Recently, we had the pleasure of doing a podcast with artist Rose Anderson, who talked about her experiences visiting the Hampton National Historic Site and how the memories of the enslaved guided her artwork and her life.
We opened up the podcast talking about Ida R. Cummings, Baltimore's first black kindergarten teacher and a prominent club woman, who was vice president of the Colored Empty Stocking and Fresh Air Circle, which gave an annual festival to raise funds for the city's underprivileged black children to have Christmas gifts and a summer trip to a nearby farm. She graduated from Morgan College in 1922 and served as its first female board of trustee member for a number of years.
Ida’s father, Henry, formerly enslaved, had been manumitted from David Ridgley, of White Marsh, in 1855 at the age of 28.
Her maternal grandmother, Sidney Hall Davage, was also formerly enslaved at the Perry Hall Mansion in Baltimore ,MD. Sidney Hall was manumitted in 1840. The Ridgelys of Hampton were closely related to the owners of Perry Hall; the wife of the first owner, Harry Dorsey Gough, was Gov. Charles C. Ridgely’s sister.