Baltimore park recreates first black shipyard

As part of the new Frederick Douglass-Isaac Myers Maritime Park, which opened June 28, they help recreate the nation’s first black shipyard, complete with a marine railway like those that once pulled ships from the harbor for repair in the days before modern drydocks.

Baltimore was home to one of the largest populations of free blacks before the Civil War, many of whom worked in shipbuilding but were systematically pushed out after the war to make room for growing numbers of white workers.