It was in Vince Leggett’s nature to give.

He just had a “charitable heart,” said his grandson, Akil Leggett Jr. One night during the COVID pandemic, Leggett took his grandchildren fishing. They had a good haul, reeling in six or seven catfish. Before they even discussed what to do with the catch, Leggett was messaging friends and family: Anyone want a catfish?

“It’s just a different type of fulfillment that money can’t buy — that sense of giving back and feeling that you are having an impact on the community that you came from,” said Akil Leggett Jr., a student at the University of Chicago. It’s one of the many pieces of life advice that his grandfather has left with him.

Vince Leggett, an influential conservationist who worked to preserve Black history and culture on the Chesapeake Bay, died Saturday. His family declined to provide the cause of death. He was 71.

Leggett, who often referred to himself as “a country boy from East Baltimore,” was born in 1953 to Charlie and Willie Mae Leggett. His parents moved from North Carolina to Baltimore around that time, but Leggett and his siblings would often spend summers there and help with the family farm, Leggett said in a 2022 interview.

He never forgot his roots — and he carried that sentiment into his professional life.

Leggett became synonymous with the Black legacy of the Chesapeake Bay in the 1990s after he created Blacks of the Chesapeake Foundation. The organization published books, participated in films and created oral history projects at museums all over the world that foregrounded the rich Black maritime history, which mainstream Chesapeake publications had often ignored.

He introduced historians, scientists and restoration technicians to the Black communities that made their living on the Chesapeake and exposed how Jim Crow laws had erased or obscured many of those contributions.

He increased the general public’s knowledge of previously little known people and communities, including Bellevue on the Eastern Shore, where the Turner family created a “Black Mayberry” in the Jim Crow years. Black captains hauled in seafood, and Black managers oversaw crab and clam steaming and oyster shucking at a company that employed close to 100 people for almost 50 years.

Leggett not only included these stories in his books, but also traveled around the state and the world telling stories. He was comfortable speaking at a library for 10 rapt listeners or on a university stage in front of hundreds.

Leggett was one of only a few Black Marylanders to earn the honor of Admiral of the Chesapeake, a lifetime achievement award the governor can bestow on an individual for their commitment to conserving America’s largest estuary. He earned the honor in 2003; his mentor, Capt. Earl White, won it in 1998. Leggett was always proud to continue White’s legacy, and he often signed off on emails as “Admiral Vince.”

“Vince’s work went beyond retelling the stories of the Black watermen who worked the waters of the Chesapeake Bay,” Annapolis Mayor Gavin Buckley said in a news release. “He had a passion to preserve stories that otherwise might have been lost to time.”

Leggett spent many years amassing an archive of Black maritime stories, which he wanted to share with the public. He was working with the Enoch Pratt Free Library and the Maryland State Archives to digitize the collection, Leggett told The Banner before his death.

At the time of his death, he was still collecting, getting the names and life stories of Black men and women whom white photographers identified only as “crab picker” and “oyster shucker.”

Leggett also documented the story of Carr’s Beach, a resort that famed Baltimore entrepreneur and civic leader William “Little Willie” Adams birthed out of segregation. The resort’s concerts brought Billie Holiday, Count Basie, James Brown, Ray Charles, Wilson Pickett, Otis Redding and Little Richard to Annapolis’ sands.

After more than two decades of local activism, Annapolis established the Elktonia-Carr’s Beach Heritage Park in 2022. Given how much land Black communities had lost over the years, Leggett was extremely proud of the 6-acre piece he helped preserve. The county built a wastewater plant on part of an adjacent historically Black beach resort, Sparrow’s Beach, a development Leggett had long lamented.

Leggett was conscious that he was often one of few Black faces — and sometimes the only one — in the rooms where officials made decisions. Whether he was working as a land-use planner at the Maryland Department of Natural Resources or the president of the Anne Arundel County school board, Leggett always wanted to ensure that whoever was talking about inclusion also walked the walk. He was passionate about Black Marylanders telling their own stories in their own ways and making sure those stories weren’t sanitized.

“African American history is big business,” he told The Banner earlier this year. “I see various organizations throwing the words around, but I also look to see if the programming matches the jingles.”

One example is his party at Whitehall, an Annapolis plantation. Some of his friends and colleagues could trace their ancestry to the sprawling grounds about 7 miles from Annapolis, but had never been invited there — so he rented the grounds for a Blacks of the Chesapeake fundraiser.

“Just to be in that space was very enlightening and empowering to them,” Leggett said.

Outside of Leggett’s local work, “he was an international humanitarian,” said Dee Dee Strum, the chief administrative officer of the Blacks of the Chesapeake Foundation. He was a natural and charismatic leader, she said.

“He embraced people across the world, and they embraced him,” Strum said. “His spirit was one that pushed out just a very welcoming and embracing confidence that the best humanity was seen in each of us.”

That may have also been a reflection of Leggett’s deep faith, his grandson said. Even though Leggett was an important and well-known advocate, he always made time for family, especially through Sundays at church. Christianity is a pillar of the Leggett family, Akil Leggett Jr. said, and his grandfather made sure “that we knew who God was and that we had relationship with God.”

Joel Dunn, the president and CEO of the Chesapeake Conservancy, said Leggett was a mentor and friend to many, and he helped inspire a “collective commitment to justice and equity.” That extended to nearly every part of his life — Leggett was also an avid golf player, and he hosted an annual golf tournament honoring Black golf players and their history.

One of Leggett’s mentees was Randy K. Rowel Jr., the CEO and founder of Breaking Boundaries Environmental, an organization that pursues environmental restoration projects in historically underserved communities. Leggett took his role as a mentor very seriously, Rowel Jr. said.

“He knew it would take another group of young professionals to come in and carry that torch and not let many of the things that he spent most of his life working on go to pass,” Rowel Jr. said. “He understood the importance of setting up the next generation of people like him to take his place.”

Rowel Jr.’s father, Randolph Rowel, was Leggett’s longtime friend. The elder Rowel said he will especially miss Leggett’s keen ability to articulate the challenges that African American people face and identify solutions. He was never afraid to discuss “the issues and the neglect in the communities that were most often impacted by climate change,” Rowel said.

As a result of Leggett’s work, “you saw changes in policies, and you saw changes in the way people stopped overlooking the underserved communities and the communities who lost access to the Chesapeake Bay over the years,” Randolph Rowel said. “That was his legacy — to bring attention to our contribution to the health and well-being of the Chesapeake Bay.”

Mariah Davis, the environmental justice officer at Maryland Department of Natural Resources and Leggett’s friend, said one of the main words she associates with Leggett is “joy.” Whenever he talked about his research, he just lit up, she said.

“Any time he talked about Black history, it was also a story of Black joy,” Davis said.

Last year, The Baltimore Banner reported on the loss of Black historians after the deaths of two notable scholars, Louis Diggs and James Lane. At the time, Leggett talked about how sometimes more credentialed white historians would dismiss his work because he didn’t have a doctoral degree. Some even referred to him in newspapers as an “amateur historian.”

“I look at myself as a John the Baptist, crying in the wilderness, telling the story, and I don’t have the dollars or the time to dedicate to the academic rigor that is required,” Leggett said at the time. “What I am is an intellectual gangster, and I was trained by intellectual gangsters.”

Correction: This story has been updated to correct the year Capt. Earl White was recognized as an Admiral of the Chesapeake Bay.