By Joshua Clark Davis Baltimore is not a city nationally known for its social movements. Urban historians have written extensively about the Black Power movement in Oakland, the labor movement in Detroit, Communists in Harlem, civil rights in Atlanta, radical feminists in Washington, D.C., and the LGBTQ movement in San Francisco. But aside from Rhonda […]
By Sara Patenaude On the morning of August 20, 1995 a crowd gathered in the streets of downtown Baltimore. Thirty thousand people formed an eight-block-long parade and party, complete with band performances and vendors selling commemorative t-shirts and souvenirs. At noon, a hush fell over the crowd, after which the countdown began. As the chant […]
Dorothee Brantz Center for Metropolitan Studies Technische Universität Berlin, Germany Describe your current research. What about it drew your interest? I am currently working on two new projects – one about the impact of seasons on urban life in the US and Europe between 1900 and 2000. The other asks about the role of nature […]
By Emily Lieb The story of twentieth-century Baltimore is the story of an expressway. Actually, it’s the story of the idea of an expressway, because most of the highways planned for Baltimore were never built. But the cat’s cradle of lines they made on planners’ maps changed the city all the same. They came close […]
Emily Callaci Associate Professor of History University of Wisconsin, Madison @ecallaci Describe your current research. What about it drew your interest? I’ve been working for a few years now on a project on the history of reproductive technology in Africa in the 1960s through the present day. It’s not an urban history project in the […]
By Mary Rizzo It was intended to be the gala event of 1978. Under blazing Klieg lights, Al Pacino, in the midst of filming …And Justice for All, and Alan Alda, who had recently starred in The Seduction of Joe Tynan, would walk the red carpet, waving to adoring fans. John Waters, best known for […]
By Will Cooley How did Baltimore earn the unfortunate nickname “Bulletmore”? Though many factors converged to produce high homicide rates, observers frequently overlook the law enforcement strategy of destabilizing drug trafficking organizations. In the United States as well as Central and South America, policymakers have directed agents to decapitate the “kingpins” of narcotics businesses through […]
James Wolfinger Professor of History and Education DePaul University Describe your current research. What about it drew your interest? I am currently working on a book about a World War II U.S. airman named Bert Julian. Julian grew up in the Orange, N.J. area around 1910, in an era when the New Jersey suburbs were […]
By Dennis Patrick Halpin On June 2, 1885, Reverend Harvey Johnson called five of his fellow clergymen and close confidants —Ananias Brown, William Moncure Alexander, Patrick Henry Alexander, John Calvin Allen, and W. Charles Lawson—to his Baltimore home. During the previous year, Johnson had orchestrated challenges to public transportation segregation and Maryland’s prohibition on black […]
The Metropole digs symposiums. Who doesn’t? Recently, the Global Urban Humanities Initiative (a joint venture between the UC Berkeley Arts & Humanities Division of the College of Letters & Science and the College of Environmental Design) contacted the UHA about its upcoming two day symposium: Techniques of Memory: Landscape, Iconoclasm, Medium, and Power. Needless to say, we […]