Highland Beach is a town in Anne Arundel County, Maryland, United States. Per the 2020 census, the population was 118. The town was founded late in the 19th century by affluent African Americans from Washington, D.C., and Baltimore, looking for a summer retreat on the Chesapeake Bay. The town's incorporated status gave it a unique standing in empowering it to maintain its own police force. Celebrities with homes there have included historian and author Alex Haley, actor and comedian Bill Cosby, and tennis champion Arthur Ashe. Street names in the town include Crummell, Dunbar, Henson, Augusta, Douglass, Langston, and Washington, which were chosen to honor leading African Americans.

Charles Remond Douglass was the third and youngest son of Frederick Douglass and his first wife Anna Murray Douglass. He was the first African-American man to enlist in the military in New York during the Civil War, and served as one of the first African-American clerks in the Freedmen's Bureau in Washington, D.C.