Baltimore park recalls contribution of black Americans to shipbuilding
Railroad tracks dip into the harbor next to an old, square, brick building in this rapidly gentrifying post-industrial waterfront.
The tracks enter the water by design, not decay.
As part of the new Frederick Douglass-Isaac Myers Maritime Park, which opened June 28, they help re-create the nation's first black shipyard, complete with a marine railway like those that once pulled ships from the harbor for repair in the days before modern drydocks.
Baltimore was home to one of the largest populations of free blacks before the Civil War, many of whom worked in shipbuilding but were systematically pushed out after the war to make room for growing numbers of white workers.
The tracks enter the water by design, not decay.
As part of the new Frederick Douglass-Isaac Myers Maritime Park, which opened June 28, they help re-create the nation's first black shipyard, complete with a marine railway like those that once pulled ships from the harbor for repair in the days before modern drydocks.
Baltimore was home to one of the largest populations of free blacks before the Civil War, many of whom worked in shipbuilding but were systematically pushed out after the war to make room for growing numbers of white workers.
"It was, in a way, really a symbol of how African Americans did not stand back and accept the fate they had been dealt," Swann-Wright said. "They were proactive and very aggressive in seeking business and doing a good job."
"What we want to show kids and others here in the Baltimore community and throughout the nation was that the free black population was very prominent in Baltimore. They were very instrumental in the trades on the waterfront, particularly the caulkers union," said Wilbert E. "Bill" Cunningham, vice president of the Living Classrooms Foundation, a nonprofit educational group that created the park.