Old West Baltimore

The Old West Baltimore community is the nation’s largest registered African American historic district. The designated Pennsylvania Avenue Black Arts and Entertainment District is the commercial main street in this area. The Colored High and Training School (later renamed Frederick Douglass High School), along with other segregated schools within the district, produced many prominent individuals, including Thurgood Marshall, the nation’s first African American Supreme Court justice, and Lucy Diggs Slowe, educator, tennis champion, and one of the 16 founders of Alpha Kappa Alpha sorority. Many notable people have visited the area, such as Booker T. Washington, W.E.B. DuBois, Countee Cullen, Elton Fax, Madame C.J. Walker, Marcus Garvey, and Princess Wee Wee.