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Such news is of concern to the Task Force because in the case of this building, one is not only talking about the first building in the United States to be constructed expressly as a museum and one of the first in Baltimore to be illuminated by gas, one is also talking about the first public school for African Americans in the City of Baltimore.    Around the same time, The Sun ran an article indicating that at  1838 Druid Hill Avenue in Baltimore, there was nothing left of the home where  Supreme  Court Justice Thurgood Marshall  was reared but a recently bulldozed hole in the ground.    The Task Force finds  that  similar problems  exist  statewide.
[Excerpt from Testimony of Mr. Lewis Fields, Executive Director, The Maryland  African  American  Tourism  Council]
One of the  first things that happened after slavery was  the establishment of churches;  and  out  of the  churches,  schools  were established,  and for the  schools came the  first colored teachers.     It was to the church that African Americans went to meet.    Built in 1787, the church on Sharpes  Street in Baltimore does not have a marker indicating the site.    People drive right past historical sites, in the Eastern Shore. On the way to the Harriet Tubman center you pass by the home of Frederick Douglass in Calvert County.    We went