WAS A SEGREGATED SOUTHERN TOWN
THAT HAS INTEGRATED EXCEPTIONALLY WELL

Race, poverty and turmoil in the mix

(A personal perspective)
 
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Protesters march in Baltimore during city’s most violent week since the assassination of Rev. Martin Luther King Jr. in 1968.  The April 2015 demonstrations were orderly
and predominantly peaceful. (VoB file photo/Bill Hughes)

NEW MILLENNIUM ‘CHARM CITY’
IS NOT THE RACIALLY BIASED REGION
OF THE EARLY-MID 20th CENTURY

An age long gone when children walked to school,
when inner-city neighborhoods were safe & secure;
when race and ethnicity served as a dividing line

CHARLATANS LIKE SHARPTON

‘No Dogs or Jews’ at Meadowbrook
 
By Alan Z. Forman
 
In the wake of the death of Freddie Gray at the hands of Baltimore police, followed by over a week of peaceful demonstration punctuated by little more than a day of rioting and looting, it has become popular for politicians, national media and various and sundry activists to analyze and demonize the City of Baltimore for its failure to be perfect.

To say that Baltimore in 2015 is wracked by poverty and murder would certainly be an understate- ment, and to include these among the causes for the conflict is obvious.  But this is only part of The B’more Story and totally ignores the good side of this quintessential New Millennium city that is struggling to right the wrongs of its provincial Southern past.

I grew up in segregated Baltimore at a time when blacks and Jews hesitated to enter Roland Park and Guilford, even Towson; when Meadowbrook Aquatic & Fitness Center, where Olympian Michael Phelps now trains, had a sandwich-board sign near its entrance, warning prospective patrons: “No Dogs or Jews” allowed.

It didn’t have to say “No Blacks”; that was understood.

Upscale Baltimore neighborhoods like Homeland, Roland Park and Guilford had covenants in their deeds restricting the sale of homes to WASPy families only.

Polish Baltimoreans lived in Highlandtown and Canton; Italians lived in Little Italy. Blue collar families were in Curtis Bay, Fells Point and Westport, and outside the city limits in areas such as Essex and Dundalk. Blacks were not allowed to live in Hampden.

“Negroes,” as Supreme Court Justice Thurgood Marshall famously identified himself late in life when a reporter apologized for not referring to him as “black,” lived predominantly in West Baltimore, mostly below North Avenue, which was once the northernmost boundary of the city.

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Memorial Stadium, 1991.  Former Mayor Martin O’Malley’s apathy contributed to Baltimore’s failure to preserve the stadium’s distinc- tive dedication honoring the veterans of World Wars I and II when the facility was torn down after the construction of Oriole Park at Camden Yards and Ravens Stadium downtown during the 1990s.

DID NOTHING TO PRESERVE
MEMORIAL STADIUM TRIBUTE
TO WWI & II WAR VETERANS

ABC News Anchor George Stephanopoulos
is Clinton crony first, journalist second

IS ‘DEFLATEGATE’ NATIONALLY IMPORTANT?
 
By David Maril
 
While wondering if, for the good of Baltimore, Mayor Stephanie Rawlings-Blake and Gov. Larry Hogan will put aside their political differences and work together in a respectful and professional way, it’s interesting to note the following:

 Obviously, after campaigning around the country and pretty much going unrecognized, Baltimore still feels like home to Martin O’Malley.

The former Baltimore Mayor and Maryland Governor has chosen Baltimore to announce his decision on seeking the Democratic Party nomination for president.

His critics, who seem to be growing in number, suggest it would be appropriate for his announcement to be made in front of a Baltimore jail. His zero-tolerance policy as Mayor, which inflated arrest statistics that he used to claim he was lowering crime, is faulted by some as a factor in the current climate of alleged abuse by city police.

However, if it was up to me, he’d make his announcement on 33rd Street in front of where Memorial Stadium, demolished in 2002, used to stand.

His apathy, when he was Mayor and had local political clout, was a key factor in not preserving the stark and powerful “Time will not dim the glory of their deeds” façade of the old stadium. The front of the stadium was a tribute to war veterans who had sacrificed their lives.

The stadium’s façade should have been preserved there, on 33rd Street, as a permanent monument. This could have been incorporated into any of the proposed redevelopment plans.

Besides serving as a shrine to veterans, the façade would have provided lasting recognition and memories of a generation of great Orioles, Colts, Ravens and other civic-related highlights in Baltimore.

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     Modern digital thermostat for adjusting heat/air-conditioning.

WARM-BLOODED VS. COLD:
INDOOR ENERGY DEBATERS
GET SET TO SWITCH SIDES

Battle lines form in the workplace
over who controls the thermostat

TO AIR-CONDITION… OR STAY WARM?
 
By David Maril
 
In another week or two when Baltimore’s temperatures remain in the 80s, the warm-blooded segment of our population will shift from their insistence on energy conservation to demands for air-conditioning around the clock.

On the other side are the cold-blooded. This usually shivering bunch, who should be wearing woolen uniforms, will suddenly take an interest in the energy crisis and demand air-conditioning thermostats be set no lower than 80 degrees.

There isn’t any middle ground. You either like brisk living and working conditions or prefer an ever-present warmth in the air.

Product manufacturers are recognizing this great divide.

Certain bed/mattress companies have been touting temperature controls for each side.

For years, many luxury cars have come equipped with separate heaters for the two front seats.

Many models have temperature control systems that divide the car into different climate zones.

A person on your right who likes to chill out can sit in a wind tunnel of arctic air. Or, if their preference is classic sauna conditions, they can sweat to their heart’s delight while you sit in a 70-degree environment.

I discovered years ago that some of the most intense battles for power and control in the workplace are generated by who controls the temperature.

I once knew a high school teacher/coach who lost his job over a thermostat dispute.

One day when he decided the gymnasium was too cold, he grabbed a handful of snow and packed it around the thermostat, forcing the sensor to call for a lot more heat. When the school’s administration learned what he’d done, he was out the door in the snow.

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  Morgan State University, located on Perring Parkway in Northeast Baltimore — formerly known as Morgan State College —   had no white students when screenwriter and novelist-to-be Stephen H. Foreman matriculated there in the mid-1960s.

In the mid-1960s there were virtually no white students at Morgan State College, a traditionally black university located on Perring Parkway in Northeast Baltimore.

 Northwest Baltimore native Stephen Foreman was one of the first whites to at-  tend and graduate from Morgan.  His memoir-in-progress influenced this story.
 
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   Stephen Foreman signs copies of his 2009 novel Watching    Gideon at Barnes & Noble bookstore in Lower Manhattan.

WHITE STUDENT BREAKS MOLD
BY ATTENDING TRADITIONALLY
BLACK MARYLAND COLLEGE

KENTUCKY FRIED CHICKEN AT YALE
 
By Stephen H. Foreman
 
Nearly 51 years ago I graduated from Morgan State College.  I was the only white boy in my graduating class, the only one in the school.

My story is a long one, better read in detail in the memoir I am writing, “The Education of a White Boy.” I have been immersed in writing this as the situation in Baltimore has played out.

With the military in the streets of the city of my birth, and white America’s complete misunder- standing of the situation, I feel compelled to say something now.

As a young man I served honorably in the United States Marine Corps. I’m not sure where that puts me on the liberal spectrum, but of this I am sure: my beloved country is, in great part, overt or subtle, a nation of bigots.

After Morgan and before graduate school at Yale, for which my undergraduate education beautifully prepared me, I worked as a social worker in Charm City.

I worked and walked those same streets currently shown on television, wearing suit and tie. I felt no fear, and the people treated me well.

I was there to help, albeit insufficiently, and it distresses me terribly that those neighborhoods are still suffering from the disease of racism just as they were 51 years ago: the decrepit living conditions; the almost total lack of economic opportunity; miserable, badly stocked grocery stores.

Once, at Yale, I got a hankering for Kentucky Fried Chicken. There were no outlets around campus so I took a bus to one I found in the black community.

I was shocked to discover a bucket full of the cheapest parts of the chicken. They were inedible. Even with my tiny grad school budget, I threw them away.

I tossed them in a garbage can and, you know what, a man took them out, ate one, and carried the rest of the bucket up the street.

Of course, I feel tremendous anger at all the bigotry I still encounter; fury when white America lets a Cliven Bundy get away with assault rifles pointed at federal marshals; absolute disgust when people use the word nigger; true disdain for all the politicians who just don’t get it.

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Baltimore City State’s Attorney Marilyn Mosby charged all six police officers involved in the death of Freddie Gray, one with murder. Legal experts believe she over-charged the perpetra- tors in order to pressure at least one of the offi- cers to roll over and testify against the others.

BPD SUPERVISORS AND HIGHER-UPS
LACK TRAINING IN CRISIS MANAGEMENT

The city would be a better place to live in
if the positive activism of protesters
would only carry over into elections

LOOTING, ARSON AND VANDALISM
DISTRACTED FROM KEY ISSUES
AND WAS PAINFUL TO WATCH
 
By David Maril
 
No question that State’s Attorney Marilyn J. Mosby’s quick decision to file criminal charges against the six police officers who arrested Freddie Gray, was the most effective path to tranquility after a week of protests and unrest in Baltimore.

The public has been clamoring for answers and a sense of justice regarding the death of the 25-year-old black man who had been arrested, severely injured and died after a week of hospitalization.

It’s vital the charged six police officers have their day in court for the facts to come out and the legal system to have a chance to determine innocence or guilt. The playing field should be level and the same standards enforced whether the accused are civilians or police.

For too many years there is the perception — and there’s little evidence to prove this isn’t true — that blacks and other minorities often are discriminated against by police, locally and nationally.

In this age of smartphone cameras, portable video, and the Internet, the abuse and harassment is more frequently exposed and publicized, raising awareness and stirring public outrage.

The sickening details of Gray’s death is only the tip of the iceberg.

The issue of brutality by a few, but certainly not all, police officers has been a simmering problem for nearly a century and tied in with crisis conditions related to poverty this country struggles to solve.

As someone who remembers, as a kid in 1968, Baltimore’s last riots, following the assassination of the Rev. Martin Luther King Jr., here are a few observations from a week of city unrest:

 There’s certainly ample evidence and enough questions to merit police officers going to trial for the death of Gray. Their innocence or guilt will be determined in court.

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