A local leader named James A. Jones wished to change this, and he found a way to do so. Born in 1805, Jones was a prominent Black businessman and political organizer in Chestertown who owned multiple plots of land. With this deed, filed at the Kent County Courthouse on May 16th, 1871, he partitioned a single square foot of ground among 52 other African American men, selling it to them for the combined price of $5. The document lists the names of every one of those men. (It also calls special attention to Jones’s race with the annotation (cld) — “colored” — next to his name at the top of the deed.)

Jones also organized voter drives, standing outside voting sites for hours with fellow community leaders William Perkins and Levi Rogers, dressed in their finest attire in order to encourage other African Americans to turn out.

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