I just ordered from Amazon.Com the forthcoming book by Antero Pietila entitled, "Not In My Neighborhood: How Bigotry Shaped A Great American City."
If you have seen any of the David Simon’s work -- Wire, The Corner, and Homicide – you know a bit about today’s Baltimore. Barry Levinson’s Liberty Heights in particular – or even John Waters movies – told you something about the city’s past. But none of that prepares you for Baltimore’s bigotry. Newspaper ads classified houses by race, or would state that Jews could not buy or rent. Jews were restricted to certain neighborhoods. In overall discrimination Baltimore was a trailblazer city. In 1910 it became the first American city to segregate each residential block by race. It was a border city but more segregated than many cities in the Deep South. Baltimore was the only city in the country that segregated even music: the city established a “colored” band and a “colored” symphony orchestra. In the 1920s and 1930s, Baltimore also was one of 239 cities that the federal government redlined.
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