April marks the 40th anniversary of the riots in Baltimore and other cities sparked by the assassination of Dr. Martin Luther King. This month also marks the 40th anniversary of the passage of the Fair Housing Act, enacted just days after the riots on April 11, 1968.
ACLU of Maryland's Fair Housing Project presents information on the history of residential segregation and public housing in Baltimore in two presentations that use historic documents, contemporaneous news articles, and maps from the archives of ACLU's landmark fair housing lawsuit, Thompson v. HUD. The presentations tell a visually compelling story of the rigid spatial segregation caused by public policies and the very limited progress that has been made since 1968 to expand housing opportunities for lower income African Americans. "The 1968 Riots and the History of Public Housing and Segregation in Baltimore" orginally presented at the University of Baltimore's symposium "Baltimore '68: Riots and Rebirth."
See the presentation, "Baltimore '68: Riots and Bebirth"
See the presentation, "Segregation and Public Housing Development in Cherry Hill and Westport: Historical Background" Originally presented in April 2008 to the Maryland Environmental at their Listening Session in Baltiomre's Cherry Hill neighborhood as historical background for the Middle Branch Master Planning Process.
Cherry Hill is historically significant because it was founded during World War II as the nations first - and last - planned "Negro suburb." Deemed the only "politically acceptable" area of Baltimore for construction of "Negro public housing" on undeveloped land, it came to have one of the largest concentrations of public housing east of Chicago.
Learn more about ACLU-MD's landmark public housing desegregation case