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Muddyboots,
You are absolutely right. I apologize for the offense in my remarks. After I re-read it, it did sound really racist, which is not my intent or my persona. It was intended as a response to the comment that the Yankees invaded the South, like a plague, or a band of raiders, and negatively effected the quality of life there.
So I'm going to attempt to stuff my foot further in my mouth. A few points, here, about African American movement to Baltimore. A large segment of the people of African American descent who live in Baltimore today came from North and South Carolina during the 1930's, 1940's, and 1950's. This was a movement due to the failure of share-cropping in the 1930's, and because there was still a large industrial base in Baltimore with jobs that could be occupied in the then-segregated culture. There was also a degree of tolerance from elements of the community that didn't exist elsewhere, e.g. Sinai Hospital of Baltimore would treat African Americans when other hospitals would not, street cars were not segregated, etc. However, the jobs weren't here any more than they were elsewhere during the depression, until the war boom in 1939-1945. An aside here- Glenn L. Martin didn't like African Americans, and didn't want to hire them into the work force. He was compelled to by local politicians. Where he placed them was in Sinclair Division, which was where all the Martin 250 CE and 250 SH Turrets were built.
A major problem with this relocation was housing. At the time, to accomodate the influx, there were large-enough tracts of the city which were given over to public assistance housing and public housing for the new immigrants, but these were areas in the poorer sections of town, most of the houses really run down. Then, in the late 1940's, the phenomenon of block busting came in. There are several good books about it but I don't have the titles handy. Houses in predominantly white neighborhoods of the city were sold to African Americans. This inspired the rest of the neighborhood to move out, as most of the localities were heavily ethnic Eastern European and Western European and did not well tolerate African American culture. Of course, in the post-war times, everybody was expected to go back to their places before the war. For most African Americans, this meant a return to the farm industry, packing houses, and other low-end labor- Glenn L. Martin and other war manufacturers didn't need them any more. The traditional employment for African Americans in the region went away after WWII as the market consolidated, leaving the city residents, now increasingly African American in composition, without many options. The block busting led to larger and larger tracts of the farms surrounding Baltimore being cut up for suburban developments, known as the phenomenon of Urban Sprawl.
There were 33 airports in the City of Baltimore and Baltimore County, which surrounds the city. Because of this sprawl, most of these closed in the 1940's through the 1960's. and there are only 2 public use airports in Baltimore County, and none in the city. Nearly all of these airports, and you can look them up on Paul Freeman's site on old airfields, were closed and eventually developed due to the expanding use of land for suburban housing development, which was spurred by the "white flight" from the cities. So, the tone of my comments notwithstanding, Southern African American entry into the Baltimore Metropolitan area was a factor in the eventual closing of the local airports. I am not saying they were individually or collectively responsible for that, but their arrival here and the white population's reaction to their prosperity and buy-in to the local economy contributed to the local airport closings here, largely due to the block-busting. I'm not in any way trying to excuse my comments, as I freely admit that they could be construed as racially charged. But as a scholar, I thought you might be interested.
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It's in the constitution or somethin. But the cracker remarks are seriously efgayed upgayed.
