Vincent Leggett, historian and founder of Blacks of the Chesapeake, dies at 71

Vince Leggett was the executive director of Blacks of the Chesapeake. Paul W. Gillespie/Staff file

Vincent O. Leggett, a historian and conservationist of Black culture along the Chesapeake Bay, died Saturday at 71.

“I was shocked and deeply saddened to find out this morning that our beloved Admiral of the Chesapeake, and Blacks of the Chesapeake founder, Vincent Omar Leggett has passed away,” Anne Arundel County Executive Steuart Pittman said on social media Sunday. “All of us must now come together and carry on his great work.”

Leggett was born in Baltimore in 1953 to Charlie Leggett, a labor union representative, and Willie Mae Leggett, an elementary school teacher, according to a biography published by Yale University. He graduated from Morgan State University with a bachelor’s degree in urban planning in 1975.

A former president of the Anne Arundel County Board of Education, Leggett also worked for Baltimore City Schools, the Anne Arundel County housing authority and the Maryland Department of Natural Resources.

In 2010, Leggett told The Baltimore Sun that in 1984 he started a mission to visit as many of the bay’s port towns and villages as possible to start piecing together a collective story of Black life on the Chesapeake. Through his nonprofit, Blacks of the Chesapeake Foundation, he started lecturing about how the bay and its tributaries served as part of the Underground Railroad.

“I’d read of all the shipbuilders, boat captains and shipping magnates who supposedly made bay history, most of them members of the majority community,” Leggett said. “Every book would have a picture of a Black crab picker or oyster shucker. The caption would simply say ‘crab picker’ or ‘oyster shucker.’ There’d never be a name. These people worked.”

“They must have had families, raised children, lived lives. Who were they? What did they do?” Leggett asked

He published his first book, “Blacks of the Chesapeake: An Integral Part of Maritime History,” in 1997, followed by his second, “The Chesapeake Bay through Ebony Eyes,” in 1999.

In 2000, through the Blacks of the Chesapeake Foundation, Leggett worked with the Smithsonian and U.S. Library of Congress on a collection of more than 40,000 images portraying Black families and their lifestyles, tradition and work keeping Maryland’s seafood and maritime industries thriving. The core of the collection is from 1980 onward, according to the state archives.

“This irreplaceable, extensive collection began as a labor of love 35 years ago for [Black of the Chesapeake Foundation] founder Vincent Leggett. He sought to capture, document, and chronicle African American life along the reaches of the Chesapeake Bay, before time and evolving generations allowed it to float away,” the Maryland State Archives says of the collection.

Leggett and his foundation also were integral in the creation of Elktonia-Carr’s Beach Heritage Park, a public park project in Anne Arundel County launched in 2022 on the site of two popular Chesapeake Bay resorts, Carr’s and Sparrow’s Beaches, that were a haven to the Black community during segregation. Sarah Vaughn, Ella Fitzgerald and Duke Ellington all performed there.

“This is a dream come true,” Leggett told The Sun about the project in 2022.

“He illuminated untold stories and ensured that future generations would know and honor the vital role that Blacks played in shaping the Bay’s heritage,” Chesapeake Conservancy President and CEO Joel Dunn said in a statement Sunday. “Vince’s work transcended the archives and pages of history books.”

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