You may have known me as Rose Anderson. I am now River Irons.
My house in White Marsh, just outside Baltimore City, looks down over a valley that the Big Gunpowder Falls created. This mighty river has been cutting through and shaping the landscape for thousands and thousands of years of natural history, and just a few hundred years of US history.
“Gunpowder” is a name imbued with the violence of the American Revolutionary War, conjuring powerful images of newly-minted American Patriots willing to die for a brand new and uniquely American ideal of liberty and justice for all. We’re meant to swell with pride when historical markers remind us of the glorious legacy that our forefathers created.
Our childhood history lessons trained us to claim that glory as part of our identity. Every fourth of July is a booster shot of nationalist pride, bombs bursting in air as glory merges with violence, and violence becomes glory.
The marker for White Marsh reminds me daily that the most important thing that happened ever here wasn’t even heroic violence, but the fact that some troops camped here in 1782 on their journey from one violent conflict to another.
The violence never abates. As I stand on the bank of the Gunpowder River today, I can sometimes hear the boom of military testing from Aberdeen Proving Ground just to the north.
We won the Revolutionary War against the British in 1783, so whom does our nationist identity now pit itself against?
Where the Gunpowder River gives itself to the Chesapeake Bay, a historical marker adds white supremacy to the violence glorified in this place. It says, “Legend relates that the name originated with an Indian attempt to plant Gunpowder in hope that a crop could be raised.”
Do you believe that people deeply connected to the land for generations did not know the difference between a seed and not a seed, spore and not a spore? Moreover, why would this explain the name of the Gunpowder River?
Someone added the story to serve a purpose: to protect our celebrated history of justified violence from the stain of genocide. If Native Americans were idiot savages, our forefathers committed no sin. Their pillaging and genocide are sheltered deep in the shadows of triumphant patriotic bloodshed. The echoes of early American crimes into the present day are stifled.
This river powered colonial iron forges, the ruins of which can still be found along the banks of the river, just a stone's throw from my front door. The historical marker nearest my house declares that “The Nottingham Forge and Gunpowder Furnace built metal products and battleship parts from 1759 to 1858”.
Did the forges produce iron by magic? Of course not. The wording deliberately removes the idea of people laboring in the forges because we are to forget that the colonizers forced enslaved Africans to do that. I could have seen all of it from where I sit in my home studio to write this today.
My name won’t let me forget.
I write here about just a handful of historical markers, within a few square miles surrounding one river. Imagine the number of historical sites in this country, and how many incomplete historical markers and patriotic stories exist to control the way we think about them.
Whether by complete omission or carefully-crafted narratives, the unholy marriage of white supremacy and glorified violence are always present in the American story, even from the very birth of this country. And it is not just a passive idea. Historical markers, school curriculums, religious teaching, social media posts, and framings in news reports act upon our minds all day, every day.
As a nation, we are surrounded by and immersed in violent, racist subliminal messaging.
It is why Trayvon Martin, Freddie Gray, George Floyd, and Breonna Taylor–just to name a few–are gone. Murdered. It is why a white man slaughtered Black Americans in a mass shooting while they shopped for groceries.
But let’s not forget that violence can also be psychological, emotional, and financial, hiding itself in the mundane.
Let’s not forget that this is why a company of 65 can have just one or two Black employees.
Let’s not forget that this is why the Black and Latino-owned homes appraise for far less than comparable homes owned by whites.
It is why a Black man’s pleas to feel psychologically safe on the job are ignored, but a white woman can cancel him with one unfounded complaint.
It’s why we’re tired of talking about anti-Black racism and there’s no money for Reparations, yet we seem to have unlimited attention and financial resources for the war in Ukraine.
Too many of us float limp and passive in a powerful undercurrent of white supremacy that surges and pulls, surfaces and submerges us, determining how we think and behave in ways we have hardly begun to understand.
