A free publication arrived this week to help people interested in Baltimore's African-American history understand their city and its neighborhoods. "A Lasting Legacy: Baltimore's African-American History Passport" is a handy resource.
These cold days recommend an indoor museum experience. Jason Vaughan, who designed the brochure and helped with the writing, suggests stops at the Reginald F. Lewis Museum and the Great Blacks in Wax Museum for a "wonderful grounding."
You can also have a rich living-history experience at places where there are no exhibition panels or artifacts. Read up on your destination, go to the spot and let your educated imagination take over. The passport suggests plenty of addresses. And in Baltimore, these truly authentic places are often little-restored, or used for non-museum purposes. There's a strong reality value to seeing them.
The passport recommends trips to Baltimore's oldest neighborhoods, such as Fells Point. If you want a feel for Baltimore in the 18th century, just walk along Lancaster Street. Baltimore historically had a large population of free blacks, many of whom worked along the waterfront as carpenters, sailmakers and caulkers.
The booklet also recommends a visit to Frederick Douglass-Isaac Myers Maritime Park. I also enjoy walking along the 500 block of S. Dallas St., where Frederick Douglass once worshipped. The abolitionist later bought the church, tore it down and built affordable housing at what is known as Douglass Place.
Singer Billie Holiday also lived briefly in the neighborhood, in the 200 block of S. Durham St. Last year, local residents called in artists and transformed the narrow block into a kind of walking arts way. It's delightful.
Seton Hill is another recommended neighborhood destination that is somewhat less well known. The black community grew around the old St. Mary's Seminary and its chapel on Paca Street. St. Mary's Court, a tiny street that has now disappeared, was the birthplace of the Oblate Sisters of Providence, a Roman Catholic religious order. Mother Mary Elizabeth Clarisse Lange, the founder of the order, once walked these streets.
A few blocks westward, at 1315 Division St., is an old public school. Supreme Court Justice Thurgood Marshall received his childhood education here, at the Henry H. Garnet School, No. 103.
"It was in the segregated schools of Baltimore that Marshall memorized the U.S. Constitution and first learned and understood the principles of equal protection under the law," the passport says.
It's not fixed up or marked by a plaque, but the old Read's Drug Store, at the southeast corner of Howard and Lexington streets, ought to be a more widely recognized shrine of Baltimore's civil rights movement. The passport explains that this modern-looking structure from 1934 was the flagship store for the massively patronized and locally owned Read's chain.
"Like many downtown businesses in the 1950s, the store maintained a strict policy of racial segregation at its lunch counters," the passport says. "In 1955, a group of Morgan State College students organized a successful sit-in protest at the store's lunch counter. The group's success provided a powerful model for the more famous lunch-counter sit-in of Greensboro, North Carolina, in 1960."
The brochure also tells of Henrietta Lacks, the cancer patient who became the unwitting donor of the first immortal cell line, used since her 1951 death in research for polio, cancer, AIDS and other diseases. She was treated at the Johns Hopkins Hospital.
This booklet is a product of the staff of the federally designated Baltimore National Heritage Area.
"The aim is to encourage residents and tourists to learn more about Baltimore's African-American heritage," said Vaughan.
"A Lasting Legacy: Baltimore's African-American History Passport" has a press run of 20,000 copies. The cost of its printing was underwritten by PNC Bank. The publication is free and is available beginning next week the bank's branches. The passport is also to be distributed in schools.