Highland Beach is a town in Anne Arundel County, Maryland, United States. Per the 2020 census, the population was 118. The town was founded late in the 19th century by affluent African Americans from Washington, D.C., and Baltimore, looking for a summer retreat on the Chesapeake Bay. The town's incorporated status gave it a unique standing in empowering it to maintain its own police force. Celebrities with homes there have included historian and author Alex Haley, actor and comedian Bill Cosby, and tennis champion Arthur Ashe. Street names in the town include Crummell, Dunbar, Henson, Augusta, Douglass, Langston, and Washington, which were chosen to honor leading African Americans.
History
Highland Beach was founded in summer 1893 by Maj. Charles Remond Douglass, (Frederick Douglass's son) and his wife, Laura, after they had been turned away from a restaurant at the nearby Bay Ridge resort because of their race. Charles Douglass was a retired military officer who served with the 54th Massachusetts Infantry Regiment of the United States Colored Troops during the American Civil War. After being turned away, Maj. Douglass decided to buy beachfront property directly south of Bay Ridge and sell lots to family and friends.
Maj. Douglass bought a tract with of beachfront on the Chesapeake Bay from Daniel Brashears, a Black farmer and waterman of Anne Arundel County, and turned it into a summer enclave. He had two homes built - one for himself, his wife, and their children, and one as a retirement home for his father, Frederick Douglass, which was known as "Twin Oaks." Frederick Douglass's house, now called the Douglass Summer House, was listed on the National Register of Historic Places in 1992. It became a regular gathering place for upper-class African-Americans. Robert Terrell, the first Black municipal court judge in Washington, DC, and his wife, activist and civic leader, Dr. Mary Church Terrell, built a home, "Villa Aloha," in 1915 on the property they purchased in 1893, which was next door to the Douglass Summer House. Their grandson, Raymond L. Langston, former Highland Beach mayor, owns this home.
Among the residents and guests of the town were Paul Robeson, Robert Weaver, Harriet Tubman, W. E. B. Du Bois, and poets Langston Hughes and Paul Laurence Dunbar. Frederick Douglass visited and would have become a resident but he died in 1895, before the house that his son was building for him was completed.
In the early 1900s, a horse stable, a guest house, a hotel, and tennis courts were all built in the community to accommodate the growing number of residents and their guests. The guest house, which was built by George Bowen in 1902, was a very popular site for lectures, discussions, and informal gatherings. The hotel, which was built by Richard Francis Ware in the 1920s, was a popular spot for Saturday night dances and a meeting place for church groups. It was converted to a private home in the 1970s.
After the death of Charles R. Douglass in 1920, his son, Haley G. Douglass, took over the development of the area. Haley Douglass became a member of the Board of Commissioners for the town of Highland Beach, and incorporated the town on May 12, 1922, making it the first African-American municipality in Maryland. He and his friends controlled the community for the next thirty years, keeping it small and exclusive. He served as Mayor of Highland Beach from the time of its incorporation through his death on January 20, 1954. In 1922, Osborne T. Taylor, a Highland Beach resident, bought 13 acres south of Highland Beach and created Venice Beach, which still exists.