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10
SECTION I
BALTIMORE: HISTORICAL STRUCTURES, 1930
The social struggles that developed in Baltimore in the years after the Crash
were generated within a definite system of historically-determined structures. This
system of structures was not autonomous or self-contained, but integrally linked to
larger systems. In this sense, Baltimore at the point of the Great Depression was
not simply a city defined by obvious juridical boundaries, but a metropolitan area
with a specific and characteristic place within the overall U.S. social formation and
within the system of urbanization of that social formation as it existed in 1930. To
understand the social struggle that later emerged in this metropolitan region, it is
important to first understand something of the Baltimore's location within the
larger social structures.
Moreover, the metropolitan region was itself a complex of structures,
including, spatial speaking, overlapping political, economic, and cultural centers,
and a system of peripheries. Within this urban space, particular structures of social
class and ethnicity, and, within these, particular structures of gender, were in a
constant process of development and change. These "internal" structures of the
Baltimore region, too, were key determinants of the shape and character of the
ensuing social struggles and help explain why they were both different and similar
to struggles in other urban regions of the U.S. during the era. Hence it is also
necessary to take a look at these internal structures before beginning the story of
the social movements that arose in Baltimore in the wake of the Crash.
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