Baltimore '68

Riots and Rebirth in an American City

Datos Bibliográficos

ID5704201
AutoresJ Berger (0000-0002-3029-7357)
Año2012
Volumen99
Número2
Páginas665-666
Fecha de publicación2012-09-01
Peer ReviewedSí
Open AccessNo
TipoARTICLE
RevistaJournal of American History (JOURNAL)
Identificadores de la revistaISSN: 0021-8723 • E-ISSN: 1945-2314
EditorialOxford University Press (PUBLISHER • GB)
DOI10.1093/jahist/jas204
OpenAlexW1986547150
IdiomaEN
Citas recibidas8

Baltimore '68 is a collection of ten essays and four expertly edited oral histories that provide useful insights into the local and national significance of the responses in Baltimore to the assassination of Martin Luther King Jr. Considered collectively, and in keeping with scholarship in recent urban history, the anthology reveals that looting and arson in Baltimore did not cause that city's urban decline. Emily Lieb uses a case study of the deterioration of a middle-class black neighborhood to illustrate the devastating impact that federally funded highway projects had on communities along projected routes. Not rioters but municipal planners “turned a neighborhood of ... homeowners into a slum,” she argues (p. 64). Elizabeth M. Nix and Deborah R. Weiner's investigation of the economic vitality of three commercial districts demonstrates that many businesses survived the events of April 1968 and that their later decline resulted from multiple forces. Though not the cause of urban decay, responses in Baltimore to King's assassination left an indelible mark on the city and the nation, several contributors assert. Maryland governor Spiro T. Agnew made national headlines when he publicly rebuked mainstream civil rights activists for not preventing the violence. The Republican governor also made clear his conviction that “‘evil men and not evil conditions’” caused the crisis—a move that Alex Csicsek argues was in keeping with Agnew's political convictions (p. 73). The governor's provocative rejection of the liberal interpretation of events—that, as Langston Hughes had suggested decades earlier, a dream deferred by racism and injustice can indeed explode—won him the attention of the then–presidential candidate Richard M. Nixon. Peter B. Levy notes that Nixon's selection of Agnew as a running mate reflected the candidate's decision to woo white southern Democrats at the expense of African American voters—a strategy with long-term implications for national party politics and federal urban policy. Howell S. Baum argues that the violent reactions in Baltimore to King's assassination, in combination with Agnew's diatribe and its favorable reception among whites, undermined efforts to desegregate the city's public schools. Dismayed by whites' callousness, moderate African Americans lost faith in the effort. Simultaneously, surprised by the intensity of African American anger, Caucasians backed away from integration as well. The events of April 1968, these essays explain, revealed and widened what Barack Obama famously described as “the chasm of misunderstanding that exists between the races” (“A More Perfect Union,” campaign speech, March 18, 2008, Philadelphia, Penn

Arson · Conviction · Criminology · Governor · Looting · Mainstream · Political science · Politics · Racism · Scholarship · Sociology · History · Law · Race, History, and American Society