1983]

RESIDENTIAL SEGREGATION ORDINANCES

291

Baltimore's black bourgeoisie, then perhaps 250 in number, sought to
remove themselves from the "disreputable and vicious neighborhoods
of their own race.9 Thus a first wave of blacks relocated in the north-
western part of the city as those blacks that could afford to do so
purchased second-hand housing around St. Mary's Orchard and Biddle
Streets, in what was to become the 17th Ward. (A street map of the
11th, 14th, and 17th Wards as they existed in 1904 appears at the end of
this article.) Their neighborhood began in the alleys and then moved
out to the wider streets, displacing Bohemians and Germans.	
 The Negro migration to Northwest Baltimore accelerated as
whites abandoned their homes there and fled to newly opened subur-
ban tracts. For example, when the B & O Railroad displaced 100 black
families to expand its yards,10 they sought alternative housing in the
northwest's 17th Ward. The second wave of black arrivals was poorer
and doubled up to pay the rent; slum conditions similar to those in
some of the city's southw.estern sections began to develop.11  By 1903
the Negro population was perhaps the majority in the 17th Ward;12 the
slum that had developed in the Biddle Alley neighborhood in the lower
portions of the ward had replaced Pigtown as the worst in the city.13 -
Blacks were not the only slum dwellers. In the 1880's Russian
Jews and Poles were immigrating to Baltimore in large -numbers.
These immigrants faced the same problems as Negroes — little money
and few jobs.  As a result, their housing conditions were similar to
those in the black slums: the houses were overcrowded, poorly venti-
lated, and lacked water and sewerage. The major difference between
these immigrant ghettos and the black ghettos was in the type of hous-
ing they contained: Immigrants converted once-substantial three- and
four-story row houses into tenements for up to ten families. The black
alley districts consisted of smaller ill-built structures. Another differ-
ence was that the immigrant ghettos tended to locate on the east side of
town.   Thus the growing immigrant population exacerbated black
housing conditions by displacing Negroes from that area.14

 These slums were but a symptom of the social chaos in turn-of-

9. Haynes, supra note 5 at 111 (discussing consequences of segregation in cities
generally).	

 10. Hawkins, supra note 4, at 27; transcript of interview with Dr. J.O. Spencer, Record
Group [R.G.] 102, Box 121. National Archives (June 20, 1916).

11. U.S. CHILDREN'S BUREAU, REPORT ON CONDITIONS AFFECTING BALTIMORE NE-
GROES 32, R.G. 102, Boxes 120-21, National Archives (1923) (Bureau Publication 119, part
of a study of infant mortality in Baltimore) [hereinafter cited as CHILDREN'S BUREAU
STUDY].

12. A Social Problem, supra note 6, at 497.	

13. W. Paul, supra note 4, at 392.	

14. Hawkins, supra note 4, at 27.