UMD archeology professor discusses her work to uplift black history

Archeology professor Cheryl LaRoche is an expert on the Underground Railroad (School of Architecture, Planning, and Preservation)

Amidst cameras and a crowd, Gov. Larry Hogan declared 2022 “The Year of Harriet Tubman,” at the national historic park bearing her name in Dorchester, Maryland in March. The park’s 5th anniversary coincided with Tubman’s 200th birthday. 

But while Hogan celebrated Tubman with fanfare, one historian has ruminated over Tubman’s legacy for her whole career. Cheryl Janifer Laroche has dedicated more than 30 years to studying the Underground Railroad, and Tubman. LaRoche is a preservationist and archeological conservator who focuses on African American history and the Underground Railroad.

LaRoche, one of the foremost Black archeologists focusing on the Underground Railroad, illuminates Black history in multiple disciplines whose methods of record keeping are traditionally white-centric.“ There’s a lot of holes in every record around African American history,” LaRoche said.

A research professor in University of Maryland’s School of Architecture, Planning and Preservation department, LaRoche’s studies branch into many fields of focus. “She combines history and geography with archaeology and material culture, historic preservation with cultural landscapes and mapping to produce a more fully realized narrative of the African American experience,” her biography for the university reads.

As she maps her research across various fields of study, she validates the histories kept by Black Americans. Many historians belittle oral history, for example, as inaccurate although it is a traditional manner of record keeping in Black history, according to LaRoche. The professor embraces slave narratives which were passed down from generations of African Americans as proof of their lives.

“There’s this sort of debunking attitude that I find demeaning,” LaRoche said. Other historians “come in and…call you a liar” when the basis of the information is oral history, slave narratives and her findings from the land, LaRoche said. Then, they study the same subject and deem their findings the truth, the archeologist said.

But she does not rely on just oral history. LaRoche protects her findings by referencing the agreed upon histories that have “just the facts,” and blends it with family history, knowledge of the historic landscape, maps and artifacts to qualify her research.

And she knows the story of Tubman so well, she knows real from fake. “I know the ones that are made up; I know the ones that have been proven,” LaRoche said. “I have enough standing now that I can use them all if I so choose.” 

Alfonso Narvaez, a lecturer in the school of architecture, planning, and preservation at the University of Maryland, has known LaRoche for about 25 years. LaRoche guest lectured his Conservation of Historical Places class in April because he trusts her standing, Narvaez said.

He first worked with her on an archeological project at the African Burial Ground in New York. “Dr. LaRoche was our conservator,” Narvaez said. “And she was instrumental in retrieving and evaluating artifacts that were taken up from that site.”

In the class she guest lectured, LaRoche’s expertise silenced the room with rapt attention when she broached the subject of white-supremacy and how it affects their field of conservation. She repeatedly asked why doesn’t the typical American know more Black history, a question which is prevalent in  their field of study.

Second year applied anthropology and historic preservation master’s student attending the class, Stewart Williams, has read LaRoche’s research and champions her work. Methods of record keeping that prioritize written history over oral forms of recording “is steeped in white, upper-class colonialism,” Williams said. “It reinforces the beliefs and the narratives we have about what it means to be American.”

LaRoche heard a “clarion call” to archeology when she was invited to visit the African Burial Ground in New York City more than 30 years ago. To that point, she had been a book paper conservator, working as a picture framer. 

At the time, there were few African Americans in the fields of conservation and archeology, according to LaRoche. Her study led her to the Underground Railroad and Tubman, who “always seems to turn up” in most of what she does.

When the national park called her to a roundtable discussion of experts in 2013, LaRoche wanted the curators of the park to be authentic to Tubman’s character. Her essay on the discussion echoed her sentiments throughout: honor Tubman’s evident “intelligence and acuity” though she was illiterate.

“Harriet Tubman’s life story exemplifies her altruism, not only toward her family but also toward her fellow man,” LaRoche wrote. The park’s challenge would be to “present this humanitarian woman in a way that honors her extraordinariness within the commonplace occurrences of her life.”

Hogan spoke of one such instance at the park’s commemoration.

“She served in the Union army as a nurse, a spy, a scout and as the first woman to lead American troops into battle,” during the Civil War, Hogan said.

As a final commemoration to Tubman, LaRoche wants her on the $20 bill as a “reminder.” One should be confronted by “her legacy and what she means,” LaRoche said, every time they see the bill.