St. Mary’s ‘From Absence to Presence’

St. Mary’s College of Maryland was committed to turning the discovery of 19th-century slave quarters into a teaching, learning, and understanding opportunity–one that would challenge preconceptions and reorient perspectives.

Poet Quenton Baker drew upon actual slave advertisements and runaway slave notices from Southern Maryland to create the redacted words of erasure poetry etched onto the exterior of the Commemorative the College constructed.

Site visitors and video viewers are invited to literally fill in the blanks and confront what our shared past means to our collective future.