Housing and Development Newsletter
“A more intelligent way is to pose new questions. Take one example: the 19th century read fifth century Thucydides writing the great historian of the Peloponnesian war for insights into politics and strategy. In the 20th century, we experienced the effects of total warfare. Suddenly historians were paying more attention to those passages where Thucydides describes the psychological and moral deterioration that results from prolonged warfare. Nobody made anything up information for both points of view has always been there. That makes Thucydides a great historian. Each age has simply keyed in on passages that were more relevant to their lived experience.”
In Frederick Douglass early years, he spent a lot of time in Fells Point, where, in his efforts to learn to read, he created his own barter system for impromptu classroom instruction.Frederick Augustus Washington Bailey was born around 1818 into slavery in Talbot County. When he was 8, he was sent to Baltimore to live with a ship carpenter named Hugh Auld. It was in the streets of Fells Point that he learned to read with the help of the Point Boys. The Point Boys were similar to the Little Rascals group. It was a group of close-knit young boys of Irish nationality, John Muller said.Muller is the author of Frederick Douglass in Washington, D.C., The lion of Anacostia. Through his company, Lost History Associates, he offers community-based street history tours in Fells Point. He said the Auld family sons, Thomas and Benjamin, who would later be the captain of the Eastern District police station, were both members of the Point Boys. The Point Boys were a group of young children