Augusta T. Chissell was one of the most influential activists in the womenâs suffrage movement in Maryland. She lived in the red painted row house at the corner of Druid Hill Ave and McMechen St. Through her tireless participation in important civil rights organizations, she was able to give women of color a voice in the movement.Â
Born in Baltimore in 1880, Augusta Theodosia Lewis briefly worked making hats for friends before she married Dr. Robert Garland Chissell in the 1910s. Robert Chissell was a prominent physician and an executive committee member for the Maryland Medical, Dental, and Pharmaceutical Association. By 1917, the Chissells had moved into the house at 1534 Druid Hill Ave. At that point, Augusta was already heavily involved in advocating for civil rights for African Americans. She was one of the founding members of the Baltimore branch of the NAACP, and was its first vice-president in 1912.Â
Beyond this already impressive achievement, she also established herself as one of the most important African American activists in the womenâs suffrage movement. White womenâs suffrage activists often excluded the voices and interests of women of color. This led many African American women to form their own suffrage organizations. One of these organizations was the Progressive (or sometimes Colored) Womenâs Suffrage Club (PWSC), which Chissellâs friend, Estelle Young, founded in 1915. The PWSC stressed the importance of women of all races being given the right to vote. Yet another group was the DuBois Circle, which was (and still is) a group of prominent women of color from Baltimore and Washington D.C. that met to discuss arts such as literature and music. More importantly, it was involved in supporting suffrage and other rights for women of all backgrounds. It did this mainly through academically supporting community youth, especially through scholarships. Chissellâs next door neighbor, Margaret Hawkins (1532 Druid Hill Ave), was the Circleâs first president when it was founded in 1906.Â
Chissell served in important roles in both of these groups. She was an officer in the PWSC, as well as a member of the Dubois Circleâs Executive Committee from 1921 to 1935, and its Executive Secretary from 1930 to 1940. She also dedicated her time to serving with the Womenâs Cooperative Civic League, which organized grassroots efforts to bring about change by spreading awareness about a variety of issues affecting Baltimore. They did this mainly by handing out pamphlets and organizing committee fundraisers to get Baltimoreans interested and involved in supporting their cause. They also organized a flower mart in West Baltimore. Chissell served as the chair of the Flower Mart committee in the 1930s, as well as of the indoor flower show committee. She was a networker and a prominent member in her community. Because of this, she had connections with many other important African American womenâs rights activists. She would even invite Hawkins, Young, and other activists to her house for meetings and organizing events.
Once the 19th Amendment was adopted into the Constitution in 1920 securing a womanâs right to vote, Chissell continued to be an advocate for other fundamental womenâs issues. For instance, she wrote a weekly column in the Afro-American called âA Primer for Women Voters.â The column focused on giving advice and answering questions about voting for women of color. She was also involved with the Womenâs Auxiliary of the Baltimore Urban League, serving as its president in 1936. During Chissellâs time as president, the Womenâs Auxiliary focused heavily on getting white women involved with combating racial inequity. Her involvement with many different activist groups led the Afro-American to describe her as a âgo-getterâ in 1931.
Augusta Chissell passed away on May 14th, 1973 around the age of 92. Her devotion to social justice and humanitarianism never wavered throughout her long life. Up until her death, she continued to be an important part of the NAACP and the DuBois Circle. Because of the sheer influence and scope of her work, Chissell was inducted into the Maryland Womenâs Hall of Fame in March 2019. Later that year, the Maryland Womenâs Heritage Center dedicated a historical marker to both Chissell and her neighbor, Margaret Hawkins. The marker was placed in the front yard of 1534 Druid Hill Ave, Chissellâs home for much of her nearly 60 years of activism.
The research and writing of this article was funded by two grants: one from the Maryland Heritage Areas Authority and one from the Baltimore National Heritage Area.The white two-story house at 2702 Elsinore Ave was once the home of Violet Hill Whyte, the first African-American police officer in the Baltimore City Police Force. It was through her service as an officer and a social worker that Whyte became a beloved and well-respected pillar of her community.
Violet Whyte (born Violet Hill) was born in Washington, D.C. on November 18th, 1897 and moved to Baltimore as a young girl. After graduating from Douglass High School and Coppin State College, Hill became a public school teacher. She taught grammar for 6 years until she got married and had children with George Sumner Whyte, who was the principal of Public School No. 111 at the time. In the following years, Violet Whyte became a prominent social worker in her community. She became a member of the Womenâs Christian Temperance Union (WCTU) in 1931 and continued to serve in many different roles with the WCTU until 1976. Before becoming an officer, she was also a member of the Civic League advisory board and the Negro State Republican League, the executive secretary of the Parent-Teacher Federation, and president of the Intercity Child Study Association.
On December 3, 1937, Whyte was appointed an officer of the Baltimore Northwestern District Police Force. At the time, the Baltimore Police Department had never allowed an African American to become a police officer. However, on June 1st, 1937, William P. Lawson replaced Charles D. Gaither as Baltimore Police Commissioner. In his first six months, Lawson decided to end the BPDâs policy of barring African Americans from becoming police officers.Â
The station where Whyte was assigned to work served one of the largest police districts in Baltimore. Two days after her appointment, she arrested murder suspect Violet Key. The next day, over 100 Baltimoreans crowded into the station to celebrate her induction as an officer. The crowd showered her with floral arrangements and congratulations as she formally accepted her post.
Whyte worked incredibly hard. She handled homicide, abuse, assault, narcotics and robbery cases. Once, she went undercover in order to arrest the members of a narcotics gang. She even worked up to 20 hours on some days. She handed out food and gifts during holidays, and inspired local children to stop skipping school. This dedication to helping the community through both law enforcement and charity led her to be described as a âone-woman-police-force and a one-woman-social-worker combined.â In 1965, she was promoted to sergeant. Two years later in October 1967, she was promoted again to the rank of Lieutenant, a first for both African Americans and women in the BPD.
Finally, on December 3rd, 1967, Whyte retired from the police force 30 years to the day after she was appointed. She never missed a day of work. Even after retiring, she volunteered at the Western District Station to organize charity events. She also continued to be involved in many other community and charity organizations. On July 17th, 1980, after a lifetime of service, Violet Hill Whyte passed away at the age of 82.Â
A historical sign at the corner of N Payson St and W Franklin St honors the massive impact Whyte had on the city of Baltimore. Violet Hill Whyte Way near the University of Maryland, Baltimore campus was also named after her.
Amidst the grand old houses, some vacant and in disrepair, and important civil rights historic sites in Historic Marble Hill in West Baltimore sits the Henry Highland Garnet Neighborhood Park. It is a leafy green space, with flowers, trees, giant urns, winding paths, and park benches. Plaques to a variety of local leaders are spread throughout. The park, in the Baltimore National Heritage Area, is named for militant abolitionist and minister, Henry Highland Garnet.
Garnet was born into slavery on Marylandâs Eastern Shore in 1815. He and his family escaped via the Underground Railroad to New York City when he was 9 years old. Although they escaped to a northern state, slave catchers threatened his family. Garnet spent time working on ships and attended several schools established by abolitionists. He became a Presbyterian minister. In 1840 he helped found the . He was known for his captivating and radical speeches encouraging armed uprisings among the enslaved. During the Civil War he helped recruit Black soldiers for the Union Army, and narrowly escaped a white mob during the . On February 12, 1865 he was the first African American to address the United States House of Representatives, encouraging them to adopt the 13th Amendment with a sermon entitled â.â
After the end of the war, he continued to work against slavery in Cuba and Brazil. Although he had first been critical of Liberia, a colony in Africa for Black Americans, toward the end of his life he supported Black emigration. In December 1881 President James Garfield appointed him Ambassador to Liberia, and he died there a few months later on February 13, 1882.
The large historical marker at one of the entrances to the park quotes Garnetâs ââ also known as the âCall to Rebellion,â which he gave to the National Negro Convention in 1843:
Brethren, arise, arise! Strike for your lives and liberties. Now is the day and the hour. Let every slave throughout the land do this, and the days of slavery are numbered. You cannot be more oppressed than you have beenâyou cannot suffer greater cruelties than you have already. Rather die free men than live to be slaves. Remember that you are four million!
In the audience was fellow former Marylander, Frederick Douglass. The address was considered too radical to distribute,but other abolitionists, including John Brown, funded its publication.
In 1969, the Henry Highland Garnet Council, which was made up of 36 block organizations, established the park on the site of a former school. Robert Harding, a MICA professor, designed the park and Lena Boone, president of the Council, coordinated the work. The Neighborhood Improvement Program (a federally funded program of the Department of Labor) provided the labor for the creation of the park. The Baltimore City Department of Public Works furnished the walkways and plumbing for the fountain and the Department of Recreation and Parks provided $15,000 for materials. The construction company, Potts and Callahan (still operating today) donated fill dirt for the landscaping.
Over the decades the park fell into disrepair. In 2016 the park was renovated by the Marble Hill Community Association. Since 2018 it has been maintained by Friends of Henry Highland Garnet Park. In 2021 volunteers planted a rose walk and installed a bronze plaque (sponsored by the Baltimore National Heritage Area and Union Baptist Church) to honor Juanita Jackson Mitchell and Clarence M. Mitchell, Jr. The Mitchells were important civil rights activists who lived and worked in the neighborhood, and who had entertained Jackie Robinson, Eleanor Roosevelt, and Lady Bird Johnson in their rose garden. A community composting program currently provides fertilizer for the gardens, continuing the tradition of neighborhood care for, and pride in, the park.
On Beechwood Drive, leading up to the Rawlings Conservatory in Druid Hill Park stands a small historical marker. Erected in 1992, it sits where the main clay tennis courts in Druid Hill Park once stood. It was at these courts that one of the earliest Civil Rights protests in America took place: a tennis match. On Sunday, July 11th, 1948, a group of black and white tennis players gathered at two of the âwhites onlyâ clay courts to play. The game was organized by the civil rights activist group the Young Progressives of Maryland.Â
At the time, African American tennis players had to go to separate courts in the park to play tennis. These courts were crumbling and in much worse condition than the âwhites onlyâ ones. However, this ban on interracial tennis matches was not written in any law. Instead, it was an informal city policy enforced by the police. Because of this, the Young Progressives saw the courts as a good target for a protest.
The Young Progressives had already held multiple interracial matches at the clay courts protesting segregation. However, these matches were often on Sundays during church services, so few people noticed them. For the July 11th match, the Young Progressives wanted to draw a larger crowd. They posted a flier reading âKILL JIM CROW! DEMAND YOUR RIGHTS! Organize to smash discrimination in recreational facilities.â They also sent a letter to the superintendent of the Bureau of Recreation telling him their plan to hold an interracial tennis match at the park.
Their attempts at drawing a crowd on July 11th were more than successful. Hundreds of people had come to the clay tennis courts to support the Young Progressives. The Park Police were also at the courts waiting for the players to start. The players included four men and four women, with two African Americans and two whites in each group. The men were the first to try and start a game. However, as soon as they went to serve the ball, they were immediately told to leave or be arrested. The players refused to leave, and sat down on the courts. The police had to carry them off the court in order to arrest them. The women then attempted to play, but they too were arrested. Along with the players, many people in the crowd and later outside the Northern Police Station were also arrested for disorderly conduct. In total, 22 people were arrested in relation to the protest.
Those who were arrested were accused of violating park rules, disturbing the peace, and/or conspiracy to unlawfully assemble. Only 7 people charged with disturbing the peace served out a jail sentence. All of the other charges were dropped because what the protesters had done was not actually illegal. This case was an important first step in Marylandâs long Civil Rights movement. It was the first time in Maryland history that both Blacks and Whites protestors appeared in court together claiming that Jim Crow laws violated their rights.
Today, the tennis courts are still a regularly visited spot in Druid Hill Park. However, the courts that were in use when the Young Progressives played their match in 1948 were removed in 1989. All that stands as a reminder of the old clay courts is the historical sign near the Rawlings Conservatory. The sign, entitled âPlaying for Civil Rights,â is specifically dedicated to the events of June 11th, 1948, including a short explanation of the protest and why it happened. This is meant to ensure that the courage shown by the activists on that day will never be forgotten.
The research and writing of this article was funded by two grants: one from the Maryland Heritage Areas Authority and one from the Baltimore National Heritage Area.Although the famed African American lawyer and civil rights advocate George McMechen is remembered fondly for his service to the community, he is best remembered for living on McCulloh Street. In June 1910, McMechen and his family moved to 1834 McCulloh Street and the local white community reacted with outrage. The first night McMechen and his family stayed at the house on McCulloh Street, white Baltimoreans vandalized it. In the middle of the night, someone broke all the windows and flung a brick through the third-story skylight. In late 1910, white-owned newspapers reported that the vandalism occurred as a direct result of McMechen family choosing to live on McCulloh Street.
In response to the McMechen family, and several other African American families moving to McCulloh Street, the city responded with a segregation ordinance. The ordinance declared: âNo negro may take up his residence in a block within the city limits of Baltimore wherein more than half the residents are white.â
McMechen said of the ordinance, âIt is my opinion as a lawyer that it is clearly unconstitutional, unjust, and discriminating against the negro, although on its face it appears to be equally fair to white and blackâŠ.our people feel very deeply the action taken, and there is no doubt but that this feeling will shortly crystallize into a movement against the ordinance which will result in legal proceedings to have it declared void as it certainly is.â
McMechen, and another lawyer named Ashbie Hawkins (McMechenâs sisterâs husband and legal counsel for the Baltimore NAACP), led the crusade in the courts against the ordinance. In the meantime, McMechen was forced out of his house on McCulloh St.
In 1911, Hawkins and another lawyer, Warner T. McGuinn, successfully argued that the West Ordinance was unconstitutional and it was repealed. A pattern then emerged where the Mayor and City Council would tweak the ordinance and re-establish it. McMechen, Hawkins and McGuinn would then successfully argue it was unconstitutional and the ordinance would be repealed. Another segregation ordinance would then be created.
It wouldnât be until a Supreme Court case coming out of Kentucky that the Baltimore segregation ordinances would be overturned permanently. After 1910, the West Ordinance, often called the âBaltimore idea,â for promoting residential segregation proved so attractive for White Americans that it was copied in a score of other southern and border cities, including Richmond, St. Louis, and Louisville, Kentucky.
It was from Louisville that the case testing the constitutionality of segregation ordinances came to the U.S. Supreme Court in 1916. It was called Warley v. Buchanan. Buchanan was a White individual who sold a house to Warley, a Black individual. Since 8 of 10 houses were occupied by White people, Warley was not allowed to live on the block. Buchanan sued Warley in Jefferson County Circuit Court to complete the sale. Warley cited the city ordinance as the reason for non-completion of the sale.
Baltimoreâs own Ashbie Hawkins filed an amicus brief on behalf of the Baltimore Branch of the NAACP and appeared before the Supreme Court for this case. After hearing and rehearing the Court made fast work of it. The Court ruled that the motive for the Louisville ordinanceâseparation of races for purported reasonsâwas an inappropriate exercise of police power, and its insufficient purpose also made it unconstitutional.
Buchanan v. Warley is one of the most significant civil rights cases decided before the modern civil rights era. After the Supreme Court case, Maryland courts found the Baltimore segregation ordinances unconstitutional as well.
Hawkins continued to work with George McMechen until he died in 1941. McMechen continued to practice law until his death on February 22, 1961. They made an undeniable impact on our countryâs legal system.
As an influential figure in Baltimoreâs African American community, George McMechen served in many important appointed positions throughout his life. He served as a trustee of Morgan College from 1921 to 1939. He was also the first African American member appointed to the Board of School Commissioners. Lastly, he was the first Baltimorean elected Grand Exalted Ruler (National President) of the Benevolent and Protective Order of Elks of the World. In 1972, Morgan State erected its School of Business and named it in McMechenâs honor.
The research and writing of this article was funded by two grants: one from the Maryland Heritage Areas Authority and one from the Baltimore National Heritage Area.
On October 13, 1935, William âLittle Willieâ Adams and Victorine Quille were married at Saint Peter Claver Catholic Church. The young businessman and the school teacher each came from different backgrounds. William Adams, originally of Zebulon, North Carolina, arrived in Baltimore at age fifteen. Over the next six years, Adams worked his way up from running numbers and cutting sail cloth into rags at a shop on Caroline Street to owning three businesses (a bicycle shop, candy store, and barbershop). Victorine Adams grew up in a working-class family in Baltimore. She graduated from what is now Frederick Douglass High School and enrolled in the teacher training course at Coppin Normal School (now Coppin State University).
Shortly after completing the two-year training course and beginning work as a teacher, Victorine met William Adams. The pair married in 1935 and, soon thereafter, William and Victorine emerged as an influential couple in the political, social, and economic spheres of Black Baltimore. They owned several businesses along Pennsylvania Avenue (including Club Casino and the Charm Centre) and made loans to Black business owners throughout the city in the 1940s and 1950s. But they also started to use their money and connections to push for political change.
In 1946, Victorine founded the Colored Womenâs Democratic Campaign Committee of Maryland (CWDCC) to interest Black women in politics and increase their participation in the social, civic, and economic development of the city. The CWDCCâs home base was the basement of the Adams family home on Carlisle Avenue in the neighborhood of Hanlon Park. When they moved to Hanlon Park in July 1949, the couple were the first Black residents in the communityâmost of their neighbors were white and Jewish. The basement served as the headquarters for many voter registration and get-out-the-vote campaigns, as Victorine trained volunteers how to vote using an instructional model table-top voting machine from the Automatic Voting Machine Corporation of Jamestown, New York.
The couple helped many successful Black politicians win office in their campaign to diversify Maryland politics: Harry A. Cole to the Maryland State Senate in 1955; Verda Welcome to the Maryland House of Delegates in 1962; and Parren Mitchell to the United States Congress in 1970. Their home also served as the base for subsequent successful political campaigns by Victorine. She won her own seat in the Maryland House of Delegates in 1966 and became the first Black woman to serve on the Baltimore City Council after a successful race in 1967.
The Adamses continued to be involved in Baltimore politics and philanthropy throughout their lives, whether they were fundraising for the now-defunct Provident Hospital or supporting the William L. and Victorine Q. Adams Foundation, which awarded scholarships to Black residents of Baltimore City for undergraduate studies in business-related fields. Their Hanlon Park home sold shortly after Victorine died in 2006. William moved to an apartment at Roland Park Place where he died in 2011.Â
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Baltimore activists have a long history of fighting discrimination and segregation in the cityâs public establishments. In the years after World War II, the NAACP and their allies worked to end segregated seating at Fordâs Theatre on Fayette Street and drew national attention to the fight for equal rights in Baltimore.
Ford's Theatre opened in 1871. It was built by John T. Ford, a Baltimore native, and the owner of the Ford's Theatre in Washington, D.C. infamous as the site of President Abraham Lincoln's assassination. Like many other theatres in downtown Baltimore, Ford's enforced a strict policy of racially segregated seating. As early as 1947, Baltimoreâs branch of the NAACP began picketing the theatre. At that time, NAACP executive secretary Addison Pinkney stated that the protest had gone on for âthe entire seasonâ and âreduced the average attendance to less than one-half capacity of [the] building.â Unfortunately, theatre management was resistant to changing their discriminatory policies. Protests continued for five years with national and international stars joining the fight. In 1948, celebrated singer and Civil Rights activist Paul Robeson walked a picket line in front of the theatre. In 1951, Basil Rathbone, the British actor famous for playing Sherlock Holmes, declared: âYou may depend on my taking a firm stand of disapproval of the segregated theatre in Baltimore and to inform any management to whom I may in future contract myself and the case of any play in which I play.â
By 1950, the protests were hurting the theatreâs bottom line. The theatre, which was operated by United Booking Office Inc. of New York, leased the building from Baltimore theatre mogul Morris Mechanic. By 1950, United Booking Office reported that Fordâs, once one of the most prosperous theatres in the nation, had its box office receipts cut almost in half, attributing the decline to the NAACP protest and to the poor selection of plays.
In 1952, the protest gained another strong ally: Maryland Governor Theodore R. McKeldin. Speaking in early 1952 at Bethel African Methodist Episcopal Church, McKeldin declared that he wanted Fordâs opened to African Americans because they had been âneedlessly affrontedâ by its policies. âWe are going to walk together,â he said. âI am an optimist, and we must win. We are going to stop this evil thing.â On February 1, 1952, Fordâs dropped its segregation policies and was finally open to all.
In 1964, the Sun recalled, "Almost every theatrical star from the last century has played there, from James W. Wallack and Maude Adams to Katharine Cornell, and the building has gained a reputation for everything from cats on stage to deer in the balcony and bats in the dressing rooms." Unfortunately, neither theatrical or Civil Rights history could save the three-story theatre from the wrecking ball. The building was torn down in 1964 to make way for the parking garage that stands on the site today.
Trinity Baptist Church at the corner of Druid Hill Avenue and McMechen Street tells the story of Baltimore's connections to the national civil rights movement and radical Black activism in the early twentieth century.
One of the church's influential early activist leaders was Reverend Garnett Russell Waller. In July 1905, Waller joined fellow activists W.E.B. Du Bois, William Monroe Trotter at the Erie Beach Hotel in Ontario, Canada in founding the Niagara Movementâa new civil rights organization that ultimately developed into the NAACP.
Trinity Baptist Church was then located at Charles and 20th Streets and Waller, who served as the Niagara Movementâs Maryland secretary, lived nearby at 325 E. 23rd Street. James Robert Lincoln Diggs, educator and succeeded Waller as pastor of Trinity Baptist Church beginning around early 1915. Diggs shared Waller's commitment to activism and was also a participant in the 1905 founding of the Niagara Movement.
In 1918, Diggs helped to establish the Baltimore chapter of the Universal Negro Improvement Association and African Communities League (UNIA-ACL) in 1918. The UNIA-ACL was first established in Ohio in 1914 by Marcus Garvey, a Jamaican-born activist. Diggs was close with Garvey and presided over his marriage to Amy Jacques Garvey in 1922.
In May 1920, Diggs led the congregation's move to Druid Hill Avenue after the congregation purchased the 1872 St. Paul's English Evangelical Lutheran Church for $40,000. The church quickly put their new building to workâhosting the 1920 annual convention for the National Equal Rights League in October. The conference was presided over by Rev. J. H. Taylor, secretary of the Maryland Association for Social Service, with speakers including founding member Monroe Trotter, lawyer Nathan S. Taylor from Chicago, and Trinityâs own Rev. Diggs.
The church also served as a center for local activism. For example, on February 1, 1921, 500 people gathered at Trinity Baptist Church at Druid Hill Avenue and Mosher Street to protest the release of a white man, Harry Feldenheimer, on a $500 bail soon after police arrested him for an attempted assault on a 10-year-old black girl named Esther Short. The Afro-American reported that participants in the meeting criticized the âbrutality of the local police, exclusion of qualified men from the police force and from juries in the city, and the Jim Crow arrangements for colored people in the Criminal and Juvenile Courts.â
Regrettably, Diggs health began to decline around the fall of 1922 and he soon entered a hospital. On April 14, 1923, he died at home and was buried in Mount Auburn Cemetery. Rev. Garnett R. Waller died in Baltimore in 1941 but the church both individuals supported continues to this day.
1621 Bolton Street is the childhood home of Walter Sondheim, Jr.: a local business executive and civic leader who is best known for his role as president of the Baltimore City School Board as the city first sought to put an end to racially segregated school following the 1954 Brown v. Board of Education decision. In their decision, the U.S. Supreme Court ruling that "separate educational facilities are inherently unequal." In contrast to many southern school districts, Sondheim led the school board to immediately respond to the ruling with a new policy that, at least officially, allowed white and black students to attend any school regardless of their race.
Leaders in Baltimoreâs African American community had lobbied for more resources for the cityâs black students as far back as the 1860s. In 1867, for example, the Baltimore Association for the Moral and Educational Improvement of the Colored People successfully petitioned the city to provide funds for the education of black children. And, in 1882, Everett J. Waring, Reverend Harvey Johnson, and others succeeded in pushing the school board to establish the first âcoloredâ high school for black students, which went on to become the school we know today as Frederick Douglas High School.
In the early 1950s, Baltimoreâs NAACP and Urban League began advocating to integrate Polytechnic Institute, particularly the schoolâs elite engineering program. Their efforts culminated in a contentious hearing at the school board in 1952 where among others, Thurgood Marshall battled against the Poly Alumni Association and others to integrate the school. With Walter Sondheim as the chair, board members voted five to three to integrate, and fifteen African American students entered the program at Poly that fall.
Despite this victory, attempts to integrate Baltimoreâs all-female Western High School and Mergenthaler School of Printing (better known locally as âMervoâ) failed in 1953. Efforts of challenging these decisions were put on hold as Marshall and others from the NAACP knew the case from Topeka, Kansas, Brown v. Board of Education, would be heading to the U.S. Supreme Court. When the unanimous Brown decision came out in May 1954, Baltimore already had years of advocacy and attention to the issue of desegregation.
While Baltimore did not experience the violence that desegregation sparked in other cities, the city never successfully integrated its schools. In the fall of 1954, six white students enrolled in formerly all-black schools and sixteen hundred black students enrolled in formerly all-white schools. By 1960, African American students became the majority in the school system. In 1961, 75% of the cityâs schools were either 90% black or 90% white. In 1973, the U.S. Office of Civil Rights threatened to withhold federal funds charging that the city was not doing enough to integrate the schools.
Union Baptist Church traces its origins to 1852 and a group of fifty-seven worshipers meeting in a small building on Lewis Street. It was the fifth oldest African American congregation in Baltimore and financed entirely by African Americans. The first pastor of the church was the Reverend John Carey. In 1866, the Lewis Street congregation merged with members of Saratoga Street African Baptist Church, forming Union Baptist Church. When Rev. Harvey Johnson arrived in 1872, he found a modest congregation of perhaps 270 members.Â
Harvey Johnsonâs dealings with the Maryland Baptist Maryland Baptist Union Association (MBUA) in particular, and with prejudiced white Baptists in general, served as a proving ground for his leadership and vision. He took the skills honed in the battle for equality among all Baptists and transfered those skills as he entered the fight for equaliy among all people. Johnsonâs original cause of friction with the MBUA stemmed from its paternalistic approach to black people and black Baptist churches. Not only did black ministers categorically receive less pay than white counterparts, but black churches were slow to realize full and equal political priviledges within the state denomination governing apparati. This problem was more troubling once, thanks in no small part to Johnson himself, black numbers in the stateâs Baptist churches began grow. By 1885, Union Baptist's membership surpassed two thousand members for the first time.
Rev. Johnson's response to this discrimination was two-fold: economic independence and institutional autonomy. This situation exploded throughout the 1890s as Johnson urged black congregations to free themselves of white purse strings, and to get out of the Union Association altogether. One of Rev. Johnson's most controversal speeches brought this issue to fore. In September 1897, speeking in Boston, Johnson made, "A Plea For Our Work As Colored Baptists, Apart From the Whites." Johnson called for black Baptists to move as a group toward self-determination.
The Union Baptist Churchâs Gothic design features stained glass windows created by John LeFarge, the renowned artist known as the inventor of the art of using opalescent stained glass.
The Baltimore Black Musicians Union opened a meeting hall and boarding house at 620-622 Dolphin Street around the 1940s. Due to the discrimination of Baltimore's downtown hotels at that time, traveling black musicians would stay overnight in the rooms located in part of the building. Both locals and traveling musicians also used the building for meetings and socializing.
Even in the late 1970s, the building continued to be used for music education. Former neighborhood resident Catherine Bailey recalled in a recent post on the Baltimore Old Photos Facebook Group:
âI used to have marching band practice in the basement as a little girl. We were the pride of Baltimore!â
The building later operated as the meeting hall for the Elks fraternal organization and as Mrs. Joanneâs After Hours club.
A native of Goochland County, near Richmond, Virginia, Warner T. McGuinn was born less than two years before the Civil War in November 1859. His parents, Jared and Fannie McGuinn, sent him to public school in Richmond and then he went on to graduate from Lincoln University in 1884. Warner McGuinn studied law at Howard University for two years but finished his degree at Yale, where he served as the president of the Law Club and made friends with Mark Twain before graduating in 1887. Twain even supported McGuinn's education after finding out that the young man was working his way through school.
McGuinn moved to Baltimore in 1890 and was admitted as a lawyer to the Maryland Bar in 1891. The next year he married Anna L. Wallace, a fellow Virginian, and started a family with the birth of their daughter Alma in September 1895. McGuinn started working with Harry S. Cummings, Baltimore's first African American City Councilman in 1893, and moved to 1911 Division Street, just six blocks north of Cummings' house on Druid Hill Avenue.
McGuinn participated in Civil Rights struggles and Republican politics throughout his life in Baltimore. In 1910, McGuinn and W. Ashbie Hawkins worked together to overturn the West segregation ordinance and McGuinn argued against a similar ordinance in court in 1917. In 1911, he voiced his support for women's suffrage by reading an "exhaustive" paper on the issue to an assembly gathered at Bethel A.M.E. Church to inaugurate the Baltimore Historical and Literary Association. The Afro-American Ledger reported that McGuinn reminded his audience of the principle of the consent of the governed found in the Declaration of Independenceâmaking it evident that all adults had a right to participate in electing their own representatives regardless of their color or gender.
Warner T. McGuinn served two terms as a Republican on the Baltimore City Council, from 1919 to 1923 and 1927 to 1931. In May 1919, after his first election, the Afro-American quoted the new Councilman who said:
"I shall do my best in the City Council to fulfill every pledge that has been made during the campaign, especially as regards the health and school conditions of the race."
In 1927, the Sun praised his service as a Councilman, writing:
"No member has been more efficient or more earnest in endeavoring to promote public welfare than Warner T. McGuinn... He set an example of nonpartisanship in consideration of measures before the Council, and when he spoke upon them showed that he had taken pains to inform himself. His record deserves commendation."
While visiting his daughter Alma in Philadelphia, Warner McGuinn died on July 10, 1937. His home on Division Street still stands.
A neglected brick rowhouse at 1318 Druid Hill Avenue was once the residence of Baltimoreâs first black City Councilman Harry S. Cummings.
Harry S. Cummings, his wife Blanche Teresa Conklin and their two children Louise Virginia and Harry Sythe Cummings, Jr. moved to 1318 Druid Hill Avenue in 1911. The family hadn't moved far. They had moved to 1234 Druid Hill Avenue in 1898 and Cummings' sister continued to live in the house up through the 1950s. This house, later known as Freedom House for its' role as offices for the local chapter of the NAACP, was torn down by Bethel AME Church in November 2015.
The rowhouse at 1318 Druid Hill Avenue was not only a family home but also a place for politics. Cummings campaigned and won re-election to the City Council in 1911 and 1915. In 1912, Cummings hosted the Seventeenth Ward Organization at his home where local Republicans met to endorse President William Howard Taft. Unfortunately, Cummings fell ill at age fifty-one and, on September 5, 1917, the Sun reported that Cummings was "critically ill at his home, 1318 Druid Hill Avenue, of a complication of diseases and a blood clot on the brain. It was said last night that he had not spoken since last Friday."
Cummings died on September 7, 1917, at his home. On Monday, September 10, thousands of people, both white and black, visited the Metropolitan M.E. Church on Orchard Street to see the âremains lay in stateâ and hundreds of people visited his home. Rev. Leonard Z. Johnson, the pastor of Madison Street Presbyterian Church, conducted a brief service at 1318 Druid Hill Avenue, remarking:
âThis life is a token and a proof of Negro possibility in the sphere of life achievement, if given its chances to fulfil itself, and while such Negro possibility shows there shall none, of right reason, decry the Negro people and race and reuse right and a place of common human respect and equal opportunity of strong life in the citizen life of the nation.â
Blanche T. Cummings continued to live in the house up until her death on January 12, 1955, and the property remained in family ownership up until 2005. Despite the deteriorated condition of the building today, the backyard still holds a reminder of the Cummings familyâa rare American Elm planted on Harry S. Cummings, Jr.âs seventh birthday. Neighbors hope to see the history of this home and memories of the Cummings family preserved of for generations to come.
1805 Madison Avenue was built around 1886, when the property was first advertised in the Baltimore Sun as available to rent for $35 per month. In July 1888, Benjamin and Rosetta Rosenheim purchased the home and moved in with their two young children.  Benjamin was a lawyer with an office at 19 East Fayette Street. When Rosetta needed help at home in January 1889, the Rosenheim household placed an advertisement in the Sun seeking a âWhite Girl, from 15 to 17 years to nurse two children, aged 2 Âœ and 4.â Similar advertisements appeared again in June 1889 and March 1890 seeking a caretaker for the two children. The family didnât stay long, however, and on May 29, 1893, Benjamin and Rosetta Rosenheim sold the home to Julia Gusdorff.
The home sold again in 1902 and 1914. In the late 1910s and early 1920s, many of the German Jewish immigrants who had occupied the Madison Avenue homes for the past couple decades began moving northwest into new neighborhoods like Park Circle northwest of Druid Hill Park. Replacing these residents were African Americans home-owners and tenants. In 1923, Keiffer Jackson, husband of the well known civil rights activist Lille Mae Carol Jackson, purchased 1805 Madison Avenue for $3200.
Lillie Mae Carroll and her husband Kieffer Jackson never lived at 1805 Madison Avenue but rented the property to African American tenants from a wide range of backgrounds. In February 1928, Frank H. Berryman, the manager of William âK.O.â Smith and K.O. Martin, publicly sought to âarrange either local or out-of-town bouts for one or both of his fightersâ noting managers could reach him at 1805 Madison Avenue. Mrs. Lizzie Futz lived at the house in 1931 when she was quoted in the Afro American criticizing a move by the Baltimore school superintendent to segregate white and black children on a recent field trip to Fort McHenry:
âI honestly think that the principal was unquestionably wrong in asking that the two groups be separated. There was no reason for the separation. School children of today get along better than their elders. Itâs such segregation acts that breeds prejudice in the future.â
Born in Baltimore on April 29, 1922, Parren James Mitchell moved around as a child. Early on, his family lived on Stockton Street near Presstman Street just south of Saint Peter Claver Church which had stood on North Fremont Avenue since September 9, 1888.
He was seven years old when his family moved into a new home at 712 Carrollton Avenue. The new neighborhood had started life as an elite suburb built between the 1870s and 1880s within a short walk of Lafayette Square or Harlem Park. Prior to the 1910s and 1920s, the population of the neighborhood was largely segregated white (although many African American households lived in smaller alley dwellings on the interior of the districtâs large blocks). Segregation in the  was enforced through deed restrictions, local legislation and even physical attacks on black families that attempted to move into the neighborhood.
Parren Mitchellâs move to the house on Madison Avenue came at an important moment in the nationâs relationship to struggling cities in the wake of the riots in Baltimore and cities around the country in 1968. The home was a source of pride and provided Mitchell with a perspective on city life that few other representatives in Congress could match. In June 1974, during a discussion of âurban homesteading,â Parren Mitchell shared the success of the cityâs new homesteading program (established in 1973) seen from his own front stoop, remarking:
âCome to my house at 1805 Madison Avenue in the heart of a ghetto in Baltimore City and look at the home across the street which was sold for $1 under the Homestead Act. If you do you will see a beautiful and decent residence for a family.â
During hearings on the , Mitchell repeated the offer:
âI will take part of my 5-minute time to extend an invitation to visit my home in Baltimore, Md. I live at 1805 Madison Avenue, which is deep in the bowels of the city. It is the ghetto. Four years ago, I purchased a home in the 1800 block of Madison Avenue at 1805, using conventional financing. I have rehabilitated the home, and I think itâs attractive enough for you to come to visit me on a Saturday morning in the 1800 block of Madison Avenue.â
The renovation to the house cost $32,000 and combined the first and second floor of the building with a new staircase returning the stories into a single unit. He rebuilt the third floor as a rental apartment, a configuration that remains in use at the building today.
The home may have been a source of pride and a sign of his strong commitment to Baltimore but it was also a site of conflict between Congressman Mitchell, the Baltimore City Police Department, and even the Ku Klux Klan. Between 1968 and 1974, before Mitchellâs move to 1805 Madison, the Baltimore Police Department Inspectional Services Division (ISD) kept his home under twenty-four-hour surveillance, illegally bugged his home and office telephones for eight months, and placed paid informers in his congressional campaigns. Beginning in 1971, Mitchell began calling for the resignation of Baltimore Police Commissioner . When the ISD surveillance program (and its close ties to the FBI) were revealed, Congressman Mitchell extended his criticism to the ISD.
In 1977, Parren Mitchell and his neighbors secured Madison Park designation by the Baltimore Commission for Historical and Architectural Preservation as a local historic district â the first in an African American neighborhood. The lead champion of the historic district was Michael B. Lipscomb, an aide to Parren Mitchell and office manager at the Congressmanâs Bloomingdale Road office.
Lipscomb was a resident in Madison Park and the vice-president of the Madison Park Improvement Association. In his testimony before CHAP, Lipscomb observed that the district was the âcityâs first all black historic district,â continuing:
âI came here because I love the house. I love the size of the house, the rooms, the old architecture, the high ceilings, the 10-foot high solid wood doors, the marble fireplaces, the stained glass windows. To get a house built like this would be astronomically expensive.â
Other residents in Madison Park were also active in the cityâs civic organizations, including John R. Burleigh, II, a resident of 1829 Madison Avenue and director of Baltimoreâs Equal Opportunity program and Delegate Lena K. Lee who lived at 1818 Madison Avenue. Delegate Lee also supported the historic district designation, testifying:
âWe have been working in this area since 1940 to clean it up and keep the intruders out, to keep it from being overrun by bars, sweatshops and storefront churches that stay a little while and then pack up and go. We want to make it purely residential by getting out all business.â
Parren Mitchell sold the property to Sarah Holley in 1986 and moved just a few blocks away to 1239 Druid Avenue. He remained at that location until 1993 when he returned to Harlem Park and lived at 828 North Carrollton Avenue where he remained until 2001. This property has been featured on 91ÊÓÆ” of Lafayette Square and is now used as offices for the Upton Planning Council. Sarah Holley lived at the 1805 Madison Avenue from 1986 through 1989 and, since 1989, the property has been maintained as a rental property.
Built in 1921, Pool No. 2 in Druid Hill Park served the recreational and competitive swimming needs of over 100,000 Black residents Baltimore. Pool No. 2 measured just 100â x 105â (half the size of whites-only Pool No. 1), but proved so popular that the swimmers had to be admitted in shifts. In 1953, a young Black boy swimming with friends in the Patapsco River accidentally drowned. The tragedy revealed the difficult circumstances for many Black residents looking for a place to swim in Baltimore. The boy lived near Clifton Park but swam in a dangerous river due to his exclusion from the parkâs whites-only pool. In response, the NAACP started a new push to make all of Baltimore's municipal pools open to all races. When the City Parks Board refused to desegregate, the NAACP filed a lawsuit and eventually won on appeal.
On June 23, 1956, at the start of the summer season, Baltimore pools opened as desegregated facilities for the first time. Over 100 African Americans tested the waters in previously white-only Pool No. 1 but only a single white person swam in Pool. No. 2.
Pool No. 2 closed the next year and remained largely abandoned up until 1999. That year, Baltimore artist Joyce J. Scott won a commission to turn Pool No. 2 into a memorial. In creating her installation, Scott asked herself, âHow do we make this area useful and beautiful, and harken back to the pool era?â The results combined architectural elements and aquatic symbolism with abstract, colorful painted designs on the pavement around the pool. The designs and interpretive signage have weathered in the years since but Pool No. 2 remained an important destination to explore the Civil Rights history of Druid Hill Park and Baltimore's pools.
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Saint Peter Claver Church at Pennsylvania Avenue and Fremont Street takes itsâ name from a sixteenth-century Spanish priest who is considered the patron saint of slaves. The building dates back to 1888 making it the cityâs 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 cityâs 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 Peopleâs March on Washington. The march, planned by the by the Southern Christian Leadership Conference before Kingâs 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 cityâs 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 âwholly dedicated to being a priest in the African American community,â and recalled him as âa tireless fighter for justice who did things that people said were not possible.â
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.