Baltimore

Baltimore is a peculiar city. Located in the borderlands of the Eastern Seaboard, it has a rich and complicated history. After serving a few months as the nation’s capital during the Revolutionary War, Baltimore experienced an economic boom in the late eighteenth century that positioned it as a vital commercial city in the United States—the largest one in a slave state. Baltimore’s history of slavery spoke to its idiosyncratic character. On the eve of the Civil War, Maryland had the largest number of free Black people in the South, most of whom resided in Baltimore. Baltimore’s free Black people developed lasting community institutions, including churches, labor forces, and other cultural hubs. During the Civil War, Maryland remained part of the Union, though tens of thousands of its residents fought for the Confederacy. In fact, a Baltimore mob’s assault on a Union regiment led to the war’s first casualties. After war’s end, the state and city’s loyalty to the Union cause, ironically, allowed them to largely sidestep Reconstruction and place heavy legal and social fetters on its Black citizenry. Baltimore, a Union city with a vibrant Black community, would be run by a Democratic machine composed of ex-Confederates and their sympathizers for decades. These extremities typified Jim Crow in ways that further emblematized the city’s middling peculiarity and characterized the city’s 20th-century history. During the postwar period, white flight, blockbusting, and other predatory real estate practices intensified the city’s long and enduring racial hierarchy. By 1980, Baltimore became a majority Black city. However, gone were the days of Baltimore’s commercial and industrial vigor. Present, though, were the founding antagonisms that made the city so peculiar to begin with. The city’s Southern culture represents both its hospitality and entrenched racialized foundations. The scholarship, art, and culture of the city represent, detail, and embrace its peculiarity while grappling with its past, present, and future.