You are standing in front of a graphic panel titled “From Emancipation to Jim Crow.” To your left is a reader rail titled “Window on the Past: Agricultural Decline.” To your right is a graphic panel titled “SERC’s Campus and the Surrounding Area: 1865 to 1965.”

The panel in front of you includes text and five images.

The main text reads:

From Emancipation to Jim Crow

The Civil War and the abolition of slavery in Maryland in November 1864 radically changed life in the area.

Farm values plummeted, but landowners still needed workers to bring in the crops. Many former slaves became sharecroppers or tenant farmers.

While legally free, African American households were often deeply in debt to white landowners and merchants because of intentionally exploitative contracts.

Soon, African Americans learned that they had escaped slavery only to face another form of racial oppression: Jim Crow laws that enforced racial segregation.

An 1865 illustration from Frank Leslie’s Illustrated Newspaper, at the top of the panel, shows African Americans arriving in Baltimore after the Civil War.

A black-and-white photo below it shows a “Colored Waiting Room” sign at a bus station in Durham, North Carolina, in 1940. African Americans in this area faced similar restrictions.

The secondary text reads:

Tenant Farmers and Sharecroppers
Tenant farming and sharecropping were common in the South after the Civil War. Tenant farmers paid landowners rent in return for the use of their land, while sharecroppers worked the land in exchange for a share of the crop. Unpredictable harvests and high interest rates made it difficult for tenant farmers and sharecroppers to make a profit, and they were often heavily in debt.

A black-and-white photo shows African American farm laborers harvesting tobacco with oxen.

Another black-and-white photo below it shows African American farmer Sam Neal tending his tobacco crop, 1976.

A background image at the bottom of the panel shows a wooden house surrounded by sheep and cows grazing on grass. The caption reads: Tenant farmers and sharecroppers often lived in former slave quarters, such as this house on nearby Ivy Neck farm.