New Voices, New Vision at the Water’s Edge Museum

There’s a quiet transformation happening in Oxford, Maryland—one that you might miss if you’re only passing through. But step inside the Water’s Edge Museum and it’s clear: things are changing. New leadership, new projects, and a bold new commitment to telling untold stories.

“We’re not just preserving history,” said Ja’Lyn Hicks. “We’re building on it.”

Hicks and Sara Amber Marie Park were named Co-Directors of the Water’s Edge Museum at the start of this year. Both had previously interned and worked closely with founder and curator Barbara Paca. Now, they’re steering the museum into its next chapter, bringing fresh energy and new perspectives to its mission of elevating African American history on the Eastern Shore.

Their focus? More visibility, more interactivity, and more connections between past and present.

The biggest news is the museum’s leadership role in a multi-year initiative to create a Middle Passage Port Marker sanctuary at the Oxford ferry dock—the only documented site of disembarkation for enslaved Africans on Maryland’s Eastern Shore.

The project is being led entirely by people of African descent—a first for any Middle Passage marker nationwide.

“The history here is heavy,” said Hicks. “Oxford was a receiving point. From here, people were sent to places like the Lloyd estate, where Frederick Douglass was enslaved. A lot of people don’t know that.”

That educational gap is exactly what the Water’s Edge Museum is working to change. As Hicks put it, “People hear ‘Middle Passage’ and they still say, ‘What is that?’”

The sanctuary space itself is being designed to be physically accessible and emotionally resonant. “We’re not just putting a plaque on a dock,” said Hicks. “We’re creating a path. A place to walk, sit, reflect.”

Among those helping bring it to life are:

-Dennis Howland II, a civil engineer who recently completed the Frederick Douglass Memorial Bridge in Washington, D.C.

-Jeffrey Moaney, Design Director and Senior Associate at Gensler.

-Mia Matthias, Curatorial Advisor and Mentor.

-Dr. Sarah E. Vaughn, Environmental Anthropologist at UC Berkeley.

At the kickoff meeting on July 1, the team gathered in Oxford to walk the site and brainstorm ideas. “Someone suggested footsteps in the path that slowly disappear,” said Hicks. “It represents the people who arrived here—people whose stories weren’t recorded, whose names we may never know.”

Accessibility was a top priority in the planning. “Dennis and I both have family members who use wheelchairs,” said Hicks. “We want the space to be welcoming for everyone, not just physically but emotionally, too.”

While the Middle Passage project is getting a lot of attention—and rightly so—it’s just one part of a broader wave of new work happening at the museum. Another major initiative underway is Black Watershed, a museum-led book project that will serve as both an interpretive companion to the sanctuary and a powerful storytelling platform in its own right.

“Each chapter focuses on something tangible—an oyster shell, a fishing boat, a plant—and tells the story of how people have formed relationships with the Chesapeake through their engagement with the landscape and the waterscape,” said Park, who serves as the book’s editor-in-chief. “It’s about culture, identity, and memory—all rooted in the landscape.”

Also happening this summer is a new exhibit on Black watermen and crab pickers being curated by Hicks. “You see these figures in Ruth Starr Rose’s paintings,” she said. “But we’re going deeper—sharing oral histories, environmental struggles, stories from the segregation era.”

To help younger visitors connect with the material, the museum is introducing an interactive iPad feature that allows children to explore Rose’s artwork while listening to the gospel music that inspired her. “We’re using tech to make history come alive,” said Hicks. “And we’re keeping it authentic—we chose recordings by Black choirs to keep that spiritual connection.”

The museum is also continuing its education outreach with local camps and schools. Park recently led an art exercise with Oxford Kids Camp where children painted scenes of their favorite outdoor spaces. “It helped us start a conversation about environmental justice and how we relate to nature,” she said.

That dual lens—history and environment—is central to Park’s approach. With a degree in geography and political science from Syracuse University and a background in environmental policy, she brings a spatial and cultural perspective to everything the museum does. “I think about place,” she said. “We’re asking: ‘Who lives there? What happened there? Who got erased?”

Those questions are at the heart of the work being done now, and will also be at the heart of future work. Park and Hicks will travel to Pea Island, North Carolina, in August to begin a research initiative documenting endangered African American communities in the Tidewater and Chesapeake regions. That work will eventually be included in Black Watershed.

But for now, the focus is here. In Oxford. On the Middle Passage. On building something lasting.

“We’re still in the early stages,” said Hicks. “We’re surveying the land, working w ith the town, figuring out what we can build and where. But the momentum is real.”

That momentum is also visible inside the museum. The gallery is shifting. The exhibits are evolving. And the stories being told are more layered, more inclusive, more connected than ever before.

“We want people to know that history is not frozen,” said Park. “It’s alive. And we’re shaping how it’s remembered.”

What’s happening at the Water’s Edge Museum isn’t just a redesign or a new exhibit—it’s a reimagining. A way of telling history that doesn’t separate the past from the present or the environment from the community. A place that centers Black stories not as sidebars, but as the heart of the Chesapeake.

And it’s all happening right now.

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For additional information, go to https://www.watersedgemuseum.org/