They told Frederick Douglass's son he couldn't sit at their table. So he bought the land next door and built a resort they couldn't touch.
In 1893, Charles Douglass was denied entry to the restaurant at the Bay Ridge resort in Maryland. He didn't protest. He didn't march. He checked the land records.
Discovering that the beachfront property immediately adjacent to the segregated resort was for sale, he quietly purchased 40 acres of prime Chesapeake Bay real estate. He turned that land into Highland Beach—the first African American municipality in Maryland and a summer haven where the Black elite (from Langston Hughes to Paul Robeson) could exist without the white gaze.
This isn't a story about segregation. It’s a story about Revenge.
The Land Was Ours: How Black Beaches Became White Wealth in the Coastal South by Andrew W. Kahrl.
Race, Riots, and Roller Coasters: The Struggle over Segregated Recreation in America by Victoria W. Wolcott.
Black AF History by Michael Harriot
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