A Place for Everybody

Henry's Beach on the segregated Eastern Shore

by Jenifer Dolde

AS A CHILD, WHEN ALL OF HER FRIENDS went to the beach for the day, Lorraine Wigfall Henry stayed home. “All the kids would go... their parents would get them nice outfits to wear... and they had their own change to spend.” Only the three days after Labor Day were designated as “Colored Excursion Days,” giving Black residents from Maryland, Delaware, and Virginia the chance to visit Ocean City freely. The rest of the season, nearly all hotels, the boardwalk, and oceanside beaches were off limits. “At that time there were no recreational areas for colored people... that is the way everything was.... We lived through it, you know what I mean,” Henry recalled. “But you know, my mother would never let us go.” In the 1950s, Henry would envision a beach resort for all.

Henry remembered that Dames Quarter—located in Somerset County just northeast of Deal Island—was a busy, prosperous community in the 1920s and 1930s: “Colored and white. And everybody got along just like they were neighbors and friends... the only difference was they didn’t go to church together, or school.” The daughter of Hanson Wigfall, a blacksmith and waterman, she recalled a childhood centered on extended family and friends, church, and community activities such as sandlot baseball.

Nonetheless, Henry wanted opportunities beyond working in the oyster packing houses that dominated local industry. In 1940, she married George Henry, a local man from Berlin, Md., left home for Philadelphia, and took a course in drafting. She worked as a tracer at the Navy Yard until the end of World War II. In search of a new occupation, she studied cosmetology at the Beauty Academy and, in the early 1950s, opened her own beauty shop on 55th and Girard streets in West Philadelphia; a decade later, she expanded Lorraine’s Beauty Shop and School into an apartment building two blocks away, with the business on the first floor and living quarters above.

The beauty of Dames Quarter’s waterfront and fond childhood memories inspired Henry on a visit to her parents in 1951. Tangier Beach, an old resort with a derelict cottage, a bathhouse, and no running water or electricity, was for sale. “The beach itself was beautiful—nice sandy beach—gorgeous,” Henry remembered. Her father worked there before it closed in 1924, but the beach itself was for white people only. Now a successful business and property owner, she still had not forgotten how it felt to be left out. “This would be nice because we can have a place for everybody [to] come that want[s] to come. And that’s what started Henry’s Beach.” Her husband, a mechanic for a Cadillac dealer in Philadelphia, quickly agreed.

For about $2,500, they purchased 16 acres of land with a beach that was “sandy all the way out almost to the buoy.” The Henrys upgraded the utilities, hired a family friend to expand the old bathhouse building for a dining room, and built another structure to accommodate visitors. “People were just flocking in, you know, because it was a needed place…. People just loved the idea, and they were thrilled to have someplace to go.” From spring to fall, Lorraine and George Henry drove back and forth from Philadelphia every weekend to manage the beach.

Seafood purchased directly from Deal Island watermen and home-cooked specialties were central to the Henry’s Beach experience: fried fish, crabs, oysters, fried chicken, ham, and roast beef. People went for “crabs of all types: soft shell crabs, crab cakes, crab croquettes, crab this, crab that.” Local watermen made sure the Henrys had plenty of seafood at reasonable prices, chicken came from the local Perdue processing facility, and fresh vegetables from area farmers were in ample supply. Henry did most of the cooking and ordering from the beginning. “I took up cooking... mainly to be able to cook that food and make it right so that people would want to come back again.” Church groups, clubs, community organizations, and large family groups flocked to Henry’s Beach from the Eastern Shore, Baltimore, Delaware, Philadelphia, Washington, D.C., and beyond.

If dining on local specialties, relaxing on the beach, swimming, fishing, crabbing, and enjoying rides brought in by Trimper’s of Ocean City were not enough of an attraction, Henry’s Beach also hosted well-known performers in the Arcade room, as well as onstage in an outdoor pavilion. Earth, Wind & Fire, The Temptations, and the seminal R&B/funk band New Birth performed, along with comedic and dramatic stage plays by troupes from Pennsylvania. These acts were key to drawing a large clientele. Although they served beer and malt liquor, George Henry insisted on polite behavior. “My husband was a good policeman. He was so strict... he wouldn’t allow them... unless they had a tie on in the summertime…. We didn’t have any trouble.”

The Henrys advertised on the radio, especially Hoppy Adams’ show, which aired on WANN out of Annapolis. Charles “Hoppy” Adams, whose “Bandstand on the Beach” broadcasts introduced a diverse group of Americans to R&B and soul music, attracted a large audience of listeners that both big-name performers and venues like Henry’s Beach were eager to convert to customers. “He did a lot of our advertising,” Henry remembered. They also distributed business cards and made direct contact with groups looking for places they were welcomed. “There was no other place, as far as... recreation area... for people to go to.”

The surrounding community, recognizing the benefit of an influx of potential customers, supported Henry’s Beach, and even recreated at the resort. “All the local people were really for it…. They appreciated it, too, because that was business for them…. Restrooms and areas where they could get maybe a little lunch or breakfast... maybe gas, oil…. They were out to spend money and have fun.” Henry recognized the economic benefit their beach provided to local whiteowned businesses and those along the route to Dames Quarter, but that support only came within the parameters of segregation and unequal access. “But when it came to being served [in those white businesses], that was a different story. Like meals, you know, and bath facilities. They had facilities, but they had separate ones…. They had colored signs for colored—they never stopped people from coming, but colored had to go in this door, or use this bathroom.”

As a privately owned recreational area, Henry’s Beach could welcome any and all visitors, regardless of race, when it opened in 1952. In Maryland and other states, restrictive, discriminatory laws enacted by local governments excluded people of color from public beaches and made private havens necessary. Other Maryland beaches established as recreational spaces for Black people include Highland Beach, founded in 1893 by Frederick Douglass’s son, Charles, who then sold parcels of land to friends and family. Esteemed Black Americans such as W.E.B. Dubois, Booker T. Washington, and Langston Hughes visited there. Carr’s and Sparrow’s beaches, founded by two daughters of formerly enslaved parents, welcomed Black people from all over the Mid-Atlantic to swim, socialize, and enjoy performances by well-known vocalists that included Billie Holiday, Ray Charles, and Aretha Franklin.

When Sandy Point State Park near Annapolis opened— the same year as Henry’s Beach—it became the first state park in Maryland opened to Black people, although the segregated accommodations were not equally maintained. In 1953, the NAACP filed a lawsuit; in Lonesome v. Maxwell, the court decided that the separate beaches and facilities at Sandy Point must receive equal upkeep but did not rule against the segregated spaces. Following the Supreme Court ruling in Brown v. Board of Education two years later, which deemed “separate but equal” schools unconstitutional, the Fourth Circuit court ruled that segregated beaches were unconstitutional as well. In spite of these legal precedents, segregation and discrimination persisted for years afterward.

“But that was just the way of things, you know, way of life... and everybody was used to it, the Black and the White, I guess. That’s about all I can say because I don’t know when it started, but I do know when it ended.” Henry’s Beach continued to fill an important role in Dames Quarter through the 1970s. Desegregation, ironically, led to the decline of places like Henry’s Beach, which was eventually unable to compete with the draw of previously forbidden venues. Lorraine Henry remembers feeling hurt by the comments from former regulars: “‘We can go to Sammy’s and Johnny’s now.’ They were thrilled to death that they could go there and get a meal.” Although the Civil Rights Act was passed in 1964, the Eastern Shore did not fully integrate public spaces until the 1970s. This proved to be the beginning of the end for Henry’s Beach, which continued to cater to groups rather than the general public. After George Henry died in 1979, the business became too much for Lorraine Henry to manage on her own. She leased the property for several years but, unhappy with the way it was operated, sold Henry’s Beach in the early 1980s.

The openness of nature may seem to be democratizing, but environmental racism has persisted throughout American history. Private ownership and public management of beaches, parks, and natural lands have restricted or denied access to many, including Black Americans. That Lorraine Henry made her dream of Henry’s Beach as a place for everyone a reality in the 1950s is a reflection of her business acumen, persistence, open-mindedness, and selfrespect. “I’d been used to associating and living and working around all types of people. And I know people are people, regardless…. It’s the way you carry yourself, the way you demand respect, you can give respect to everybody. I was brought up that way.” Nonetheless, the Henrys saw a need in the Black community and filled it for more than 30 years, reminding their African-American visitors that the beaches and waterways of the Chesapeake region were theirs to enjoy, fully and equally.

Lorraine Henry died on Jan. 23, 2021, a week before her 100th birthday. An oral history with her was conducted in 2001 by CBMM folklorist Kelly Feltault, and the Henry’s Beach story is featured in CBMM’s At Play on the Bay exhibition. Documents and photographs related to Henry’s Beach were collected as part of the oral history fieldwork and are now part of CBMM’s collection. ★

Lorraine Henry in the dining room at Henry’s Beach, c. 1970s. Gift of Lorraine Henry. Collection of the Chesapeake Bay Maritime Museum, 1022- 0044.