Frank Dean Banks was born into slavery in Appomattox in 1855; the son of Archer Banks Sr. and Evelina Jones. Frank went to Hampton Institute at the age of 17 and graduated 4 years later in 1872. He took a position as bookkeeper at Hampton Institute and served in that office for 45 years. In addition to his service to the historic school, Banks was also largely responsible for the planning and creation of the “Vacation Paradise of the South” for African Americans during the Jim Crow Era of segregation. Feeling the need for recreation opportunities for students at Hampton and Black residents of the region, Banks convinced the leaders of Hampton Institute to support the creation of Buck Roe Beach and Bay Shore Hotel in 1897. Over the years the Bay Shore hotel went from a small affair of four rooms to a three story hotel with 70 rooms and amenities including a dance hall, amusement park, restaurant and bath house. Black vacationers from New York to Georgia flocked to the rare opportunity for such seaside recreation for Black Americans along the eastern shore. As if that weren’t enough, Frank Banks was also the first African American contributor to be published in the “Journal of American Folklore” in 1894. Banks’ piece “Plantation Courtship” came from a paper he presented to the Hampton Folklore Society in 1893 began with these words: “The American slave's life was a desert of suffering certainly, but in it there were oases whose shades and springs yielded whose delights were all the keener for their infrequency.” Frank Banks is buried in the cemetery at Hampton University.