February Virtual Lunch and Learn

Three Howard County community members, Marlena Jareaux, Wayne Davis, and Christine Bulbul, came together to participate in a community research roundtable called the Truth Lab.

Using archival documents, obscure maps, and phone interviews, they worked to research and ascertain the accurate history and age of one of the most beloved and iconic historic structures in Howard County, the “Thomas Isaac Log Cabin.”

As they discovered, the factual Black history of the cabin had been obliterated by a European settler narrative propagated for decades. The resulting book, Early Ellicott City Black History: A Historic African American Church, A Log Cabin and Lynching, restores the cabin’s true history. They never imagined that their research would also uncover a community of Black homeowners in Ellicott City in the years before the Civil War.

The authors’ talk will describe their research and the implications of what history is deemed “significant.”

Marlena Jareaux has loved Howard County since her family moved there in the mid-1980s. As Executive Director of Howard County Lynching Truth & Reconciliation Inc., she uses her knowledge and training to help bring balance to the historical narrative of the county by using primary source documents.

Wayne Davis is a husband, father of three children, and grandfather of two teenage boys. He is the coauthor of two books and several articles on Howard County history, after a lengthy career as a federal government environmental scientist and researcher.

Christine Bulbul, a twenty-three year Navy veteran, was born in Hyattsville, earned her M.S. in Information Systems from the Naval Postgraduate School, and lives in Howard County.