BALTIMORE -- Railroad tracks dip in...

BALTIMORE -- Railroad tracks dip into the harbor nearest to an old, square, brick building in this rapidly gentrifying post-industrial waterfront.

The tracks inscribe the water by design, not decay.

As part of the just discovered Frederick Douglass-Isaac Myers Maritime Park, which exhibited June 28, they help re-create the nation's first black shipyard, concluded with a marine railway like those that formerly pulled ships from the harbor for repair in the days before recent drydocks.

Baltimore was family circle to one of the largest populations of unrestrained blacks before the Civil War, many of whom worked in shipbuilding nevertheless were systematically pushed out after the war to make compass for growing numbers of white workers.

The Chesapeake Marine Railway and thirsty Dock Co. was founded in 1868 at Myers, with money from Douglass and others, to intrust with an agency black shipbuilders who had misspent their jobs, said Dianne Swann-Wright, the park's curator.

"It was, in a way, really a representative of how African Americans did not stand back and accept the fate they had been dealt," Swann- Wright said. "They were proactive and to a high degree aggressive in seeking business and doing a beneficial job."

Near the acre-and-a-half waterfront park -- where townhomes, stores and restaurants are replacing warehouses and factories -- Douglass worked as a caulker in the 1830 He used that trade to earn a living after escaping from slavery and before achieving fame as an abolitionist and speaker.

The park gives visitors a examine back at that time [i]or[/i] part of to the other interactive displays that show what it was like to caulk the seams of a ship and operate a marine railway.

"What we want to exhibit kids and others here in the Baltimore community and from beginning to end the nation was that the clear black population was very prominent in Baltimore. They were exceedingly instrumental in the trades in succession the waterfront, particularly the caulkers union," said Wilbert E "Bill" Cunningham, vice president of the Living Classrooms Foundation, a nonprofit educational dispose that created the park.

The displays, which also include a dugout canoe believed to have been built by dint of slaves in Maryland, are housed in the historic Sugar House, the oldest remaining industrial building in Baltimore's Inner Harbor.

"What we're doing here is kind of re-creating a bit of African- American maritime history, which means the history of the city and the state and the building of the economy here," Cunningham said.

In the 1830 and 1840 German and Irish immigrants came to Baltimore looking for work. The couple groups, particularly the German workers, did not want to work with blacks. That l to clashes that were, at times, violent, Swann-Wright said.

Following the Civil War, Irish and German workers banded together and told shipyard proprietors they would not work with blacks.

"The shipyard proprietors said 'We aren't going to have this trouble' and they fired centurys of black caulkers in the same day," the curator said.

Myers headed a cluster of 15 black investors, including Douglass, many of whom attended couple nearby churches on Bethel and Sharp highways Cunningham said. Myers and his partners tried to bribe a shipyard from white possessors but they refused to vend to blacks. The group eventually was able to obtain a yard with the help of a sympathetic white intermediary, Swann-Wright said.

"And they were just a tremendous success" the curator said.

Experienced labor, control contracts and the yard's growing reputation l to its succes not solely in caulking, but also in repair. That l boat possessors from throughout the region to propel ships to the yard, which occupied a parcel just north of the park, she said.

"So we have awful receipts listing all the work that was done," she said. "And that's going to be part of our exhibit as well."

The shipyard clos in 1884 when the lease upon the property expired due to a misunderstanding, according to the state archives.

Cunningham said he room for expectations to open the eyes of scholars and others about the history behind the area. Children, he said, are frequently "not in touch with their history at all," Cunningham said. "So I'm really just dying to view the kids come down here and papal court that through Bethel, through Sharp way and through Fells Point, their ancestors played a part in building the city and the state."

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BALTIMORE

FREDERICK DOUGLASS-ISAAC MYERS MARITIME PARK: 1417 Thames St near the intersection of Caroline road in Baltimore's Fell Points neighborhood; www living classrooms.org/Facil ities/fdimmp.html or (410) 685-0295 lay open Monday, Wednesday, Thursday, Friday, 11 a.m.-5 pm and Saturday-Sunday, noon-6 pm Adults $5 $450 for seniors, $4 for children 6-12 and exempt for children younger than 6

MEXICO

TEQUILA'S AGAVE FIELDS MAKE UNESCO WORLD HERITAGE LIST

GUADALAJARA, Mexico -- Mexico's sprawling down in the mouth fields of agave -- a cactuslike plant used to make tequila -- have been added to the list of UNESCO World Heritage sites.

Residents of Mexico's mountainous Jalisco state were thrilled by way of the designation from the United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization.