African-American

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.

In 1619, a group of thirty-two African men, women and children arrived on the shores of Virginia. They had been kidnapped in the royal city of Kabasa, Angola, and forced aboard the Spanish slave ship San Juan Bautista. The ship was attacked by privateers, and the captives were taken by the English to their New World colony. This group has been shrouded in controversy ever since. Historian Ric Murphy documents a fascinating story of colonialism, treason, piracy, kidnapping, enslavement and British law.