Editor’s Note. On July 25 of 2015, the Spy sat down with Bishop Joel Marcus Johnson, the then co-chair of Talbot Association of Clergy, to talk about his organization’s request that the Talbot Boys be removed from the Talbot County Courthouse green. Almost precisely five years later, the statue remains in place.
In a going series of interviews, both from Spy archives, and the present, we return to our primary mission of community education related to the Talbot Boys statue, including its history and meaning in 2020.
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It seemed inevitable that once Nikki Haley, the very conservative, very Republican, and very dynamic South Carolina governor, announced last June that the Confederate flag should be removed from the statehouse grounds, every other state and town which had any connection to the Civil War would be looking very carefully on how those governments, directly or indirectly, have honored their own Confederate veterans in the tragic war between the states.
This certainly is the case with Talbot County. Over the last few weeks, in letters to the editor, at civic meetings, cocktail parties, and in the coffee houses of Easton and St. Michaels, the community is indeed having a real conversation about the future of the “Talbot Boys,” the memorial which honors the fallen local men who had fought for the South’s secession to preserve slavery, which is located on the front lawn of the historic Talbot County Courthouse.
In preparation of the first public meeting, now scheduled for next Wednesday at 4pm, with the Talbot County Council and local representatives of the NAACP discussing the status of the memorial, and to support what promises to be an important community conversation about race, history, and how we honor the courageous, the Spy starts our own series on the Talbot Boys.
The Spy starts this new project with Anglican Bishop Joel Marcus Johnson Bishop of The Anglican Diocese of The Chesapeake. A local leader in race relations since he arrived on the Eastern Shore twenty-five years ago, Bishop Johnson also currently chairs the Talbot Association of Clergy. Through these special experiences, he shares his perspective on the future of the Talbot Boys.
This video is approximately eight minutes in length
Deirdre LaMotte says
The response to the Lafayette Square protests and now this interview makes me proud to be an Episcopalian. Keep up the inspiring
messages and homilies we all need now.