"Highland Beach,Maryland" (1893)

The oldest of the major African American resort towns,was founded along the

western shore of Chesapeake Bay in 1893 by Charles & Laura Douglass.Charles was the son of prominent and 19th century civil rights  activist Frederick Douglass.Major Charles Douglass,was prominent in his own right.He was a retired officer formerly with the 54th Massachusetts Colored Infantry,the famed regiment first established during the American Civil War,and longtime Treasurly Department Clerk.

Located in Anne Arundel County,35 miles east of Washington,D.C. and a few miles south of Annapolis,Maryland,Highland Beach became the first AFRICAN-American-owned summer resort community in the United States.In fact it was established because of an act discrimination.In 1890 MajorDouglass and his his wife were denied entry into a restaurant at The Bay Ridge Resort on Chesapeake because they were African American.In response Charles entered the real estate business and began purchasing beachfront property  directly south of Bay Ridge.When he acquired  slightly more than 40 acres for $5,000 he began developing the property as summer resort community by selling lots to family and friends.Among the earliest purchasers were Blanche Kelso Bruce,the Reconstruction-era Senator from Mississippi,former Virginia Congressman John Mercer Langston,former Louisiana  Governor Pickney Benton Stewart Pinchback  AKA (P.B.S Pinchback),Washington hotel owner James Wormley,and judge Robert Terrell and his wife,Mary Church Terrell.Robert was the first African American judge in the District of Columbia.

Charles aso began building a large family summer house which he named Twin Oaks.Intended primarily as a retirement residence for his daddy,Twin Oaks soon became a gathering place for many influential African American who lived in the Washington-Baltimore area but who visted Frederick Douglass there.Frederick Douglass died before he could move permanently in to the house,Highland Beach,as the surrounding community was now called,quickly became popular with prominent African American.Part-time residents and guest over the years included a who's of African American including Paul Robeson,Booker T.Washington,William Edward Burghardt Dubois AKA W.E.B.DuBois,Langston Hughes,Robert Weaver,and Alex Haley.

Charles claimed his greatest success in establishing Highland Beach was in circumventing restrictive property convenants in the area that prevented the sale of real estate to African Americans and other people of color.Originally intended as a summer resort,Highland Beach by 1915 was a year round community with many houses and properties still retained by descendants of the original owners.

When founded Charles died in 1920,the town's leadership fell into the hands of his son,Haley Douglass who in 1922 led the effort to make Highland Beach the first African American incorporated municaplity in the state's history.Once incorporated,Haley and his allies controlled the community for the next three decades and succeeded in the major objective,insuring the community remained small and exclusive.

Ironically in the community's determined effort to keep newcomers out,it could not control the land surrounding Highland Beach.Beginning in the 1940s white and African Americans developers built competing resort communities that attracted newly affluent African Americans.Also,the older formerly all white-resort community of Arundel-on-the-Bay had become predominately African American by 1960.

By the 1990sthe combination of high taxes,enroaching upscale developments filled with luxury homes,and the flight of younger African Americans to newer resorts,left the elderly residents of Highland Beach increasingly isolated.Only about 1,000 residents remained in the community by 2010.