BALTIMORE'S RICH African-American history comes from a combination of its unique locale and its status and opportunities as a port city during slavery and the Civil War.
Residents never considered the city a part of the Deep South, although Maryland was a slave state. Baltimore's harbor was once a port in the slave trade.
However, because the city wasn't an agricultural area, there were free blacks as well, which created a more open political and social climate for slaves seeking freedom.
"In Baltimore by 1810, if you were black you may or may not have been enslaved," says David Terry, exhibition curator for the Reginald F. Lewis Museum of Maryland African American History and Culture. "If you were a woman you maybe did domestic work. If you were a man you may have been a blacksmith, carpenter, a brick maker, a wide variety of things.
"So you had black people coming to Baltimore with a wide variety of expectations," Terry says. "In Prince George's County at the time if you were black you were probably enslaved and worked on a tobacco plantation."
Baltimore had the largest free black population of any place in the nation. According to the 1860 Census, there were 84,000 slaves in Maryland and 83,000 free blacks -- a third of which were in Baltimore, says Russell Adams, professor emeritus of Afro-American studies at Howard University. "The large number of free blacks gave Baltimore's early black community a kind of energy and chance to do things that was absent everywhere else with the possible exception of New Orleans," Adams says.
The black population was empowered, to a degree, to build its own community without interference from the majority culture.
"The free black population was able to build institutions, churches, educational institutions, fraternal organizations, and so you had an emerging leadership class in Baltimore," says Joanne Martin, founder of the National Great Blacks in Wax Museum. "All of that led to Baltimore becoming a mecca for blacks."
Here are just a few of the places and people who are part of Baltimore's African-American legacy.
Thurgood Marshall, the first African-American appointed to the U.S. Supreme Court, was born here. Last year, the airport changed its name to Baltimore-Washington International Thurgood Marshall Airport to honor Marshall, who died at age 84 in 1993. A marker at 1632 Division St. shows the house where he was born.
Billie Holiday --a renowned jazz vocalist whose sultry music carried her life experiences, impressions and moods -- lived in Baltimore and played in many area clubs.
In 1825, Truman Pratt founded the Orchard Street Church, 512 Orchard St., which played a significant role as a station on the Underground Railroad. In the sub-basement, three floors below the ground level, there is a crawl space that travels across Martin Luther King Jr. Boulevard to what is believed was once a shed and hiding space for fugitive slaves until the next "stop" on the railroad. The building is now the home of the Baltimore Urban League.
The St. Frances Academy, a Catholic high school in east Baltimore, was started by the oldest order of black nuns in North America, the Oblate Sisters of Providence. In 1828, Mother Mary Elizabeth Lange, a Haitian native, founded the religious order with three other nuns.
Blacks dominated the horse racing industry until 1911 and the emblem of Pimlico Race Course denotes the great race of 1877. Three of the top jockeys ran in this race, one of whom was African-American.
St. Peter Claver Church, 1546 N. Fremont St., was the first church in the United States built to honor the patron saint of slaves.
Morgan State University was founded in 1867 as Centenary Biblical Institute, a school for black ministers. The school operated under the Methodist Episcopal Church and held classes at the Sharp Street United Methodist Church.
Bethel African Methodist Episcopal Church on Druid Hill Avenue is the oldest independent African-American Methodist Church in Baltimore. It was formed in 1875 after Daniel Payne Coker broke away from the Methodist Church.
The Reginald F. Lewis Museum of Maryland African American History and Culture opened last year and is the second-largest facility of its kind after Detroit.
The National Aquarium in Baltimore received a rare fish collection from black engineer Henry Hall before it was built in 1981. He also made the tank that held his donation.
On Feb. 12, 1865, Henry Highland Garnet, the son of an enslaved African chief, was the first black person to speak to the U.S. House of Representatives. The Henry Highland Garnet Park was named after the Baltimore native, Presbyterian preacher and lecturer.
The Arch Social Club at 2426 Pennsylvania Ave. is the oldest black men's club in the country. The club began in 1912 as a place for men with a broad range of occupations and incomes to socialize. It is still a members-only club for men. It has a popular disco Friday and Saturday nights and a jazz club Sundays.
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Source: Baltimore Black Heritage Tours, Renaissance Productions and Tours, The Sun archives.
