Strange Fruit

A "high quality" history of racism in the Chesapeake community from the 19th century to the present (James H. Johnston, author of From Slave Ship to Harvard: Yarrow Mamut and the History of an African American Family).

Strange Fruit traces the course of racism and society in a tidewater county in Maryland's Chesapeake Bay country from 1850 to the present. Author John Wennersten examines influences and trends, as well as political and cultural developments, which have played out in Maryland over time, and which might test or call into question assumptions about the nature of race relations in America.

"Eastern Shore white traditionalists have long resisted telling the true and complete story of their history, which mirrors similar trajectories of other counties and communities south of the Mason-Dixon Line. The country, I believe, desperately needs to to know, acknowledge and own it-all of it." —Eugene L. Meyer, author of Five For Freedom: The African American Soldiers in John Brown's Army

"This book shows the historical significance and relevance of the subject, particularly now that race has become such an integral part of the American narrative. It also demonstrates the richness of the documentary resources Wennersten tapped to tell the story." —Donald A. Ritchie, U.S. Senate Historian Emeritus