Long before the abolition of slavery, the Chesapeake Bay region played a major role in enslaved African Americans’ search for freedom and a better life. Maryland’s Eastern Shore includes a number of historically significant sites related to the Underground Railroad, a loosely structured network of routes and safehouses that people escaping slavery would use to travel north. Black Americans worked the region’s waters as ship-builders, crew, and sailors. For much of the 20th century, they comprised the majority of workers in oyster and crab-processing houses and their stories were largely passed down orally and through family histories. [Editor's Note: In order to ensure that we are telling the full American story, we acknowledge that enslaved Black Americans were, in most cases, enslaved by white people in the United States.]

Vince Leggett is founder and president of the Blacks of the Chesapeake Foundation (BOCF), whose work brings to light the maritime history of African Americans in the Chesapeake Bay. The foundation maintains a collection of records, artifacts, genealogies, and more than 40,000 photographs representing 200 years of African American life and work in the seafood and maritime industries. The Library of Congress and the U.S. Congress designated BOCF as a Local Legacies project, and former governor of Maryland, Paris N. Glendening, commissioned Leggett as an honorary Admiral of the Chesapeake in 2003. Below are his responses to some questions that help shed light on this history.

What sparked your initial interest in African American history in the Chesapeake Bay?

I am a native-born Marylander, with an innate interest in the preservation of our bay and an understanding of life over the decades here for my African American community. I spent years traveling the deep and shallow reaches of the bay, and as a fellow waterman, I was welcomed into thriving and struggling shoreline communities. I’ve listened to hundreds of stories of African American fishers, captains, and maritime business owners. The more I heard about their way of life, the more I understood how the older generation’s wisdom and culture might become lost to history.

That sense of responsibility was the driving force behind the Blacks of the Chesapeake Foundation, which I founded in 1984 to advocate for preservation; to inspire the next generation of activists; and to celebrate our cultural history. BOCF is smashing the myth that African Americans and marginalized citizens do not care about the environment.

Is there a particular person from the region's past whose story inspires you today?

I have been enriched by meeting many African American storytellers over the years. The one man whose words, history, and heart inspired my book is the old waterman, Captain Earl White. Captain Earl was born in 1919 in Dames Quarter on Deal Island on the lower eastern shore county of Somerset. He toiled for nearly 70 years oystering the bay, and in his retirement, he worked as the first mate and field educator on the Chesapeake Bay Foundation’s floating classroom, the skipjack Stanley Norman. He schooled me on what he called “the black side of the bay” and “the other Chesapeake.” He shared with me the stories that his father and grandfathers had passed along to him.

When you speak to the public, what are audiences most surprised to learn about African Americans and their connection to the Chesapeake Bay?

Audiences are impressed learning about the length, depth, and breadth of the African American presence on the bay, historically and currently. They come to realize that African Americans were more than slaves, servants, crew members, crab pickers, and oyster shuckers. Some Marylanders never learned that familiar local historical figures like Frederick Douglass and Harriet Tubman had deep connections to the bay. Most importantly, my audiences are awakened to the truths behind what they have always understood as American colonial history.

In so many cases, I found that African American stories were embedded within white American history. The history of African Americans living and working on the Chesapeake had long been overwritten by the white versions of successful enterprise and thriving communities. African American watermen have essentially been cut out of photos, history books, movies, and professional journals.

How can we harness the interest and passions that Americans have in our nation's maritime history to build wider, more diverse support for the stewardship of our waters today?

The truth is that many citizens living and working in Chesapeake Bay region are not exposed daily to the bay and don’t often consider their connection to its tributaries. As a result, people have developed a sense of alienation regarding responsibility for our watershed.

In order to change this mindset, we must begin by increasing environmental literacy among our school students. From my years in the field of education, I have seen that often young folks dismiss the bay as a playground for the rich. BOCF has created environmental education programs that engage urban schools with high percentages of minority students.

Also, people of color have largely been absent from environmental policy development and implementation discussions, and excluded from state resource allocations. With today’s increased focus on diversity, equity, and inclusion, we can raise issues regarding environmental justice to the attention of lawmakers and inspire the leaders of tomorrow.

Finally, I see a great need for leadership at influential organizations to shift from majority-white and become more representative of the bay area’s diverse population. To address these challenges, BOCF has outlined environmental, economic, and social justice imperatives and works to foster cross-generational interest in conservation.

In 2019, Mallows Bay-Potomac River National Marine Sanctuary was designated in the Chesapeake Bay watershed. What overlap do you see between your work and the presence of this new national marine sanctuary?

I find Mallows Bay fascinating, as a living organic laboratory with a complex anthropological history of white, Native Americans, and African Americans. My mentor Mr. Diggs taught me that Southern Maryland counties are the cradle of African American history and culture, between the Patuxent and Potomac tributaries. These navigable waterways spawned the growth of our nascent nation, as fishing and farming industries flourished.

However, these ancient rivers were waters of hope and despair for enslaved and free Africans, given their place in history with the Underground Railroad. BOCF’s expertise in this chapter of the African American story is a possible area of collaboration. The sanctuary’s ties to military engagements are also of interest. African Americans have been a part of every battle fought by the U.S., as free men or enslaved. This truth presents another avenue for educational programming on the sanctuary’s connections to African Americans.

This story originally appeared on the NOAA National Marine Sanctuaries website.

Clarissa Lam, a student at Reed College and a Virtual Student Federal Service intern for NOAA's Office of National Marine Sanctuaries, contributed to this report.