FY 2025 African American Heritage Preservation Program Awardees  – Our History, Our Heritage

The Frederick Douglass Summer House is a Queen Anne style frame dwelling that was constructed in ca. 1894 as a summer home for Frederick Douglass, who unfortunately did not live to see the project’s completion. The building is the oldest standing dwelling in Highland Beach, a municipality founded by African Americans in 1893. The house is currently used as a museum space for the Frederick Douglass Museum and Cultural Center. Funding will support structural improvements to the building. 

The Harlem Theatre stands as the last first-run movie theater serving Black Baltimoreans. Opened in 1932 and built with an ornate Spanish-style interior and luxurious amenities, the theater drew record crowds during the height of segregation. The theater still serves as an important community hub, hosting youth theater groups and multi-cultural performances. Funding will support pre-development services to support future rehabilitation, as well as roof and window repair. 

The Cowdensville A.M.E. Church was constructed between 1904 and 1907, but its roots go back to 1857 within the free Black community once known as Crowden Town. The church has served not only as a place of worship but as a meeting place for civil rights groups in the mid-20th century. For many years the church hosted grief support groups, food and school supply giveaways, and neighborhood organization meetings.   A complete rehabilitation was undertaken in the late 1990s to save the church from condemnation and demolition. Funding will support the repair of the narthex.  

Asbury United Methodist Church began as a meeting house in 1828 for enslaved and freed persons living in the White Marsh, Loreley, and Cowenton areas. The congregation worshiped in a log cabin until 1913 when the present frame church was built. In 1872, members of the Asbury United Methodist Church formed the Union of Brothers and Sisters of Ford’s Asbury Lodge #1 to meet the benevolent needs of community members and provide burial assistance. Funding will support replacing exterior rehabilitation of the church.  

This project will transform St. Paul Church, built in the 1880s, into a community-based center to engage in conversations that uplift Denton’s African American community. The community center will facilitate an increased awareness of African American culture and history in Caroline County and statewide through educational seminars, literature, and cultural events. Funds will support cemetery conservation efforts, floor repair, foundation repair, and interior and exterior finishes. 

For nearly 175 years, Fairview Methodist Episcopal (now United Methodist) Church and Cemetery has continuously served the Carroll County community since its foundation. The church was built by free African Americans who worked as farmers, stone masons, and carpenters. When the church was completed, services were held at night so both free and enslaved people could attend. Funding will support cemetery conservation efforts.  

Malone’s Methodist Episcopal Church is a single-story, gable-roofed church built in 1895. The church served the African American community that had grown in the area beginning in the late 18th century, as free-born families began to settle here and intermarry with the local enslaved population. The community has ties to Harriet Tubman’s family, including in-laws who are buried in the cemetery adjacent to the church. Funding will support a new foundation, masonry work, and roof rehabilitation. 

Located within the Frederick Historic District, Asbury Methodist Church is over 200 years old and has remained a pillar in the community. Prior to the Civil War, the church was a sanctuary where African Americans, some enslaved, were permitted to worship alongside white congregants and later, a place wholly their own. The church plans to raise funds to open a Child Development Center and provide scholarships to minority students. Grant funding will support a new interior ramp, two doors in their Child Development Center, and new gutters.

With a congregation that dates back to the 1790s, Quinn African Methodist Episcopal Church served as a safe house for the Underground Railroad and was used as a hospital during the Civil War. Later, the building housed one of the first schools for Black children in Frederick. Funding will support the repair and stabilization of the bell tower, structural support, and other building maintenance, helping the church continue its role as an educational resource for the public and extend its outreach.  

The Catoctin Furnace African American Cemetery is significant to American industrial history and the role African Americans played in the iron industry. Using DNA collected from cemetery burials that were exhumed in the late 1970s, a joint research project among Harvard University, 23andMe, and the Smithsonian Institute has identified more than 40,000 descendants of African American enslaved ironworkers at Catoctin Furnace. Funding will support the purchase of the cemetery property, which will pave the way for public access and interpretation of the site.  

The Hosanna School was built in 1867 to educate recently freed African Americans. A free Black man donated the land, the Freedman’s Bureau funded teachers and supplies, and the local African American community donated their supplies and labor to create the school. Now the Hosanna School Museum, the school is open to the public, highlighting history from slavery to Jim Crow and the years that followed. Funding will support accessibility upgrades. 

The quarter built for people enslaved on the Blandair estate is a notable example of a double-pen, sawn plank building with a central double fireplace, dating to the 1850s. The building housed African Americans enslaved on the property, working in the house and on the farm, for over a century.  Now part of a larger park, Howard County intends to restore the site and interpret the story of all people, free and enslaved, who lived at Blandair. Funding will support the rehabilitation of the quarters including roof, siding, and window repairs.  

Mt. Gregory was originally established in Cooksville in the 1867s as a place to educate African American children. The church was established on the site in the years that followed and both the school and church utilized the same building into the early twentieth century. A modest frame Gothic Revival church, constructed in 1898, still serves the congregation today as an active place of worship and houses a food pantry. Funding will support renovations of the lower level of the church building. 

Dating back more than 275 years, the Custom House on the Washington College campus has what is believed to be an underground holding cell for enslaved people, a rare surviving feature from the trans-Atlantic slave trade. The house, now home to the Starr Center for the Study of the American Experience, hosts public events and will expand its community engagements to educate the public on local African American history. Funding will support framing, waterproofing of the chamber, and an archaeological investigation.  

Congo “Mango” Mander purchased the Mander House property in the late 18^th century after he gained his freedom from slavery. The house itself was built by Mander’s descendants, and the property remains in the Mander family today. Once developed, the Mander House Museum will tell the story of local African American freedmen and their contributions to Kent County before the Civil War, as well as residents who fought in the Union Army, like  Congo Mander’s grandsons.   Funding will support structural repairs, a new roof, and an overall conditions assessment of the building in advance of a full rehabilitation.  

St. Mark’s Episcopal Church  is a rural stone church constructed in Lappans in 1849. The church served local landowners, as well as the free and enslaved African American population, performing weddings, baptisms, confirmations, and burials for African American congregants from its founding. A stained-glass window in the church commemorates the significant role African Americans played in the history of the church.  With the help of a professor from Hood College, the congregation is sharing its African American history with the public. Funding will support roofing, repointing, and electrical upgrades.