Mount Olivet Cemetery

Neither Valerie Jean nor Elayne Bond Hyman spent their entire lives in Frederick County, but both have deep roots in the area roots that extend down into the soil itself. For Jean, they trace back to her parents’ home on Madison Street in Frederick, behind the tired tombstones of Mount Olivet Cemetery. Her parents, now dead, built the home themselves after they were denied housing in the still-segregated city. Until the fourth grade, Jean attended St. John Regional Catholic School to avoid the indignities of a segregated public school system. She can still remember a childhood when black residents of Frederick were afraid to be caught near Baker Park — a municipal amenity then reserved for whites only. Hyman spent most of her childhood in Washington, D.C., but returned to Frederick seven years ago to trace ancestors who settled in the western part of the county. To Hyman, a poet and author, it’s a sort of cruel irony that neither of her great-great grandparents could read or write. They traveled from Washington County to Frederick County with five children in the mid-1800s, she said, before the start of the Civil War. They set up a homestead in Knoxville along the C&O Canal, and were among the few free black landowners to live and work in Frederick County.Shortly after they settled here, Hyman said, they were forced to recross South Mountain, back to a courthouse in Hagerstown, to request certificates of freedom. “It’s another thing that stays with me,” she said. “They had to go to court to be validated and carry these documents everywhere, even though they couldn’t read them. And trust that whoever looked at them would believe them.”For Jean and Hyman, both writers, it’s a knowledge of family history and their own experiences as women of color that continue to influence their work. Hyman is currently working on a series of monologues tentatively titled “Listen,” which detail the stories of her ancestors from their own perspectives. Jean has written three collections of poe...