Garrett Power, Apartheid Baltimore Style: The Residential Segregation Ordinances of 1910-1913, Maryland Law Review, 42 (1983) , Image No: 24   Enlarge and print image (67K)            << PREVIOUS   NEXT >>

Garrett Power, Apartheid Baltimore Style: The Residential Segregation Ordinances of 1910-1913, Maryland Law Review, 42 (1983) , Image No: 24   Enlarge and print image (67K)            << PREVIOUS   NEXT >>

1983] RESIDENTIAL SEGREGATION ORDINANCES 311 vacillated, first rejecting,129 then approving,130 different versions of At- lanta's ordinance; and the Virginia Court of Appeals sustained its ordi- nances with some qualifications.131 As we have already seen, the Baltimore branch of the NAACP, under the leadership of W. Ashbie Hawkins, had successfully attacked an early version of Baltimore's segregation ordinance.132 Hawkins' plan to take a constitutional challenge to the United States Supreme Court had been postponed by this success. But in 1915, Hawkins again started up the judicial ladder when he challenged, before the Maryland Court of Appeals, the constitutionality of Thomas S. Jackson's criminal conviction for violation of Baltimore's fourth segregation ordinance.133 At the request of Mayor Preston, William L. Marbury filed a brief in support of the city's position. Preston remained apprehensive; he wrote to Marbury: "In this brief there is a page and a half of argument. It seems to me that this is too important a matter to be 'kissed down the wind' so lightly,134 Mayor Preston went on to request his City Solici- tor, S.S. Field, to file an additional brief in support of the constitution- ality of the segregation ordinance. The Maryland Court of Appeals postponed its decision in the case pending a decision by the United States Supreme Court in a closely related case. In 1914, the City of Louisville, Kentucky had passed a segregation ordinance of its own. The text of the Louisville ordinance closely resembled the text of the first segregation ordinance which Milton Dashiell had drafted for Baltimore. The ordinance made it un- lawful for blacks to reside in residential blocks more than fifty percent white and vice versa.135 , The Supreme Court case was a product of the efforts of the NAACP's national headquarters. The NAACP had formed a Louis- the ordinance did not contravene state constitution and its laws, and did not authorize enact* ment of racial segregation ordinance). 129. Carey v. City of Atlanta, 143 Ga. 192, 84 S.E. 456 (1915); (city's racial segregation ordinance violated due process clauses of both the state constitution and the fourteenth amendment to the federal constitution, because it denied a person's inherent right to ac- quire, to enjoy, and to dispose of property). . 130. Harden v. City of Atlanta, 147 Ga. 248, 93 S.E. 401 (1917); (city's racial segregation ordinance, by its terms applicable only prospectively, did not violate due process). 131. Hopkins v. City of Richmond, 117 Va. 692, 86 S.E 139 (1915); (enactment of racial segregation ordinance is within the city's police power to promote peace and good order, and ordinance is constitutional insofar as it is applied only to persons whose property rights accrued after its enactment). 132. See supra text accompanying notes 94-95. 133. Jackson v. State, 132 Md. 311, 103 A. 910 (1918). - - - 134 Letter from Mayor Preston to William L. Marbury (Nov. 29, 1915), Baltimore City Archives, Preston Files, File 506 135. Buchanan v. Warley, 245 U.S. 60 (1917).