The Old West Baltimore community is the nation’s largest registered African American historic district. The designated Pennsylvania Avenue Black Arts and Entertainment District is the commercial main street in this area. The Colored High and Training School (later renamed Frederick Douglass High School), along with other segregated schools within the district, produced many prominent individuals, including Thurgood Marshall, the nation’s first African American Supreme Court justice, and Lucy Diggs Slowe, educator, tennis champion, and one of the 16 founders of Alpha Kappa Alpha sorority. Many notable people have visited the area, such as Booker T. Washington, W.E.B. DuBois, Countee Cullen, Elton Fax, Madame C.J. Walker, Marcus Garvey, and Princess Wee Wee.
Philip Jackson Merrill is the CEO and founder of Nanny Jack & Company, an African American heritage consulting business. He served for eight seasons as a Chesapeake Collectibles appraiser on Maryland Public Television (MPT) and for six seasons as an Antiques Roadshow appraiser and the Black Americana specialist. He is the author of The Art of Collecting Black Memorabilia (1998) and Black America Series: Baltimore (1999) and the editor of The World War II Black Regiment That Built the Alaska Military Highway (2002). He maintains the Old West Baltimore website.