From Mobtown to Charm City : Papers from the Baltimore History Conference

by Elfenbein, Jessica I.; Breihan, John R.; Hollowak, Thomas L.; Elfenbein, Jessica I.

• ISBN13: 9780938420859
• ISBN10: 0938420852
• Format: Paperback
• Copyright: 2002-01-01
• Publisher: Johns Hopkins Univ Pr

Summary

A collection of thirteen original and illuminating essays representing the latest scholarship drawn from the Baltimore History Conference of 1996 and 1999 and ranging across a wide spectrum of subjects. After an introduction, "Thinking Big About a Big City," essays discuss the culture of volunteer firemen in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries, the hidden significance in the trial of a pair of stagecoach robbers, "alley houses" as an urban treasure, the secession movement as it took shape in an urban political context, race relations, the creation of an African American YMCA, the role of African Americans in World War II arircraft manufacturing, the rise of grass-roots politics in 1960s Baltimore, and the political reasons behind the difficulty with housing projects and urban schools.

Table of Contents

Thinking Big About a Big City: Baltimore, 1729--1999	3	(14)
Joseph Arnold
Volunteer Fire Companies and Community Formation in Baltimore, 1780--1859	14	(19)
Amy S. Greenberg
Baltimore's Alley Houses: Homes for Working People Since the 1780s	33	(14)
Mary Ellen Hayward
Deconstructing the Slums of Baltimore	47	(17)
Garrett Power
Saving Morris Hull: Capital Punishment and Public Opinion in Early Republic Baltimore	64	(28)
Seth Rockman
Secession in an Urban Context: Municipal Reform and the Coming of the Civil War in Baltimore	92	(37)
Frank Towers
Race and Public Policy in Post-Emancipation Baltimore	129	(20)
Richard Paul Fuke
``A Place of Resort and Help for Their Young Men'': Baltimore's Black YMCA, 1885--1925	149	(23)
Jessica I. Elfenbein
Wings of Democracy?: African Americans in Baltimore's World War II Aviation Industry	172	(26)
John R. Breihan
From New Deal Promise to Postmodern Defeat: Two Baltimore Housing Projects	198	(27)
Deborah R. Weiner
The Not-So-Silent Majority: White Working-Class Community	225	(25)
Kenneth Durr
Baltimore's Public Schools in a Time of Transition	250	(23)
Edward Berkowitz
Appendices	273	(8)
Index	281