Timeline, Baltimore and Beyond
Baltimore 1892: The Afro-American was started by John Murphy.
Salisbury, MD December 1931: Matthew Williams was lynched.
Princess Anne, MD October 1933: George Armwood was lynched, the last lynching in Maryland.
Baltimore 1934: Paul Lawrence Dunbar High School opened on Caroline and McElderry Streets. "Don't Buy Where You Can't Work" campaign on Pennsylvania Avenue concluded successfully with the hiring of black employee Thomas Hawkins at A&P.
Baltimore 1936: Court of Appeals of Maryland upholds Judge Eugene O'Dunne's decision to overturn segregation policy of University of Maryland School of Law, which cemented Donald Gaines Murray's entrance to the school.
Baltimore 1942: The March to Annapolis took place to stop the brutalities of African Americans by white police officers.
Baltimore 1944: Eleanor Roosevelt spoke at Sharp St. Church.
Baltimore 1947: First African American was promoted to the rank of sergeant. This marked the first time an African American of the force outranked a white patrolmen.
Baltimore 1947: Presentation of “Deep Are The Roots” to nonsegregated audiences at Morgan State College, after the playwrights had refused to permit the play to be presented at Ford’s Theatre because of its segregation policy.
Baltimore 1948: Judge Calvin W. Chesnut ruled that African American golfers were entitled to play on all municipal courses. The Park Board acted promptly by designating certain days of the week on which “Negroes” and “Negroes” only, could use each of the four public courses.
Baltimore 1948: Judge Chesnut ruled that the Maryland Art Institute, although a recipient of some public funds, could restrict its enrollment to white students.
July 1948: The Progressive Party of Maryland staged an interracial tennis match in Druid Hill Park in defiance of the segregation policy of the Board of Recreation and Parks. Police stopped the match and arrested 34 people. Twenty-two were charged by the Grand Jury with conspiring to riot and seven were convicted.
Annapolis 1949: Wesley A. Brown became the first Black graduate of the U.S. Naval Academy. He was appointed by Black U.S. representative Adam Clayton Powell, Jr., of New York in June 1945.
Baltimore 1949: A 19-year-old African American was stabbed to death in Carroll Park during a fight between White and Black kids.
Baltimore 1949: Protests were held against the use of Clifton Park by Dunbar High School students and against the construction of Black housing in the Cantonsville suburban area.
Baltimore 1950: African American professionals were appearing regularly in International League games at Baltimore’s Municipal Stadium, a scheduled baseball game on a park diamond between Baltimore Junior College and York (Pennsylvania) Junior College was cancelled because the York team had two Black players.
Baltimore 1950: African Americans protested against exclusion from Fort Smallwood, a city bathing beach.
Baltimore 1950: A White person was stabbed which caused an attack on African Americans by a gang of White kids that necessitated a police guard at the Latrobe public housing project for African Americans.
Baltimore 1951: The Board of Recreation and Parks abandoned its “white” and “colored” days at municipal golf courses, and also relaxed it rule against mixed play at more than a score of its baseball diamonds, tennis courts and other athletic facilities. Some segregated facilities remained particularly the swimming pools.
Baltimore 1951: As a result of court action, the Fort Smallwood bathing beach was opened to African Americans but on a limited basis. For example, during the first two-thirds of each summer month the beach was reserved for white bathers; during the last third, for African Americans.
Maryland 1951: The Maryland State Teachers Association became an integrated organization.
Baltimore 1952: African Americans were hired as operators by the Baltimore Transit Company.
Baltimore 1952: African Americans were admitted to the “A” course at Baltimore Polytechnic Institute.
Baltimore 1952: Segregated seating was abolished at Ford’s Theatre.
Baltimore 1953: The Baltimore Fire Department ended 95 years as an all-white municipal agency by appointing ten African Americans to its force.
Baltimore 1953: The Enoch Pratt Free Library opened its largest and newest branch on the corner of Pennsylvania and North Avenues with an integrated staff.
May 17, 1954: Brown v. Board of Education of Topeka, Kansas. The Supreme Court unanimously decides that segregation in public schools is unconstitutional.
Baltimore 1954: Around 500 students stay away from classes in protest of school integration.
Baltimore 1954: Following the Brown announcement, the Catholic parochial schools announced that all parochial schools in the Baltimore area would be desegregated (Catholic high schools and colleges were already on a nonsegregated basis).
Baltimore 1954: Friends School announced that it would take African American students, beginning with the first grade.
Baltimore 1954: The Park School decided it would admit qualified African Americans to any grade.
Baltimore 1954: The Baltimore City Dental Society voted to continue its exclusion of African American dentists.
November 1954: Three African Americans were elected to the Maryland General Assembly: Harry A. Cole was elected to the State Senate; Emory Cole and Truly Hatchett to the House of Delegates.
December 1955: Rosa Parks, a member of the NAACP, is arrested for refusing to give up her seat up to a white passenger and take her place in the “colored section” of the bus. In response, Montgomery’s black community launches a bus boycott.
Baltimore 1955: Read’s drug stores, the largest local chain, opened its lunch counters on a city-wide basis to seated “Negroes.”
Baltimore 1955: Two downtown motion picture theatres quietly dropped their white-only policies and a court test brought a reversal of the Liquor Board’s regulation against serving alcoholic drinks to mixed clientele.
Maryland 1955: The first African Americans toll takers were assigned to the Susquehanna River and Chesapeake Bay bridges.
Baltimore April 1955: On April 29th, between 100-125 Morgan State students tried to gain entry to the movie theatre at Northwood Shopping Center. They were denied.
August 1955: Emmett Till, a 14-year-old, was kidnapped in Money, Mississippi. His body was found four days later in a river.
December 21, 1956: After a year of boycotting, Montgomery buses are desegregated.
Baltimore 1956: Mondawmin, a huge shopping center, opened in northwest Baltimore in an African American neighborhood. Most of the 50-odd stores showed a willingness to serve colored patrons without discrimination but one restaurant admitted whites only. Mondawmin’s tenants also exposed shoppers, predominantly white, to African American salespeople on an unprecedented scale.
September 1957: In Little Rock, Arkansas, Central High School, formerly an all-white high school, blocks the entry of nine black students as ordered by Governor Oval Faubus. President Eisenhower deploys federal troops and the National Guard in an effort to mediate on behalf of the “Little Rock Nine.”
February 1, 1960: In Greensboro, North Carolina, four black college students are refused service at a segregated lunch counter in Woolworth’s.
April 1960: The Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee (SNCC) is established at Shaw University in Raleigh, North Carolina, giving young blacks greater status in the Civil Rights movement.
MD Route 40 1961: On June 26th an Ambassador from Chad entered the Bonnie Brae Diner. He was told that “The Diner didn’t serve Negroes.” The Ambassador filed a protest with the State Department in Washington, D.C.
May 4, 1961: The Congress of Racial Equality (CORE) implements “freedom riders” to test the new interstate travel facility integration laws.
Baltimore 1963: Northwood Theatre was integrated on February 22nd due to protests by Morgan State students and the Civic Interest Group (CIG).
Baltimore 1963: Protestors went to Gwynn Oak Park to challenge its segregation policy. Hundreds were arrested as whites yelled insults to the people being led away to jail.
April 16, 1963: During anti-segregation protests in Birmingham, Alabama, Martin Luther King, Jr. is arrested and jailed and writes “Letters from Birmingham Jail.”
May 1963: Televised throughout the world, Commissioner of Public Safety Eugene “Bull” Connor turns police dogs and fire hoses on black demonstrators in Birmingham, Alabama.
Cambridge 1963: On May 14th Gloria Richardson, along with her daughters, was arrested at the Dizzyland Restaurant for trespassing. This resulted in 62 people being arrested for protesting the Richardsons’ arrest.
Cambridge June 1963: On June 10th and 11th African Americans demonstrated. The protests turned violent. There were shootings by blacks and whites, brick-throwing and fires started by Molotov cocktails. 20 people were arrested.
Cambridge 1963: Governor J. Millard Tawes ordered the National Guard to Cambridge. They imposed a strict 10 p.m. curfew, ordered all businesses to close at 9 p.m., and ordered all establishments selling alcoholic beverages to close until further notice.
Cambridge July 1963: On July 11th, two carloads of white men ripped down Pine Street, the main black throughfare, at seventy miles an hour, shooting in all directions.
August 28, 1963: Martin Luther King, Jr. delivered his “I Have A Dream” speech to about 200,000 people at the Lincoln Memorial during the March on Washington and Gwynn Oak Park was integrated when Sharon Langley entered the Park.
September 15, 1963: In Birmingham, Alabama, four young girls:Denise McNair, Cynthia Wesley, Carole Robertson and Addie Mae Collins, were killed while attending Sunday School when a bomb explosion at the Sixteenth Street Baptist Church.
January 23, 1964: The 24th Amendment abolished the poll tax.
July 1964: The Civil Rights Act of 1964 was signed by President Johnson.
August 4, 1964: In Mississippi, three civil-rights workers: James E. Chaney, Andrew Goodman, and Michael Schwerner, two white and one black, were found murdered by the Ku Klux Klan in an earthen dam.
February 21, 1965: Founder of the Organization of Afro-American Unity, Malcom X was shot to death.
March 7, 1965: Dubbed “Bloody Sunday” by the media in Selma, Alabama, blacks began a march to Montgomery in an effort to gain voting rights but were stopped short by a police blockade at the Pettus Bridge where they were tear gassed, whipped, and/or clubbed.
August 10, 1965: The Voting Rights Act of 1965 was passed by Congress.
August 11-17, 1965: In a black section of Los Angeles, race riots erupted.
October 1966: Huey Newton and Bobby Seale founded the Black Panthers in Oakland, California.
June 12, 1967: Interracial marriages declared unconstitutional by the Supreme Court in Loving v. Virginia.
July 1967: Major race riots in Newark, New Jersey and Detroit, Michigan.
Cambridge 1967: On July 24th H. Rap Brown, gave a speech urging blacks to arm themselves and be ready to die. An hour later violence broke out. 17 buildings were damaged by fire during the night. Governor Spiro Agnew sent in the National Guard and declared that Brown was personally responsible for the violence.
Baltimore 1968: Black Panther Party chapter organized.
April 4, 1968: In Memphis, Tennessee, Martin Luther King, Jr., at the age of 39, was assassinated by James Earl Ray.
Baltimore 1971: The Baltimore Branch of the Black Panthers opened the People's Free Clothing Program at 1829 Edmondson Ave. The Royal Theater closed on Pennsylvania Avenue.
April 20, 1971: In Swann v. Charlotte-Mecklenburg Board of Education, the Supreme Court upholds using buses as a means of achieving integration in public schools.
1973: In Atlanta, Maynard Jackson becomes the first elected black mayor of a major Southern U.S. city.
1983: Martin Luther King, Jr. Day was established as a federal holiday.
1989: The first black elected governor was L. Douglas Wilder of Virginia. Also, in 1989, General Colin Powell became the black chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff.
April 29, 1992: In Los Angeles, four white police officers, caught on tape, were acquitted for the beating of Rodney King.
June 23, 2003: The Supreme Court ruled that race can be one of several factors that colleges consider when admitting students.
June 21, 2005: Edgar Ray Killen was convicted of manslaughter for the Mississippi civil rights murders that occurred on August 4, 1964.
October 2005: Rosa Parks, whose act of civil disobedience in 1955 inspired the modern civil rights movement, died Monday in Detroit, Michigan. She was 92.
Baltimore 2005: Elkridge Club, on the Baltimore city/county line, admitted it first African American member in its 127-year history.
Baltimore January 2006: Victorine Quille Adams former Baltimore City Council, General Assembly member and community activist passed away at age 93.
January 2006: Coretta Scott King died at the age of 78. Wife of Martin Luther King, Jr., and a pioneer of the civil rights movement.
Baltimore February 2007: Walter Sondheim, Jr. passed away at the age of 98.