"Every Friday, when the men got paid, they would buy a load of bricks," he said. "When they got enough, they upgraded their homes with brick walls."
The tour turned onto Hopewell Avenue, where new homes sit beside well-maintained World War II-era abodes and where First Baptist Church of Back River is thriving in its 104th year. Several in the tour group noted the numerous Baptist churches, many of them with impressive newer edifices standing near humble buildings that marked their beginnings.
Freed slaves often came north after the Civil War, said Lenwood Johnson, a Baltimore County planner who shared tour directing duties with Diggs. Decades later, Baptist missionaries followed them and founded churches in the African-American enclaves. Johnson listed many of those congregations that are still growing today, including Mount Olive in Towson and Morning Star in Catonsville.
Ruth Quinn, a researcher at Johns Hopkins' Bloomberg School of Public Health, said she was struck by how many of the communities were clustered around churches.
Betty Stewart said the information gathered on the tour would help as she volunteers at the Benjamin Banneker Museum in Catonsville.
"I love all this history!" Stewart said. "Trips like this make all of us learn and appreciate each other."
The tourists stopped for lunch at Shiloh Baptist Church in Edgemere.
"Freed slaves started this church and stayed here to farm the land," said congregation member Burdetta Ellis.
Delores Goode, who grew up a neighbor to the church and never left these last 70 years, gave a brief history to the visitors sitting in an elegant, spacious sanctuary dominated by a towering stained-glass window. Shiloh began as a log cabin in 1898 and grew to a frame building, where the congregation treated the tourists to lunch.
