baltimoreblackwoman

An essay by Eric Grandy

Racism is not new in this country. It is historical and based on skin color, or whatever religion you practice. The evidence is plentiful and deeply rooted. If you are Black, like I am, you are the most affected. Racism, over time, appears to lose its sting because it is oftentimes subtle. Life interferes and people become distracted. They have jobs to hold, bills to pay, and children to raise. What happens to refocus attention on this issue? A blatant incident, like sawing down a neighborhood’s only basketball hoop, is an act whose sting never fades.

Baltimore City has a long racist history. It was among the first cities in the country to adopt anti-Black housing covenants. According to reporter William Zorzi, the Northwood community’s original land deed stipulated the following: At no time shall the land in said tract, or any part thereof… be occupied by any negro or person of negro extraction. In 1942, a group of whites erected a “spite” wall along Hillen road to keep Morgan State College students out of their neighborhood. And, it was Morgan students who, in 1955, staged the first lunch counter sit-in for equal rights at the Reads Drug Store at Lexington and Howard streets downtown, five years before the more famous Greensboro, North Carolina sit-ins.

The community of Waverly was annexed by the city in 1888. It was then an agrarian suburb of Baltimore County. It remained an all-white, mainly working class enclave until September of 1966, when my family moved into a house in the 700 block of East 36th street. It wasn’t considered a “hotbed” of racism, but it was a microcosm of Baltimore’s racist practices. The residents’ reactions ranged from begrudging acceptance; the next door neighbors pretended that we didn’t exist, to acts of violence, when our windows were shattered regularly at night by unknown brick throwers on motorcycles. I was assaulted by three white, belt buckle swinging teens while walking through a nearby alley. Even after the civil rights movement and fair housing legislation, whites continued to live in mostly white neighborhoods. A Black family among them clearly affected their idea of community.

The more subtle forms of racism were also practiced. I would hear conversations by white friends disparaging Blacks, only to hear this qualifier, “ but you’re not like them!” I would listen to white adults lament the disappearance of “one way neighborhoods,” or have a “friend” ask me if I heard any motorcycles at night lately.

 

When the local basketball court started to attract young Blacks who lived nearby, someone hacked off the rims, a purely bigoted act done to discourage Blacks from coming to their neighborhood. The perpetrator was a white neighborhood teen known to everyone, including me and my few Black friends. He was never held accountable, but this was predictable. Experience has taught me that racial solidarity among whites is more important than right or wrong, fair or unfair. My family repaired the damage to our windows, but the unusable court and the bare backboard remained on display for several months. 

“You’re not like them,” was disturbingly subtle, intangible, spoken to one person. A deliberate act, like hacking down a public basketball hoop, sent a  widespread and longer lasting racist message. Blacks are not welcomed.