Frederick Douglass, Billie Holiday and the Deep History of Fells Point

Baltimore’s culture ripples far and wide throughout Maryland. Most of us have relatives or friends in the state’s biggest town. Its bright lights allure; its sports teams, museums, internationally famous medical facilities, concert halls, TV and radio stations, harbor attractions and many and varied neighborhoods also exude a certain magnetism.

At night, many of us living on the Eastern Shore can see the glow of Baltimore’s lights to the west, across the Chesapeake.

The city’s high murder rate – 34 in January alone – splashes cold water over my love affair with Baltimore – but the heat in my heart, along with wishes and prayers for the people of the city to quit killing themselves, typically drive out the cold and keep the attraction alive.

When I was growing up in Chestertown, I listened to radio station WCAO, somewhere down in the 600s on the AM radio dial.  The station broadcast from a hill in the city.

Its signal didn’t need any boost to reach the newfangled Zenith transistor radio my old man gave me one year for my birthday. Its single plastic earpiece wired into the cigarette pack-size device brought me the strong voice of DJ Johnny Dark between exciting new songs from those early days of rock and roll.

I’d try to keep myself awake waiting for the songs I really liked.  Born To Be Wild and Magic Carpet Ride by Steppenwolf, Sloop John B from the Beach Boys, My Girl from the Temptations and Ain’t Too Proud To Beg from the Four Tops.

On the top of a larger, white, plastic-cased radio my older brother had on a table next to his bed, he had scrawled in black Magic Marker “Lil’ Darlin,” the title of a popular song by the Diamonds.

Johnny would always sign off from the end of his shift with a smoothly turned phrase that drilled itself deeply into my personal mental culture:

“May Dame Fortune smile on you always, but never her sister, Miss Fortune.”

Unfortunately, Miss Fortune is prowling the streets of Baltimore way too much these days.

But we keep going back, west on 50, over the bridge, northwest on 97, a quick jog on 695, and then north on 295 – the old Washington-Baltimore Parkway – into the watershed of the Patapsco and the heart of downtown.

Becky and I have been celebrating our anniversary for decades in Baltimore.  Invariably we gravitate to Fells Point, at the foot of Broadway that reaches many blocks northward into Johns Hopkins territory and its gritty surrounding neighborhoods. Our favorite overnight haunt there is the venerable Admiral Fell Inn where Broadway meets up with Thames Street.

Lots of history inside and outside the hotel. Classic black and white photographs from the mid 1900s by celebrated Baltimore Sun photographer Aubrey Bodine bedeck the narrow, creaking and winding hallways. Edgar Allen Poe could have been inspired here: “Once upon a midnight dreary . . .” We always enjoy the Admiral Fell Inn.

Old schooner ship models in the tired but quaint lobby harken to the maritime history of Fells Point where the sights and sounds of the harbor are a constant.

History in this part of Baltimore runs deep. On this year’s anniversary foray, early in January, we fueled ourselves intermittently with espresso and Irish coffee in the many coffee shops and bars of the neighborhood as we walked the streets, open to discovery.

I punched Fells Point Walking Tours into the search bar on my phone.  Up came an audio and video historic walking tour of about four miles length.  It took us up and down main streets and side streets, gave us photography cues, and standing in front of this old house or that old commercial establishment, a narrator provided short histories. Cool is all I can say.

We came close enough to my favorite fishing tackle store, located on Eastern Avenue, that we had to stop in. I don’t think Tochterman’s is on the tour but at more than 100 years old it deserves a place on the itinerary.

Especially for outdoor-oriented folks, it’s tough to get out of that well-stocked store – still operated by Tochterman family members – without spending at least an hour and thirty or forty bucks.

Just a few blocks away we came upon two interesting rowhouse streets with history of national and international depth.

One colorful street featured homes, murals and distinctive Baltimore painted window screens dedicated to the life of legendary jazz singer Billie Holiday and her family. A native Baltimorean, Holiday and her family lived on this street.

Not far away, our tour took us to the street where Eastern Shore native Frederick Douglass lived during his many years in the city.  A former slave on a Talbot County plantation, Douglass became an ardent, pivotal and prominent abolitionist in the years after relocating to Baltimore where he earned his freedom. In that capacity, he was part of the calculus that led to President Abraham Lincoln’s issuance of his Emancipation Proclamation.

The dark shadows of slavery and drug abuse play significant roles, respectively, in the larger Douglass and Holiday narratives. No doubt both of these prominent Baltimoreans would be sickened by the problems now plaguing the city.

Nonetheless, the historic walking tour, produced and made available by one of the Fells Point historical societies, has done a remarkable job in showcasing the larger story of this part of Baltimore and spotlighting, in particular, the positive aspects of the Frederick Douglas and Billie Holiday chapters.

Dennis Forney grew up on the Chester River in Chestertown. After graduating Oberlin College, he returned to the Shore where he wrote for the Queen Anne’s Record Observer, the Bay Times, the Star Democrat, and the Watermen’s Gazette. He moved to Lewes, Delaware in 1975 with his wife Becky where they lived for 45 years, raising their family and enjoying the saltwater life. Forney and Trish Vernon founded the Cape Gazette, a community newspaper serving eastern Sussex County, in 1993, where he served as publisher until 2020. He continues to write for the Cape Gazette as publisher emeritus and expanded his Delmarva footprint in 2020 with a move to Bozman in Talbot County. 

Photos by Dennis Forney