Explore Black History in our area right from your computer! The Maryland Department of Natural Resources has an intriguing online slide show called, "Blacks on the Chesapeake." This poignant passage from Frederick Douglass is just part of what you'll enjoy on the DNR site:

Frederick Douglass: On The Chesapeake
This Very Bay Shall Yet Bear Me Into Freedom

Our house stood within a few rods of the Chesapeake Bay, whose broad bosom was ever white with sail from every quarter of the habitable globe. Those beautiful vessels robed in purest white, so delightful to the eye of freemen were to me so many shrouded ghosts, to terrify and torment me with thoughts of my wretched condition.

I have often, in the deep stillness of a summer's Sabbath, stood all alone upon the lofty banks of that noble bay, and traced, with saddened ear and tearful eye, the countless number of sails moving off to the mighty ocean. The sight of these always affected me powerfully. My thoughts would compel utterance; and there, with no audience but the Almighty, I would pour out my soul's complaint, in my rude way, with an apostrophe to the moving multitude of ships:

"You are loosed from your moorings and are free; I am fast in my chains, and am a slave! You move merrily before the gentle gale, and I sadly before the bloody whip! You are freedom's swift-winged angels, that fly round the world; I am confined in bands of iron! O that I were free! O, that I were on one of your gallant decks, and under your protecting wing! Alas! In betwixt me and you, the turbid waters roll. Go on, go on. O that I could also go! Could I but swim! If I could fly! O, why was I born a man, of whom to make a brute!

The glad ship is gone; she hides in the dim distance. I am left in the hottest hell of unending slavery. O god, save me! God deliver me! Let me be free! Is there any God? Why am I a slave? I will run away. I will not stand it. Get caught, or get clear, I'll try it. I had as well die with ague as the fever. I have only one life to lose. I had as well be killed running as die standing. Only think of it; one hundred miles straight north, and I am free! Try it? Yes! God help me, I will. It cannot be that I shall live and die a slave. I will take to the water. This very bay shall yet bear me into freedom."

Frederick Douglass
The Library of America Literary Classics of the United States, Inc., New York, N.Y. 1994

The slide show on the DNR web page was largely compiled by Vincent Leggett, based on one of his books. Mr. Leggett has since written another book called Chesapeake Bay Through Ebony Eyes.

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