West Baltimore was once a booming community in the city. It was what we would now call a “walkable neighborhood” with everything one would need within a short distance. West Baltimore had it all—delis, dry cleaners, clothing shops, you name it. But what happened to all of that? How did the community go from rich and thriving to impoverished within a span of 50 years?

According to Ron Cassie, Senior Editor at Baltimore magazine and author of A Tale of Two Cities, “the short answer to what happened to West Baltimore is sometimes proffered as ‘the riots,’ meaning the four-night, April ’68 riots following [Dr. Martin Luther]King’s murder in Memphis.”

These riots caused business owners and residents to flee the city for county living. This mass exodus that continued to take place over the next several decades proved detrimental for the West Baltimore community.

From 1970 to 1980, Baltimore’s population declined from 906,000 to 787,000 according to the Maryland chapter of ACLU (American Civil Liberties Union). White residents fled the city to the suburbs and the percentage of black residents increased substantially. Recorded at only 24 percent in 1950, the city’s “non-white” population steadily increased, registering at 65 percent by 2000.

This was the beginning of decades’ worth of racially discriminatory laws and policies in the predominately Black community of West Baltimore. For example, more affluent neighborhood associations like Roland Park, signed racially restrictive covenants that would prevent owners from selling to African Americans.



Of all the racially charged and discriminatory issues that plague West Baltimore; sufficient transportation is at the top of the list. Transportation is becoming a hot topic throughout the city of Baltimore, but some feel that West Baltimore and other traditionally Black communities are being overlooked in the conversation.



Dr. Lawrence Brown, assistant professor at Morgan State University, created a Facebook page dedicated to examining urban redevelopment in Baltimore City. BRACE, the Baltimore Redevelopment Action Coalition for Empowerment, promotes “an understanding that urban redevelopment is simply urban renewal (aka Negro removal 2.0). We also understand that we must tackle Baltimore’s hyper-segregation.”

The Baltimore City Department of Planning defines an urban renewal plan (URP) as “a form of overlay zoning that is more restrictive than the city’s zoning code. Urban Renewal Plans regulate specific geographies ranging from small business districts to entire communities.” The urban renewal plans in Baltimore City to implement redevelopment goals date back to the 1960s.



Many of these URPs resulted in the displacement of African Americans in communities like Barclay, Brooklyn, Druid Heights, and Coldspring cementing Baltimore’s history as a hyper-segregated city in America. The term “Baltimore Apartheid” comes up frequently when browsing the BRACE Facebook page.

According to Brown, this term is further elaborated on in a paper by University of Maryland law professor Garrett Power. The paper discussed the racial segregation laws in South Africa’s apartheid and this logic intrigued Brown. In South Africa, the apartheid laws prohibited blacks from traveling and moving to certain parts of the country. He says he began noticing this type of racial distribution in housing and transportation throughout Baltimore that was similar to South Africa.



“The ‘White L’ and the ‘Black Butterfly’; this pattern is showing up everywhere; it’s not just in one system,” Brown says. “All these systems converged around racial segregation. He called it ‘Apartheid Baltimore Style’; I just changed it to Baltimore Apartheid.”

Although he believes that Baltimore is a “2.0 version” of an apartheid society, Brown doesn’t believe it to be as cut and dry as the political system of a 1940-90s South Africa.

“It’s tricky in a sense, it’s not quite what Jim Crow used to be,” he explains. “There are Black enclaves in the ‘White L’ and there are White enclaves in the ‘Black Butterfly.’”



The “White L” that Dr. Brown mentions is the area of the city, running north-south, that consists of predominately white and affluent neighborhoods--Inner Harbor, Roland Park, Charles Village, Locust Point. The highlighted area actually forms an “L” shape, hence the term “White L.”

The “Black Butterfly” represents the outlying areas of the city that are dominated by black residents--Sandtown-Winchester, Mondawmin, Westport. These areas specifically are in what he describes as a “transit desert;” places that lack sufficient, reliable transportation to all areas of the city.

Dr. Brown has been extremely vocal via his Facebook page regarding the transportation issues that cripple the more impoverished areas of the city including West Baltimore— more specifically, the new BikeShare transit system that the city unveiled in October.

“This is simple arithmetic, folks: 46 out of the 50 BikeShare stations that will be built (in Phase I from what I understand) are either in the White L or next to historically segregating universities— Johns Hopkins University and University of Maryland.”

Brown is suggesting having bike lanes run from Sandtown-Winchester or other Black neighborhoods to Port Covington for future job opportunities to come with the new waterfront developments. He believes that cutting off commuting options keeps people stuck in their impoverished neighborhoods and prevents residents from getting them to the jobs they need to improve their lives.



“A government that can’t or won’t provide transportation may keep its residents mired in poverty,” Brown says. “Here’s the thing that is so insane and insidious about racial segregation: When certain things exist in White neighborhoods but not Black neighborhoods, it sends Black folks living in red-lined neighborhoods the subtle but powerful message that: ‘That’s not for us.’”