Lifeguards collect on the shoreline of Carr’s and Sparrow’s seashores in Annapolis. The Black-owned and operated seashores have been a thriving gathering place for generations of Black households.
Time was operating out to save lots of the final vestige of a rollicking African American getaway on the shores of the Chesapeake Bay.
The pair of neighboring Jim Crow period resorts as soon as buzzed alongside the waterfront of the Annapolis Neck peninsula. At their peak in the course of the Nineteen Fifties and ‘60s, Carr’s and Sparrow’s seashores attracted crowds by the 1000’s who got here to calm down and revel in a number of the high Black entertainers of the day, from Little Richard to Aretha Franklin.
However after the venues closed within the Seventies, their once-expansive acreage started to be swallowed by suburban growth: a gated subdivision, a marina, a senior-living neighborhood and the enlargement of a wastewater therapy plant.
Now, the leaders of a broad coalition of private and non-private teams say they’ve struck a deal to save lots of the final piece of the unique resort. Their plan is to remodel the 5-acre, shore-hugging property right into a metropolis park that celebrates the location’s heritage.
“We’re proud to associate with town of Annapolis to reclaim a part of this stunning waterfront space that’s of such nice historic and cultural significance,” Maryland Gov. Larry Hogan mentioned, asserting the pending $6.4 million transaction March 14. “As a serious music venue and beloved gathering place for generations of Black Marylanders, Carr’s Seaside left an unbelievable legacy that we are going to now have the ability to protect for posterity.”
This shoreline in Annapolis, as soon as a part of the Carr’s and Sparrow’s seashore complicated, will probably be preserved as a park and acknowledged for its historic significance. The seashores have been a centerpiece of waterfront recreation for Black Marylanders.
Vince Leggett, founder and president of the preservation group Blacks of the Chesapeake, started attempting to buy the property 15 years in the past. However he mentioned it shortly grew to become obvious that he would want assist.
“It was like placing collectively a million-piece jigsaw puzzle,” he mentioned. “Nobody entity was sturdy sufficient to do it by itself.”
The undertaking ended up getting funding from a patchwork of metropolis, county and federal sources. An earmark obtained by U.S. Sens. Ben Cardin and Chris Van Hollen of Maryland within the just lately accredited 2022 federal funding invoice will present $2 million for designing and planning the park. In the meantime, state Sen. Sarah Elfreth, whose district consists of Annapolis, is pushing legislation to designate the property as a state park to be operated collectively with town.
The Conservation Fund plans to buy it from its proprietor, developer Theo Rodgers. Afterward, the group plans to promote the land to town, officers mentioned.
Along with its cultural significance, the parcel’s salvation would advance environmental targets, mentioned Joel Dunn, president and CEO of the Chesapeake Conservancy, one other associate. The principally wooded, undeveloped parcel can take in pounding surge throughout sturdy storms, defending neighboring built-up areas from erosion. Dunn added that its preservation ensures that the panorama will proceed to be a house for wildlife.
These younger ladies have been among the many crowds that got here to Carr’s and Sparrow’s seashores in Annapolis to get pleasure from performances by high Black entertainers like Billie Vacation, Aretha Franklin, Little Richard and Chuck Berry.
“To me, it is a image that land conservation is essential to everybody, and everybody advantages from it,” Dunn mentioned.
The park would additionally supply public water entry, however its last appear and feel stay to be decided. Supporters hope it should inform the story of one of the vital common summer season havens within the mid-Atlantic that catered to African People when others shut them out.
“It’s greater than a pin or a dot on the map,” Leggett mentioned. “It was an genuine house owned by African People.”
That story started with Frederick Carr, a previously enslaved man who bought 180 acres of farmland on the Bay on the mouth of the Severn River. Within the early years, along with persevering with to farm the land, he and his spouse, Mary Wells Carr, hosted picnics and outings.
In 1926, they based Carr’s Seaside as a family-oriented Black retreat. 5 years later, one of many Carr’s daughters, Florence Carr Sparrow, began her personal attraction, which she referred to as Sparrow’s Seaside, on adjoining land she had inherited. Her older sister, Elizabeth Carr Smith, took over administration of Carr’s Seaside.
Over time, patrons merely referred to as the realm “The Seaside.” New facilities popped up, together with a halfway lined with slot machines and a pavilion that hosted dances and a number of the hottest acts on what was often called the Chitlin’ Circuit — the string of venues in segregated components of the nation that catered to Black performers and audiences.
The record of entertainers who carried out on the seashores presents a who’s who of African American stars: Billie Vacation, Rely Basie, Ella Fitzgerald, Chuck Berry, James Brown, the Coasters, the Temptations and extra.
After segregation formally ended, the resorts struggled to attract crowds the way in which they as soon as did and closed. The preservation effort goals to save lots of the final slice of the seashore complicated, now often called Elktonia Seaside.
A household poses for a portrait on the shoreline of Carr’s and Sparrow’s seashores in Annapolis.
Leggett, 68, has vivid reminiscences of visits to the seashores as a baby within the Nineteen Fifties and ‘60s. His father labored at a canning plant in Baltimore with separate unions for Black and White employees. Every year, the unions would arrange separate weekend-long outings for his or her members. Leggett’s father instructed him that within the lunchroom afterward, the White employees all the time appeared envious of the time that their Black counterparts had had at Sparrow’s and Carr’s.
“Everyone has a Carr’s Seaside story,” Leggett mentioned, “and my tagline is, ‘Come out and inform me yours.’”
