The Forgotten Howard Countian - Color Me Black

The Forgotten Howard Countian—Color Me Black

Beulah (Meacham) Buckner (1930–2005) was a researcher and historian of African American history in HoCo.  She was motivated to document Black history through discovering and recording historic schools, churches and cemeteries and researching government records and genealogy documenting the Black communities that existed in an area now bulldozed and developed into Columbia. Buckner knew it was crucial to publicly record this hidden and disappearing history as an important component of HoCo’s past, present and future. She intended that her meticulous research from the 1980s and 1990s would culminate in a book called The Forgotten Howard Countian—Color Me Black.

In her unpublished work currently archived at the private Howard County Historical Society, Inc, she wrote:

I found that these Historical Society and Individual Howard County historians have been content to borrow Frederick Douglass from Talbot County, Harriett Tubman from Dorchester County, Benjamin Banneker from Baltimore County, and Mathew Henson from Charles County whenever reporting African American contributions to Howard County or the State of Maryland, as if these four great African Americans were the sum total of the African American intelligence and contributions in Maryland. Howard County is particularly guilty of the omission by including Benjamin Banneker in their history when he actually lived in Baltimore County and worked in Ellicott City in Howard County. Rather than take the time to document the history of those African Americans who were born in and made contributions to the history of Howard County. 

These records provided information that from the beginning of the county both Free Blacks and Slaves helped build the roads, worked in the quarries, iron works and mills; tilled the land, fought in their wars and helped raise the children of those elegant white families while they were busy being elegant. They also showed that the great manors of Howard County, which Howard County white society is always so proud to possess and talk about but quick to forget and seldom mention that Free Blacks and Slaves provided most of the labor in the building of these manors and beautiful gardens surrounding them.

The collection of Beulah Buckner’s work had been in the possession of the HoCo government since her passing in 2005 and was transferred, with no notice, in 2023 to a private organization, the Howard County Historical Society, Inc.  We hope that it will be fully catalogued and digitized to become available to the public. The quality and quantity of records Buckner obtained are impressive, containing documents, journals, newspaper clippings, notes, typed pages of her manuscript, computer disks, photos, slide negatives and more. Her research is overwhelming and powerful, especially knowing how she felt about the lack of research into our county’s Black history. The information she collected is still difficult to find today.