Happy Black History Month everyone! I write this in the interest of understanding the plight of black communities from a perspective of intertwining interests, from ordinary white citizens to mayors and city leaders to developers and urban planners. I will write post as a case study of Baltimore, where I went to college.

Residential segregation in urban areas had one of its starts in Baltimore as the first major city to create a racial zoning law drafted to keep white and black citizens separate from each other. In 1910, an ordinance divided the city into black and white areas on a block by block basis. To quote the ordinance in question, which you can read here.

1. That no negro may take up his residence in a block within the city limits of Baltimore wherein more than half the residents are white.

2. That no white person may take up his residence in such a block wherein more than half the residents are negroes.

3. That whenever building is commenced in a new city block the builder or contractor must specify in his application for a permit for which race the proposed house or houses are intended.

Other cities across the South such as Atlanta, Louisville and Richmond, VA quickly caught onto the idea. The practice was eventually challenged in Buchanan v. Warley, which deemed such blatant racial discrimination unconstitutional as a breach of the 14th Amendement. From that point, such residential discrimination became a gentleman's agreement between mayors and important developers to not only block large investments in designated black areas, but to prevent black homeowners from buying properties in these areas. As tbe Great Migration saw hundreds of thousands of Southern blacks crowd to these neighborhoods, landlords made fortunes on the perennial shortage of apartments new migrants could rent.

Before this time, the federal government had largely ignored the choices of such cities. In 1934, the National Housing Act was passed to slow the rate of foreclosures in the midst of the Great Depression. It also allowed banks to categorize neighborhoods by risk for future investment, forming the foundation of redlining. Blacks were denied loans to buy properties in their both increasingly black and traditionally white areas.

Fast forward to the end of World War II, when the G.I. Bill allowed returning veterans access to low interest loans and fueled urban sprawl and white flight from the nation's large urban areas. The end of the war had left black veterans without these benefits and many brought their families north and increasingly west looking for work. As an increasing college educated population left cities, so did the manufacturing jobs that had been at the heart of their economies. In Baltimore, Bethlehem Steel slowly shrunk its manufacturing base from its peak in 1960 (35,000) until the late 80s where its workforce was less than 10,000.

Efforts to desegregate our urban areas have been thawed by the lax enforcement of the Fair Housing Act, which remains to be treated on a systemic basis instead of case by case. It had also prevented by a sure refusal to integrate the region using any mass transit system. What was once a fairly comprehensive 70 mile long system was shortened to one simple line, approximately 15 miles long, connecting Johns Hopkins Hospital to the Inner Harbor and the Green Spring Valley surburbs northwest of the city. In the place of transit were numerous road projects, from the Highway to Nowhere, which was supposed to connect 1-70 to the center of the city, to the Jones Falls Expressway going north into Baltimore County.

The politics of the region has also acquiesced to the segregation of the region. The 3 Congressional districts that claim part of the city curve and meander to form the majority black 7th discrict and two majority white districts, MD-2 and MD-3. Education is no different, and BCPS only graduates 40% of students from high school on time. For the sake of brevity, I'll skip the effects of the War on Drugs, which are probably more understood around these parts.

Sources of Interest:

Children and Foreclosures, Part 1

children and Foreclosures, Part 2

A piece by Ta-Nehisi Coates, a native Baltimorean

The Warmth of Other Suns: The Epic Study of America's Great Migration by Isabel Wilkerson

Not in My Neighborhood: How Bigotry Shaped a Great American City by Antero Pietila

American Apartheid: Segregation and the Making of the Underclass by Douglas Massey and Nancy Denton