“Living the Dream”: One Inner-City Neighborhood Fifty Years After the March on Washington

Authors : Elizabeth M NİX

Pages : 77-81

View : 15 | Download : 8

Publication Date : 2014-04-01

Article Type : Research Paper

Abstract :Thirteen years ago my husband and I moved our young family into a Victorian house due west of Martin Luther King, Jr. Boulevard. In Baltimore, MLK is a significant border, separating Downtown, filled with repurposed Art Deco office towers and waterfront condos, from Old West Baltimore, the neighborhood where the city’s middle-class African Americans lived for most of the twentieth century. The area had gotten poorer as the century progressed. By the time Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. participated in the March on Washington in 1963, our section of Old West Baltimore would have qualified as “a lonely island of poverty in the midst of a vast ocean of material prosperity” he referenced in his “I Have a Dream” speech King . In Southwest Baltimore about a third of the residents live below the poverty line, and despite the attempts at historic preservation, the area is dotted with vacant houses and is in no danger of being gentrified. In 2000, we were thrilled to discover an area where we were able to afford a Victorian house with many details intact.
Keywords :