I worked for a period of time with a guy who’d grown up in Baltimore in the 1960s and 1970s. He could talk for an entire hour about the ‘charm’ of the city, the Orioles, and local cuisine...in the OLD days. Then he’d come to the 1990s, when the city was starting to dissolve. It no longer functioned....drug use was escalating, and there weren’t enough cops to protect people. In some ways, it’s become a mini-Detroit.
To all of the above who wrote about the Old Baltimore. I was born there and lived there thru 1964, worked their in a family business from 1975-87, and had a sister who lived their until she died a couple years ago.
I went to BCC (City) and it was ranked as one of the best high schools in the country with an award winning newspaper and Yearbook (my father worked on the YB in the mid-1930’s).
I was on the track & field team. It was a winning team with blacks and whites working together. Even at our 50 year reunion in 2012, when I showed some of the older black athletes a photo of our JV team from 1960, they recognized everyone and were proud of what they accomplished.
Crime in most od Baltimore in the 50’s and early 60’s was usually limited in type and scope/area, very few killings and mainly over drugs or robberies. My neighbor (Ashburton) has only one crime, the famous “Cat Burglar” of the mid-late 50’s. No drugs, no car thefts, no robberies, no drunks.
While there had been segregation until 1956 (esp. in the schools), it went off reasonably well for a basically southern city. even in Junior High (Garrison) black girls were highly respected for their excellent grades and just being very nice people.
One white gang ( called “drapes” a la Sal Mineo and James Dean)was wiped out by the police and the threat of a black gang never materialized.
The trouble began in 1968 when Mayor Tommy D’Alessandro II, caved in to black rioters (insiders and outsiders) and let them burn out the small Jewish businesses in East, Southern and possibly part of western Baltimore. That drove the older business owners out of the city, never to return.
However, in armed ethnic areas, such as Patterson Park (Polish, Ukrainian, Italian, Slavic) or Hamilton/Hampden (white crackers if there ever were some), there was very little violence. Guns and WW2 veterans had a great deterrent effect. So did the threat of Mafia retaliation (never spoken, but made known to the rioters).
After that, the city, which had been run by the Democrats, began its decline from which it has only partially recovered (and only in certain areas).
Mayor Schaefer was the city’s last great “white hope”, “Marxist O’Malley was basically a holding action but not very effective, and then a series of black mayors (one of whom is now in jail). You know the story of Freddy Gray’s accidental death in a police van and the riots that followed. No wonder Baltimore rapidly became “Harm City” with soring murder rates AND IT WASN’T BEING DONE BY WHITES, ASIANS, OR AMISH.
a total failure of Blacks to elect honest, hardworking and concerned non-political machine politicians is the KEY reason Baltimore is a shithole in many places.
If the black population starts singing and doing “The Man in the Mirror”, they won’t like what they see.
As for us old white Jewish guys, we started to built the city, along with the other immigrants in the early 1900’s into a nice, major industrial/business city. In 1968, it was destroyed (and other white businessmen also suffered as secondary targets). By the late 80’s, all the older white guys in business since the 30’s/postwar 40’s, were retired or dead and their kids too often abandoned their family homes for the safety of Baltimore County (which is getting worse), Howard County, etc.
We always left our house doors unlocked during the day. I’m sure now that NO ONE does that, anywhere in the city.
That is the tragedy of Baltimore and with the politically corrupt black machines running it now, it will stay that way.