In 1661, David Jones settled along the Patapsco River, the future site of Baltimore City. In 1706, the Port of Baltimore was created for the tobacco trade and the Town of Baltimore was founded on July 20, 1729. The city and the surrounding county were named in honor of Lord Baltimore. While it was founded for the tobacco trade, it was the sugar trade that helped the city to grow and develop.
During the American Revolution, the city was a Colonist city and was briefly the capital of the US between 1776 and 1777. In the War of 1812, the British attacked after burning Washington, DC and shelled Fort McHenry. The success of the US in this battle, the Battle of Baltimore, inspired Francis Scott Key to write the poem The Star-Spangled Banner.
Maryland was a slave state but remained with the Union during the American Civil War, even though secession was popular due to the profits the city made off of the tobacco and slave trade. President Lincoln forced the state to remain with the Union in order to protect Washington, DC. In 1861, the Sixth Massachusetts marched through Baltimore and Confederate sympathizers started the Baltimore Riot of 1861 by attacking the troops. This was not the first riot in Baltimore, bad bank investments had caused residents to riot in 1835.
After the Panic of 1873, the Baltimore & Ohio Railroad company lowered wages in order to weather the depression but this led to the Great Railroad Strike of 1877. The National Guard was called in to end the strikes but sympathetic citizens attacked the troops and B&O property.
On April 4, 1968, Martin Luther King, Jr. was assassinated and his death sparked race riots across the country, one of which was in Baltimore. The black population of Baltimore had been growing steadily over the years but at the time of the riot, the city was majority white, which led to segregation.
In 1975, Baltimore was described as "an anonymous city even to those who live there." Mayor William Donald Schaefer was trying to end the bad image for the city and through working with advertisers, the city was given the nickname "Charm City." The reasoning behind the nickname was that the city had a lot of hidden charm and great history. The advertising campaign was too expensive for the city at the time but the name stuck.
Today "Charm City" is the focus of the media because of protests that turned violent over the weekend. These protests began after Freddie Gray, a young black man from a dangerous part of town, was arrested for unknown reasons and died due to his spinal cord being severed somewhere between the location of his arrest and arriving at a hospital. The country has been on edge concerning black-police relations ever since the shooting of Michael Brown in Ferguson, Missouri last August.
While the Civil Rights Movement of the 1960s was largely successful, not all was fixed, as the protests of the past year have demonstrated. Baltimore itself has been the subject of difficult race relations almost from the start. Maryland was a slave state but as Frederick Douglass demonstrated, it was easy for slaves to escape to Free states. Instead of trying to put an end to this, many slave owners made it possible for their slaves to earn their freedom over time. After the Civil War, freed African Americans flocked to Baltimore to escape the harsh Jim Crow laws of the Deep South. During World War II, many white southerners relocated to Baltimore to work in shipbuilding for the war effort. These white workers helped to maintain segregation in the city despite the fact that the black population was growing.
Baltimore really is a charming city in that it has character and the people are friendly and welcoming. But underneath the charm is the ugly fact that race relations, especially with police officers, are still not good. What we are witnessing could become the next phase of the Civil Rights Movement: justice for African Americans killed by white police officers and equal treatment for blacks and whites in the eyes of the law. Racial profiling needs to end.
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