I horribly have to imagine that maybe, they’re made to work longer hours. Or they’re…
TONY: Are you avoiding the obvious?
MECCA: I don't know. Please don't say that they take their ,their hands or fingers from them.
TONY: Oh, no. They're far too valuable.
MECCA: Okay.
TONY: Yeah. I'm sure, whipping with, nice long green hickory switch. Might have been included, but on some farms, if you missed it, you were required to eat it. Yes.
MECCA: No.
TONY: So. So you take the whipping over the green wiggly mozzarella sticks, huh?
MECCA: It's kind of interesting because when you said that these big green mozzarella sticks were really attracted to the tobacco plant. I did assume that they might have been eaten or consumed, especially if they were in abundance. I'm not sure that I would be super excited to eat something like that today, but when I think about alternative living in the future and what types of resources we have, I can see myself being like, love the—the tobacco hornworm.
But yeah, when you're talking about the role of a child and like how that how they're at an advantage for, caretaking for crops and seeing things that older folks may be miss. I imagine the sense of wonder that, someone so young might experience in walking through rows of crops and maybe feeling more like a forest. You mentioned, like the plants being able to reach seven, maybe eight feet tall.
I, I just could imagine that being so joyous, honestly, to find deep connection in relationship to the plants and like, be able to take care of them in that way. And it being just something that you're naturally good at because of where you are height-wise.
TONY: Yeah. And as a child, you don't exactly know what's coming. Right? So you don't have the rearview mirror context of enslavement, right? Children on farms often had the lightest chores for the first several years of their lives, and then were slowly put to work.
MECCA: What is like caretaking for these crops spring up for you and visitors to the farm?
TONY: I think just their presence draws people closer to the history we're trying to interpret it. It makes it real. For instance, to my left, there are several cotton plants that are growing, and this is a variety of what was known as Brown cotton. Cotton wasn't very prevalent in Maryland because of our climate, but there was one factory we've discovered in Montgomery County in the 1830s to 1850s, which processed Brown cotton.
But we have this here to represent, a crop that we know was here in the county. And you see the beautiful flowers, that are coming up. Yes, I would never have even thought this was cotton. I didn't think that cotton would, would have a beautiful, rose-like flower like that.
TONY: Isn't it incredible?
MECCA: It's cool.
TONY: And that's the reaction that almost everybody has when this is in full bloom. You can see it from yards away and people come over. You know, what is this beautiful plant? And then they get around the side and they see the sign that says cotton. And often the response is: Cotton! We're on a farm that interprets slavery. The evil plant. Right?
MECCA: Right.
TONY: But after having a dialogue and I'll often ask them to, you know, just kind of reach around and pull the tag up from the collar of the person standing next to them, you know, what does it say? Oh, nine out of ten times it's cotton.
MECCA: Um-hum, um-hum. Woah.
TONY: Well, where was that shirt made. Indonesia. Great. Now we can have a conversation about modern labor practices that were predicated by historic labor practices. And so we bridge the divide between the deep historical past and the present. You know, how do the choices we make perpetuate other forms of enslavement today around the globe?
MECCA: Yeah. I just want to look at it real quick. Yes. And touch it. Whoa!
TONY: It's pretty incredible. It's a really sturdy plant. It's just so beautiful. And those are the bolls. The pods from which the cotton emerges as it goes through the, the growing season, these pods will dry. Then they crack open and you glimpse the top of the cotton ball. Back in the day, you would have to reach in and grab that cotton out. Right? You can imagine you almost have to go in with tweezers, right? Well, they didn't do that. They used the smallest thing that they could find on a human, which was a child's hand. Right. So children were frequently some of the best cotton pickers because they had those small fingers that could get in there and grab. And now you have the vision of child labor from the time of bondage. Right? Through one of the most beautiful plants that's out there.
MECCA: Yeah. When you said the “evil plant” earlier, I. I didn't feel like I resonated with the plant being like, evil, but when. Yeah, that that image is just kind of maybe made me feel a little bit like that. Oh, no. That is. Yeah. A plant that specifically needs to be tended to by children is not super sustainable.
TONY: Yes, absolutely. Cotton production is, so highly mechanized in some places, like here in the United States, but it's never completely lost its human, component. In other places around the world. And so the story of enslavement, then, as with child labor now, is also a story of economics. That's what's, you know, kind of at the at the core of this.
So imagine this garden that you're in, which is about,
I don't know, an eighth of an acre? Has about 40 raised beds, each growing something from the time period. Heirloom table crops and also cash crops. Just imagine that each of these beds has the potential to tell another story, its own story about our collective past.
MECCA: It feels nice to step out of the garden where all the gnats were lovingly, chatting, trying to be a part of our conversation, but sitting with you in the rocking chair on your porch. Makes me want to ask more about how you became, the steward of this site.
TONY: I really had this vision of having a farm where we could bring to life all of the things that I was reading in historical records and in books. Cotton production is pretty flat. When you read a historian's account of what it is completely different when you're standing in the middle of a cotton field. Someone suggested that I look to the Department of Natural Resources, our state park system, and I learned of the curatorship program.
Private citizens or nonprofits can get long term leases on properties that are on public land for low or even no rent. We pay a dollar a year to be here, and we have a 40 year lease. Our part of the deal is we raise the money to restore the buildings on the site and maintain them, and open the property to the public.
I remember it was just this abandoned farmhouse in the middle of the woods and getting the mail. There was my lease and I remember opening up the letter. I pull it out. It's from Department of Natural Resources confirming that we now had button farm and tears are actually coming down my face like, wow. I convinced the state of Maryland that they should give us land so we can interpret slavery for the general public.
MECCA: Wow, can you share any sort of account from what you've heard, maybe firsthand or through people who have helped facilitate some of the programs, like what do some of those children walk away feeling after this sort of reengage—like engagement with tradition and craft from the past?
TONY: We asked that question, reflect for a moment on the objects, the historical tools and artifacts you've encountered, the farm chores that you've done, the stories you've heard and things that children say have included.
Well, enslaved people weren't stupid people. They were really smart, and they possessed ingenuity. Most often here: Well, I didn't know that. From adults: Not only I didn't know that, but why was this kept from me? Why was this history hidden from me? So history can be very empowering. I believe, because it gives us perspective. Perspective. We get a measure—measurement, if you will, across time of how far we've come and what still remains to be tended to.
MECCA: I think about now, like today, reading about how, funding is being shifted from, you know, preserving our history—and, how have you navigated times when priorities of those who are in leadership have changed? When you are on public land, when you're a part of a public park system?
TONY: For us, we found our partnership with the state to be very affirming. We choose to just stay to the path. We want to learn from the past. We don't want to live in the past. Today, when we're hearing criticisms of history as revisionist history or history shouldn't be told if it might hurt someone's feelings. What we've discovered at the farm is people's feelings don't get hurt, except when they believe that knowledge is being kept from them.
And frequently, when we talk about enslavement through our programs with our guests who come here about topics like the Underground Railroad, people will often wonder and say, you know, I can only hope, if I had been alive during those times, I would have stood up for what was right. My response to that is, well, we have the power to stand up for what we feel is right today.
MECCA: Yeah.
TONY: Because someone in the future will look back and judge us. So, what will they say? This is a question we asked the youngest kids who come 150 years from now, what will people look back at our society and say, and those kids, they are just totally on spot. And they talk about social justice. They talk about equity. They know all of the struggles and challenges that are here now. So being able to play a part in that community conversation is something we're very proud of.
MECCA: I hope that, as you know, we we move towards those 150 years in the future that this land is still protected because of the curiosity of those and the wisdom of the the children who have come here before, like who have interacted with the landscape and can remember that in their body here. Yeah. It's really powerful. What do you envision or dream of happening on this land 150 years from now?
TONY: Um, wow. The efforts and the work put in by the foundation and the community at large will still be evident on the landscape. The house that we're sitting at right now. I'd love it to still be standing and still have a story to tell. The part of our county that the farm actually sits in upwards of 90,000 acres of our county, the agricultural reserve.
I hope that will still be here.
MECCA: I hope so too.
(meditative music)
Rooted Wisdom is a production of Beech Works in collaboration with The Menare Foundation.
This episode was produced and recorded by Michael Lewis, Lauren Giordano, and George Burroughs.
Special thanks to our guest, Tony Cohen. Learn more about Cohen's work at Menare.org and buttonfarm.org.
I'm Mecca Lewis, your host. To learn more about Rooted Wisdom, visit rootedwisdom.org.
Check out our available community programs, including film screenings and educational presentations.
You can also email us at rootedwisdom@beechworks.org. That's B-E-E-C-H.
If you enjoyed this podcast, please tell a friend about it or leave us a review on Apple Podcasts or on our website.
This material is based upon work, assisted by a grant from the Association for the Study of African American Life in History, with funding from the National Park Service, National Underground Railroad Network to Freedom. Any opinions, findings, and conclusions or recommendations expressed in this material are those of the authors and do not necessarily reflect the views of a scholar or the Department of the interior.
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