Two aging union halls on Dundalk Avenue help the story of Baltimore’s steel industry. In 1942, steel workers had won their right to unionize and established the United Steel Workers’ of America. When the two-story tan brick building at the corner of Dundalk Avenue and Gusryan Street was built in 1952, it served as the headquarters for USW locals 2609 and 2610. As both groups grew in size, however, local 2610 split off and constructed a modern new building next door. According to Gay Flynn, a steelworker who lived in Highlandtown and worked at Sparrow’s Point, many workers recognized the need for a union:
“A lot of people were afraid to go to the higher-ups and that, to me, is what brought the unions. They have somebody that they can go to and call that’s on their side. They always used to feel that they had nobody to talk to. We used to have a company union and a lot of people looked at that as being just that, a company union. Everybody thought that that union was for the company.”
Once the USW started, some, like Flynn, joined to protect their jobs, whereas others saw the union as a necessary way to protect the gains that workers had made in the labor movement. , a 34-year veteran of Sparrow’s Point, former shop steward and member of the alternate grievance committee, views the USW, and other unions, this way:
“Well what I feel is, thank God for unions in America. Because it made me realize that nothing was given freely, everything was born out of struggle. A lot of people today take for [granted] that fact that you get paid vacations. That was something born out of the labor movement—that you get paid if you off sick, that you have workers compensation laws, that you have employer provided health insurance, that you have many safeguards in place, all that were met with resistance when lobbied for that we have in place today that a lot of people think that they are etched into the fabric.”
O'Connor's, a package store and restaurant, has been located since the early 1920s in the heart of Greektown at the corner of Eastern Avenue and Oldham Street. In the 1940s, this unassuming, two-story, brick building played a significant role in the city labor movement of the New Deal era. Baltimore steel workers fought to unionize between 1940 and 1942 and turned O’Connor’s into the meeting spot where they could discuss the progress of organizing efforts. Similar meetings took place at the Finnish Hall in nearby Highlandtown at Ponca and Foster Streets. The Steel Workers Organizing Committee (SWOC) moved their headquarters into the second floor of O’Connor’s and, in 1943, the committee became the United Steelworkers of America, a CIO union.
Ellen Pinter was part of the Finnish community of Highlandtown, and her father worked at the steel mill in Sparrow’s Point. She saw firsthand the effects of underemployment on the steelworkers and their families during the Great Depression. Some only received work for one to two days a week. Many families ran up debts at the grocery store or fell behind on rent. Some families took in boarders to try to make ends meet. Ellen took a job for $18 week working for the steel workers’ union SWOC around 1937 in the office on top of O’Connor’s.
In a 1980 interview with the Baltimore Neighborhood Heritage Project, Ellen recollected:
"The quarters were small but the activity was small. I can vividly remember when the miners came to Baltimore and started the big organization drive of the CIO. The men were pouring into that hall with their pockets just bulging with dollar bills as they were signing up men into the union. There was such a tremendous upsurge of interest in the union. Of course, the mills were full of foreign-born people who knew the value of unions because they had come from European countries where they had been a little more politically astute. And Finns were aware of unionization and more progressive thought… Oh I can remember the Italians, the Finns, the Czechs, the Americans, they were organizing left and right then, in Bethlehem Steel Company."
Pinter also notes African American participation in the organizing activity—Finnish activists welcomed African Americans at the Finnish Hall during the early days of organizing activity, even though Highlandtown remained a segregated white neighborhood. Racial antagonisms, however, were not absent in the social activities of the union. For instance, Pinter remembers being at a union picnic; a black man asked her to dance and she accepted, only to have a white man cut in and demand to know how she could dare dance with a black man. O’Connor’s still remains in operation today.
Dr. Alfred T. Gundry established the Gundry Sanitarium on his family farm in the late 1800s, and the Gundry family continued to operate the facility up through 1990. Dr. Gundry served as the medical superintendent at nearby Spring Grove Hospital from 1878 to 1891, where he was a pioneer in ending the use of mechanical restraints on psychiatric patients.
One advertisement from 1903 described the santitarium:
“Splendidly located, retired and accessible to Baltimore, surrounded by 28 acres of beautiful grounds. Buildings modern and well arranged. Every facility for treatment and classification. Under the medical management of Dr. Alfred T. Gundry.”
Saint Peter Claver Church at Pennsylvania Avenue and Fremont Street takes its’ name from a sixteenth-century Spanish priest who is considered the patron saint of slaves. The building dates back to 1888 making it the city’s second oldest African-American Roman Catholic Church. True to the inspiration of Saint Claver, the congregation and their leaders, have long been active in seeking equal rights for African Americans in Baltimore.
Father Henry Offer led the church from 1960 to 1971 and was a member of the NAACP and Urban League. In 1968, he was one of the city’s African American leaders to speak out after the riots following the death of Martin Luther King, Jr., criticizing Governor Spiro Agnew for laying blame for the unrest on local black activists. Later that same year, the parish chartered buses to transport its members, as well as community residents, to the Poor People’s March on Washington. The march, planned by the by the Southern Christian Leadership Conference before King’s death, was led by Civil Rights activist Ralph Abernathy.
In 1966, Father Philip Berrigan advocated for the disinvested urban neighborhoods from his position at the church. Berrigan, whose long career as a Catholic activist included burning Vietnam War draft cards with his brother Daniel Berrigan and others of the Catonsville Nine. In the years leading up to this, Berrigan worked from St. Peter Claver to establish the Baltimore Interfaith Peace Mission and actively lobbied and demonstrated for the city’s African American communities.
Another Civil Rights activist coming from St. Peter Claver in the 1960s was Father John Harfmann. In 1967, Harfmann, who was white, worked with Black activist Dickey Burke to provide recreation opportunities in West Baltimore through Operation CHAMP. During his tenure at the church, he also participated in integration activities with church members and actively supported efforts of BUILD (Baltimoreans United In Leadership Development) to create housing, provide job opportunities, and rebuild neighborhoods in the city. At his funeral, fellow priests remembered how Harfmann was “wholly dedicated to being a priest in the African American community,” and recalled him as “a tireless fighter for justice who did things that people said were not possible.”
Today, the church continues their long tradition of civil rights and community activism, in part, by hosting the No Boundaries Coalition that works to unite communities around the church that have historically been divided by racial and economic barriers.