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What is the Frederick Douglass Isaac Myers Maritime Park

What can I see at the
Frederick Douglass-Isaac Myers Maritime Park

Did you know

What is the Douglass-Myers Maritime Park site logo

About Frederick Douglass

About Isaac Myers

Frequently Asked Questions

 

 


1417 Thames Street
Baltimore, Maryland 21231
Tel:  410.685.0295 x 252
Fax: 410.276.6347

douglassmyers.org

What is the Frederick Douglass Isaac Myers Maritime Park?

The Maritime Park is a national heritage site that highlights

  • African American maritime history
  • The saga of Frederick Douglass’s life in Baltimore as an enslaved child and young man
  • The life of Isaac Myers, a free born African American who became a national leader
  • The founding of the Chesapeake Marine Railway and Dry Dock Company
  • The establishment of the African American Community in Baltimore during the 1800’s
  • Shipbuilding traditions of the Chesapeake bay
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What can I do at the Frederick Douglass-Isaac Myers Maritime Park?

Almost 5, 000 square feet of gallery space, divided into permanent and temporary galleries and interactive learning centers where an engaging visitor experience is created through

  • Historic maps and images
  • Artistic Renderings
  • Audio Components
  • Historic artifacts
  • Archaeological findings
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Did you know?

Did you know... The Frederick Douglass-Isaac Myers Maritime Park is where history actually happened?

  • Frederick Douglass lived and worked on the Baltimore docks
  • He purchased his first book a block away
  • He met and courted his wife in the Fell’s Point community

Did you know... The First African American owned and operated shipyard was only a few yards from this historic warehouse door?

Did you know... The Frederick Douglass-Isaac Myers Maritime Park combines living history and interactive activities?

  • You can see, learn, participate and make memories here
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What is the Douglass-Myers Maritime Park site logo?

The Frederick Douglass-Isaac Myers Maritime Park is represented by the sankofa (sang-ko-fah) bird along with a ship, the Living Classrooms Foundation symbol

Fast facts about the Sankofa bird and Frederick Douglass-Isaac Myers Maritime Park logo

  • The sankofa symbol is drawn from an actual bird that lived in West Africa centuries ago
  • The sankofa bird walked forward while looking back to acknowledge where it had been
  • In the modern day the sankofa bird is a widely recognized West African Adrinkra symbol, which translated means “return and get it”
  • It is a symbol of learning from the past
  • At the Frederick Douglass-Isaac Myers Maritime Park—visitors are encouraged to understand past challenges and obstacles as learning tools, which will equip them to master the future
  • The ship in the center of the sankofa bird is a Living Classrooms Foundation symbol recognizing schooner Lady Maryland.  It represents opportunities where people of all ages are invited to “Learn By Doing,” The Living Classroom Foundation mission for the past twenty-one years
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About Frederick Douglass

February  1818  Born Frederick Bailey near Easton, Maryland
  1824 Works for Captain Aaron Anthony
  1826 Travels to Baltimore, Maryland to work for Hugh Auld
March 1833 Returns to Anthony farm to work for Thomas Auld
January 1834 Works for Edward Covey
  1835 Works for William Freeland
  1836 First escape plan fails; is imprisoned; sent back to Hugh
  1837 Meets Anna Murray
September 1838 Escapes to New York; sends for and marries Anna Murray; changes name to Frederick Douglass
August 1841 Asked to speak at American Anti-Slavery Society meeting;invited to go on lecture tour
May 1845 Narrative of the Life of Frederick Douglass is published; Douglass begins tour of England
  1847 Returns to the United States and begins lecture tour
December 1847 Begins printing the North Star
  1848 Attends first women's rights convention
  1850 Becomes involved in the underground railroad
  1851 Breaks with William Garrison
November 1859 Sails to England to begin lecture tour
May 1860 Returns to the United States
  1863 Meets with President Abraham Lincoln to discuss the treatment of black soldiers during the Civil War
  1864 Meets with Lincoln to formulate plans to lead blacks out of the South in case of a Union defeat
February 1866 Meets with President Andrew Johnson to discuss black suffrage.
July 1867 Declines Johnson's offer to head Freedman's Bureau
May 1870 The Fifteenth Amendment is adopted and blacks are granted the right to vote; becomes editor of the New National Era
  1874 Becomes president of the Freedman's Savings and Trust Company
  1877 Becomes U.S. Marshal
  1880 Appointed recorder of deeds for Washington, D.C.
August 1882 Anna Douglass dies
January 1884 Douglass marries Helen Pitts of Rochester   
  1889 Accepts post of American consul-general to Haiti
  1891 Resigns post and returns home
  1895 Dies in Washington, D.C.
     
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About Isaac Myers

1835  Born in Baltimore, Maryland, to free parents
1851 Apprentices as a ship caulker to James Jackson
1855 Hired to supervise one of the largest shipyards in Baltimore’s    harbor

Marries Emma V. (full name unknown), the mother of his three children
1860 Begins work as a shipping clerk and chief porter for Woods, Bridges and Company, a wholesale grocery firm
1864 Runs his own store
1865 Returns to the shipyards and experiences a strike protesting black labor in the maritime industry

Helps form a union of “colored mechanics”

Serves as president of the Baltimore’s Colored Caulker’s Trade Union Society [BCCTUA]; works to better the BCCTUA’s relationship with white labor organizations
1866 Myers and 15 other well-known Afro-American men convene at the Sharp Street UM auxiliary hall; they work together to form the Chesapeake Marine Railway and Dry Dock Company [CRDDC] (first known as the Maryland Mutual Joint Stock Company and the John Smith Company)
1868 The Chesapeake Railway and Dry Dock Marina [CRDDM] is chartered and continues to function through 1884
1869 Myers is one of nine black delegates to attend the National Labor Movement Convention

Creates the Colored National Labor Union and is elected as the first president
1870 Becomes the second Afro-American in Maryland’s history to receive federal appointment as a messenger to the customs service in Baltimore
1872 Becomes supervisor for the Postal office in the South
1879 Myers returns to Baltimore and opens a coal yard
1882 Founds the small weekly newspaper The Colored Citizen
1888 Serves as Secretary of the Baltimore Republican Campaign Committee

Elected president of the Colored Business Association of Baltimore, and of the Colored Building and Loan Association, as well as president of the “Aged Ministers’ Home” of the Bethel AME Church and the Maryland Colored State Industrial Fair Association

Serves as grand master of a Masonic order and the superintendent of the Bethel AME Church

Publishes a three-act drama entitled “The Missionary”
1891 Myers dies in Baltimore
   
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Frequently Asked Questions

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