African American Monument, Saint Mary's County

The monument near here was dedicated in two thousand, the project of a community committee. Its purpose, as stated at dedication, is to serve as a permanent reminder of the contributions African Americans have made to the growth and development of this region. Saint Mary's County holds particular weight in this story: it was the site of Maryland's first colonial settlement in sixteen thirty-four, and enslaved Africans were part of that economy within years of the colony's founding.

The county's tobacco plantations depended heavily on enslaved labor for generations. Monuments like this one, built by community committees rather than government agencies, often do the harder work of making that history visible in the landscape where it actually happened.