Race, class and antisemitism in Baltimore (Towson, Denton: best neighborhoods, rent, mortgage)

[krakenten]

If the idea was to keep Jews out of Baltimore, it didn't work.

Baltimore is perhaps the most Jewish city in America-even more than New York City.

How I miss the bakeries-there are bagels to die for in Baltimore, and I hope to taste ribbon cake again before I die.

Yes, I loved Baltimore, and next to the loss of my wife, having to leave her is the greatest sorrow of my life.

I hope to return some day, because, even though I wasn't born there, Baltimore is Home.

I'm not blind to her faults, I hope the new influx of people may force serious changes in the ossified corruption and dysfunction.

There's a chance, people, just a chance, but it's gonna be an uphill pull!

[TheseGoTo11]

Thanks to the OP for sharing, very interesting discussion.

There's a great book on this topic about Boston called "Urban Exodus : Why the Jews Left Boston and Catholics Stayed".

Basic point of the book is that Jews were comfortable leaving their neighborhoods like Roxbury, Dorchester, Mattapan for the suburbs because they took their congregations with them. These areas then became heavily black. Catholics, on the other hand, were geographically tied to their parishes, and large Irish areas east of Dorchester Ave, in South Boston, and Charlestown remained so, because they wouldn't leave their parishes. Some of the Irish have left now, but blacks haven't really moved into those neighborhoods, instead it's been mostly immigrant Latino Catholics. Anyway, a good read if you're interested in this topic.

[TheseGoTo11]

Irony about Baltimore is that today it doesn't seem as segregated as DC or Boston. Is any zip code in the city more than 50% white?

DC is 55% black, a little less than Baltimore, which is 64%. But the 4 DC zip codes west of Rock Creek - 20007, 20008, 20015, and 20016 - combined have close to 100,000 people, and each is just 4-5% black. Meanwhile, the three zips east of the Anacostia are all 95%+ black.

Baltimore, seems to have A-A people living throughout the city, without the large white enclaves Boston and DC have.

[barante]

Aside from Gerald Gamm's excellent book about Boston, a couple of others deal with racial change in that city. If you read them, one difference is evident: None of them indexes restrictive covenants, which became the chief instrument of promoting separation in Baltimore after the U.S. Supreme Court declared residential segregation laws illegal in 1917.
Similarly, if one reads detailed studies about Atlanta or Kansas City, it becomes clear to a person not intimately familiar with those cities that their experience in most ways was not comparable with Baltimore's. For example, none of those cities separted Jews to the extent that Baltimore did.

[barante]

A somewhat related book is Kenneth Jackson's seminal Crabgrass Frontier, which examines the history and impact of suburbanization, particularly after WWII. It is highly readable.
Kenneth Jackson was the first scholar to recognize the importance of the redlining maps. He talks about some other cities, including St. Louis, but not Baltimore. He also does not touch on the influence of eugenics in that business.

[vivo]

Originally Posted by krakenten

If the idea was to keep Jews out of Baltimore, it didn't work.

Baltimore is perhaps the most Jewish city in America-even more than New York City.

How I miss the bakeries-there are bagels to die for in Baltimore, and I hope to taste ribbon cake again before I die.

Yes, I loved Baltimore, and next to the loss of my wife, having to leave her is the greatest sorrow of my life.

I hope to return some day, because, even though I wasn't born there, Baltimore is Home.

I'm not blind to her faults, I hope the new influx of people may force serious changes in the ossified corruption and dysfunction.

There's a chance, people, just a chance, but it's gonna be an uphill pull!

as far as Jewish %ages bmore is 5 0r 6 pt something % , nyc is 12. that's 12% of around 8 million people

[barante]

We all know Fraser Smith as a voice on WYPR and as a Sunday Sun columnist. He is also an author, having written about the death of ballplayer Len Bias. Even more interesting is his biography of William Donald Schaefer, although the Johns Hopkins University Press needs to publish an updated version of this remarkable politician's life story.
Fraser's new book, "Here Lies Jim Crow: Civil Rights in Maryland," will be launched at the Enoch Pratt Central Library June 12. Reception and book signing at 6 p.m.; remarks by the author at 7 p.m. (There will be a sneak preview a few days earlier at a book store in Towson that I have near heard of. More details when I learn more).
I have read Fraser's manuscript. He deals with important but forgotten aspects of our history. One bookend is Roger Taney, the Supreme Court chief justice from Maryland, who was the author of the Dred Scott decision decreeing that blacks were not and could not be citizens of the United States and that Congress had no right to outlaw slavery. The other bookend is Thurgood Marshall, the Baltimore-born Supreme Court justice. Interesting stuff.

[TheseGoTo11]

Originally Posted by barante

Aside from Gerald Gamm's excellent book about Boston, a couple of others deal with racial change in that city. If you read them, one difference is evident: None of them indexes restrictive covenants, which became the chief instrument of promoting separation in Baltimore after the U.S. Supreme Court declared residential segregation laws illegal in 1917.

One of the main differences between Boston, DC, and Baltimore is that Boston and DC retained a much greater number of college-educated whites who were willing to stay in the city throughout the 60s and 70s and send their kids to private schools. There is no equivalent to the large, expensive, white enclaves of upper NW and Back Bay in Baltimore.

[jonjj]

Originally Posted by TheseGoTo11

One of the main differences between Boston, DC, and Baltimore is that Boston and DC retained a much greater number of college-educated whites who were willing to stay in the city throughout the 60s and 70s and send their kids to private schools. There is no equivalent to the large, expensive, white enclaves of upper NW and Back Bay in Baltimore.

I think Bolton Hill could easily compete with Back Bay in terms of history, beauty, and size. I walked through it today and it just seems to get nicer every time. The difference between the two would be the surrounding areas; Back Bay on the heels of downtown whereas Bolton Hill has some tough neighborhoods to the west of it.

[barante]

Thesegoto11 -- Hypersegregation is an academic subfield and studies abound. Trying to gauge segregation merely by eyeballing streets is a very inaccurate gauge.
Here is one reputable index:
Rank. City, Segregation Index

1. Chicago, 84.6
2. New York, 82.2
3. Atlanta, 81.5
4. Washington, 79.7
5. Cleveland, 77.3
6. Newark, 76.7
7. Philadelphia, 76.4
8. Baltimore, 71.1
9. Houston, 70.9
10. Los Angeles, 70.6

A word of caution. These measurements are by metropolitan area. I am not familiar enough with other cities but in Baltimore's case this amounts a double-whammy because, in addition to the city, most of the counties are also hypersegregated.
As seen, Boston is not among top ten. Why this is I don't know because it; keen competition, I guess. What is interesting about these indexes is that the Sun Belt, particularly Florida, scores high. Not only are cities hypersegregated but so pare most of the new communities, including senior villages.
Want to know more? The seminal work on all this is "American Apartheid: Segregation and the Making of the Unverclass" by Douglas S. Massey and Nancy A. Denton. Although it originally came out in 1993, it's pretty up-to-date in its overall thrust. These change either don't change or change very slowly.