However Vincent Leggett, founder and president of the Blacks of the Chesapeake Basis, has large plans to regain what he can of that “Black Eden,” if solely in reminiscence. He believes the Elktonia web site may appeal to guests enthusiastic about a seashore that performed an essential function in African American historical past, particularly if the bay turns into a part of the nationwide park system, as members of Maryland’s congressional delegation have proposed. Final month, the Museum of Historic Annapolis opened a brand new exhibit on the seashores and their legacy.
“This place was the mecca of Black leisure within the mid-Atlantic area,” mentioned Leggett, 69, who grew up in Baltimore and have become an educator, city planner, native historian and neighborhood advocate. His basis, included in 1999, grew out of his efforts because the Eighties to protect the historical past of Black watermen, crab pickers and others who lived on and labored the bay. “There’s simply a lot African American historical past and heritage alongside this stretch,” he mentioned.
Carr’s Seaside initially was a part of a 180-acre tract of coastal farmland belonging to Frederick Carr. Carr, who was previously enslaved after which employed on the U.S. Naval Academy, bought the property in 1902 and sometimes invited church buildings to host their picnics there. It handed to his 4 daughters, two of whom — Elizabeth Carr Smith and Florence Carr Sparrow — created Carr’s Seaside and Sparrow’s Seaside subsequent door, respectively, as a Black resort in 1931. Each hosted musical leisure, although Carr’s Seaside accommodated the most important acts in its 6,000-seat amphitheater. However neither obtained a lot point out in White-owned newspapers.
Leggett mentioned Carr’s and Sparrow’s seashores have been two of solely seven resorts listed within the “Inexperienced Guide,” a journey information designed to assist Black vacationers discover secure lodging, eating and leisure venues when a mistaken flip in some components of the South may put their lives in peril. Highland Seaside, a summer season enclave inhabited by prosperous Black Washingtonians, was close by. Different resorts on the bay’s western shore, reminiscent of Bay Ridge Seaside — which styled itself because the “Tahiti on the Chesapeake,” with bathhouses themed on the South Pacific — have been Whites solely.
Nevertheless it wasn’t till William Lloyd “Little Willie” Adams bought concerned that Carr’s Seaside grew to become a sensation. Adams, a sharecropper’s son, amassed a fortune working numbers on Baltimore’s streets as a part of a $1,000-a-day unlawful playing operation. He additionally plowed the cash again into respectable Black-owned enterprises, together with funeral houses, condominium complexes, magnificence parlors and liquor shops. (He even tried to launch a delicate drink with boxer Joe Louis.) The Baltimore Solar, in an obituary following Adams’s loss of life in 2011, hailed him as “the town’s first distinguished African-American enterprise capitalist.”
Within the Nineteen Forties, Adams bought a number of items of the Carr property. He constructed a pavilion with a bandstand, introduced in slot machines and put up a Ferris wheel. The crowds quickly made Carr’s Seaside a nationally recognized vacation spot on the Chitlin’ Circuit, a string of Black nightclubs, theaters and different venues named after a vital of soul meals. Louis skilled there the week earlier than his August 1951 battle towards Cleveland heavyweight Jimmy Bivins in Baltimore, the Washington Night Star reported.
The record of musicians who took the stage at Carr’s Seaside is a who’s-who of early blues, R&B, and rock-and-roll. Among the many superstars who performed “race music,” as African American-influenced music was then recognized, have been Brown, Fitzgerald, Bo Diddley, Ray Charles, Marvin Gaye, Billie Vacation, Otis Redding, Little Richard, Smokey Robinson, Sarah Vaughan, Jackie Wilson, Gladys Knight and the Pips, and Stevie Marvel.
At the very least 50,000 individuals flocked to Chuck Berry’s July 1956 live performance after “Roll Over Beethoven” had soared to high of the charts, inflicting an enormous site visitors jam as followers deserted their vehicles and walked, in accordance with an account within the Baltimore Night Solar. A ticket to the July 1966 Blues Pageant, that includes the legendary Muddy Waters, value solely $2 — a bit of greater than $19 in right now’s {dollars}.
Annapolis disc jockey Charles W. Adams Jr. — a.ok.a. Hoppy Adams — saved the heartbeat bumping.
“Tonight, tonight, tonight!” he would shout, a signature tagline to introduce the star-studded lineups. The reside reveals he emceed at Carr’s Seaside have been a spillover from the distinctive mixture of gospel, soul, and rhythm and blues that Adams spun on WANN AM-1190.
The seashores grew to become a showcase for type, too, Leggett mentioned. Magnificence pageant contestants vied to put on the crown of “Queen of the Chesapeake,” and images present Black guests dressed to be seen round its pavilion, with girls in attire and males in straw boaters, with spats on their sneakers. Others picnicked within the sand or frolicked within the surf. Admission to the non-public seashores was 25 cents a head, besides shut to point out time, Leggett mentioned.
Followers have been recognized to cover generally within the trunks of vehicles to evade the doorway charge, mentioned Leggett, whose mother and father have photos of him on the seaside courting to 1956. When there have been sold-out reveals or crowds swelled to such a dimension that nobody else may enter, individuals swam over from Sparrow’s or Elktonia seaside, he mentioned. Ahmet Ertegun, the founding father of Atlantic Data, visited Carr’s Seaside whereas attending St. John’s Faculty, to listen to acts that may later seem on his label, in accordance with Annapolis Mayor Gavin Buckley.
The heyday of Carr’s and Sparrow’s seashores as a leisure scorching spot waned with the tip of segregation and the development of the Bay Bridge, which opened the best way to Ocean Metropolis and different resorts on the Atlantic Ocean. Frank Zappa performed the final live performance on the pavilion in 1974. Inside a matter of years, Carr’s Seaside was gone, having been offered for residential housing. Sparrow’s Seaside, which was adjoining to Carr’s Seaside, grew to become the positioning of a wastewater remedy plant.
When Leggett heard round 2006 {that a} developer hoped to bulldoze the Elktonia Seaside tract, he spent 16 years making an attempt to put it aside. His efforts paid off final August, when a gaggle of Maryland public officers, led by Buckley, and nonprofits together with the Chesapeake Conservancy and the Conservation Fund, teamed to accumulate the five-acre web site for a metropolis park.
Although solely a small slice of land, Leggett and others mentioned that Elktonia Seaside, as the one remnant of Carr’s and Sparrow’s seashores, bears outsize significance as a possibility to showcase Black resilience, entrepreneurship and tradition.
“This has at all times been a ardour factor for me, even earlier than I used to be elected,” Buckley mentioned. “We’re very selective in how we inform our historical past right here in Annapolis, and it leads clearly to the wonderful issues that occurred in Colonial occasions. However, , now we have wonderful trendy historical past that many cities would kill for. … I see a lot potential in that area.”
In the intervening time, the Elktonia Seaside property isn’t a lot to take a look at: just a few tick-infested scrub, a ruined pier and a concrete storm drain jutting into the water.
However Leggett envisions constructing trails by way of the brand new parkland, establishing kiosks with panels explaining the seashores’ historical past and maybe making a customer heart that may inform the story not solely of one of the crucial essential Black seashores within the South, however the historical past of Black watermen and others who constructed their lives across the Chesapeake.
“This is likely one of the most inspiring locations within the nation to study Black historical past and the magic of the Chesapeake Bay,” Joel Dunn, who heads the Chesapeake Conservancy, wrote in an e-mail. “Our subsequent step is to buy the property adjoining to the park and create a first-class customer heart to share these monumental cultural and historic achievements with future generations.”
