Currents of Culture: Jaelon Moaney Remembers Vince Leggett

Part of the National Park Service series "The Vince Leggett Legacy," in which colleagues remember the founder of the Blacks of the Chesapeake Foundation.

Jaelon T. Moaney, a commissioner on the Maryland Commission on African American History and Culture, compares Vince Leggett's legacy to the old sea shanties that were never written down but never forgotten: few people listened to the Chesapeake's rhythms as closely as Leggett, known to many as "the Admiral." Writing in grief, Moaney counts himself among the younger stewards Leggett mentored.

A last day together

On Saturday, November 23, the two spent hours on the work that bound them — keeping collective memory. For months they had been planning a major regional artwork to honor four centuries of African American history in the Tidewater, and Leggett's counsel shaped a public art bus tour to Philadelphia that weekend.

Over lunch in the city, Leggett talked about how important that early U.S. capital had been to his family and to the Annapolitan he became. On the ride home, as the sun sank toward the Delaware River, the conversation turned to Moaney's own story, and the two found how much their beginnings had in common.

A book that started a path

Moaney traces his life's work to the day he picked up Leggett's book, The Chesapeake Bay Through Ebony Eyes. What first caught him was the portrait of people living in harmony with the Eastern Shore's waterways; what held him was its centering of the African diaspora in the maritime story. Leggett encouraged him to:

• study how his ancestors turned the routes of the Middle Passage into places of refuge, and how that shaped the art of Ruth Starr Rose;
• build on the naval service that shaped his childhood through interdisciplinary study in the Williams-Mystic program;
• grow as an advocate helping vulnerable descendant communities across the country become more resilient and fight environmental injustice.

Moaney closes with a sailor's farewell: fair winds and following waters.

Sources

Based on "Currents of Culture From the Helm," by Jaelon T. Moaney, Commissioner, Maryland Commission on African American History and Culture, published by the National Park Service; rewritten in hubnx's own words.