Merideth M. Taylor: MAKING A WAY OUT OF NO WAY

The Ivy is excited to welcome Dr. Merideth M. Taylor to speak about her new book Making a Way Out of No Way: Lives of Labor, Love, and Resistance, a richly imagined, photo illustrated narrative of 150 years of life in slavery on tobacco plantations in Southern Maryland.

The photographs and stories in this book grew out of the author's quest to understand how these people, who were subjected to a system that made every attempt to brutalize and dehumanize them, were able not only to survive but to build families and meaningful lives. Her choice to largely avoid graphic depictions of the violence perpetrated on enslaved bodies allows the reader to focus, instead, on the remarkable resilience, ingenuity, skills, and cultural strengths that enabled them to make a way out of no way.

Author royalties will be donated to Historic Sotterley's Descendant's Project, and we're fortunate that Angela Davis, a Descendant of Historic Sotterley Plantation, will join Dr. Taylor for this event, along with Maya Davis, Director of the Riversdale House Museum. We hope you can join us for this meaningful conversation.

Books will also be available at the event.

Merideth M. Taylor is Professor Emerita of Theater and Dance at St. Mary’s College of Maryland, and a founding member of the African and African Diaspora and Women Studies programs at the College. She is author of Listening in: Echoes and Artifacts from Maryland’s Mother County; co-editor of In Relentless Pursuit of an Education: African American Stories from a Century of Segregation; and screenwriter/director of the documentaries With All Deliberate Speed: One High School’s Story and Telly-Award-winning Talking and Walking Common Ground.

Maya Davis is Director of the Riversdale House Museum. A former Research Archivist and Legislative Liaison at the Maryland State Archives, she is a member of the Maryland Commission on African American History and Culture, and board member at the Maryland Center for History and Culture and Prince George’s County Historical Society. Previously she served as the Interim Director of the Banneker-Douglass Museum, staff at the City Museum of Washington, DC, and Vice Chair of the Annapolis 1864 Commission to Commemorate Maryland Emancipation Day. A native Washingtonian, Maya is a graduate of Howard and George Washington Universities where she obtained degrees in History and Museum Studies.

Angela Wilson is a Descendant of Historic Sotterley Plantation, Family Historian, retired Consultant Financial Planning & Analyst from a Fortune 500 communications company, founder of the Sotterley Descendant Facebook page, former member of Historic Sotterley’s Descendants Panel, Finance Team Chair of the Sacred Heart Cemetery Project in Bowie, a founding member newly formed White Marsh Historical Society and a USAF veteran.

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