Carnelious Jones was volunteering aboard the Amistad, a replica of the historic cargo schooner, when Vince Leggett walked into his life.
Jones, whose company had donated fuel to the Amistad, had been told that an “admiral” would board the vessel before it sailed into Baltimore’s Inner Harbor. So Jones, a Navy veteran, expected a stern military man in uniform — not the sedan that pulled up nearby (several minutes late), and the jovial man who climbed aboard in a white captain’s hat.
That was Vince Leggett, who had been named an Admiral of the Chesapeake Bay in 2003 by then-Gov. Parris N. Glendening. He was the third Black person to receive the honor, recognizing a lifetime of service to the nation’s largest estuary.
“I saw that he had done some astonishing things,” Jones said. “So, I approached him and I shook his hand, I told him I was happy to meet him, and thanked him for his accomplishments.”
When the ship reached the shore, Leggett brought Jones to his tent, featuring artifacts he’d collected for his book about the Black history of the Chesapeake Bay. Jones was enthralled.
“I’m from the south — in Tennessee,” Jones said. “I was amazed at just how outspoken everything was, and how much development as it relates to the African American story was so publicized and so published.”
Vincent Omar Leggett died Nov. 23 at 71-years-old. A pillar of the Anne Arundel County community, who served on the school board, directed the Annapolis housing authority and even became the first Black chaplain of the Annapolis fire department, Leggett was perhaps best known for his work on the Chesapeake Bay.
Creating a legacy
Beginning in the 1980s, through his foundation, Blacks of the Chesapeake, Leggett gathered and preserved the legacy of Black bayside communities, watermen, captains, seafood industry workers, and sail makers.
For Leggett, it began with the recognition that the history books often omitted these stories. So, he told them himself, penning “The Chesapeake Bay Through Ebony Eyes,” and serving for decades as an encyclopedia of the bay’s Black legacy.
“He wanted everybody else to know that it was more. We were just not shucking them oysters,” said Jones, the vice president for new business development at Blacks of the Chesapeake. “We had contributors, to this day, into this maritime industry.”
Leggett also had stints at the Maryland Department of Natural Resources, as chairman of the Wiley H. Bates Legacy Center, as a board member for the Seafarers Yacht Club of Annapolis, and on the list goes. Friends remember him as a talented historian and orator, who also served as a lobbyist, an advocate, and — perhaps above all — a leader.
Leggett was also the driving force behind a successful decades-long effort to preserve the historic Elktonia-Carr’s Beach Heritage Park, the last remnant of the Black-owned beach land that welcomed Black families during segregation, and hosted music legends such as Ella Fitzgerald and Aretha Franklin.
Along the way, Leggett inspired a new generation of historians and environmental advocates, forging a path for Black voices where none existed before, said R. Kenyatta Rowel Jr., CEO of Breaking Boundaries Environmental, a Maryland-based environmental restoration firm he started in 2022.
“Vince paved the way as a trailblazer for all of these activities, all of these places and spaces for people like me.” Rowel said. “He was the first.”
Rowel remembers a recent event he attended with Leggett at the Whitehall Plantation near Annapolis. For Rowel, who grew up nearby in a historically African American community called Mulberry Hill on the Broadneck Peninsula, the event was already special. But Leggett made it even more so.
“He was talking on the mic, and he introduced me and my company to have a few words. And to me, that was a moment I’m never going to forget,” Rowel said.
A local childhood and lifetime on the Bay
For Leggett, it began with his upbringing in Baltimore, and family trips fishing and boating on the Chesapeake Bay, Jones said. The experiences tied him to the outdoors, and were the first spark for his eventual effort as a historian.
“It wasn’t a research project. It was part of his livelihood,” Jones said. “That’s the difference.”
Though he grew up in Baltimore, where he also earned his bachelor’s degree from Morgan State University, Leggett ultimately built his life in Anne Arundel County. He and his wife Aldena lived in Arundel-on-the Bay enclave in Annapolis, according to an online biography, where they enjoyed “beautiful bay views, fishing with their grandchildren and planning their next trip to the golf green.”
For Jones, that day aboard the Amistad — a reproduction of the ship famous for its 1839 slave revolt — began a yearslong partnership and friendship with Leggett, focused on achieving shared goals for the Bay’s Black community and its legacy.
He looks back fondly on their frequent early morning phone calls, beginning as soon as 4 a.m. and continuing for 90 minutes — or until Leggett left to make his wife coffee or breakfast as she headed off to work, Jones said.
To this day, Jones and others marvel at Leggett’s ability to balance it all. The early morning and late evening meetings, the positions on countless boards and committees, the appointments with legislators, community members and advocates.
“There are people every now and then that come through, that — it’s unexplainable,” Jones said.
‘You couldn’t tell the story without Vince’
Much of Leggett’s legacy lives on in the vast array of artifacts he amassed amid decades of research on the bay’s Black history. Today, much of the collection is stored in warehouses, but it is being digitized and shared publicly online, thanks to a partnership with the Maryland Archives.
To Leggett, the history of the Bay should include not only Harriet Tubman and Frederick Douglass, but everyday Black Marylanders, who let him into their homes — and into their worlds. In a way, he became their representative — their messenger, Jones said.
“The ones that passed, he would put a book inside of their coffin. The family would give him the artifacts of the waterman,” Jones said. “They trusted that he would do something with it.”
In the archives, Leggett himself, and his foundation, is a part of the history. In 2000, the Library of Congress designated the foundation as a Local Legacy Project.
The archive includes not only artifacts and images documenting Black life in the Bay region, but also documenting Leggett and his foundation — photos of him at a book release or a boat show, examples of exhibits and more.
“He had collected a large collection at that time. Papers, posters, his own personal documents, correspondence with different officials, really chronicling the 30-year history of Blacks of the Chesapeake,” said Corey Lewis, assistant state archivist at the Maryland Archives.
“You couldn’t tell the story without Vince,” Lewis said.
For the past several years, interns from local universities have helped document the collection, conduct research and find places to put the artifacts on display, Lewis said. Leggett made a point of working with each intern directly, pointing out figures in photos and telling their stories, ensuring the online collection would be complete, Lewis said.
“He could have just given us the collection. But he found it important — we found it important — for him to come in, sit down and spend time with them,” Lewis said.
Joel Dunn, president of the Chesapeake Conservancy, said he was incredibly proud to work alongside Leggett to preserve Carr’s Beach, a crowning achievement for Leggett’s legacy.
Today, the beach is set to be transformed into public parkland. The more recent acquisition — a home on the property — could become a visitor center. Dunn believes it should bear Leggett’s name.
Getting the land was far from simple, Dunn said, as the waterfront properties were incredibly valuable. It took millions, including from local government, the Conservancy and Blacks of the Chesapeake, to save the land from another fate, such as residential development. Leggett, who had an existing relationship with landowners and a proven track record of preservation, was instrumental in sealing the deal.
“Vince was so knowledgeable about that history, and all the acts that played there. And the years and months that they played,” Dunn said. “He just was such a great storyteller. That, I think, was a really key part of winning over the landowner and the elected officials and garnering the resources we needed.”
There is a particular memory of Leggett that still plays on in Dunn’s mind. It was Juneteenth this year, when Leggett planned a celebration at Carr’s Beach — complete with music acts, a fish fry and fried chicken. And there Leggett was, in the middle of it all, dancing on the very beach that he helped preserve.
“Now, multiple generations ever after Vince Leggett will be able to experience that place and learn about that place and experience that history, because of his hard work and passion,” Dunn said.
“I’m so glad he got to enjoy that. I wish he had more time.”
A memorial for Leggett will be held Dec. 13 at the First Christian Community Church in Annapolis, with a wake at 10 a.m. and a Service of Triumph at 11 a.m.
Have a news tip? Contact Christine Condon at [email protected], 667-256-6883 and @CChristine19 on X.
