Frederick Douglass-Isaac Myers Maritime Park

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The Frederick Douglass-Isaac Myers Maritime Park is a Living Classrooms Foundation campus (and headquarters). It is a national heritage site that celebrates the contributions of African Americans in the development of Baltimore’s maritime industry while preserving one of the city’s oldest existing waterfront industrial buildings. The museum chronicles the saga of Frederick Douglass’ life in Baltimore as an enslaved child and young man. It also highlights the life of Isaac Myers, a free-born African American labor leader and businessman. 

Frederick Augustus Washington Bailey (later Douglass) was born into slavery on the Eastern Shore of Maryland in February 1818. When he turned eight years old, his enslaver forced him to work for a family in Baltimore. When Frederick was fifteen, his enslaver sent him back to the Eastern Shore to labor as a fieldhand. Frederick rebelled intensely. He educated other enslaved individuals, physically fought back against a "slave-breaker," and attempted to seize his freedom through a bold, but ultimately unsuccessful plan.

Frustrated, his enslaver returned him to Baltimore. This time, Frederick met a young free Black woman named Anna Murray. Anna Murray used her money to buy him a train ticket, risking her own safety to help him seize his freedom. On September 3, 1838, with the ticket in hand, he boarded a northbound train dressed as a sailor. In less than 24 hours, Frederick arrived in New York City. From there, he became the most important leader of the movement for African-American Civil rRights in the 19th century (read more about Frederick Douglass here). 

Kennard's Wharf at the end of Philpot Street, the very place where Frederick Douglass entered Baltimore as an enslaved child in the 1820s, later became the site of one of the most successful black-owned businesses in Baltimore City, the Chesapeake Marine Railway and Dry Dock Company. It was founded by Isaac Myers and other Black labor organizers. 

A caulker by trade, Myers was born free in Baltimore in 1835. The ship-building/maritime industries, and specifically the caulking trade, of Baltimore were historically interracial. By the close of the U.S. Civil War, black workers were systematically pushed out of this type of employment to make room for growing numbers of white workers in the city. This reality led Myers and others to found the Colored Caulkers Trade Union Society.

In the early 1860's, the union formed a cooperative company. Pooling their resources, the workers issued stock and quickly raised $10,000 in subscriptions among Black Baltimore residents. On February 12, 1866, they purchased a shipyard and railway, which they named the Chesapeake Marine Railway and Dry Dock Company. Within months, the cooperative employed 300 black caulkers and received several government contracts. Ultimately it employed a number of white workers as well. 

The success of Myers’s union in Baltimore encouraged black caulkers in other seaport cities to organize. Myers was elected president of the (Colored) National Labor Union, the first organization of its type in U.S. history. Myers appealed to black workers to join unions and called on white unions to accept them as full members. Myers also organized and became president of the Maryland Colored State Industrial Fair Association, the Colored Business Men’s Association of Baltimore, the Colored Building and Loan Association, and the Aged Ministers Home of the A.M.E. Church.  He also authored the Mason’s Digest. Myers was married twice and had several sons, one of whom became a leading political figure in Ohio. Isaac Myers died in Baltimore in 1891.