The Baltimore Book: New Views of Local History

Baltimore has a long, colorful history that traditionally has been focused on famous men, social elites, and patriotic events. The Baltimore Book is both a history of "the other Baltimore" and a tour guide to places in the city that are important to labor, African American, and women's history. The book grew out of a popular local bus tour conducted by public historians, the People's History Tour of Baltimore, that began in 1982. This book records and adds sites to that tour; provides maps, photographs, and contemporary documents; and includes interviews with some of the uncelebrated people whose experiences as Baltimoreans reflect more about the city than Francis Scott Key ever did.The tour begins at the B&O Railroad Station at Camden Yards, site of the railroad strike of 1877, moves on to Hampden-Woodbury, the mid-19th century cotton textile industry's company town, and stops on the way to visit Evergreen House and to hear the narratives of ex-slaves. We travel to Old West Baltimore, the late 19th-century center of commerce and culture for the African American community; Fells Point; Sparrows Point; the suburbs; Federal Hill; and Baltimore's "renaissance" at Harborplace. Interviews with community activists, civil rights workers, Catholic Workers, and labor union organizers bring color and passion to this historical tour. Specific labor struggles, class and race relations, and the contributions of women to Baltimore's development are emphasized at each stop. Author note: Elizabeth Fee is Professor in the Department of Health Policy and Management of The Johns Hopkins University School of Hygiene and Public Health.Linda Shopes is Associate Historian at the Pennsylvania Historical and Museum Commission.Linda Zeidman is Professor of History and Economics at Essex Community College.

Linda Shopes is Associate Historian at the Pennsylvania Historical and Museum Commission.

Introduction: Toward a New History of BaltimoreAcknowledgments1. Camden Yards and the Strike of 1877 - Sylvia Gillett2. Evergreen House and the Garrett Family: A Railroad Fortune - Elizabeth Fee3. Hampden-Woodberry: Baltimore's Mill Villages - Bill Harvey4. Old West Baltimore: Segregation, African-American Culture, and the Struggle for Equality - Karen Olson5. The City that Tries to Suit Everybody: Baltimore's Clothing Industry - Jo Ann E. Argersinger6. East-Side Union Halls: Where Craft Workers Met, 1887-1917 - Roderick Ryon7. Fells Point: Community and Conflict in a Working-Class Neighborhood - Linda Shopes8. Radicalism on the Waterfront: Seamen in the 1930s - Linda Zeidman and Eric Hallegren9. Sparrows Point, Dundalk, Highlandtown, Old West Baltimore: Home of Gold Dust and the Union Card - Linda Ziedman10. Flight to the Suburbs: Suburbanization and Radical Change on Baltimore's West Side - W. Edward Orser11. A View from Federal Hill - David HarveyInterviews with Former Slaves: Caroline Hammond and Richard MacksInterviews with Civil Rights Activists: Dr. John E.T. Camper and J. Broadus MitchellInterviews with Community Activists: Dr. Beryl Warner Williams, Betty Hyatt, Barbara Mikulski, Lucille Gorham, Willa Bickham and Brendan WalshInterviews with Labor and Political Activists: George Meyers, Robert Moore, Sirkka Tuomi Lee Holm, Dean Pappas and Ann GordonAfterwordBibliographyPhoto SourcesAbout the ContributorsIndex