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Frederick Douglass - Isaac Myers Maritime Park
This park is a maritime national
heritage site that showcases the African-American maritime history,
Frederick's life in Baltimore as a slave and young man, Isaac Myers
life as a free born African-American that would become a national
leader, the starting of the Chesapeake Marine Railway and Dry Dock
company, the start of the African-American community in the city
during the 1800s and the shipbuilding traditions of the Chesapeake
Bay area. Inside the museum, there is 5000 square feet of historic
maps and images, archaeological findings, artistic renderings,
historic relics and audio components. Frederick lived and worked on
the Baltimore docks, buying his first book nearby, and meeting his
future wife and the courtship they enjoyed in Fell's Point. Here is
where the first owned and operated shipyard in the nation was
located and the park houses many wonderful living history and
interactive activities. The maritime park is represented by the
sankofa bird, that lived in West Africa centuries ago, which would
walk forward but with his head facing backwards to see where he had
been. Today, the bird symbolizes the West African Andrinka symbol
which means return and get it in English. It also meant it was a
symbol of learning in days gone by, and here, at the park, symbols
like the bird encourage you to understand your past challenges, so
that in the future, you will be experienced enough to face and
overcome it. A timeline of his life indicates that he was born
Frederick Bailey near Easton, Maryland in 1818, and went to work for
Captain Aaron Anthony when he was only 6 years old. Two years later,
he went to Baltimore to work for Hugh Auld, but returned to work at
the Anthony farm in March of 1833, this time to work for Thomas
Auld. During the next few years, Frederick worked for various men,
then tried to escape, but was caught and returned to Hugh Auld. In
1837, he me Anna Murray, and then escapes to New York in 1838,
sending for Anna and when she arrives, he marries her and changes
his name to Frederick Douglass. As his future brightens, he is asked
to speak at the American anti-slavery society meeting in 1841 and
inquired of to go on tour as a lecturer. In 1845, his life is
published and he goes to England to tour there. After two years, he
returns to the United States and starts a lecture tour here. In
December of the same year, he starts printing the North Star and in
1848 goes to the first women's rights convention. He gets involved
in the underground railroad in 1850, and breaks away from William
Garrison in 1851. In 1859, he returns to England to start a lecture
tour and comes back to the states in 1860. In 1863, he is invited to
the White House and meets with the president, Abraham Lincoln to
talk about the way black soldiers are during the Civil War. He meets
with Lincoln again in 1864 with a plan to get slaves out of the
south if the north loses the war. In 1866, he talks with President
Andrew Johnson about black suffrage, and the next year decline's
Johnson's offer of heading the Freedman's Bureau. In 1870, the
Fifteenth Amendment is passed and blacks are given the right to
vote, and Frederick becomes the editor of the New National Era. In
1874, he becomes president of the Freedman's Savings and Trust
Company, and in 1877 becomes a U.S. marshal. In 1880, he is
appointed the recorder of deeds for DC. and two years later, his
beloved wife passes on. In 1884, he marries Helen Pitts of Rochester
and then in 1889, is offered the post of the American consul-general
in Haiti, which he accepts. In 1891, he resigns the post and comes
home. In 1895, Frederick Douglass Bailey passes away. Isaac
Myers was born in Baltimore in 1835, to free parents, and became an
apprentice to James Jackson as a ship caulker in 1851. In 1855, he
is hired to supervise one of the biggest shipyards in the city's
harbor and marries Emma V. who would have three children by him. In
1860, he starts working as a shipping clerk and chief porter for
Woods, Bridges and Company, a wholesale grocery store. In 1864, he
gets his own store, and the next year goes back to the shipyards
where a strike breaks out in protest of the black workers that are
involved in the maritime industry. That same year, 1865, he helps
form the union of colored mechanics and becomes president of the
city's Colored Caulker's Trade Union Society (BCCTUA) and strives to
improve its relations with the white unions. In 1866, he and 15
other well known African-American men meet at the Sharp Street UM
auxiliary hall, trying to form the Chesapeake Marine Railway and Dry
Dock Company, which becomes functional in 1868, and goes on to
function through 1884. In 1869, he is one of nine black delegates to
the National Labor Movement convention, which then starts the
Colored National Labor Union and is voted in as its first president.
He becomes the second African-American to get federal appointment to
the customs service in Baltimore, in the state's history. In 1872,
is made the supervisor of the post office in south Baltimore, but
then goes back to Baltimore in 1879 to open a coal yard. In 1882, he
starts the small weekly newspaper, the Colored Citizen. In 1888, he
is the secretary of the Baltimore Republican Campaign Committee and
also elected president of the Colored Business Association of
Baltimore and the Colored Building and Loan Association, plus the
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, as well as publishing a three act play called the
Missionary. Isaac passes on in 1891, in Baltimore.
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