<commit_before>---
title: "1905-1929"
excerpt: "Segregation and WWI"
permalink: /overview/1905-1929/
categories:
  - overview
tags: draft
sidebar:
  nav: "overview"
header:
  overlay_image: uva-lib_330943.jpg
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  caption: "Carnegie Hall at Morgan College (now Morgan State University). Photo by <NAME>, 1921 November 3. _Courtesy University of Virginia, [330943](http://search.lib.virginia.edu/catalog/uva-lib:330943)._"
---

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## Introduction

Baltimore’s urban landscape saw big changes during the first three decades of the twentieth century. Following the Great Baltimore Fire of 1904, the city rebuilt the downtown. In 1915, the city dedicated a new sanitary sewer system after decades of delay. In 1918, Baltimore City annexed a large area of Baltimore County spurring the rapid expansion of neighborhoods out from the center on along the electric streetcar lines. During World War I, the city's population boomed and scores of new factories opened.

A changing city did not always mean progress for African Americans. Black Baltimoreans fought against an aggressive effort to impose racial segregation on residential neighborhoods and struggled to get their fair share of benefits from the city's growth. African Americans experienced continued discrimination against black workers and woefully unequal conditions for black students and teachers in the city's public schools.

<!-- TODO: Figure out how economic instability (the Panic of 1901, Panic of 1903, and the city's downturn following WWI) affected black workers in this period. -->

![Chart: Baltimore City total population compared to black population, 1900-1930](https://baltimoreheritage.github.io/civil-rights-heritage/images/baltimore-city-population-1900-1930-total-black.png)

The city's population grew from 508,957 in 1900 to 733,826 in 1920, reaching 804,874 people by 1930. The city's black population grew from 79,739 in 1900; 84,749 in 1910; 108,322 in 1920; and 142,106 in 1930.^[U.S. Census, 1900; 1910; 1920; 1930.] In the years after the Civil War, most black migrants to Baltimore came from Maryland or Virginia and this pattern continued into the early twentieth century. In 1910, 87% of the black population in Baltimore was native to Maryland and migrants from Virginia made up 8.7% of the group born outside of the state. This set Baltimore apart from other large cities with growing populations of black residents. In 1920, 76% of Baltimore's black population was native to Maryland, in comparison to Detroit's 8.4% or Manhattan's 20.9%. By 1930, 59.4% of Baltimore's black population was native to Maryland—a modest decline of 17.1% since 1910.[@reich_baltimore_2014, 18]

<!-- TODO: Add more information about annexation and how it affected the city. -->

<!-- TODO: What are the labor and housing issues related to race and Civil Rights during World War I? -->

The growth of racially segregated suburbs at the edges of the city, formal and informal policies of clearance and containment to isolate black neighborhoods, and the segregated condition of Baltimore's public schools all contributed to the increasing concentration of Baltimore's black population in northwest Baltimore. By 1904, a full half of Baltimore’s black population lived in the city's seventeenth ward bounded by Biddle Street, Argyle Avenue, Druid Hill Avenue, and North Avenue.[@power_apartheid_1983] At present, scores of buildings with important associations to this period in Baltimore's Civil Rights history survive within the Old West Baltimore National Register Historic District covering the neighborhoods of Madison Park, Upton, Druid Heights, Harlem Park, and Sandtown-Winchester. Examples include the former St. Peter’s P.E. Church (built 1868) which was purchased by Bethel A.M.E. Church in 1910; Public School No. 103 (built 1877) converted to use as black school the same year; the Druid Hill Avenue Branch of the Young Men's Christian Association (YMCA) built in 1919; and, after 1928, the former Western High School building on McCulloh Street housed the Coppin Normal School, Colored Junior High School, and offices for the Baltimore colored school administration.

Black occupancy and activism was not solely limited to West Baltimore. The Morgan Park neighborhood, home to W.<NAME> and Dr. <NAME>, began development in 1917 when Morgan College moved to northeast Baltimore. In Baltimore County, growing African American communities included St. Stephens A.M.E. Church (which replaced their original 1878 church with a new building in 1907 which stood until 1972); the Big Falls community where an African American schoolhouse on Hereford Road remained in use until 1936; the Cuba Road community which grew around Gough United Methodist Church (erected in 1907 to replace an 1875 church and school building); and Lutherville where Colored School Number 24 opened in 1909 (making it the second oldest African American schoolhouse in Baltimore County).[@e.h.t._traceries_african_2016]

<!-- TODO: Decide if it makes sense to note <NAME>ens (built 1917) as a significant site in this period. -->

!["Pay day for the stevedores", c. 1905. Detroit Publishing Company. _[Courtesy Library of Congress](https://www.loc.gov/resource/det.4a12583/)._](https://cdn.loc.gov/service/pnp/det/4a10000/4a12000/4a12500/4a12583v.jpg)

Baltimore's Civil Rights activists in the late nineteenth century defended some of the rights black residents won following the Civil War but legal setbacks such as the U.S. Supreme Court decision in _Plessy v. Ferguson_ (1896) encouraged new white supremacist campaigns attacking the rights of black voters, segregating residential neighborhoods and public accommodations, and restricting black students to underfunded public schools.^[Other notable setbacks for Civil Rights activists include _Berea College v. Kentucky_ (1908).] After Mississippi passed a new state constitution in 1890 that disenfranchised black voters (the so-called ["Mississippi Plan"](https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mississippi_Plan)), white Democratic Party leaders in every state below the border south (Delaware, Maryland, West Virginia, Kentucky, and Missouri) found a way to do the same by 1910.[@thompson_civil_1996, 1]

In Maryland, and in most northern states, activists could not find political support for Civil Rights from either the white supremacist Democrat Party or the Republican Party (which segregated black party members at local meetings and conferences by 1910).[@thompson_civil_1996, 32] Despite after the addition of black women to the pool of African American voters (following the ratification the Nineteenth Amendment in 1920), African American residents made up a small share of the city's voters, as historian <NAME> notes:

>In 1900, blacks comprised fifteen percent of the voting-age population and fifteen percent of the registered voters. By 1932, blacks comprised sixteen percent of the voting-age population, but only twelve percent of the registered voters. Only in a few wards did the black vote make a difference in local elections. In 1931, four wards had a black majority and three others were evenly populated by blacks and whites.[@thompson_civil_1996, 33]

In the absence of leadership from elected officials, Civil Rights activists in Baltimore still continued to fight and, in some cases, win in the courts. The U.S. Supreme Court decision in _Guinn v. United States_ (1915) outlawed grandfather clauses; _<NAME>_ (1917) abolished residential segregation ordinances in the large number of other cities that passed such laws modeled after Baltimore's 1910 ordinance; _<NAME>_ (1923) outlawed mob trials; and _<NAME>_ (1927) abolished the practice of white primaries. In Baltimore, African American residents won victories to limit the growth of legal segregation in transportation, voting rights, and housing between 1904 and 1918.[@thompson_civil_1996, 31] <NAME> argued that these cases were distinct from the earlier advocacy by suggesting that the Brotherhood of Liberty in the 1880s and 1890s used the law to "defend black civil rights against encroachments by whites" but not "strengthen, re-establish, or expand black civil rights".[@thompson_civil_1996, 28] Thompson writes:

>These were important victories for the civil rights struggle because they showed that blacks could respond to segregation and the abridgement of rights and helped set the stage for the civil rights movement.[@thompson_civil_1996, 3]

As the city's black population grew in the 1920s, conditions for black workers and residents remained difficult. In recognition of the notable challenges in this period, some scholars have diminished the significance of activism in Baltimore during the early twentieth century and instead portrayed a later period beginning between the 1930s and 1950s as a kind of “golden age” of civil rights activism in the city.^[For example, <NAME> wrote "Before 1935, blacks and the civil rights struggle were on the defensive, responding to segregation and the loss of rights." (p.4).] As a corrective measure, historian <NAME> has argued for the importance of an expansive definition for Civil Rights activism that includes "struggles for access to municipal and social services and struggles related to labor and employment." Using this definition, Doster notes the importance of lesser-known organizations including the Federation of Parent-Teacher Clubs, the Women’s Cooperative Civic League, the Independent Republican League, and the Baltimore Urban League.[@doster_strike_2015] Other significant groups in this period included fraternal organizations such as the Monumental Lodge No. 3[@schiszik_monumental_2013] and philanthropic groups such as the CYWCA (founded in 1896) and the Colored Fresh Air and Empty Stocking Circle (established in 1904 by Ida Cummings and other members of the CYWCA).[@bowling_how_2002] In 1927, the Maryland state legislature established a new “Interracial Commission” (Chapter 559, Acts of 1927) to create a framework for discussing Civil Rights policy issues.

Prominent individual activists and leaders during this period included City Councilman <NAME> (1866–1917) and educator Ida <NAME> (1867–1958) (brother and sister); lawyers <NAME> (1859–1914), <NAME> (1859–1937), and <NAME> (1871–1961); pastor Rev. Dr. <NAME> (1852–1919); and newspaper editor Dr. <NAME> (1889–1967). Notable organizations included the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP) (established in 1909, with a Baltimore chapter beginning in 1912) and the Baltimore Urban League (established nationally in 1910, with a Baltimore chapter beginning in 1924). The _Afro-American Newspaper_ under the editorial leadership of <NAME> (beginning with the death of <NAME>, Sr. in 1922) also became a vocal proponent of Civil Rights in Baltimore.[@farrar_baltimore_1998]

<!-- TODO: I cut this passage on the activism of the Afro: "exemplified by efforts such as the newspaper's campaign against segregated buses and discrimination by bus drivers along Howard Street in July 1929" It doesn't belong here so I need to find another place for it. -->

These varied organizations and individual activists and leaders subscribed to a range of different beliefs about how black Baltimoreans could counter white supremacist attacks on their lives and communities. Historian <NAME> contrasts the philosophies of <NAME> and the accommodationist "Atlanta Compromise" with the "more radical" position of <NAME>, writing:

>For <NAME>, accommodation and uplift would not solve the problems blacks faced. He advocated the more radical position that blacks should oppose segregation and work for their political and civil rights.[@thompson_civil_1996, 2]

Philosophical and political debates at a national level influenced local Civil Rights activism in Baltimore and Baltimore influenced the national movement. In 1905, Rev. <NAME> and four other members of Baltimore's Brotherhood of Liberty were among the twenty-nine people from fourteen states who met near Buffalo, New York to form the Niagara Movement.^[The Niagara Movement ended within five years but led directly to the creation of the NAACP in 1909.] Historian <NAME>-Thomas suggested that <NAME> was in “close contact with members of the Brotherhood... as he frequently traveled there to deliver speeches” between 1895 and 1910. Collier-Thomas noted that the Brotherhood “willingly shared twenty years of experience, strategy development and know-how with the founders at Niagara.”[@collier-thomas_harvey_1991, 224] The city also included supporters of Book<NAME> as the [National Negro Business League](https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/National_Negro_Business_League) (organized by Booker T. Washington in Boston in 1900) held their Ninth Annual Convention in Baltimore in 1908. For others, the Niagara Movement and, later, the NAACP did not go far enough. Pastor and educator Rev. <NAME>	(1866-1922) at Trinity Baptist Church was a prominent supporter of the [Universal Negro Improvement Association and African Communities League](https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Universal_Negro_Improvement_Association_and_African_Communities_League) (UNIA-ACL) (established in 1914, with an active Baltimore chapter by 1918).

This section is organized around four themes that help us understand Civil Rights activism within this period:

- black opposition to white supremacist efforts to disenfranchise black voters and promote racial segregation in housing and public accommodations.
- the local and national movement to stop lynchings, mob violence, and criminal injustice
- grass-roots activism to improve housing conditions and educational opportunities for African Americans in Baltimore
- the expansion of voting rights for women and the emerging role of black women as organizers and activists

## Opposition to disenfranchisement and segregation

In the late nineteenth and early twentieth century, prominent white political leaders, especially within the Democratic Party, championed white supremacist policies of disenfranchising black voters and segregating housing and public accommodations. Some contemporaries argued that segregation was a "solution" to the disturbing violence of lynchings. Recent historians (notably <NAME>) have illustrated how segregation was a key part of how, after the Civil War and the end of Reconstruction, white Americans reasserted their dominance in the South through a cultural system based on violence and physical separation.[@hale_making_2010] Historian Carl Nightingale, echoes this analysis writing:

><NAME> ordinances segregating rail and trolley cars, theaters, restaurants and other public amenities signaled Southern whites' final rejection of physical proximity as a method of social control, and their embrace of distance.[@nightingale_transnational_2006, 674]

In Maryland, the state legislature passed a law in 1904 to require segregation on all railroads and, in 1908, extended the law to include electric lines and steamboats. Black opponents in Baltimore secured "an exemption [from the law] for travel within Baltimore, but outside the city limits all blacks suffered the ignominy of being separated."[@thompson_civil_1996, 31] Baltimore lawyer <NAME> argued a test case against the racist transportation ordinance in 1920 without success and the law remained on the books up until 1951.[@thompson_civil_1996, 32]

The segregated character of city life during this period was later recalled by <NAME> who grew up in Baltimore in the 1910s and 1920s, "The only thing different between the South and Baltimore was trolley cars. They weren't segregated. Everything else was segregated."^[See @thompson_civil_1996, 12; Thompson cites <NAME>, "Marshall's Law," Washington Post Magazine, 7 January 1990, 12-17.]

The state legislature promoted the disenfranchisement of black voters in a series of proposals between 1905 and 1910. A coalition of African American activists and recent European immigrants worked together under the banner of the Maryland Suffrage League to defeat all three. White Republican party leaders like prominent Baltimore lawyer <NAME> also played an role in rallying opposition to these proposals, as historian <NAME> described Bonaparte's opposition to the Poe and Strauss Amendments in 1905 and 1908.[@phelps_charles_1959] Ultimately black and white opponents to the disenfranchisement campaign succeeded, defeating the Poe Amendment with 104,286 to 70,227 votes in 1905. In 1908, voters narrowly defeated the similar Strauss disenfranchisement bill 106,069 to 98,808 votes. In 1910, Maryland voters conclusively defeated a third proposal, the Digges Amendment, by 84,000 to 46,000 votes.[@smith_here_2008, 65]

Not long after on December 19, 1910, Baltimore City passed a new law, known commonly as the West Ordinance after the bill's proponent Councilman <NAME>, to require the racial segregation of residential blocks in Baltimore.
As the first residential segregation law in the country the been the subject of detailed scholarly study over the past thirty years.^[@power_apartheid_198; @nightingale_transnational_2006; @jr_infectious_2009; @boger_meaning_2009; @halpin_reforming_2012; @halpin_struggle_2015] Historian <NAME> described how the 1910 housing segregation ordinance worked, writing:

>This ordinance prohibited blacks from purchasing or occupying houses on blocks in which fifty-one percent of the dwellers were white. Similarly, whites could not move into blocks that were predominantly black.

Thompson continues to note:

>In less than one month, twenty-six cases were on the court docket. In the very first case, the presiding judges ruled that the law was invalid because it was drawn incorrectly.[@thompson_civil_1996, 34-35; @power_apartheid_198, 298-303]

<!-- TODO: Add information about the block of McCulloh Street that served as a flashpoint for this conflict over segregation. -->

After the court overturned the first ordinance, the City Council passed a similar ordinance on April 7, 1911. They quickly repealed and replaced the bill with a third segregation ordinance on May 15, 1911, entitled:

> an ordinance for preserving peace, preventing conflict and ill feeling between the white and colored races in Baltimore city, and promoting the general welfare of the city by providing, so far as practicable, for the use of separate blocks by white and colored people for residences, churches and schools.[@_baltimore_1911]

In 1917, the U.S. Supreme Court decision in _Buchanan v. Warley_ (1917) declared racial segregation ordinances (including Baltimore's) unconstitutional. While the decision limited the enforcement of Baltimore's segregation ordinance to less than seven years, the measure still had a lasting effect, as <NAME> notes:

>By the end of the 1910s, black Baltimoreans resistance to the ordinances remade the city’s racial geography. Nevertheless, they struggled to challenge the strategies segregationists used in the wake of the laws’ demise.[@halpin_reforming_2012, 204]

<NAME> also notes how the NAACP's national advocacy around residential segregation has roots in the fight over segregation in Baltimore.[@doster_strike_2015] As Halpin and others note, deed restrictions, racist practices by professional realtors, and urban design and planning (described by some as "clearance and containment") all contributed to the persistence of segregation even after the 1917 decision. With exceptions in the neighborhoods of Morgan Park and Howard Park in northeast Baltimore, local builders and developers almost never erected new homes for black buyers in the first half of the twentieth century. Roland Park, developed beginning in 1891, Guilford (developed beginning in 1913) and Homeland (developed beginning in 1924) served as models of racial exclusion for developers around the country as the Roland Park Company:

 >...used deed restrictions as the cornerstone of a broader attempt to manufacture a dichotomy between suburban and urban space in order to sell a new spatial and social arrangement to a status-conscious white middle class. Other developers frequently requested copies of its deed restrictions.[@glotzer_exclusion_2015, 481]

![This sign commemorates the groundbreaking of the 667th house in Guilford, on January 17, 1930. _[Courtesy Sheridan Libraries Special Collections, Johns Hopkins University](http://hub.jhu.edu/magazine/2014/fall/roland-park-papers-archives/)._](http://api.hub.jhu.edu/factory/sites/default/files/styles/hub_large/public/roland-6.jpg)

<NAME> notes the National Association of Real Estate Boards (NAREB) adoption of a Code of Ethics in 1913 (the same year the Roland Park Company began using racial restrictions in deeds) then revised the code in 1924 to prevent any Realtor from:

>“introducing into a neighborhood a character of property or occupancy, members of any race or nationality, or any individual whose presence will clearly be detrimental to property values in that neighborhood.”[@glotzer_exclusion_2015, 488]

The Roland Park Company also planned physical boundaries between their development and nearby properties occupied by black Baltimoreans, for example, planting "a long hedge to cut off sightlines of a predominantly black settlement down the hill, the same settlement where it later located its sewage disposal field."[@glotzer_exclusion_2015, 482-483]

Some white Baltimoreans promoted a similar approach in the area of Mount Royal Avenue where, in 1909, <NAME>, commander of the Fifth Regiment, wrote to the _Sun_ advocating for the extension of Howard Street north of the Richmond Market as a way of tearing down homes occupied by African Americans:

> I would be deeply interested in this improvement because it means so much more than simply tearing down some houses and opening a street. Everyone in the city is familiar with the steady decrease which has taken place in the value of property in this neighborhood for the last 20 years.
> All about Richmond Market, and extending north, there are hundreds of undesirable houses and, in many cases, huts. This sore is spreading rapidly. A great many negroes, not of the best class, gradually tenant the houses on the edge of this district and immediately the white people move from the block invaded. If this continues no one knows where it will stop.[@_favors_1909]

While the extension of Howard Street, the construction of the Mount Royal Viaduct, and the erection of the Howard Street Bridge were all delayed until they received funding from the Public Works Administration in the 1930s, the Mount Royal Protective Association fought and won an effort to demolish a block of African American occupied homes around the Fifth Regiment Armory building for the creation of a plaza (around 1930) and boasted of their efforts to secure and enforce racial covenants from local property owners, noting the group's "greatest achievement... has been the subjecting of the property in its area to a restriction for white occupancy only."^[See @_way_1930 for approval of Armory Plaza plans; Citation needed for quote about Mount Royal Protective Association.]

Not all older neighborhoods could create the physical barriers employed in Roland Park but they could use racial covenants. In January 1924, two hundred members of six West Baltimore protective associations met at the Fulton Avenue Presbyterian Church (at Fulton and Monroe Streets) to fight the movement of African American households into these western neighborhoods. The _Baltimore Sun_ quoted Dr. <NAME>, the City Councilman for the 5th district saying:

> The principal function of any organization is to acquire everything of benefit to the community and to keep away everything undesirable. It is a pity that law-abiding citizens who do not receive sufficient protection from the law to keep out undesirables must form protective associations to do so.[@_plan_1924]

The result of the meeting was a campaign to get 1600 property owners in an area bounded by North Avenue, Pennsylvania Avenue and Bentalou Street to sign commitments not to sell to African Americans. The _Baltimore Afro-American_, also reported on the meeting and summarized the sentiment of the speakers as, "Negroes should be put in a bag and pitched overboard."[@_segregationists_1924]

![Photograph of Carnegie Hall at Morgan College (now Morgan State University) by <NAME>, 1921 November 3. _Courtesy University of Virginia, [330943](http://search.lib.virginia.edu/catalog/uva-lib:330943)._](https://baltimoreheritage.github.io/civil-rights-heritage/images/uva-lib_330943.jpg)

When proponents of segregation took legal action to promote segregation, their efforts were less successful. For example, in 1918, a group of white residents in Lauraville attempted to have the 1917 sale of the Ivy Mill property to Morgan College revoked by the circuit court in Towson. Court dismissed the case and, after the Lauraville residents appealed, the state court upheld the lower court's decision.^[_Diggs v. Morgan College_, 105 A. 157, 133 Md. 264 (1918); For more on the history of Morgan State University see @wilson_history_1975 or @dula_prospering_2016; For more on the history of Morgan Park see @mcconnell_history_2000.]

## Movement to stop lynchings, mob violence, and criminal injustice

Segregation and disenfranchisement were not the only consequence of the broad political support for white supremacy in the early twentieth century. While the number of lynchings peaked nationally in the 1890s, lynching remained a major concern for African American Civil Rights advocates in Baltimore through the 1940s.^[Explore the history of lynching in America in southern states through the [American Lynching website](http://www.americanlynchingdata.com/). See also the Equal Justice Institute's report ["Lynching in America: Confronting the Legacy of Racial Terror"](http://eji.org/reports/lynching-in-america)] For example, in 1918, the new local chapter of UNIA organized an event at Bethel AME Church featuring <NAME> and famed anti-lynching advocate <NAME>:

>Rev. <NAME> cosponsored an event at Bethel with the Baltimore division of the Universal Negro Improvement Association, led by <NAME>, on December 18, 1918 featuring <NAME> and <NAME> as speakers.[@mamiya_social_1994, 250-251]

Mob violence, such as the wave of riots that affected many American cities in 1919 known as the [Red Summer](https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Red_Summer), was also a source of major concern for local activists. Following a riot in East St. Louis, Illinois in July 1917 prompted a mass meeting at Bethel AME Church that sent a delegation (including Dr. <NAME>) to meet with President <NAME> and urge him to investigate the riot and take action to address the issue.[@farrar_baltimore_1998, 125] Baltimore activists saw their proximity to Washington, DC as an obligation to support national efforts to lobby federal officials over lynching and related issues.^[A detailed account of the efforts of Baltimore activists to lobby for anti-lynching legislation is included in @farrar_baltimore_1998.]

<!-- TODO: Update the above footnote with page numbers for the relevant section. -->

The physical violence of the period took place concurrently with the local and national resurgence of the Ku Klux Klan. For example, on October 10, 1922, the Ku Klux Klan held a rally in Annapolis and, that same year, also rallied in Frederick and Baltimore.^[See [Mapping the Second Ku Klux Klan, 1915-1940](https://labs.library.vcu.edu/klan/) for more details on the growth of Klan chapters across the country.] In early 1923, the Ku Klux Klan presented a charity circus in Hazazer's Hall at 111 W. Franklin Street (the present site of the Enoch Pratt Library Central Branch) to publicize the Klan’s endorsement of Protestantism. The Klan visited the United Brethren Church and the Roland Avenue Methodist Church at 40th Street and Roland Avenue. The pastor at Roland Avenue accepted a $25 donation from the Klan, remarking, "I, for one, am glad to get it.” In March 1923, a Klan meeting at the Brooklyn First Baptist Church at 3801 5th Street was "almost broken up by an angry mob."[@jackson_ku_1967, 181]

While the majority of lynchings in Maryland took place on the Eastern Shore or in Southern Maryland, black residents in Baltimore did face the more immediate threat of police violence and a broader challenge of criminal injustice. Noted incidents of police violence in this period include a police officer beating of a black WWI soldier (an action criticized in February 1918 by <NAME> who later served as Police Commissioner from 1938 to 1943); the police shooting of a black man on Pennsylvania Avenue on June 1, 1918; Baltimore police officer <NAME> “beating up” <NAME> in 1926; and a police officer clubbing of <NAME> in 1927.^[@_soldiers_1918; @_penna._1918; @_brutality_1926; @_raise_1927; See the thematic study on [Criminal Injustice](/civil-rights-heritage/criminal-injustice/) for more on this topic.] Black residents responded to these incidents with letters of protest, mass meetings, and other forms of organized activism. As a student at the the Colored High School on Pennsylvania Avenue in the early 1920s, <NAME> had a close-up view of how Baltimore's police officers treated black suspects at the Northwestern District Police Station next door. In _<NAME>: American Revolutionary_, <NAME> quotes Marshall’s recollection of what he heard, writing:

>“We could hear police in there beating the hell out of people, saying, ‘Black boy, why don’t you just shut your goddamned mouth, you’re going to talk yourself into the electric chair.’”[@williams_thurgood_2011, 40]

Black residents in Baltimore experienced the dual challenges of being both overpoliced and underprotected as white people who committed crimes against black people could expect much lighter penalties for their actions. For example, in February 1921, five hundred people gathered at Trinity Baptist Church at Druid Hill Avenue and Mosher Street to protest the release of a white man, <NAME>, on a $500 bail after police arrested him for an attempted assault on a ten-year-old black girl named <NAME>. The _Afro_ reported that participants in the meeting criticized the "brutality 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".[@_mass_1921] A 1926 report from the _Afro-American_ called attention to racism in the use of capital punishment in Maryland. Observing that between 1903 and 1926, nine of the ten men executed in Maryland for murder or rape were black, the newspaper called for an end to the death penalty.[@farrar_baltimore_1998, 115-117]

Activists sought to address these problems through stronger oversight of the police and the appointment of black police officers. In 1925, the Conference of AME Ministers set up a committee to consider the best way to place black officers on the police force.[@farrar_baltimore_1998, 112] However, such efforts were largely unsuccessful in this period and activists could not force the city and state to begin to address their concerns until the late 1930s and early 1940s.

## Activism to improve housing and educational conditions for African Americans

In northern cities, public debates around poverty and difficult living conditions took place in the context of the Great Migration. The National Urban League was established in New York City as the Committee on Urban Conditions Among Negroes, on September 29, 1910, and focused on the needs of new migrants to the city. Although the proportion of migrants to Baltimore was much smaller than New York, conditions for many black Baltimoreans were still difficult. Historian <NAME> noted the challenges for black students attending the city's segregated schools, writing:

>Baltimore’s black public schools were crowded and in disrepair, housed in the cast-off buildings left behind as whites moved to better facilities. ... Despite the reorganization of the city government and the educational system, no new black schools were built between 1898 and 1915.[@roberts_infectious_2002, 28]
<commit_msg>Minor revisions<commit_after>---
title: "1905-1929"
excerpt: "Segregation and WWI"
permalink: /overview/1905-1929/
categories:
  - overview
tags: draft
sidebar:
  nav: "overview"
header:
  overlay_image: uva-lib_330943.jpg
  overlay_filter: .5
  caption: "Carnegie Hall at Morgan College (now Morgan State University). Photo by <NAME>, 1921 November 3. _Courtesy University of Virginia, [330943](http://search.lib.virginia.edu/catalog/uva-lib:330943)._"
---

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## Introduction

Baltimore’s urban landscape saw big changes during the first three decades of the twentieth century. Following the Great Baltimore Fire of 1904, the city rebuilt the downtown. In 1915, the city dedicated a much-needed new sanitary sewer system after years of delay. In 1918, Baltimore City annexed a large area of Baltimore County spurring the rapid expansion of neighborhoods out from the center on along the electric streetcar lines. During World War I, the city's population boomed and scores of new factories opened.

A changing city did not always mean progress for African Americans. Black Baltimoreans fought against an aggressive effort to impose racial segregation on residential neighborhoods and struggled to get their fair share of benefits from the city's growth. African Americans experienced continued discrimination against black workers and woefully unequal conditions for black students and teachers in the city's public schools.

<!-- TODO: Figure out how economic instability (the Panic of 1901, Panic of 1903, and the city's downturn following WWI) affected black workers in this period. -->

![Chart: Baltimore City total population compared to black population, 1900-1930](https://baltimoreheritage.github.io/civil-rights-heritage/images/baltimore-city-population-1900-1930-total-black.png)

The city's population grew from 508,957 in 1900; to 733,826 in 1920; to 804,874 people in 1930. The city's black population grew from 79,739 in 1900; 84,749 in 1910; 108,322 in 1920; and 142,106 in 1930.^[U.S. Census, 1900; 1910; 1920; 1930.] In the years after the Civil War, most black migrants to Baltimore came from Maryland or Virginia. This pattern continued into the early twentieth century. In 1910, 87% of the black population in Baltimore was native to Maryland and migrants from Virginia made up 8.7% of the group born outside of the state. This set Baltimore apart from other large cities with growing populations of black residents. In 1920, 76% of Baltimore's black population was native to Maryland, in comparison to Detroit's 8.4% or Manhattan's 20.9%. By 1930, 59.4% of Baltimore's black population was native to Maryland—a modest decline of 17.1% since 1910.[@reich_baltimore_2014, 18]

<!-- TODO: Add more information about annexation and how it affected the city. -->

<!-- TODO: What are the labor and housing issues related to race and Civil Rights during World War I? -->

The growth of racially segregated suburbs at the edges of the city, policies of clearance and containment to isolate black neighborhoods, and segregated public schools all contributed to the increasing concentration of Baltimore's black population in northwest Baltimore. By 1904, a full half of Baltimore’s black population lived in the city's seventeenth ward bounded by Biddle Street, Argyle Avenue, Druid Hill Avenue, and North Avenue.[@power_apartheid_1983] At present, scores of buildings with important associations to this period in Baltimore's Civil Rights history survive within the Old West Baltimore National Register Historic District.^[The district includes the neighborhoods of Madison Park, Upton, Druid Heights, Harlem Park, and Sandtown-Winchester.] Examples include the former St. Peter’s P.E. Church (built 1868) purchased by Bethel A.M.E. Church in 1910; Public School No. 103 (built 1877) converted to use as black school the same year; the Druid Hill Avenue Branch of the Young Men's Christian Association (YMCA) built in 1919; and the former Western High School building on McCulloh Street that beginning in 1928 housed the Coppin Normal School, Colored Junior High School, and offices for the Baltimore colored school administration.

Black occupancy and activism was not solely limited to West Baltimore. The Morgan Park neighborhood, home to W.E.B. Du Bois and Dr. <NAME>, began development in 1917 when Morgan College moved to northeast Baltimore. In Baltimore County, growing African American communities included St. Stephens A.M.E. Church (which replaced their original 1878 church with a new building in 1907 which stood until 1972); the Big Falls community where an African American schoolhouse on Hereford Road remained in use until 1936; the Cuba Road community which grew around Gough United Methodist Church (erected in 1907 to replace an 1875 church and school building); and Lutherville where Colored School Number 24 opened in 1909 (making it the second oldest African American schoolhouse in Baltimore County).[@e.h.t._traceries_african_2016]

<!-- TODO: Decide if it makes sense to note Preston Gardens (built 1917) as a significant site in this period. -->

!["Pay day for the stevedores", c. 1905. Detroit Publishing Company. _[Courtesy Library of Congress](https://www.loc.gov/resource/det.4a12583/)._](https://cdn.loc.gov/service/pnp/det/4a10000/4a12000/4a12500/4a12583v.jpg)

Baltimore's Civil Rights activists in the late nineteenth century defended some of the rights black residents won following the Civil War but legal setbacks such as the U.S. Supreme Court decision in _Plessy v. Ferguson_ (1896) encouraged new white supremacist campaigns attacking the rights of black voters, segregating residential neighborhoods and public accommodations, and restricting black students to underfunded public schools.^[Other notable setbacks for Civil Rights activists include _Berea College v. Kentucky_ (1908).] After Mississippi passed a new state constitution in 1890 that disenfranchised black voters (the so-called ["Mississippi Plan"](https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mississippi_Plan)), white Democratic Party leaders in every state below the border south (Delaware, Maryland, West Virginia, Kentucky, and Missouri) found a way to do the same by 1910.[@thompson_civil_1996, 1]

In Maryland, and in most northern states, activists could not find political support for Civil Rights from either the white supremacist Democrat Party or the Republican Party (which segregated black party members at local meetings and conferences by 1910).[@thompson_civil_1996, 32] African American voters made up a small share of the city's voters even after the addition of black women to the pool of eligible voters (after the ratification the Nineteenth Amendment in 1920), as historian <NAME> notes:

>In 1900, blacks comprised fifteen percent of the voting-age population and fifteen percent of the registered voters. By 1932, blacks comprised sixteen percent of the voting-age population, but only twelve percent of the registered voters. Only in a few wards did the black vote make a difference in local elections. In 1931, four wards had a black majority and three others were evenly populated by blacks and whites.[@thompson_civil_1996, 33]

In the absence of leadership from elected officials, Civil Rights activists in Baltimore still continued to fight and, in some cases, win in the courts. The U.S. Supreme Court decision in _Guinn v. United States_ (1915) outlawed grandfather clauses; _Buchanan v. Warley_ (1917) abolished residential segregation ordinances in the large number of other cities that passed such laws modeled after Baltimore's 1910 ordinance; _Moore v. Dempsey_ (1923) outlawed mob trials; and _Nixon v. Herndon_ (1927) abolished the practice of white primaries. In Baltimore, African American residents won victories to limit the growth of legal segregation in transportation, voting rights, and housing between 1904 and 1918.[@thompson_civil_1996, 31] <NAME> argued that these cases were distinct from the earlier advocacy by suggesting that the Brotherhood of Liberty in the 1880s and 1890s used the law to "defend black civil rights against encroachments by whites" but not "strengthen, re-establish, or expand black civil rights".[@thompson_civil_1996, 28] Thompson writes:

>These were important victories for the civil rights struggle because they showed that blacks could respond to segregation and the abridgement of rights and helped set the stage for the civil rights movement.[@thompson_civil_1996, 3]

As the city's black population grew in the 1920s, conditions for black workers and residents remained difficult. In recognition of the notable challenges in this period, some scholars have diminished the significance of activism in Baltimore during the early twentieth century and instead portrayed a later period beginning between the 1930s and 1950s as a kind of “golden age” of civil rights activism in the city.^[For example, <NAME> wrote "Before 1935, blacks and the civil rights struggle were on the defensive, responding to segregation and the loss of rights." (p.4).] As a corrective measure, historian <NAME> has argued for the importance of an expansive definition for Civil Rights activism that includes "struggles for access to municipal and social services and struggles related to labor and employment." Using this definition, Doster notes the importance of lesser-known organizations including the Federation of Parent-Teacher Clubs, the Women’s Cooperative Civic League, the Independent Republican League, and the Baltimore Urban League.[@doster_strike_2015] Other significant groups in this period included fraternal organizations such as the Monumental Lodge No. 3[@schiszik_monumental_2013] and philanthropic groups such as the CYWCA (founded in 1896) and the Colored Fresh Air and Empty Stocking Circle (established in 1904 by Ida Cummings and other members of the CYWCA).[@bowling_how_2002] In 1927, the Maryland state legislature established a new “Interracial Commission” (Chapter 559, Acts of 1927) to create a framework for discussing Civil Rights policy issues.

Prominent individual activists and leaders during this period included City Councilman <NAME> (1866–1917) and educator <NAME> (1867–1958) (brother and sister); lawyers <NAME> (1859–1914), <NAME> (1859–1937), and <NAME> (1871–1961); pastor Rev. Dr. <NAME> (1852–1919); and newspaper editor Dr. <NAME> (1889–1967). Notable organizations included the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP) (established in 1909, with a Baltimore chapter beginning in 1912) and the Baltimore Urban League (established nationally in 1910, with a Baltimore chapter beginning in 1924). The _Afro-American Newspaper_ under the editorial leadership of <NAME> (beginning with the death of <NAME>, Sr. in 1922) also became a vocal proponent of Civil Rights in Baltimore.[@farrar_baltimore_1998]

<!-- TODO: I cut this passage on the activism of the Afro: "exemplified by efforts such as the newspaper's campaign against segregated buses and discrimination by bus drivers along Howard Street in July 1929" It doesn't belong here so I need to find another place for it. -->

These varied organizations and individual activists and leaders subscribed to a range of different beliefs about how black Baltimoreans could counter white supremacist attacks on their lives and communities. Historian Bru<NAME> contrasts the philosophies of Booker T. Washington and the accommodationist "Atlanta Compromise" with the "more radical" position of W.E.B. DuBois, writing:

>For <NAME>, accommodation and uplift would not solve the problems blacks faced. He advocated the more radical position that blacks should oppose segregation and work for their political and civil rights.[@thompson_civil_1996, 2]

Philosophical and political debates at a national level influenced local Civil Rights activism in Baltimore and Baltimore influenced the national movement. In 1905, Rev. <NAME> and four other members of Baltimore's Brotherhood of Liberty were among the twenty-nine people from fourteen states who met near Buffalo, New York to form the Niagara Movement.^[The Niagara Movement ended within five years but led directly to the creation of the NAACP in 1909.] Historian Bettye Collier-Thomas suggested that W.E.B. DuBois was in “close contact with members of the Brotherhood... as he frequently traveled there to deliver speeches” between 1895 and 1910. Collier-Thomas noted that the Brotherhood “willingly shared twenty years of experience, strategy development and know-how with the founders at Niagara.”[@collier-thomas_harvey_1991, 224] The city also included supporters of Booker T. Washington as the [National Negro Business League](https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/National_Negro_Business_League) (organized by Booker T. Washington in Boston in 1900) held their Ninth Annual Convention in Baltimore in 1908. For others, the Niagara Movement and, later, the NAACP did not go far enough. Pastor and educator Rev. <NAME>	(1866-1922) at Trinity Baptist Church was a prominent supporter of the [Universal Negro Improvement Association and African Communities League](https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Universal_Negro_Improvement_Association_and_African_Communities_League) (UNIA-ACL) (established in 1914, with an active Baltimore chapter by 1918).

This section is organized around four themes that help us understand Civil Rights activism within this period:

- black opposition to white supremacist efforts to disenfranchise black voters and promote racial segregation in housing and public accommodations.
- the local and national movement to stop lynchings, mob violence, and criminal injustice
- grass-roots activism to improve housing conditions and educational opportunities for African Americans in Baltimore
- the expansion of voting rights for women and the emerging role of black women as organizers and activists

## Opposition to disenfranchisement and segregation

In the late nineteenth and early twentieth century, prominent white political leaders, especially within the Democratic Party, championed white supremacist policies of disenfranchising black voters and segregating housing and public accommodations. Some contemporaries argued that segregation was a "solution" to the disturbing violence of lynchings. Recent historians (notably Grace Elizabeth Hale) have illustrated how segregation was a key part of how, after the Civil War and the end of Reconstruction, white Americans reasserted their dominance in the South through a cultural system based on violence and physical separation.[@hale_making_2010] Historian Carl Nightingale, echoes this analysis writing:

><NAME> ordinances segregating rail and trolley cars, theaters, restaurants and other public amenities signaled Southern whites' final rejection of physical proximity as a method of social control, and their embrace of distance.[@nightingale_transnational_2006, 674]

In Maryland, the state legislature passed a law in 1904 to require segregation on all railroads and, in 1908, extended the law to include electric lines and steamboats. Black opponents in Baltimore secured "an exemption [from the law] for travel within Baltimore, but outside the city limits all blacks suffered the ignominy of being separated."[@thompson_civil_1996, 31] Baltimore lawyer <NAME> argued a test case against the racist transportation ordinance in 1920 without success and the law remained on the books up until 1951.[@thompson_civil_1996, 32]

The segregated character of city life during this period was later recalled by <NAME> who grew up in Baltimore in the 1910s and 1920s, "The only thing different between the South and Baltimore was trolley cars. They weren't segregated. Everything else was segregated."^[See @thompson_civil_1996, 12; Thompson cites <NAME>, "Marshall's Law," Washington Post Magazine, 7 January 1990, 12-17.]

The state legislature promoted the disenfranchisement of black voters in a series of proposals between 1905 and 1910. A coalition of African American activists and recent European immigrants worked together under the banner of the Maryland Suffrage League to defeat all three. White Republican party leaders like prominent Baltimore lawyer <NAME> also played an role in rallying opposition to these proposals, as historian <NAME> described Bonaparte's opposition to the Poe and Strauss Amendments in 1905 and 1908.[@phelps_charles_1959] Ultimately black and white opponents to the disenfranchisement campaign succeeded, defeating the Poe Amendment with 104,286 to 70,227 votes in 1905. In 1908, voters narrowly defeated the similar Strauss disenfranchisement bill 106,069 to 98,808 votes. In 1910, Maryland voters conclusively defeated a third proposal, the Digges Amendment, by 84,000 to 46,000 votes.[@smith_here_2008, 65]

Not long after on December 19, 1910, Baltimore City passed a new law, known commonly as the West Ordinance after the bill's proponent Councilman <NAME>, to require the racial segregation of residential blocks in Baltimore.
As the first residential segregation law in the country the been the subject of detailed scholarly study over the past thirty years.^[@power_apartheid_198; @nightingale_transnational_2006; @jr_infectious_2009; @boger_meaning_2009; @halpin_reforming_2012; @halpin_struggle_2015] Historian <NAME> described how the 1910 housing segregation ordinance worked, writing:

>This ordinance prohibited blacks from purchasing or occupying houses on blocks in which fifty-one percent of the dwellers were white. Similarly, whites could not move into blocks that were predominantly black.

Thompson continues to note:

>In less than one month, twenty-six cases were on the court docket. In the very first case, the presiding judges ruled that the law was invalid because it was drawn incorrectly.[@thompson_civil_1996, 34-35; @power_apartheid_198, 298-303]

<!-- TODO: Add information about the block of McCulloh Street that served as a flashpoint for this conflict over segregation. -->

After the court overturned the first ordinance, the City Council passed a similar ordinance on April 7, 1911. They quickly repealed and replaced the bill with a third segregation ordinance on May 15, 1911, entitled:

> an ordinance for preserving peace, preventing conflict and ill feeling between the white and colored races in Baltimore city, and promoting the general welfare of the city by providing, so far as practicable, for the use of separate blocks by white and colored people for residences, churches and schools.[@_baltimore_1911]

In 1917, the U.S. Supreme Court decision in _Buchanan v. Warley_ (1917) declared racial segregation ordinances (including Baltimore's) unconstitutional. While the decision limited the enforcement of Baltimore's segregation ordinance to less than seven years, the measure still had a lasting effect, as <NAME> notes:

>By the end of the 1910s, black Baltimoreans resistance to the ordinances remade the city’s racial geography. Nevertheless, they struggled to challenge the strategies segregationists used in the wake of the laws’ demise.[@halpin_reforming_2012, 204]

<NAME> also notes how the NAACP's national advocacy around residential segregation has roots in the fight over segregation in Baltimore.[@doster_strike_2015] As Halpin and others note, deed restrictions, racist practices by professional realtors, and urban design and planning (described by some as "clearance and containment") all contributed to the persistence of segregation even after the 1917 decision. With exceptions in the neighborhoods of Morgan Park and Howard Park in northeast Baltimore, local builders and developers almost never erected new homes for black buyers in the first half of the twentieth century. Roland Park, developed beginning in 1891, Guilford (developed beginning in 1913) and Homeland (developed beginning in 1924) served as models of racial exclusion for developers around the country as the Roland Park Company:

 >...used deed restrictions as the cornerstone of a broader attempt to manufacture a dichotomy between suburban and urban space in order to sell a new spatial and social arrangement to a status-conscious white middle class. Other developers frequently requested copies of its deed restrictions.[@glotzer_exclusion_2015, 481]

![This sign commemorates the groundbreaking of the 667th house in Guilford, on January 17, 1930. _[Courtesy Sheridan Libraries Special Collections, Johns Hopkins University](http://hub.jhu.edu/magazine/2014/fall/roland-park-papers-archives/)._](http://api.hub.jhu.edu/factory/sites/default/files/styles/hub_large/public/roland-6.jpg)

Historian <NAME> notes the National Association of Real Estate Boards (NAREB) adoption of a Code of Ethics in 1913 (the same year the Roland Park Company began using racial restrictions in deeds) then revised the code in 1924 to prevent any Realtor from:

>“introducing into a neighborhood a character of property or occupancy, members of any race or nationality, or any individual whose presence will clearly be detrimental to property values in that neighborhood.”[@glotzer_exclusion_2015, 488]

The Roland Park Company also planned physical boundaries between their development and nearby properties occupied by black Baltimoreans, for example, planting "a long hedge to cut off sightlines of a predominantly black settlement down the hill, the same settlement where it later located its sewage disposal field."[@glotzer_exclusion_2015, 482-483]

Some white Baltimoreans promoted a similar approach in the area of Mount Royal Avenue where, in 1909, <NAME>, commander of the Fifth Regiment, wrote to the _Sun_ advocating for the extension of Howard Street north of the Richmond Market as a way of tearing down homes occupied by African Americans:

> I would be deeply interested in this improvement because it means so much more than simply tearing down some houses and opening a street. Everyone in the city is familiar with the steady decrease which has taken place in the value of property in this neighborhood for the last 20 years.
> All about Richmond Market, and extending north, there are hundreds of undesirable houses and, in many cases, huts. This sore is spreading rapidly. A great many negroes, not of the best class, gradually tenant the houses on the edge of this district and immediately the white people move from the block invaded. If this continues no one knows where it will stop.[@_favors_1909]

While the extension of Howard Street, the construction of the Mount Royal Viaduct, and the erection of the Howard Street Bridge were all delayed until they received funding from the Public Works Administration in the 1930s, the Mount Royal Protective Association fought and won an effort to demolish a block of African American occupied homes around the Fifth Regiment Armory building for the creation of a plaza (around 1930) and boasted of their efforts to secure and enforce racial covenants from local property owners, noting the group's "greatest achievement... has been the subjecting of the property in its area to a restriction for white occupancy only."^[See @_way_1930 for approval of Armory Plaza plans; Citation needed for quote about Mount Royal Protective Association.]

Not all older neighborhoods could create the physical barriers employed in Roland Park but they could use racial covenants. In January 1924, two hundred members of six West Baltimore protective associations met at the Fulton Avenue Presbyterian Church (at Fulton and Monroe Streets) to fight the movement of African American households into these western neighborhoods. The _Baltimore Sun_ quoted Dr. <NAME>, the City Councilman for the 5th district saying:

> The principal function of any organization is to acquire everything of benefit to the community and to keep away everything undesirable. It is a pity that law-abiding citizens who do not receive sufficient protection from the law to keep out undesirables must form protective associations to do so.[@_plan_1924]

The result of the meeting was a campaign to get 1600 property owners in an area bounded by North Avenue, Pennsylvania Avenue and Bentalou Street to sign commitments not to sell to African Americans. The _Baltimore Afro-American_, also reported on the meeting and summarized the sentiment of the speakers as, "Negroes should be put in a bag and pitched overboard."[@_segregationists_1924]

![Photograph of Carnegie Hall at Morgan College (now Morgan State University) by <NAME>, 1921 November 3. _Courtesy University of Virginia, [330943](http://search.lib.virginia.edu/catalog/uva-lib:330943)._](https://baltimoreheritage.github.io/civil-rights-heritage/images/uva-lib_330943.jpg)

When proponents of segregation took legal action to promote segregation, their efforts were less successful. For example, in 1918, a group of white residents in Lauraville attempted to have the 1917 sale of the Ivy Mill property to Morgan College revoked by the circuit court in Towson. Court dismissed the case and, after the Lauraville residents appealed, the state court upheld the lower court's decision.^[_Diggs v. Morgan College_, 105 A. 157, 133 Md. 264 (1918); For more on the history of Morgan State University see @wilson_history_1975 or @dula_prospering_2016; For more on the history of Morgan Park see @mcconnell_history_2000.]

## Movement to stop lynchings, mob violence, and criminal injustice

Segregation and disenfranchisement were not the only consequence of the broad political support for white supremacy in the early twentieth century. While the number of lynchings peaked nationally in the 1890s, lynching remained a major concern for African American Civil Rights advocates in Baltimore through the 1940s.^[Explore the history of lynching in America in southern states through the [American Lynching website](http://www.americanlynchingdata.com/). See also the Equal Justice Institute's report ["Lynching in America: Confronting the Legacy of Racial Terror"](http://eji.org/reports/lynching-in-america)] For example, in 1918, the new local chapter of UNIA organized an event at Bethel AME Church featuring <NAME> and famed anti-lynching advocate <NAME>:

>Rev. <NAME> cosponsored an event at Bethel with the Baltimore division of the Universal Negro Improvement Association, led by <NAME>, on December 18, 1918 featuring <NAME> and I<NAME> as speakers.[@mamiya_social_1994, 250-251]

Mob violence, such as the wave of riots that affected many American cities in 1919 known as the [Red Summer](https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Red_Summer), was also a source of major concern for local activists. Following a riot in East St. Louis, Illinois in July 1917 prompted a mass meeting at Bethel AME Church that sent a delegation (including Dr. <NAME>) to meet with President <NAME> and urge him to investigate the riot and take action to address the issue.[@farrar_baltimore_1998, 125] Baltimore activists saw their proximity to Washington, DC as an obligation to support national efforts to lobby federal officials over lynching and related issues.^[A detailed account of the efforts of Baltimore activists to lobby for anti-lynching legislation is included in @farrar_baltimore_1998.]

<!-- TODO: Update the above footnote with page numbers for the relevant section. -->

The physical violence of the period took place concurrently with the local and national resurgence of the Ku Klux Klan. For example, on October 10, 1922, the Ku Klux Klan held a rally in Annapolis and, that same year, also rallied in Frederick and Baltimore.^[See [Mapping the Second Ku Klux Klan, 1915-1940](https://labs.library.vcu.edu/klan/) for more details on the growth of Klan chapters across the country.] In early 1923, the Ku Klux Klan presented a charity circus in Hazazer's Hall at 111 W. Franklin Street (the present site of the Enoch Pratt Library Central Branch) to publicize the Klan’s endorsement of Protestantism. The Klan visited the United Brethren Church and the Roland Avenue Methodist Church at 40th Street and Roland Avenue. The pastor at Roland Avenue accepted a $25 donation from the Klan, remarking, "I, for one, am glad to get it.” In March 1923, a Klan meeting at the Brooklyn First Baptist Church at 3801 5th Street was "almost broken up by an angry mob."[@jackson_ku_1967, 181]

While the majority of lynchings in Maryland took place on the Eastern Shore or in Southern Maryland, black residents in Baltimore did face the more immediate threat of police violence and a broader challenge of criminal injustice. Noted incidents of police violence in this period include a police officer beating of a black WWI soldier (an action criticized in February 1918 by <NAME> who later served as Police Commissioner from 1938 to 1943); the police shooting of a black man on Pennsylvania Avenue on June 1, 1918; Baltimore police officer <NAME> “beating up” <NAME> in 1926; and a police officer clubbing of <NAME> in 1927.^[@_soldiers_1918; @_penna._1918; @_brutality_1926; @_raise_1927; See the thematic study on [Criminal Injustice](/civil-rights-heritage/criminal-injustice/) for more on this topic.] Black residents responded to these incidents with letters of protest, mass meetings, and other forms of organized activism. As a student at the the Colored High School on Pennsylvania Avenue in the early 1920s, <NAME> had a close-up view of how Baltimore's police officers treated black suspects at the Northwestern District Police Station next door. In _Thurgood Marshall: American Revolutionary_, <NAME> quotes Marshall’s recollection of what he heard, writing:

>“We could hear police in there beating the hell out of people, saying, ‘Black boy, why don’t you just shut your goddamned mouth, you’re going to talk yourself into the electric chair.’”[@williams_thurgood_2011, 40]

Black residents in Baltimore experienced the dual challenges of being both overpoliced and underprotected as white people who committed crimes against black people could expect much lighter penalties for their actions. For example, in February 1921, five hundred people gathered at Trinity Baptist Church at Druid Hill Avenue and Mosher Street to protest the release of a white man, <NAME>, on a $500 bail after police arrested him for an attempted assault on a ten-year-old black girl named <NAME>. The _Afro_ reported that participants in the meeting criticized the "brutality 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".[@_mass_1921] A 1926 report from the _Afro-American_ called attention to racism in the use of capital punishment in Maryland. Observing that between 1903 and 1926, nine of the ten men executed in Maryland for murder or rape were black, the newspaper called for an end to the death penalty.[@farrar_baltimore_1998, 115-117]

Activists sought to address these problems through stronger oversight of the police and the appointment of black police officers. In 1925, the Conference of AME Ministers set up a committee to consider the best way to place black officers on the police force.[@farrar_baltimore_1998, 112] However, such efforts were largely unsuccessful in this period and activists could not force the city and state to begin to address their concerns until the late 1930s and early 1940s.

## Activism to improve housing and educational conditions for African Americans

In northern cities, public debates around poverty and difficult living conditions took place in the context of the Great Migration. The National Urban League was established in New York City as the Committee on Urban Conditions Among Negroes, on September 29, 1910, and focused on the needs of new migrants to the city. Although the proportion of migrants to Baltimore was much smaller than New York, conditions for many black Baltimoreans were still difficult. Historian <NAME> noted the challenges for black students attending the city's segregated schools, writing:

>Baltimore’s black public schools were crowded and in disrepair, housed in the cast-off buildings left behind as whites moved to better facilities. ... Despite the reorganization of the city government and the educational system, no new black schools were built between 1898 and 1915.[@roberts_infectious_2002, 28]

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