Joining Vince's Crew: A Tribute to Vince Leggett of the Chesapeake

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

Wendy O'Sullivan had been superintendent of the National Park Service's Chesapeake Gateways community assistance program for about three months when she met Vince Leggett, on a crisp fall morning in Annapolis. His reputation as a change-maker had reached her first. Meeting him, she writes, felt like opening the first chapter of a treasured book — the kind with dog-eared pages that you share and reread.

A windswept street-end park

They met at a classic Annapolis spot: a small park at the end of a street, overlooking a working waterfront. Leggett came in his signature hat, carrying an Old Bay tote bag, with the warm smile of a storyteller who cared about getting the facts right. They talked for hours, as easily as old friends.

He told her about:

• the Black watermen who worked the Bay;
• the oyster harvests that built communities;
• the Black-owned beaches that once dotted the Bay and the East Coast — like Carr's Beach, where Black families gathered during the Civil Rights era to swim, picnic and dance.

"It's not just history," he told her. "It's identity. It's community." The Bay and its rivers, he said, didn't only employ and feed people; they connected them — and those connections, especially the untold African American stories, deserved to be remembered and carried on. His conviction, and the joy with which he spoke, left her seeing the Bay as a cultural archive and a chart to the future as much as a natural treasure.

Signing on

From that day Leggett was both partner and mentor to her. The friendship deepened over the years, in person and on social media. But he wasn't just cheering people on: he was preserving history and recruiting a varied "crew" to carry forward his work of remembrance, justice and hope. O'Sullivan signed up on the spot.

NPS Chesapeake Gateways joined his mission to save places and raise up stories important to African Americans whose lives were bound up with the Chesapeake:

More, she writes, was in the works.

Carrying it forward

O'Sullivan calls his work a call to action: every voice matters, and every effort to preserve inclusive history is a gift to the future. She counts herself a proud member of "Vince's Crew," and closes with an old mariner's farewell: "I'll let the waves carry my goodbye. See you in the next tide, my friend."

Sources

Based on "Joining Vince's Crew," by Wendy O'Sullivan, Superintendent, National Park Service Chesapeake Gateways; a work of the United States government in the public domain.