In the 1930s, life in Kent County, Maryland, resembled that of many other small, rural communities in the coastal Mid-Atlantic and southern United States.

The U.S. Census Bureau cites the population of the county at the time as being around 14,000, with many folks operating farms, small businesses or working the numerous Chesapeake Bay-centric industries that have largely defined coastal Maryland life.

That decade, a Jewish family’s small conglomerate of food companies in New York began to look southward. Brothers George and Victor Heller, immigrants from what would today be the Czech Republic, had founded a deli, and then got into commercial food production and supply. Their jarred herring was so popular around the region that it made sense for them to start packaging and selling it on its own to businesses outside of the New York area.

That company, Vita Foods, stumbled upon Chestertown, Maryland, and set up shop in a large factory in the town because of its access to rail travel and ample room for potential growth. They knew that they would be producing fish, pickles and other jarred and canned products.

What they didn’t know is how much of an effect they would have on the community.

Jim Weinberger, grandson of Vita Foods co-founder George Heller and a current Chestertown resident, said in addition to employing several hundred people at any given time — and as many as 1,000 at one point — Vita Foods’ primary contribution to the community was on the civil rights front.

“They were willing to hire African Americans. There was integration within the business — whites and Blacks ate in the same cafeteria,” he said.

Weinberger noted that Vita Foods was progressive, but not perfect. He said without hard evidence, he doubts that white and Black workers were paid the exact same wages. But he is sure that his ancestors and management were supportive of a place that hired regardless of race.

“There was really progress for labor rights, and I guess indirectly in civil rights for the African American community,” he said. “A union came in too, so they were doing things that were pretty progressive for the times.”

The employees eventually decided not to unionize, although the vote on the issue was close.

Patrick Nugent is the Thomas V. Mike Miller Jr. Director of Civic Engagement at Starr Center for the Study of the American Experience at Washington College in Chestertown and the Chesapeake Heartland, a local initiative that preserves the African American history of the Eastern Shore. He said that the policies of Vita Foods actually served to strengthen and foster connections in the community.

“[It made up] a large proportion of the economy, but also what it was doing was bringing, particularly women, together from across the region. So whereas they might have each known each other from their small neighborhoods or hamlets, maybe knowing each other from various kinds of agricultural work or from churches, now suddenly there were groups of women carpooling in together and then working beside women from neighboring counties and neighboring towns that they had never met,” Nugent said.

In the rural Eastern Shore, this function of the business played an important role in uniting people from different pockets of the community.

“In many ways it was kind of pulling a broader community of working-class and Black residents together across a greater geography,“ Nugent said.

In audio interviews compiled by Chesapeake Heartland Digital Archive, former Vita Foods employee Erlena C. Linthicum, a Black woman, told the organization that she went to plant manager Henry Demain while she was home from college and in need of income and was met with kindness and support.

“Henry was the manager there. When I came home, I said ‘I need some help. I need a job every summer when I come home from college so that I can go back to college the following year,’” Linthicum said. “He said, ‘Yes, you can come directly to me each summer and I will put you on the line,’ and that’s what I did.”

For Linthicum, the job was what she needed and helped her during an era that many businesses would not have been interested in hiring a Black woman, especially one who had constraints on when she would be available.

“I had no problems working there. If I had to do it again, I would, because I learned a lot. People were nice to me while I was there,” she said.

Weinberger said that Vita Foods should be understood as an anomaly for the times, and as a business that played an important role in the community.

“It wasn’t the perfect company, but it was a unique company for its time. To have two Jewish migrants somehow end up with all this business in the middle of rural Maryland in the early part of the 20th century is unconventional,” Weinberger said.

Nugent seconded this.

“While their kind of own racial politics were not perfect, they were, I think, more progressive in their stance towards race on the workshop floor than other food production facilities across the Eastern Shore,” he said.

Marie Butler, another Black woman from the Eastern Shore, said in an interview with Chesapeake Heartland that the job wasn’t for her, and that she quit soon after being hired.

But that had nothing to do with the culture of the company — it was for a reason that plenty of people would understand.

“I didn’t like it. It smelled bad working with the fish,” she said.

Nugent said it’s important to remember that Kent County has a long-running Jewish history and that there are Jews who reside there.

While it is not a nationally known center of Jewish life like Baltimore, or where the Heller brothers came from in New York, all the same, it welcomed a pair of Jewish immigrants and their business into the community and allowed them to help progress the region’s race, gender and labor politics forward.

Weinberger said that, in his opinion, most of the policies that Vita Foods is lauded for today were primarily business decisions. He said that his grandfather and great-uncle likely didn’t think much about what it would mean to hire people who others seemed disinterested in employing, although that doesn’t take away from the importance of those decisions.

“They found a labor force that could support the distribution of their products,” he said.

Weinberger added that Demain had a different point of view, which was important because he was the one who was at the plant in person every day.

“He was somebody who was doing what we would say today was ‘thinking outside the box’ at the time,” he said.

For the workers, the reasons might not have been top of mind. What seems to have mattered is that they had a good, paying job that they could count on to be there tomorrow.

“As far as I know, I think [they were one of the first businesses to hire from the black community],” said former employee Irene Moore in an interview with Chesapeake Heartland.

She added that it didn’t stop at the end of the day, stating that Vita Foods management and ownership had a good relationship with the area’s Black community.

Vita Foods was sold in the late 1960s, ending the Hellers’ involvement before the plant’s eventual closure not long after. Today, it is being transformed into an educational site for Washington College, where the institution plans to teach about and build on the legacy of workforce development and economic opportunity in the region.

“What we hope to do is provide economic opportunity in the same way that Vita Foods did,” Nugent said.

When Chesapeake Heartland hears stories from those who were there, it learns just how much Vita Foods meant to Kent County.

“We’ve heard stories of people describing being able to purchase their first car, purchase their first home, save up to go to college and otherwise, and so you know it really was key to a developing kind of middle class economy on the rural Eastern Shore,” Nugent said.
For Weinberger, the place where his ancestors built their business legacy is now the place he calls home. He said that he likes the pace of life on the shore, and that he sees progress that reminds him of his roots every day.

Vita Foods may be no more, but its legacy is visible for those who know what they’re seeing. The factory is closed, the blue cloth uniforms long gone — but the paths they forged for the community and its descendants are still going strong.

aguckes@midatlanticmedia.com