Of all the casualties of the car-centric highway age of Baltimore, perhaps the reduction in neighborhood snowball stands looms the largest on sweaty summer strolls through town. The ice cream trucks are great but… just not the same. When in 1977 the Baltimore Sun ran one of their many annual celebrations of the beloved summer…
“The Baltimore Sun rises to remark that its idea of a ‘sane Fourth [of July]’ is ‘oodles of fried chicken, deviled eggs and chocolate ice cream. It may be all right for the Fourth, but it does not argue well for a comfortable fifth.” – Racine Journal, WI, July 4, 1911 For a while now…
“Western High May Become Coeducational Negro School,” the 1954 Baltimore Sun Headline read. Hand-wringing about school desegregation was splashed throughout the pages of the Sun that year. The issue that brought Western High to the front line of the fight was its status as an all-girls school. If the quality of education was unique in…
Old black & white photographs of the ports of Baltimore bring to mind a gritty and sooty place; smog and ship steam and oyster shells. It is harder to imagine the loads of colorful & sometimes fragrant cargo coming into the port: tomatoes, bananas, coffee, citrus fruits. Much of it was headed to the city’s…
In 2018 I’m hoping to branch out to some of the interesting archives and historical collections in other parts of the state outside of Baltimore. The Historical Society of Harford County has Saturday hours once a month so I nervously planned a visit. As a “not a real scholar” I often feel out of place…