Across the Divide

Across the Divide features personal stories about race told by Baltimoreans. Maryland Morning is producing the series in conjunction with Open Society Institute-Baltimore’s yearlong “Talking About Race” series of public events, which is co-sponsored by the Enoch Pratt Free Library. We also hope you’ll share your own story, either in the comments on this page or on the Across the Divide page here.

11-30-09: Black and Blacker
Antonio Johnson is a student at Morgan State University. He tells us about the segregation he saw in Baltimore growing up, and how, in his predominately African-American middle school, lighter-skinned and darker-skinned African Americans divided into their own cliques.

11-2-09: “There Was a Coldness That Happened”
One of the lesser-noted aftershocks of the infamous 1968 riots was the “Maryland Youth Rally for Decency” at Memorial Stadium on April 20, 1969. It was anything but decent. In a melee tinged with racial tension, scores were injured — including several police officers — and seven were stabbed. Tyrone Crawley, who grew up in East Baltimore, was there; he was thirteen at the time. In the third in our “Across the Divide” series of personal stories about race, he tells us his story.
10-28-09: “I think I was six or seven before I realized that the whole world wasn’t Jewish”
In the second in our “Across the Divide” series of personal stories about race, Senator Ben Cardin talks about growing up in a racially and ethnically segregated Baltimore.Listen to the unedited version of Sheilah’s conversation with Senator Cardin:

9-16-09: “No, you got my job”
Eddie Bartee, Sr. worked at the steel factory at Sparrows Point for over 42 years. He was a union leader for many of those years and, as an African-American worker, was on the frontlines of the consent decree that integrated the factory on the heels of the Civil Rights Act of 1964. In the first story in our series “Across the Divide: Stories of Race in Baltimore,” Bartee tells a story about the first day the consent decree went into effect.