In 1893, Charles Douglass, son of the famous Frederick Douglass,
was denied entry into a white-only resort in Bay Ridge,
Maryland. Upset, Douglass purchased his own plot of beach land
from a nearby black farmer. Although the land was as small as
two city blocks, it became it’s own getaway for blacks, and gave
root to a new vacation spot that was free from racism. The area
was known as Highland Beach. Intellects like Paul Robeson,
Booker T. Washington, W.E.B. Dubois, Langston Hughes and Paul
Laurence Dunbar were found at the small, but quaint Highland
Beach. Douglass built his father a home on the beach and named
it Twin Oaks. It was meant to be his father’s place to reflect
on his life as a former slave turned a free man with property
and prosperity. Unfortunately, Frederick Douglass passed away
before the home was complete. Since 1922, the beach had been run
by its own ‘government,’ which was said to have attributed to
its survival during the Jim Crow era.