Stephen Allen Benson was six years old when he emigrated to West Africa. Born on Maryland’s Eastern Shore in 1816, he sailed from Baltimore on a brig named Strong with his free-born African-American parents and four older and two younger siblings. His father, a 36-year-old Cambridge farmer, and mother, a 30-year-old weaver, no doubt had high hopes for themselves and their children when they departed the Baltimore harbor.

Though not enslaved, the Benson family was part of a group of 37 leaving behind the brutal racism endemic to the country of their birth for the promise of life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness in the fledgling private colony of Liberia (literally “land of freedom”).

Motivated by the domestic politics around slavery and their own white nationalism, prominent Southern white Americans, including Maryland lawyer Francis Scott Key, had founded the American Colonization Society several years earlier. As an alternative to emancipation and citizenship, their answer to the growing “problem” of free Black Americans was “resettlement” in Africa.

Things took a tragic turn for the Bensons, however, after landing in Monrovia on Aug. 8, 1822, as it did for so many of their fellow passengers. Most of the African Americans aboard ships funded by the American Colonization Society would die from malaria and disease and in confrontations with the native West African populace. Stephen’s mother succumbed to disease three years after their arrival. Four of the Benson children died similarly over the ensuing two years. Underscoring the inevitable contentiousness of colonializing inhabited land, 16-year-old Joseph Benson was shot to death months after arrival by what his brother Stephen described as “an attack of the natives.”

Maryland, with other slave states, including Mississippi and Kentucky, later formed its own resettlement colony under the American Colonization Society umbrella in what is today’s Liberia. In fact, after seceding from the American Colonization Society, the short-lived Republic of Maryland—now the Maryland County in Liberia—became an independent country. More than half of the African Americans who ultimately emigrated to Liberia were emancipated on the condition of deportation to West Africa.

Stephen Benson would survive and, emblematic of Liberia’s settler colonialist roots, become the nation’s second president after it declared independence from the U.S. in 1847.

HE BELIEVED IT WAS BETTER TO “DIE IN MARYLAND THAN BE DRIVEN LIKE CATTLE TO…LIBERIA.”

Not surprisingly, Liberia has struggled with its dual heritage—a mix of minority Black Americo-Liberian settlers and indigenous Africans—since the constitution, “For the Government of the African Colony of Liberia,” was written 100 years ago.

“Liberia continued to mean different things to different people,” writes Claude Clegg, a Black historian of the African diaspora at the University of North Carolina, in The Price of Liberty: African Americans and the Making of Liberia. “Those who had come from America looking for liberty sometimes found a semblance of what they sought, but very few discovered absolute freedoms untampered by hardships and sacrifice.”

For many, however, it was worth the risk. “Particularly, for ex-slaves,” Clegg writes, “freedom meant legalized personhood, civil rights, and a documented existence. In essence, it was the unfettered ability to create one’s own familial, communal, and civic relations in a land beyond the overbearing control of white people.”

The role and identity of free and formerly enslaved African Americans evolved quickly in Liberia, taking a complex, empowering, but also surreal turn. With support from their U.S. backers, the Americo-Liberians constructed a replica of the antebellum society they had fled, oppressing the native population and denying them the right to vote, which still has political reverberations in Liberia.

“The Americans, in this case, are repeating what global, British colonizers did,” says local historian Lou Fields, author of Freedom Seekers: Early Abolitionists in Antebellum Baltimore. “Britain laid down a philosophy that says go somewhere, take somebody’s land, call it yours. Put people in charge, give them all the guns, and they’ll make the rules and regulations and tell the poor people, ‘You’re just a laborer, you don’t have much say.’ Unfortunately, we still see that elsewhere in the world today.”

The bonds between the country we know as Liberia, uniquely allied with the U.S. since its inception, and Maryland are profound, if generally little known. Stephen Benson was followed in office by Daniel Warner, who was born in Baltimore County to a formerly enslaved person and departed with his father and family aboard the Oswega, arriving in the teetering settlement of Monrovia in 1823.

Liberia’s capital, with a population of more than a million people today, Monrovia was named 100 years ago this month for then-President James Monroe, one of the largest slaveholders in the U.S. at the time and a staunch colonization advocate. (In a 442-page memorandum to Congress in 1845 from slaveholding President John Tyler, Black Americans emigrating to Liberia were documented as “recaptured Africans.”)

It was not until 1904, after Baltimore-born Garretson Gibson, who emigrated in 1845 and served a four-year term in office, that Liberia saw its last American-born president. Other prominent Americans who supported the colonization movement included Speaker of the House Henry Clay, Secretary of State Daniel Webster, and President Abraham Lincoln, whose views on race would evolve during the Civil War.

Johns Hopkins made a small, one-time donation to the cause. John McDonogh, in whose name the McDonogh School was founded in Owings Mills, refused to free those he enslaved unless they agreed to deportation to Liberia. He eventually sent 118 formerly enslaved individuals to West Africa on American Colonization Society ships as part of an incentivized manumission “work” program on his New Orleans plantation.

The motivations behind those who supported colonization efforts are not easily unpacked 150-200 years later. Some could no longer tolerate slavery but, believing freed African Americans could not make it in a white society, viewed their “return” as a moral effort. Others recognized that slavery was a doomed institution and preferred deportation to citizenship. Meanwhile, slaveholders simply did not want free Black individuals near enslaved African Americans, fearing they’d encourage escape—or worse, revolt.

Frustrated with the pace of colonization, which he said would take “centuries,” McDonogh proposed a 50-year “removal” plan akin in theme to the infamous Trail of Tears. In an April 1830 letter to his friend, Louisiana Sen. Edward Livingston, McDonogh suggested marching free Black Americans to the Northwest Territory—similar in concept to the removal of Native Americans from the South, which would begin the following month and last two decades:

“How would it accord, Sir with your ideas, to have the country belonging to the U.S. on the North West Coast set aside by law as an asylum or place of refuge for the free people color of the United States where they might establish either a government of their own or become a state of the union forming a part of the American confederacy.”

In the U.S., the colonization effort had the opposite effect intended by its slaveholding founders—it galvanized early abolitionists. In the eyes of former Morgan State University historian Benjamin Quarles, the colonization movement “originated abolitionism,” arousing the free Black community and slavery opponents. The overwhelming majority of 19th-century African Americans saw through the embedded racism of the era’s white liberalism.

In his pioneering book, Black Abolitionists, Quarles makes the case that the “colonization scheme had a unifying effect on Negroes in the North, bringing them together in a common bond of opposition.” Certainly, it had that effect in the Washington and Baltimore area.

“There might have been a little support for colonization initially [in the Black community],” says Scott Shane, author of Flee North: A Forgotten Hero and the Fight for Freedom in Slavery’s Borderland, whose protagonist, Thomas Smallwood, supported colonization before his 1831 manumission and then reversed his stance. “I suspect Smallwood might have been influenced by Black abolitionist writer David Walker in this famous [1830] essay in which he denounces colonization in the strongest terms. I think there was a change of heart in the Black community, at least in Washington and Baltimore. There are recorded public meetings where people basically get together and say, ‘Screw these people.’”

The brig Strong was not the first the American Colonization Society sent to West Africa. Two years earlier came the Elizabeth, which carried 86 emigrants, including the Rev. Daniel Coker, a remarkable figure in the history of the Black church in the U.S. and eventually, West Africa.

An African American of mixed heritage born into slavery in Baltimore, Coker, after gaining his freedom, served as the first official pastor of the historic Bethel African Methodist Episcopal Church on Druid Hill Avenue. Arriving initially in Sierra Leone, where the British had formed a colony of free and formerly enslaved Black individuals in Freetown, Coker became one of the founders of the West African Methodist Church.

Remarkably, the journal he kept of his voyage, chronicling his seasickness and then his heartbreak after learning of the death of nearly 400 enslaved Africans aboard a captured Spanish slave ship, survives to this day. So do letters to his wife, mother, and brother in Baltimore from his earliest days on West African soil. In one dispatch to his brother, he writes his group has met “such trials” and that only a handful of his cohorts remained together, and provisions were running low. He refers to his new home as “a strange heathen land,” adding he had not heard from America and does not know whether more people or provisions will be sent. He admits he does not know “what is to become of us, far distant from my dear family and friends,” but his faith in his mission and God is steadfast. Coker implores everyone who is able to follow his path:

“If you ask my opinion as to coming out—I say, let all that can, sell out and come; come, and bring ventures, to trade, etc. and you may do much better than you can possibly do in America, and not work half so hard. I wish that thousands were here, and had goods to trade with. Bring about two hogsheads of good leaf tobacco, cheap calico, cheap handkerchiefs, pins, knives and forks, pocket knives, etc.; with these you may buy land, hire hands, or buy provisions. I say come—the land is good…”

Interestingly, William Watkins, who attended and later ran the Bethel Charity School in Baltimore which Coker founded, rejected the invitation. He became, with Frederick Douglass, among others, one of colonization’s most vocal opponents.

In 1827, Watkins penned a letter to Freedom’s Journal urgently reminding readers that many prominent colonization supporters were slaveholders who wished to remove the influence of free Blacks on those enslaved. He also wrote anti-colonization and anti-slavery essays for the Baltimore newspaper Genius of Universal Emancipation while becoming acquainted with journalist and abolitionist William Lloyd Garrison, who had initially supported colonization. Garrison credited Watkins with changing his views and their relationship linked Baltimore’s Black community with the larger abolitionist movement.

Watkins believed it was better to “die in Maryland, under the pressure of unrighteous and cruel laws than be driven like cattle to the pestilential clime of Liberia.”

It goes without saying, even free Black men and women in Maryland did not have statutory guarantees of their rights before Emancipation. (Watkins, like so many liberty-seeking African Americans, eventually emigrated to Canada.) They could not vote, testify in a trial, or sit on a jury. They paid taxes, but their children could not attend public school.

The laws in Maryland, and elsewhere in the South, worsened after the 1831 Nat Turner slave rebellion in neighboring Virginia. In May 1832, the General Assembly banned free African Americans from other states from moving to Maryland—and prohibited free African Americans from returning to Maryland after leaving for employment elsewhere. New legislation denied free African Americans in Maryland from owning firearms without permission from local officials.

By the end of the decade, the state passed legislation that could, for all intents and purposes, re-enslave free African Americans by permitting courts to sentence forced servitude for debts, vagrancy, and some criminal convictions.

Four months after Turner’s uprising, the Maryland legislature allocated $10,000 annually for 26 years “for the transportation and removal of emigrants to Africa.” Maryland representatives subsequently purchased land from native peoples just south of the Liberian settlement in Cape Palmas.

The deportation effort struggled from the outset, however. In a report to the Maryland State Colonization Society’s board, one of the state’s traveling “recruitment” agents clearly summarized the reasons that African Americans overwhelmingly opposed colonization. They unyieldingly believed they were as entitled to the human rights set forth in the Declaration of Independence as all others born here.

“They [free Blacks] are taught to believe, and, do believe, that this is their country, their home. A Country and home, now wickedly withholden from them but which they will presently possess, own and control. Those who Emigrate to Liberia, are held up to the world, as the vilest and veriest traitors to their race, and especially so, towards their brethren in bonds. Every man woman and child who leaves this country for Africa is considered one taken from the strength of the colored population and by his departure, as protracting the time when the black man will by the strength of his own arm compell those who despise and oppress him, to acknowledge his rights, redress his wrongs, and restore the wages, long due and inniquitously withholden.”

From 1831 to 1851, only 1,025 emigrants—a fraction of manumitted African Americans in the state—were sent to Liberia. Colonization had been an issue upon which white supporters and opponents of slavery found common ground—as well as at least a handful of African Americans. Some of whom, it should also be remembered, persisted and thrived on foreign ground.

“I expect to give my life to bleeding, groaning, dark, benighted Africa,” Daniel Coker later wrote to Baltimorean Jeremiah Watts. Coker died in Freetown, Sierra Leone, in 1846, but not before founding the African Methodist Episcopal (A.M.E.) Church there and helping establish a lasting community. His descendants would become prominent citizens and leaders in Sierra Leone and Nigeria, where they remain to this day.

Decades after his death, his family would still recall their roots in Baltimore. In a letter from November 1891, West African A.M.E Bishop Henry McNeal Turner recalls a visit from two of Daniel Coker’s great-great granddaughters, 20-year-old Jane Coker and 11-year-old Susan Coker, describing them as “two beautiful ginger-cake-colored children, and very smart and bright.” He explained that they had “called upon me to inquire about their relatives in Baltimore.”

Jane Coker, Bishop Turner noted, worked as an interpreter for the missionary United Brethren of America among the native tribal population. “She wishes to visit Baltimore, but money is wanting,” Turner writes. “I told her if she dared to visit Baltimore…she would never get back; that the people would feast and honor her to death…”

Art Space is a recurring element in the UpFront section of our print publication that spotlights a local artist or project making an impact in the city at large. Here’s what’s going on this month:

Their efforts to guide enslaved people to freedom would forever change our nation. And this month, the legacies of two Marylanders will be honored on film for all to stream. Airing on PBS on October 4 and 11, respectively, Harriet Tubman: Visions of Freedom and Becoming Frederick Douglass will provide in-depth looks at how these hometown heroes pursued equality for all. “There are so many figures hailing from our state who have impacted the world,” says Travis Mitchell, chief content officer at MPT, which produced the documentaries with Firelight Films. “This is the beginning of a series of new stories we’ll be able to bring forth.”

According to the 1860 Census, more than one out of five people living in Howard County was an enslaved person. First brought to the county to work in the tobacco fields, slaves were later used in the mining and production of iron in and around Elkridge. Simply put, over the century and a half that slavery was institutionalized and legally enforced in Howard County, a significant part of the economy was built upon the backs of enslaved African Americans.

At the same time, it was home to abolitionists and an increasing number of free Blacks in the decades leading up to the Civil War. Geographically, the area was centrally situated—between railroads and the Potomac and Patuxent rivers—serving as a way station on the Underground Railroad to free country in the northern United States and Canada.

As a result, Howard County was also home to a jail, which remains standing, that incarcerated fugitive slaves. Additionally, it was home to a stone-built courthouse, which remains standing as well, that heard the cases of those charged with encouraging and assisting enslaved African Americans to flee their masters.

Built in 1851 and located at 1 Emory Street in the historic district of Ellicott City, the Howard County Jail held runaways, including Augusta Spriggs—who was detained while ads for her master in Prince George’s County to claim her went out—and Richard Martin, who was held as a fugitive without a pass. Augustus Collins was held here, too, while awaiting trial for inciting an insurrection among the Black population.

From its construction in 1843 to the end of slavery in Maryland on November 1, 1864, the Howard County Courthouse, also in the historic district of Ellicott City, held judicial proceedings related to legal cases involving those charged with encouraging enslaved persons to run away. Arguably, the most famous case here involved well-known Underground Railroad “general” William Chaplin of the American Anti-Slavery Society, who was arrested in August 1850 for having “abducted, stolen, taken, and carried out from the city of Washington” two fugitive slaves. But there were other cases, too, involving Howard County free Blacks such as Warner Cook, who was charged with enticing those enslaved to run away.

“These places and stories are important,” says Dr. Everlene Cunningham, chair of the Howard County Center of African American Culture, which curated the county’s The Simpsonville Freetown Legacy Trail. Named for the local community of early free Black landowners, the trail commemorates several places where oral history says Harriet Tubman led fugitives fleeing slavery, as well as the county’s historic jail and courthouse. “These are stories you didn’t get in school growing up.”

Maryland has the most documented successful escapes from slavery, and, in recent years, counties have been rediscovering—and highlighting—more historical sites in the state, considered the epicenter of the Underground Railroad.

Maryland has also been at the forefront of Underground Railroad research, documentations, and commemorations, which includes the now annual state recognition of September as International Underground Railroad month, signed by Gov. Larry Hogan two years ago.

That said, there’s no reason to wait until the fall to discover the indispensable role Maryland played in the Underground Railroad.

Howard County’s Network to Freedom and Underground Railroad

The Visit Howard County website highlights several stops on The Simpsonville Freetown Legacy Trail, including Locust Cemetery, where oral history says Harriet Tubman and the fugitive slaves she was guiding rested on their journey north. The cemetery is situated at the intersection of Harriet Tubman Lane and Freetown Road.

More information on the complete list of sites, as well as Tubman artifacts and belongings, can be found at the Howard County Center of African American Culture Museum in Columbia. The Center also sells Seeking Freedom: A History of the Underground Railroad in Howard County, Maryland, which was written by The Center’s since-deceased founder Wylene Burch, staff, and a team of researchers. The Center also hosts an exhibition on Maryland’s 4th United States Colored Infantry Regiment, which saw action in the Civil War in North Carolina and Virginia.

The Howard County Historical Society Museum on Frederick Road in Ellicott City also includes exhibits related to those who escaped from slavery in Howard County.

Harriet Tubman Underground Railroad Visitor Center

It’s estimated that Harriet Tubman helped free 70 people over 13 trips back and forth to the Eastern Shore. The new Harriet Tubman Underground Railroad Visitor Center in Dorchester County serves as a museum and gateway to the Harriet Tubman Underground Railroad Scenic Byway and provides visitors with the opportunity to walk in the abolitionist’s footsteps.

Among the destinations on the Byway are the Brodess Farm, where Tubman grew up in slavery; the Bucktown General Store, the site of her first act of defiance; the Tuckahoe Neck Meeting House, a gathering place for Quaker abolitionists—some of the most effective anti-slavery activists—and Tubman-Garrett Riverfront Park in Wilmington, Delaware, which honors Tubman and Thomas Garrett, who lived in nearby Quaker Hill.

Following In His Footsteps—Maryland’s Frederick Douglass Driving Tour

Organized online at the Visit Maryland website, this wide-ranging tour features sites from the Eastern Shore—where the famed abolitionist, writer, orator, and diplomat’s life began—to Central Maryland and the Capitol Region. (Douglass’ historic Cedar Hill home, now a museum, in Anacostia is not to be missed.)

Frederick Augustus Washington Bailey was born close to Tuckahoe Creek near Holme Hill Farm. Outdoor exhibits chronicle his early life here, as well as his enslavement at Miles River Neck and St. Michaels. Sites in Easton on the tour include the former Talbot County Jail, where Douglass was locked up for a week after attempting to gain his freedom by paddling a log canoe to the upper head of the Chesapeake Bay.

The Talbot County Courthouse in Easton, the location of Douglass’ famous “Self-Made Men” speech in 1878, honors him with a statue. Also on the tour site list: Bethel A.M.E Church and Asbury United Methodist Church, where Douglass also spoke in 1878.

“I am an Eastern Shoreman, with all that name implies,” Douglass once said. “Eastern Shore corn and Eastern Shore pork gave me my muscle. I love Maryland and the Eastern Shore!”

Among the key sites in Baltimore related to Douglass’ escape to freedom are the Frederick Douglass-Isaac Myers Maritime Park, which documents his life and working experience in the city, and the President Street Station (now home to the Baltimore Civil War Museum), where at 20 years of age in 1838 he successfully disguised himself and boarded a train for Philadelphia.

Hagerstown Underground Railroad Trail: Sites of Freedom and Resistance

From the mid 1700s through the Civil War period, African Americans were enslaved in Washington County, with about 14 percent of the population, or 3,200 people, enslaved in 1820.

Among those who escaped slavery here was James W.C. Pennington. He made it to Pennsylvania in 1827 at age 19, changed his name, eventually attended Yale University, became a Presbyterian minister, and officiated at Frederick Douglass’ wedding. Although he never returned to Washington County before the Civil War, he helped several members of his family escape as well, sheltering them and raising funds to secure their freedom. Pennington penned a memoir, The Fugitive Blacksmith (1849), and one of the first history books of African Americans, The Origin and History of the Colored People (1841).

Otho Davis also escaped slavery in Washington County. Taylor fled Henry Fiery’s Farm on Easter Sunday, 1856, taking his wife, two children, two brothers, a sister-in-law, and nephew with him on Fiery’s horses and two buggies, eventually reaching Canada. The Fierys attempted many times to get the Davises back, but to no avail, according to Visit Hagerstown, which has a downloadable local Underground Railroad map and brochure on its website.

The urban Underground Railroad trail in Hagerstown can be walked or driven, and takes visitors to sites associated with escapes from slavery, highlighting the individuals who fled and those who assisted in their escapes. There are several original buildings still standing—including Ebenezer African Methodist Episcopal Church, chartered in 1820—and the home of Sheriff William FitzHugh, who held people in slavery and enforced the law against those hoping for freedom.

Underground Railroad Experience Trail—Montgomery County

The trail, created in 1998 by Montgomery Parks to preserve the county’s rural landscape, provides walking paths and commemorates a part of Sandy Spring and Montgomery County’s Underground Railroad history.

The town of Sandy Spring was settled by Quakers in the 1720s, and they later banned members of the church from holding slaves. Eventually, a group of former enslaved people and the local Quakers worked together to help fugitive slaves to freedom, and it is said that Dred Scott stayed in Sandy Spring while the U.S. Supreme Court decided his famous 1857 case.

Among Underground Railroad destinations in the area are the Sandy Spring Slave Museum, which holds an actual slave cabin; the Sandy Spring Friends’ Meetinghouse, whose congregants were active abolitionists; and the Sharp Street Church, established in 1822 by newly freed African Americans. One of the stops on the trail is the Woodlawn Manor & Barn, built by a prominent family of local Quakers, who were banished from their congregation for refusing to free their enslaved workers.

Five years ago, the barn reopened as Woodlawn Museum, and today it hosts exhibits on the legacy of the Quaker community, the local African-American community, 19th-century farming, and Montgomery County’s Underground Railroad.

History, Heritage, and the Underground Railroad—Prince George’s County

African Americans have raised families and built communities for more than 300 years in Prince George’s County, which kept more slaves than any other county in Maryland. Of the more than 13,600 African Americans living in the county in 1860, some 91 percent were enslaved. Almost 10 percent of the fugitive slaves arrested in Baltimore were from Prince George’s County.

Among the historic sites here are the Northampton Slave Quarters and Archaeological Park in Bowie, which features the reconstructed foundations of slave quarters on the former Northampton Plantation. Excavations from the former plantation (1673-1860) have discovered artifacts from the lives of enslaved African Americans.

The Mount Calvert Historical and Archaeological Park in Upper Marlboro interprets the history of local Native Americans, the colonial town of Charles Town (Prince George’s first county seat), and the lives of African Americans. Fifty-one enslaved African Americans worked at the Mount Calvert Plantation by the mid 1800s. St. Paul’s United Methodist Church in Oxon Hill, believed to be the oldest Black congregation in Prince George’s County, was built upon property acquired shortly after the Civil War in 1867.

Among those who successfully escaped slavery in Prince George’s County was Nace Shaw, who fled the Upper Marlboro estate and plantation owned by Sarah Ann Talburtt in September 1858. Nace, who was 45 when he escaped, was also an unlikely candidate to flee given his relative privileged position as a plantation foreman, according to Maryland State Archives. But Shaw also had family in Washington, D.C., where he initially went before heading to Philadelphia and ultimately, Canada. “I wanted a chance for my life,” Shaw later said. “I wanted to die a free man.”

A few weeks ago, at the dedication ceremony for the new statues of Harriet Tubman and Frederick Douglass at the Old House Chambers of the Maryland State House in Annapolis, one of Tubman’s descendants walked up to sculptor Ivan Schwartz, president and founder of StudioEIS in Brooklyn, New York.

Schwartz, whose studio had been tasked with crafting the pieces, started to get nervous. As he saw it, the descendant’s judgment would be a litmus test for how successful the years-long process had been. Thankfully, the reception was positive.

“She told me that the way the statue shows Harriet holding her hands is the way that all the women in her family stand when they have their photograph taken,” Schwartz says. “How amazing is that?”

The statues of acclaimed writer and abolitionist Frederick Douglass, and Harriet Tubman, a fearless conductor of the Underground Railroad, arrive as the national conversation around historical symbols continues to evolve. Their commissioning by then-House Speaker Michael E. Busch and then-Senate President Thomas V. Mike Miller came in the wake of the 2017 removal of a statue outside the Capitol of Roger B. Taney, a staunch defender of slavery who, as a chief justice, wrote the Dred Scott decision that denied citizenship to African Americans.

“Where the void was created, there clearly was a new impetus to fill it,” says Schwartz, whose studio has made hundreds of historical sculptures, including a depiction of George Washington resigning his military commission that sits at the State House. “We are living in a time of changing symbols. What more appropriate symbol of changing times than to install sculptures of two of the most famous Marylanders in the history of the state in the very room slavery was abolished [in the state of Maryland]?”

Catherine Arthur, the senior curator and director of the Maryland Commission on Artistic Property at the Maryland Archives, which collaborated with StudioEIS on the project, calls the two pieces of artwork “forensic sculptures,” referring to a process in which the final product is generated by studying myriad photos and gathering historical research. Schwartz and StudioEIS first met with Arthur and other stakeholders in the project to discuss where the statues would be placed and exactly which photos would be used as reference points.

Douglass is one of the most photographed figures of the 19th century, so they had plenty to choose from. But when it came to Tubman, the group decided to take a chance and use a newly discovered photo of her at a young age as her statue’s framework.

“It’s a new view of Harriet,” Arthur says of the photo, which was a joint acquisition by the Library of Congress and the Smithsonian Museum of African American History and Culture. “Most photos of her are of when she’s very old. This showed her at a younger age in a different costume.”

After that meeting, Schwartz and his team got to work. They hired actors to dress up in costumes relative to the time Tubman and Douglass lived, and took countless photographs to use as visual aids. Those photos were then the focal point of an all-hands-on-deck meeting at the state capitol where the final blueprint was designed.

In the midst of a months-long creation process that Schwartz estimates included 20 to 25 people, they even molded the hands of Ken Morris, Jr., Douglass’s third great-grandson, to obtain the closest approximation of what his hands might look like. Interestingly, there is both recent and historical precedent for this practice. Arthur notes that, in creating the first-ever Douglass statue in Rochester, New York, Douglass’s son’s hands were used as a model. Morris has also lent his hands to additional Douglass statues.

“This is a very orchestrated process,” Schwartz says. “The communication is scrupulous. We are not historians, but it’s very important that people working on our projects are not just coming in to do their jobs, but that they know something about the people that we’re working to create. You cannot afford missteps.”

There is, of course, the conversation surrounding exactly what historical symbols can and should mean in 2020.

For the state of Maryland, honoring Douglass and Tubman in a very public and outward way is an effort to highlight their struggle and remarkable achievements. Arthur says she has been blown away by the reception to the statues, noticing more foot traffic than in the past at the Old House Chambers.

“I’ve been down in the State House, and guards that I’ve walked by and said hello to five million times have literally come over and hugged me and thanked me for my role in making this kind of recognition possible,” Arthur says. “There’s a real sense of a more balanced story being told. To see the joy with which visitors—particularly African American visitors—feel like this is an important part of their story being told and acknowledged so many years after the heroism of these two individuals—it allows the conversation to deepen.”

The day that actress Jenna Rose Stein landed the role of Susan B. Anthony in the race-and labor-themed musical The Moment Was Now, her daughter, Annabel, was watching a historical TV show called The Who Was? Show. That episode’s biography? Susan B. Anthony.

That was back in June, when the play was casting for its September premiere at the Emmanuel Episcopal Church in Mount Vernon. Back by popular demand, the musical will be reprised this month—Women’s History Month—with seven performances between February 28 and March 8. The show is set in post-Civil War Baltimore in 1869; a year before African-American males were given the right to vote.

Playwright and retired labor organizer Gene Bruskin says, “The play reveals the impassioned search for unity” by now-legendary Americans committed to equality, including Anthony, the black feminist Frances Harper, the immortal Frederick Douglass, and his partner in the black labor movement, Isaac Meyers. The question of who should receive equality under the law—and more vexingly, when—creates the conflict (argued in full-throated song) at a meeting convened by Douglass.

This year marks the 150th anniversary of the 15th Amendment to the Constitution, which gave African-American males the right to vote, and the 100th anniversary of the 19th Amendment, providing the same rights to women. The long gap between the granting of those rights ate away at Anthony, prompting deep resentment.

“Most people only know the work [Anthony] did as an old woman,” said Stein, who portrays Anthony in her mid-40s. “Early on she fought for abolition, women’s labor rights, the right for women to own property, and the right to divorce.”

As a Quaker teenager in New York, Anthony collected anti-slavery petitions. Later, she helped to create an all-female temperance movement. Once men were allowed to join, says Stein, the women were silenced. Her political break with Douglass (which their friendship survived) was the result of black male suffrage, which excluded women of all colors.

In perhaps her most powerful line in the play, Anthony tells Frances Harper: “I will cut my right arm off to stop the Negro male from getting the ballot” before women. They did and she did not, and the struggle continued until women got the vote in 1920, roughly a decade- and-a-half after Anthony’s death.

“Only by knowing the truth about our great leaders and the conflicts that they struggled with, can we learn from the past,” Bruskin says. Which is Stein’s hope for Annabel, who will watch her mother portray the suffragette again on the Emmanuel Episcopal Church stage.

For the fourth straight day, Donald Trump continued his assault on the city of Baltimore, describing it “like living in hell” while addressing reporters on the south lawn of the White House Tuesday morning. Further, the president claimed, without offering evidence, “that billions and billions given to Baltimore” in federal funding “had been stolen.”

Trump also continued his personal attacks on Rep. Elijah Cummings, who represents Maryland’s 7th District, suggesting Cummings is “in charge” of Baltimore, which the president had called “a disgusting, rat and rodent infested mess” over the weekend.

“They’re largely African American,” Trump said of Baltimore’s residents. “You have a large African-American population, and they really appreciate what I’m doing and they’ve let me know it.” Again, the president offered no information about who specifically from Baltimore had reached out to him. He tweeted that the city’s economic and crime numbers are “the worst in the United States,” neither of which is true.

In Tuesday evening’s Democratic presidential debate, Minnesota Senator Amy Klobuchar, whose husband teaches at the University of Baltimore School of Law, decried Trump’s assault on majority-black Baltimore. “Little kids literally woke up this week and turned on the TV and saw the president call their city, the town of Baltimore, nothing more than a home for rats,” Klobuchar said.

To a question about how the candidates would change course and help heal from Trump’s tactic of racial division, Vermont Senator Bernie Sanders highlighted his Thurgood Marshall Plan for Public Education, which aims at ending the growth of segregated schools, increasing support for Title I schools, and raising teacher pay, among other initiatives. Marshall, a Baltimore native, founded the NAACP’s Legal Defense Fund and won the Brown v. Board of Education case that overturned legal segregation in 1954.

On Saturday morning, a “Fox & Friends” segment that was critical of Baltimore prompted the president’s initial verbal assaults on the city and Cummings. Trump apparently viewed the segment as an opening to go after Cummings, who serves as chair of the House Oversight and Reform Committee. Previously, Cummings had offered tough questioning of Homeland Security Secretary Kevin McAleenan during a hearing on child separations and conditions at U.S. border facilities.

On Sunday, Trump referred to Cummings, the son of sharecroppers who grew up defending himself against bullies who tried to stop the integration of a South Baltimore public pool, as “racist Elijah Cummings.” On Monday, after Rev. Al Sharpton and former Maryland Lt. Gov. Michael Steele, a Republican, visited Cummings’ West Baltimore church, Trump called Sharpton a racist, too. Meanwhile, Steele said Trump “has a particular venom for blacks and people of color.”

During his remarks to reporters Tuesday morning, Trump referred to himself as “the least racist person there is anywhere in the world.”

Whether American voters believe him is another question. Later Tuesday, Quinnipiac University released a poll that found 51 percent of American voters think the president of the Unites States is a racist. Forty-five percent of voters said they do not think Trump is a racist.

Wednesday morning, U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development Secretary Ben Carson, the renowned former Johns Hopkins neurosurgeon, came to Baltimore to defend the president and tout the Trump Administration’s “Opportunity Zone” initiative. According to reporting by The Sun, HUD officials planned to stage their press conference on a vacant lot in Southwest Baltimore, but never asked permission from the owners of the property, Morning Star Baptist Church of Christ.

Meanwhile, Baltimoreans have continued their defense of their beloved city, which launched a trending social media hashtag #WeAreBaltimore over the weekend.

Visit Baltimore, the city’s official tourism arm, noted, for example, that the city ranked fifth on the both Forbes’ list of rising cities for startups and Entrepreneur magazine’s list of top cities for minority entrepreneurs, as well as one of the top three U.S. cities for recent college grads by the Wall Street Journal.

In an op-ed to the Baltimore Sun, Under Armour founder Kevin Plank and Johns Hopkins University president Ron Daniel—joined by more than a half-dozen other business, academic, and nonprofit leaders—wrote how they were “proud and privileged” to call Baltimore home. They described Baltimore as “home of creativity, optimism, and determination.”

Others, including Baltimore photographer Devin Allen, continued to show their love for the city in heartfelt tweets, Facebook and Instagram posts and pictures.

By coincidence, Baltimore celebrated its 290th birthday Tuesday.

Trump, of course, most likely didn’t know that. A couple of years ago, he described one of Baltimore’s and the country’s greatest former citizens, former slave turned abolitionist, orator, and author Frederick Douglass, as “an example of somebody’s who’s done an amazing job and is being recognized more and more.”

This year marks the 200th anniversary of the birth of Frederick Douglass, a pioneer whose tireless efforts to abolish American chattel slavery and demand equal voting rights for women and black men laid the foundation for longstanding legislative reforms. Douglass, a renowned orator, abolitionist and author was born a slave in Talbot County Maryland in 1818. Though the exact date of his birth remains unknown, Douglass adopted February 14 as his birthday.

On Thursday, October 18, the Frederick Douglass-Isaac Myers Maritime Museum will celebrate the opening of Frederick Douglass Bicentennial, an intimate art exhibition that honors his life and legacy. Curated by Kibibi Ajanku, the exhibition features a broad selection of imaginative portraits rendered by accomplished illustrator Ed Towles.

“[Douglass] walked the streets of Baltimore and did light-hearted things with a serious intent,” Ajanku noted. “I wanted to speak to that and was looking for an opportunity to celebrate his bicentennial through the art of an African-American artist who also has some legacy and connection to the city.”

Frederick Douglass Bicentennial prominently exhibits revised portraits of Douglass from key moments in his personal life and career with an aesthetic that highlights Towles’ broad design expertise: illustration, letterpress, offset poster, digital print, linoleum cut print, typography, and ceramic tile painting. The Pennsylvania-born, Baltimore-based artist emphasizes the artisanship of printmaking and what he calls “ad-libbing illustration” to realize rarely seen portrayals of black icons like Douglass, his family, and abolitionist allies.

“Part of the process is around self-exploration,” Towles shared. “I am a designer. I have to keep working at my craft and exploring. Sometimes a show forces your hand. [Douglass] was an early subject for me. I did a print in 1975. As a black man, he represented what we should be or strive towards. Harriet Tubman was a major influence, too. Their efforts were the same in trying to liberate black folks.”

By highlighting lesser known moments in Douglass’ life, Towles transcends familiar representations of Douglass as a stoic, solitary figure. In Lincoln and Douglass (2018), a digital print, Towles superimposes an image of the white house overtop red and blue stylized pop art portraits of President Abraham Lincoln and Douglass to depict their 1864 discussion to abolish slavery. Planting the Seeds of Freedom (2018), a large colored pencil portrait, features an interesting three-quarter image of a young Douglass lost in thought. Scenes of his harrowing escape from slavery emerge from his recognizable afro. In another portrait, Anna Murray Douglass and Family, (2018) Towles renders a distinguished likeness of Douglass’ wife and extended family in colored pencil.

Towles has extensive experience working as a professional designer for major publications including Black Enterprise, EBONY, Record World, and the now-defunct Crisis Magazine, as well as collaborating with prominent contemporary artists like Romare Bearden.

“There is a thread to the work that underlies all these themes,” Towles said. “Social issues [have] always been a part of the work. I wanted to imagine Frederick Douglass in a different way. His history is so profound you can’t cover it all in 20 pieces.”

Five things to eat, drink, see, hear, and do with your Charm City weekend.

 EAT

Feb. 16-18: Chinese New Year

The Elephant, 924 N. Charles St. 5 p.m.-12 a.m. 443-447-7878. 

If you’re ready to hit the refresh button after the first 44 days of 2018, start the year over with a Chinese New Year-inspired main course at The Elephant. This weekend at the historic mansion in Mount Vernon, executive chef Orlando Amaro is serving up peking duck, a famously celebratory dish with Beijing roots. Prepared five days in advance with a perfectly crisp crust, this dish guarantees a positive start to the year of the dog.

 DRINK

To Feb. 18: Union Pinewood Derby

Union Craft Brewing, 1700 Union Ave. 12-5 p.m. $5-10. 410-467-0290.

This Sunday, put your cub, boy, and Eagle scout merit badges to the test and head to Union Craft Brewing to compete in an old-fashioned pinewood derby. Yes, we’re talking about the wooden toy race cars that prevailed in the ’50s, so ride this wave of nostalgia and grab a build kit, make a racer, and run it down their 40-foot derby track. Racers can design their cars however they want—shaped like a beer bottle, sporting the Maryland flag, or mirroring the Batman mobile—and compete to win a trophy and a can of every 2018 special release beer. If you’d rather watch the four-wheeled waggery from the sidelines, grab a few Duckpins and soak up the suds with signature wood-fired pies by Well Crafted Pizza.

 SEE

Feb. 17: Baltimore’s Legends & Legacies Jubilee

Frederick Douglass-Isaac Myers Maritime Park and Museum, 1417 Thames St. 12-4 p.m. Free. 410-685-0295.

This week, Governor Larry Hogan officially proclaimed 2018 as the “Year of Frederick Douglass,” a fitting move since the father of the civil rights movement turned 200 this year. His birthday celebration continues this Saturday at Baltimore’s Legends & Legacies Jubilee, where visitors can check out interactive exhibits from local museums, sample eats from Popsations and Connie’s Chicken and Waffles, and get an up-close look at the new Frederick Douglass wax figure. Another local legend, Baltimore’s own Davon Fleming, who stole our hearts during his time on NBC’s The Voice, will host a singing competition for any brave challengers.

 HEAR

Feb. 16: Classical Music for People with Short Attention Spans

WTMD, 1 Olympic Pl., Towson. 8-10:30 p.m. $12-15. 410-704-8938.

If you get antsy and bored during a 2-hour classical music program, don’t worry, you’re not alone. Classical Revolution Baltimore, a collective of musicians that performs classical music in non-traditional spaces, is pairing up with WTMD to present a program that’s perfect for people with short attention spans. In this “Cliffs Notes of Classical Music,” hear the most notable parts of well-known classical pieces (think Mozart’s “Lacrimosa” and Beethoven’s “Symphony No. 7”) featuring performances from local artists Pique Collective, Outcalls, and Dominic Shodekeh Talifero. If you can’t make the performance, tune into the live broadcast on 89.7 to hear this one-of-a-kind mix of classical and contemporary ensembles.

 DO

Feb. 16-17: Frozen Harbor Music Festival

Locations & times vary. $20-120. 443-579-7766.

We might be weeks away from warm weather and music festival season, but we can always count on the Frozen Harbor Music Festival to start the party early. With a forecast of cloudy skies, rain, and snow on Saturday, the harbor will indeed be frozen while this 2-day festival hosts 160 acts across 10 stages downtown. Build an itinerary, map out your weekend, and hop from venue to venue to catch local and national artists, including big names like Keller Williams and George Clinton and Maryland favorites like Jimmie’s Chicken Shack and Sam Grow. 

Five things to eat, drink, see, hear, and do with your Charm City weekend.

 EAT

Feb. 10: Clues, Brews and BBQs

Blue Pit BBQ & Whiskey Bar, 1601 Union Ave. 5-8 p.m. Free. 443-948-5590. 

It might be the dead of winter, but nothing will warm your heart like downing a plate of Blue Pit’s coffee-rubbed brisket or bourbon-glazed ribs to support local rescue pups. This Saturday, Hampden’s dog-friendly bar will donate 10 percent of your final bill to Baltimore Bully Crew, a grassroots organization that helps rescued pit bulls. Come for the melt-in-your-mouth barbecue and local brews and stay for the themed escape game from Charm City Clue Room, where participants will solve a short series of puzzles to “save” a stuffed blue pit bull.

 DRINK

To Feb. 9: Sip & Shine

American Visionary Art Museum, 800 Key Hwy. 6-9 p.m. $30-35. 410-244-1900.

Valentine’s Day is right around the corner, and what’s more romantic than a night filled with wine, a scavenger hunt, and mosaic magnets? Nothing, really. The American Visionary Art Museum’s twist on a sip-and-paint night lets guests compete in an after-hours scavenger hunt through The Great Mystery Show, their current exhibit on mystical investigations and curious subjects. Grab another glass of wine or beer and dive into the museum’s treasure chest of craft supplies to make a take-home mosaic magnet for you and your valentine.

 SEE

Feb. 9-11: Constellations & Crossroads

Arena Players, 801 McCulloh St. Fri.-Sat. 8 p.m., Sun. 5 p.m. $20. 410-728-6500. 

In a theatrical collaboration like no other, Arena Players, Baltimore’s historic African-American community theatre, and Baltimore Rock Opera Society, the city’s rock theater powerhouse, present Constellations & Crossroads, a double-feature production filled with American history and live rock music. “Determination of Azimuth” follows the story of Katherine Johnson, a black NASA mathematician who performed calculations that made space flight possible. The second musical, “The Battle of Blue Apple Crossing,” depicts a fictionalized account of the legendary blues guitarist Robert Johnson. If you miss the first three shows, don’t worry, they’ll be back on the West Baltimore stage again next weekend.

 HEAR

Feb. 10: Roses

Showroom Café & Bar, 120 W. North Ave. 9 p.m. $8-10. 410-862-0930. 

We’ve watched them grow and rise in the local music scene over the past few years, and this weekend some of Baltimore’s up-and-coming artists are giving a little love back to their city. Micah E. Wood, Joy Postell, Al Rogers Jr., and Bobbi Rush will serenade the Saturday night crowd at Station North’s Showroom with their heartfelt energies and a performance that is sure to sweep you off your feet. Lose yourself in Wood’s trademark talk-sing, fall for Postell’s neo-soul rhythms, admire Rogers Jr.’s honest rap, and relish in Rush’s dreamy melodies. If you need a preview, follow The Big Baltimore Playlist on Spotify where we’ve featured our favorite songs by these talented artists.

 DO

Feb. 10: Frederick Douglass Day

Reginald F. Lewis Museum, 830 E. Pratt St. 12-4 p.m. Free. 443-263-1800.

Among the many legends born in the Baltimore region, few are more revered than Frederick Douglass. Raised on a plantation on the Eastern Shore, the freed slave turned iconic abolitionist became one of the country’s most widely-read authors and famed orators. Throughout his lifetime, he preached about universal human rights, educated other slaves, and became the first African American to receive a nominating vote for president. Celebrate his 200th birthday and honor his historic legacy at the Reginald F. Lewis Museum this Saturday with lectures by historians Dr. John Stauffer and Dr. Lawrence Jackson, readings of Douglass’s speeches by history re-enactors, and a children’s art and story hour with illustrator London Ladd.

BLACK HISTORY MONTH AT THE B&O
2/1-28. B&O Railroad Museum, 901 W. Pratt St. Mon.-Sat. 10 a.m.-4 p.m., Sun. 11 a.m.-4 p.m. Free-$20. Learn about the historic contributions of African Americans to the United States railroad industry.

FREEDOM: EMANCIPATION QUILTED & STITCHED
TO 2/28. Reginald F. Lewis Museum, 830 E. Pratt St. Wed.-Sat. 10 a.m.-5 p.m., Sun. 12-5 p.m. Free-$8. This new exhibit features documentary-style story quilts that honor the lives and legacies of people of color in Maryland.

AFRICAN AMERICANS WHO SERVED DURING WARTIME
2/10. Benjamin Banneker Historical Park & Museum, 300 Oella Ave., Catonsville. 1:30-3 p.m. Free. Celebrate two decades of the park and commemorate Banneker relatives who served during times of war.

JOHNS HOPKINS BLACK HISTORY MONTH STUDENT COMPETITION & EXHIBITION
2/24-3/4. Creative Alliance, 3134 Eastern Ave. Tues.-Sat. 11 a.m.-7 p.m. Free. Southeast Baltimore students showcase artworks inspired by and featuring historical black figures.

VISIONARY ARTISTS OF COLOR
2/14. American Visionary Art Museum, 800 Key Hwy. 10 a.m.-6 p.m. Free-$15.95. In honor of Frederick Douglass’ 200th birthday, enjoy a self-guided tour through the art museum’s collection to view works by African Americans and other artists of color.

BLACK HISTORY MONTH TEEN LISTENING PARTY
2/6-27. Enoch Pratt Free Library, 3601 Eastern Ave. Tues. 3-4 p.m. Free. Throughout the month, young adults can listen to the works of celebrated black authors.

CIRQUE ZUMA ZUMA WITH TRADITIONAL AFRICAN DANCE
2/15. Goucher College, 1021 Dulaney Valley Rd., Towson. 10:15 a.m. & 12 p.m. $9. This lively performance includes music, dance, and acrobatics to create an African-style Cirque du Soleil.

TELL THEM WE ARE RISING
2/18. Reginald F. Lewis Museum, 830 E. Pratt St. 2 p.m. Free. During this documentary film screening, learn about the pivotal role historically black colleges and universities have played in American history.

I HAVE A DREAM: THE LIFE & TIMES OF DR. MARTIN LUTHER KING JR.
2/22. Goucher College, 1021 Dulaney Valley Rd., Towson. 10:15 a.m. & 12 p.m. $9. Performance artists present this biographical dramatization about the legendary civil rights leader.

ANNAPOLIS AFRICAN-AMERICAN HERITAGE TOUR
2/17. City Dock, Annapolis. 1-3 p.m. Free-$20. Explore the history and culture of Maryland’s African-American community through this guided walking tour.

FREDERICK DOUGLASS PATH TO FREEDOM WALKING TOURS
TO 9/3. 800 S. Broadway. Times vary. $7-15. These guided walking tours take history buffs through the iconic abolitionist’s life in Fells Point.

Spencer Finch: Moon Dust
Feb. 21-Oct. 2024. The Baltimore Museum of Art, 10 Art Museum Dr. Wed.-Sun. 10 a.m – 5 p.m. Free. 443-573-1700. The Baltimore Museum of Art adds a light installation inspired by lunar dust. Mankind’s eternal fascination with the moon has inspired generations to marvel at the orb’s bright, serene presence in our nighttime sky. Now Brooklyn-based artist Spencer Finch is using the moon’s alluring luster as inspiration for the BMA’s new installation, Moon Dust, on view February 21 through October 13, 2024. For the next six years, Finch will dangle some 150 chandeliers (each one boasting 417 bulbs) from the museum’s ceiling, using a variety of lights to mimic the chemical composition of the moon’s surface as collected during the 1972 lunar landing mission of Apollo 17. But much like the real celestial body, you don’t need to know a lot about chemistry or science to let it light up your imagination.

Jason Isbell & The 400 Unit

Feb. 6. Modell Performing Arts Center at The Lyric, 140 W. Mt. Royal Ave. 8 p.m. $29-56. 410-900-1150. In the 11 years since this Alabama native ditched the Drive-By Truckers to go it alone, his widely successful solo career has proved he made the right decision. With two Grammys under his belt, the Americana songwriter returns to Baltimore with his all-star band for a night of pared-down folk songs you won’t forget.

Frederick Douglass Day 

Feb. 10. Reginald F. Lewis Museum, 830 E. Pratt St. 12-4 p.m. Free-$8. 443-263-1800. Among the many legends born in the Baltimore region, few are more revered than Frederick Douglass. Raised on the Eastern Shore, the freed slave turned iconic abolitionist, author, and orator spent many years in and around Charm City. This year, celebrate his 200th birthday and honor his historic legacy with readings and a children’s storytime at the Reginald F. Lewis Museum.

Steve Martin and Martin Short 

Feb. 16. Modell Performing Arts Center at The Lyric, 140 W. Mt. Royal Ave. 8 p.m. $85-235. 410-900-1150. Steve Martin and Martin Short have earned their reputations as comedic titans through their decades-long careers that included such memorable collaborations as Father of the Bride, Three Amigos, and, of course, Saturday Night Live. These funny men are teaming up again for a rare night of double-billed comedy full of off-kilter humor at The Lyric.

Max’s Belgian Beer Fest 

Feb. 16-19. Max’s Taphouse, 737 S. Broadway. 11 a.m.-2 a.m. Free. 410-675-6297. Take shelter from the cold weather this February at one of Baltimore’s most hallowed haunts, Max’s Taphouse, during its annual Belgian Beer Fest in the heart of Fells Point. With more than 200 bottles and beers on tap, you can sip on your favorite local brews or go bold with European rarities not commonly found in the U.S. The pub will also be offering Belgium-inspired grub such as cheese platters and frites to help soak up the suds.

Lunar New Year Celebration 

Feb. 18. The Walters Art Museum, 600 N. Charles St. 11 a.m.-4 p.m. Free. 410-547-9000. In these uncertain times, we may all feel like we could use a little more luck. On cue, The Walters is bringing together Chinese and Korean dance troupes to perform a traditional Lunar New Year celebration meant to ward off bad luck and usher in good fortune. The museum’s Year of the Dog festivities also feature live music and fun arts activities for the kids.

Fueling the Automobile Age 
 
Feb. 23. Baltimore Museum of Industry, 1415 Key Hwy. Tues.-Sun. 10 a.m.-4 p.m. Free-$12. 410-717-4808. When people think of oil, they usually think of big-time tycoons in Texas, not little old Baltimore City. But the BMI’s newest permanent exhibition explores all the ways our town contributed to the booming age of automobiles, thanks in large part to former oil heavyweights like Amoco and Crown. Visitors can learn about America’s love of cars by piling into a real 1962 Chrysler Newport station wagon, pumping fuel at a mock gas station, and viewing advertisements from the car heydays of the mid-20th century.

American Craft Show 

Feb. 23-25. Baltimore Convention Center, 1 W. Pratt St. Fri. 10 a.m.-8 p.m., Sat. 10 a.m.-6 p.m., Sun. 11 a.m.-5 p.m. $14-34. 612-206-3100. Whether you’re looking for a bold piece of furniture to complete your living room or a fabulous piece of statement jewelry, the American Craft Council’s annual show has you covered. With more than 650 artists hailing from Baltimore and beyond, there are thousands of one-of-a-kind finds, ranging from handmade clothing to fine art and even whiskey.

Django Jazz Fest 

Feb. 23-25. Creative Alliance, 3134 Eastern Ave. Fri.-Sat. 8 p.m., Sun. 7 p.m. $23-72. 410-276-1651. When Belgian jazz guitarist Django Reinhardt lost movement in two of his fingers after a fire, he taught himself to play with the other three, and in the process birthed an entire genre that is now called Gypsy Jazz, an energetic, swinging style that swept the early 20th century. Revel in the form during this weekend celebration featuring music by the likes of Baltimore’s beloved jazz group Ultrafaux and international guitar star Samson Schmitt.

This week, The New York Times released an interactive feature describing 52 cities its readers should visit in 2018. And, wouldn’t you know, our very own Baltimore made the cut at no. 15. Each writeup is short and sweet with a map, some links, and a small sentence describing why the city landed on the list. In our case, it’s because Baltimore “honors an abolitionist and lights up with art.”

“Charm City’s packed cultural calendar is showcasing commemorative events for the 200th birthday of the Maryland-born abolitionist leader Frederick Douglass,” writes Nora Walsh. “Meanwhile, an expanded Light City festival in April will feature light-based art installations and performances in 14 neighborhoods.”

We were particularly heartened that the Times chose to highlight our celebration of Douglass, a figure that we chronicled in our cover story “How Baltimore Invented The Modern World.” (We’ll also be detailing the events surrounding the 200th anniversary in our upcoming February issue.)

The writeup also mentions the eventual opening of Hotel Revival, which we’ve reported is going to cut the ribbon in Mt. Vernon this spring. The swanky new spot will have 107 guest rooms, a street-level restaurant, three karaoke rooms, and a rooftop bar headed by by Chelsea Gregoire.

Baltimore joins an elite list of regions, cities, and entire countries around the world in what the publication calls “a starter kit for escaping.” Rounding out the top three are New Orleans, the country of Colombia, and a southern region of Italy.

To get locals involved, the feature linked to a Facebook thread asking followers to post about their favorite things to do in each region. For Baltimore, the suggestions vary—from tours at  Ft. McHenry to visits at local breweries—and it’s a nice nod to the expertise of local residents.

This isn’t the first time the newspaper has lauded Baltimore and, most recently, in its famed “36 Hours” series, we think writer Nell McShane Wulfhart struck the right chord when she wrote, “The traditional things, like the old-school sheet cake at Lexington Market, remain unchanged, while neighborhoods like Charles Village seem to be opening new bars and restaurants daily.”

She continued: “Charm City has raised the charm quotient considerably in the past few years, managing to retain its quirky appeal as it develops stylish, more upmarket restaurants and hotels.”

Beach Music

Pratt Street
August 5, 2017

In 1892, Charles Douglass and his wife, Laura, were refused service at the Bay Ridge resort just south of Annapolis. “As they walked away, eventually crossing a channel bridge, they encountered a black farmer named Brashears,” historian Patsy Mose Fletcher, author of African American Destinations Around Washington, D.C., recounts before a packed audience at the Reginald F. Lewis Museum. Turns out, that farmer owned a small tract of bayfront land between Black Walnut Creek and Oyster Creek.

A conversation ensued and, soon enough, a deal was struck between the farmer and Douglass, whose family purchased the breathtaking, beach-accessible property—leading to the creation of a hassle-free vacation destination for African-Americans.

“Charles Douglass happened to be the son of Frederick Douglass, who later built a house there so he could look across the water and reflect upon his Eastern Shore origins.”

By the following August, Highland Beach had been formally established and Charles Douglass’ young son was writing his famous grandfather, telling him he was “going out fishing and crabbing every day” and that he “can swim over 100 yards without stopping to rest.”

Residents and guests would eventually include Paul Robeson, Booker T. Washington, W.E.B. DuBois, Langston Hughes, and Paul Laurence Dunbar.

Highland Beach did not remain the only beach for Maryland, D.C., and southern Pennsylvania African-Americans during segregation, however. In 1909, Frederick Carr, who had been born into slavery and spent decades working as a waiter and cook at the U.S. Naval Academy, purchased 180 acres of farmland, also on the Annapolis Neck peninsula, that his family later turned into Carr’s Beach. Over time, Carr’s Beach and nearby Sparrow’s Beach evolved into huge summer attractions, with Carr’s Beach becoming a major stop on Chitlin’ Circuit, attracting the likes of Little Richard, Sarah Vaughn, Billie Holiday, the Shirelles, James Brown, Otis Redding, and the Drifters.

Fletcher notes with a wry smile that while Highland Beach remains active today, the Bay Ridge resort is long gone. On the downside, after the civil rights victories of the mid-1960s, many black-owned businesses and destinations such as Carr’s Beach suffered as white businesses finally opened their doors to everyone.

“The last big crowd at Carr’s Beach was 1973. New owners were trying to make it a more integrated place and booked Frank Zappa, who was from Baltimore. The cover was $5 and he drew 7,000 people,” Fletcher says. “But that was it.  All those years, it wasn’t like black people said white people couldn’t come.”

Sun Block

Inner Harbor
August 21, 2017

Rider Fulks, 7, wearing a T-shirt that reads “Big Dreamer,” patiently awaits a break in the afternoon cloud cover from atop the Maryland Science Center, where he’s hoping to glimpse the first eclipse in nearly a century to sweep across the U.S.

Suddenly, at 1:15 p.m., the sky breaks.

The awestruck Parkton resident, donning safety glasses, tries to describe the rare celestial occurrence to his mother and 5-year-old brother: “It looks like the moon is taking a bite out of the sun.”

The line outside the science center began forming a couple of hours before the Inner Harbor institution opened in anticipation of the eclipse, which turned night into day across a stretch of the U.S. from Oregon to South Carolina over the course of 90 minutes. In Baltimore, the eclipse wasn’t total, but estimated at 80 percent—though that hardly dimmed enthusiasm for the historic alignment.

“We sold out all 300 tickets for each of our five rooftop viewing slots,” says science center staffer Samantha Blau.

The day included an exhibition on the sun at the science center, which also had safety glasses and unused pizza boxes on hand to assist visitors in making their own pinhole viewing devices. Many families came equipped with their own pinhole devices as well, made from Corn Flakes and Cheerios boxes—which worked better for some than others.

“The tin foil got wrinkled on the drive over here,” says one mother, smiling as she shares safety glasses with her 5-year-old daughter. “Apparently, I needed to keep a better eye on the cereal box in the car.”

Lucky Catch

14th Street, Ocean City
August 11, 2017

“You’ve seen Jaws, right?” Frank Massa asks a pair of crewmates with a mischievous smile, as he cranks a big reel in super-slow motion, imitating the foreboding click-click-click from the grizzled fictional fisherman Quint’s first encounter with the infamous movie shark. In the film, of course, that click-click-click, is the ever-so-subtle indication the killer fish has taken the bait and is readying for an epic run.

Around Massa’s boat, however, all is still. “That’s fishing: hours of boredom, interrupted by moments of chaos,” one of his crewmates says with a laugh.

Massa and his buddies are one of 353 teams, here this week for the 44th annual White Marlin Open, hoping to win a cut of the $5 million in prize money from the largest billfish tournament in the world.

Massa had hooked a thick, 64-inch white marlin this morning, but the ocean quickly turned quiet again—which it would remain for most of the tourney. On Wednesday, when a Delaware fisherman delivered an 86-pound white marlin to the dock—one of the biggest ever landed in White Marlin Open history—the competition for first place was believed over. If no one brought in a bigger white marlin, he stood to go home with $2.6 million.

“I had coffee with about 12 guys and offered a $100 bet no would top that fish over the next two days,” one local journalist commented later. “No one took me up.”

But on Friday, 40 minutes after the daily evening weigh-in begins at the Harbor Marina, Glen Frost, a Stevensville tax attorney, unloads the third largest white marlin—a 95.5-pounder—ever caught in the tournament. “Hooked it at 12:50 p.m.,” Frost says of his million-dollar-plus catch, noting it bit less than four hours before the official end of the tournament.  “First white marlin I ever caught.”