This 1871 deed for a tiny plot of land gave more than four dozen African American men the right to vote — and with it, a voice in their community and their country.

During the decades following the Civil War, the Eastern Shore of Maryland — like much of the United States — was a hard place for African Americans to cast their ballots. Even though the Fifteenth Amendment had supposedly ensured voting rights for Black men in 1870, local authorities found many ways to turn voters away. In Chestertown, a law that stated anyone who did not own land was not allowed to vote. This disenfranchised most African Americans.

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