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somewhat schizophrenic, culture of Jim Crow segregation. Blacks had separate and
inferior schools, cinemas, recreational facilities, health care services and
increasingly (as noted above) neighborhoods. According to testimony, there were
only two places in the city Blacks and whites could hold an integrated meeting:
Homewood Friends Meeting House and YMCA at Levering Hall on the Johns
Hopkins campus. Many department stores were segregated, and many, many jobs
were far beyond reach.
In some nominally integrated areas of the city, the white power structure still
made it clear that they considered Blacks outsiders. Thurgood Marshall, who grew
up in Baltimore, tells of a time when, as a young man, he was in need of a restroom
while in the downtown district. There were, however, no restrooms in the area for
Blacks. Marshall had to grab a trolley and race uptown to the Black neighborhood
in search of accommodations and had the humiliating experience of not making it.
Yet, unlike the South, there was little obstacle in Baltimore to African Americans
riding (and sitting anywhere) on most public transportation or to Black people
voting. Black voting had some effect, for in the 18 city council elections between
1890 and 1930, Black candidates won seats in 13; Baltimore was, in the words of
historian Suzanne Ellery Greene, "almost unique in the continuing presence of
blacks in high public office" in these years. Also, Maryland was the only state in the
country to have, as a part of its state government, an Interracial Commission (albeit
an ineffective one) with the stated purpose of alleviating racial contradictions.
Furthermore some real progress was made among Baltimore's Blacks in terms of
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jobs in industry and, above, all education during the 1920s.
Nonetheless, formal and informal Jim Crow had a calamitous effect of the
Baltimore Black community. Blacks suffered from devastatingly high rates of
poverty, crime, and disease, and had an extremely low rate home ownership in a
city that prided itself on widespread home ownership among all classes. Life
expectancy was low in the African American community, infant mortality and
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