“Living the Dream”: One Inner-City Neighborhood Fifty Years After the March on Washington

Year 2014, Issue: 39, 77 - 81, 01.04.2014

Elizabeth M. Nix

Abstract

Thirteen years ago my husband and I moved our young family into a Victorian house due west of Martin Luther King, Jr. Boulevard. In Baltimore, MLK is a significant border, separating Downtown, filled with repurposed Art Deco office towers and waterfront condos, from Old West Baltimore, the neighborhood where the city’s middle-class African Americans lived for most of the twentieth century. The area had gotten poorer as the century progressed. By the time Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. participated in the March on Washington in 1963, our section of Old West Baltimore would have qualified as “a lonely island of poverty in the midst of a vast ocean of material prosperity” he referenced in his “I Have a Dream” speech King . In Southwest Baltimore about a third of the residents live below the poverty line, and despite the attempts at historic preservation, the area is dotted with vacant houses and is in no danger of being gentrified. In 2000, we were thrilled to discover an area where we were able to afford a Victorian house with many details intact.

References

• Baltimore Neighborhoods Indicators Alliance: Community Profiles: Southwest Baltimore, Jacob France Institute, U. of Baltimore, 2013. Web. 21 Mar. 2014.
• Brockman, Erica. “Letter to Board members of Southwest Baltimore Charter School.” E-mail, 18 Sep. 2013.
• Cable, Dustin. Racial Dot Map. U. of Virginia, Weldon Cooper Center for Public Service, 2013. Web. 21 Mar. 2014.
• Elfenbein, Jessica, Tom Hollowak, and Elizabeth Nix. Baltimore ’68: Riots and Rebirth in an American City. Philadelphia: Temple UP, 2011. Print.
• Hannah-Jones, Nikole. “Living Apart: Fair Housing in America,” Propublica. org. Web. 21 Mar. 2014.
• King, Martin Luther, Dr. jr. “I Have a Dream.” March on Washington, 28 Aug. 1963. Archives.gov. Web. 21 Mar. 2014.
• Reutter, Mark. “Baltimore’s Jump in Homicides in 2013 Defies National Trends.” Baltimore Brew, 2 Jan. 2014. Web. 2 Feb. 2014.
• Rothstein, Richard. “For Public Schools, Segregation Then, Segregation Since: Education and the Unfinished March.” The Economic Policy Institute, 27 Aug. 2013. Web. 21 Mar. 2014.
• SbcSchool.org [Southwest Baltimore Charter School]. SbcSchool.org. Web. 24 Mar. 2014.
• Wells, Carrie. “Member of State Attorney General’s Office is Shot in Robbery Attempt,” Baltimore Sun, 18 Sep. 2013. Web. 20 Mar. 2014