Baltimore and Race — How We Got Here
Please join the Presbytery of Baltimore’s In the Loop Ministry Group for the final session of its 2021-2022 B’More Human Series, “The Racial History of Baltimore City: How did we get here?”
We all know how things are. We remain uncertain about the political landscape and the social fabric. Is it becoming undone? Can we fix it? Which way is up, anyway? We might answer these questions more easily if we knew how we got to where we are. Baltimore (and major cities around the country) did not become the disintegrating, half-populated, economically-challenged entities of today, without intentional, and sometimes insidious actions. From pre-Civil War growth of slavery as a major economic strategy and the moral downfall of the US (i.e., the brutal trafficking of human beings and treatment as chattel), and the ensuing periods of perpetuated de-facto slavery (incarceration, Black Codes and violence) through reconstruction, Jim Crow, Civil Rights, Black Power and other ‘60’s social movements, Baltimore evolved to what it is today—after more than a hundred years in the top 8 of US cities, Baltimore is now the 30th largest metropolitan area, with a majority black population and a median annual income level that was less than Detroit, in the 25th lowest position, at $33,465. (https://www.