Seeking a bit of African-American History the next time you're in historic Annapolis? Look no further than the Banneker-Douglass Museum (84 Franklin St., Annapolis, MD 21401), Maryland’s official museum of African American heritage. Named after Marylanders Benjamin Banneker and Frederick Douglass, the Banneker-Douglass Museum highlights the innovations, resilience, and achievements of African-American Marylanders. Among other notable Maryland figures exhibits surrounding Harriet Tubman and Thurgood Marshall along with the lesser-known Matthew Henson (the first African-American Arctic explorer) and Herbert Milton Frisby (a soldier stationed in the Aleutian Islands of Alaska during WWII). Along with permanent exhibits, the museum showcases various Marylanders in rotating displays, offering a different history lesson each time visitors enter.
Join Historian Annapolis blogger, Kat Spitzer, with the video above as she visits the museum and it's Director, Maya Davis.
As the State of Maryland’s official museum of African American heritage, the Banneker-Douglass Museum serves to document, to interpret, and to promote African American history and culture (particularly in Maryland) through exhibitions, programs, and projects in order to improve the understanding and appreciating of America’s rich cultural diversity for all.
The Banneker-Douglass Museum is a component of the Maryland Commission on African American History and Culture, which is a unit of the Governor’s Office of Community Initiatives — an executive-department agency, whose mandate to coordinate outreach efforts to communities, organizations, and local governments across Maryland serves as a unifying principle for all its departments.
For more information, visit the Banneker-Douglass Museum online today.
Videography courtesy of DMH Visual Productions
