FROSTBURG: There was a ribbon-cutting ceremony for a new sculpture honoring the deceased residents of Frostburg’s Park Avenue and Brownsville on Thursday. The sculpture, called Anchors of Endurance, is the first to depict the Black community of Brownsville after its inhabitants were uprooted to make way for the Normal School—now known as Frostburg State University—to be built.
Up to 125 families lived in the neighborhood by 1920, but by the late 1960s, the university’s campus had completely encircled it. In order to facilitate the expansion of the school, the state of Maryland acquired the assets.
The artwork may be found in the Frostburg Museum courtyard on Main Street, close to St. Michael Catholic Church. The location is the first Brownsville memorial off the Frostburg State campus, and it will make the neighborhood’s history more widely known to anyone passing through Frostburg’s bustling Main Street district.
Brownsville Project got underway
Jackson was raised in Frostburg and was unaware of the Brownsville community until she found out that her great-great-great grandmother had bought the neighborhood’s second parcel of property. Jackson claims that the sculpture provides the present Black community in the city with a stable and permanent home. “We were here, we’ve always been here and we’re still here,” she continued.
Through Jackson’s efforts, the Brownsville Project got underway in 2018 and aims to use theater and community outreach to better explore the rich Black heritage of Western Maryland. Even while Brownsville is well-known in and around Frostburg, many people have never truly comprehended what it used to look like.
During the ribbon-cutting ceremony, Backstories’ genealogy researcher Pamela Moore said that they traced the streets around FSU’s campus using Google Maps. “No definitive map depicted the shift of the Brownsville community before this,” Moore stated. Moore claims that descendants will soon be able to view the real signatures of their ancestors on the deeds of the lost estates.
Our community is colourful
Marguerite de Messières and Tsvetomir Naydenov, two artists, created the Anchors of Endurance statue by hand with the intention of illustrating the “beautiful complexity” of Brownsville’s past. At the dedication, Naydenov stated, “It’s one of the most meaningful pieces we’ve ever made”.
Messières claims that in order to depict how Brownsville was made by hand, the sculpture was intended to be constructed completely by hand. “The community we describe is colorful, complex,” she stated.
Everything was done by hand, even the letters spelling out the family names on the statue. It has no set shape, and vivid maps of Brownsville and the Park Avenue neighborhood are displayed on both sides. Every piece of land has its previous owner’s name stamped manually into the steel.