Baltimore City: 1940s Era
Background: It is the year 1940, and the United States has just begun to thrust itself out of the Great Depression which started in the year 1929. With tensions rising all across Europe and the Eastern Pacific, it was clear that the United States would at some point need to come to the aid of Western Europe in order to come face-to-face with the tyrannical nations of Nazi Germany and Imperial Japan. What becomes abundantly clear is that World War II is what ultimately brought the United States out of the Great Depression. With the implementation of FDR’s fifth term, and his New Deal programs, they dramatically changed the economy and infrastructure of the United States for the better. Originally however, the United States never wanted to get involved in another war. The War, Eastward on the United State’s borders seemed to be almost a conflict of interest for the United States in that involvement in the War would only mean that the recovering economy would plummet even further.
Why? Well it is simply because Wars are expensive, and you need a lot of revenue to fund big wars and not only that, you need a pretty sizable Army to fight in a War. Another question was, if the United States did come to the aid of Great Britain, where would the personnel needed to make up an Army come from?
Well, the personnel would have to come in the form of willing volunteers (which mostly came from areas in which the economy was very poor). One of those areas just so happened to be Baltimore. At the time, the demographics of Baltimore City were as one would expect- mostly lower class minorities. A huge factor in these demographics was the aspect of segregation. Segregation was still rampant throughout the United States and became more of an increasing problem much overlooked in cities across the country as whites moved to suburbia and distanced themselves from minority groups.
Beginning of WW2: But how did the United States involvement in World War II affect Baltimore in general? Civil defense and war production from Baltimore's largest factories and plants became the state's focus. ‘Uncle Sam’ seemed to target the country’s most impoverished areas, which just so happened to be the slums of then East Baltimore. It was seen back then that if you did not join the military, you would not have a bright future or have any opportunity to create a middle class family.
Fast-forwarding to December 7th, 1941, Japan declared War on the United States by bombing Pearl Harbor. Pearl Harbor was the main target of opportunity because it housed most of the United States Navy’s ships. However, most of the ships that were in that Naval yard were mostly out of date and were post World War I era. Nonetheless, by Japan carrying out this act of War on the United States, it sparked a sense of Patriotism internally that seemed to have been lost because of the Great Depression just a few years earlier.
Now because Japan was able to devastate the United States to almost null, FDR had to do something to get the Navy back up on its feet. He had to implement or convert factories across the United States that were solely dedicated to the War effort. All throughout the United States you saw various car factories in Michigan, Illinois, and New York City being only dedicated to pumping out mass quantities of weapons, tanks, and planes for the United States Army and Army Air Corps. While that was going on, it was seen that most of the cities that were very close to some sort of water or Port became only dedicated to mass manufacturing ships for the United States Navy. According to BaltimoreSun.com, “In January 1941, President Franklin D. Roosevelt created an emergency shipbuilding program, and Baltimore was one of many places that expanded its shipyards for this $350 million project. Construction in Baltimore yielded more of these “Liberty” ships than any other American shipyard, according to a 2001 Sun article.” The images in the gallery were taken by photographer Alfred T. Palmer, mostly in 1941. I was having issues copying and pasting some of the pictures here, but you can visit the website and see a lot of rich history of Baltimore.
http://darkroom-cdn.s3.amazonaws.com/2015/11/8b01691v-copy.jpg
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Post WW2: One might ask the question of what was going on in the city of Baltimore itself, how were the citizens affected? According to the Gleanings from the Census in 1940 - 1950, “The 1940 Census of Housing in the Baltimore metropolitan area revealed that 9% of the dwelling units here were in need of major repairs, 23% lacked private flush toilets, 5% had no running water, and 3% were without electric lighting.” To me, I think that this is just unacceptable. Why were so many people without the needs to carry out a sustainable living? It all comes back to that issue of segregation, which is still very prominent today.
Fast-forwarding to the year 1945, the War is over in Europe and is very quickly coming to a close in the Eastern Pacific. Now that the War was over, what was to be the fate of the Ports of Baltimore like the Inner Harbor? What were the fates of the people that were working in these ports? It would only seem inevitable that most of them would be without a job because their manufacturing skills that they acquired throughout the War in these factories were not directly relateable to what the Ports would be used for in the future. Also, too many laborers, meant that there were too many wages that needed to be paid. So once again, many impoverished people who lived in the slums of Baltimore City were forced back out onto the streets that they so desperately tried to get away from.
“Since 1940, and particularly since the War, Baltimore has been trying to improve slum living conditions through its ‘Baltimore Plan’ of providing and if necessary, compelling property owners to bring their dwelling units up to the minimum city standards of safe and sanitary housing.”
Prior to WWII, Baltimore had little housing codes with segregated services. The most notable early code was the 1910 J. Barry Mahool ordinance No. 610 prohibiting African-Americans from moving onto blocks where whites were the majority, and vice versa. “The backers of the plan and the city officials involved in its operation have naturally hoped and expected that the 1950 Census of Housing would reveal a greatly improved Baltimore as far as living conditions were concerned.”
A state constitutional amendment, approved in 1948, required a special vote of the citizens in any proposed annexation area, effectively preventing any future expansion of the city's boundaries. Streetcars enabled the development of distant neighborhoods areas such as Edmonson Village whose residents could easily commute to work downtown.
In 1947, Baltimore created a housing court to enforce code laws. In 1949, Baltimore implemented “the "Block One" program, which cleared a courtyard of 63 houses of fences and outdoor toilets, replacing the private property with an open paved public play area funded by code violations against building owners. This would evolve to the Baltimore Plan, heavily sponsored by the National Association of Home Builders as a method of revitalizing neighborhoods through private enterprise rather than government housing programs.”..........................I will do more research on this topic once I find more information about it.
Bibliography
E L J. The Sun (1837-1992); Baltimore, Md. [Baltimore, Md]31 July 1951: 10. Web.
Crenson, Matthew A. Baltimore: a Political History. Baltimore, MD: Johns Hopkins University Press, 2017.
Baltimore (Md.). The Ordinances of the Mayor and City Council of Baltimore. p. 204. Print.
Nicholas Dagen Bloom. Merchant of Illusion James Rouse, Americas Salesman of the Businessmans Utopia. p. 64.
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