Rioting is a central part of America’s political tradition. As historian Heather Cox Richardson describes it, “If there is one constant in American history it is rioting.” A prime example of such rioting is the Boston Tea Party of 1773. During this famous incident disgruntled American colonists, disguised as Native Americans, boarded three ships and dumped 90,000 pounds of tea overboard. Today, the valuable cargoes of tea would have been worth about $1.7 million; yet, Americans have often looked back upon this episode of vandalism with a sense of pride.[1]
Rioting also afflicted New York City during the Civil War after a new federal draft for Union soldiers infuriated many of the city’s residents. The rioters killed Republican officials, soldiers, and members of the city’s black American community. They also demolished approximately fifty buildings, including an orphanage for black children. In the end, the New York City Draft Riots caused the deaths of at least 120 people, and it remains the most devastating riot in American history.[2]
Additionally, the twentieth century witnessed several instances of rioting. In 1914, for example, striking coal miners living in Ludlow, Colorado attacked a vast stretch of property. The violence was an act of retribution for the Colorado National Guard’s earlier assault on a striking camp, which resulted in the killing of between 20 and 26 miners and their family members. In 1962, a race riot erupted in Oxford, Mississippi when the federal government tried to uphold the enrollment of a black army veteran, James Meredith, at the University of Mississippi. White rioters killed two civilians and wounded 300 before federal troops were able to re-establish order. As well, the black American residents of the Watts neighborhood of Los Angeles rioted for a week in August 1965. The turmoil in Watts was the first of several racial uprisings that raged across American cities in the late 1960s.[3]
Throughout American history, the country’s citizens have taken their frustration to the streets when they have felt that society at large was unfairly favoring a particular group. For instance, the New York City Draft Riots occurred because poor white Democrats blamed the Republican establishment for war policies that appeared to be unduly benefitting black Americans. In Ludlow, the National Guard’s massacre of more than 20 civilians bolstered the striking miners’ claim that the state was unfairly privileging their wealthier employers. Additionally, the race riots that ripped Oxford, Mississippi apart in 1962 were the result of the white residents refusal to submit to a government policy that they claimed favored black Americans. Finally, the Watts rioting in 1965 was a response to a long-standing history of police brutality against black Americans. In all these cases, rioting arose because American citizens decided to fight back against the systems of power that they believed were stacked against them.[4]
Keeping in mind the history of rioting in America, we can begin to understand the protesting that blazed across Baltimore this past April. As Richardson observes, the people who were burning Baltimore were not thugs; rather, they were “acting in a grand American political tradition.” Thus, they were not out of line with what other American citizens had previously done.[5] Most importantly, though, the wrongs that the Baltimore rioters were protesting against were not only legitimate, but also quite significant. Ultimately, their grievances have implications that can illuminate the complex social dynamics that continue to plague American society.
The immediate cause of the turmoil in Baltimore was the death of Freddie Gray, a 25-year old black American man who was a resident of the city. While in police custody, Gray sustained horrific injuries, including a severed spine. He died a week later. Gray’s death brought to light several underlying problems that have troubled the residents of West Baltimore: unchecked police violence, zero-tolerance law enforcement, scarce economic opportunities, oppressive housing policies, and a stifling urban landscape. Altogether these factors have created an environment that has denied poor black Baltimoreans the chance to build wealth and has locked them into a perpetual cycle of poverty. As journalist TA-Nehisi Coates puts it, “When nonviolence is preached by the representatives of the state, while the state doles out heaps of violence to its citizens, it reveals itself to be a con.”[6]
The fact that over the past four years the city of Baltimore has paid more than $5.7 million to victims of civil rights violations underscores the litany of police abuse against black citizens in the Baltimore region. The victims in these cases included a 15-year-old boy, a 26-year-old pregnant accountant, and an 87-year-old grandmother. But, the payouts have not stopped Baltimore police officers from using excessive force. As Coates concludes, it appears that “the state of Maryland prioritizes the protection of police officers charged with abuse over the citizens who fall under its purview.”[7] The payouts and the lack of a corresponding shift in police behavior has prompted historian Robin Kelley to argue that non-violent protests have failed to bring about change with regard to police violence against black Americans.[8]
In addition to its history of violence, the Baltimore Police Department maintains a culture of corruption and secrecy. For example, there is the 2011 case of former detective Joseph Crystal whose fellow police officers labeled him a “snitch” after he reported the beating of a handcuffed suspect. Crystal eventually left the force after he was denied backup during drug busts and his security clearance was withdrawn. He is now suing the Baltimore Police Department. Due to this case, and several others, Kelley asserts that in essence the Baltimore Police Department operates like a “a street gang.”[9]
Zero-tolerance law enforcement has also turned the area of West Baltimore into an open-air prison, as this policing policy has robbed the region’s residents of freedom of movement, due process, and even protection from torture. So-called “broken-windows policing” (the idea that law enforcement should punish perpetrators of petty crimes to the fullest extent to maintain order in an urban environment), is more about scaring people into submission than it is about fixing the unbearable conditions that many people are living in. For instance, with zero-tolerance policing the small act of “loitering” in front of one’s residence can lead to an arrest, or the simple act of running in what could be deemed a high-crime area can result in detainment. In effect, this type of policing subjects the residents of West Baltimore to constant surveillance and containment.[10]
What’s more, zero-tolerance policing has led to the mass incarceration of black Americans not only in the Baltimore region, but also throughout the country. David Simon creator of the outstanding TV series The Wire recently concluded that “Once America marginalized the black 10% of the population it no longer needed, it set out to make money out of them by putting them in jail.” The research of academic Ruth Wilson Gilmore has shown that two-thirds of the 2.5 million people imprisoned in America are people of color. In the southern state of Louisiana, moreover, 95 percent of the people imprisoned are black. Scholar Mike Davis has called this growing multibillion-dollar enterprise the “political economy of super-incarceration.” In short, Simon, Gilmore, and Davis all contend that the mass incarceration of black Americans has helped the government “fix” the problem of having a surplus of available labor (mostly in the form of unemployed but ready to work black Americans), when the actual demand for labor is low. [11]
To be sure, there was a time when the demand for labor was high in Baltimore, as it was in cities across America. In the 1950s, for example, the Sparrows Point Steel Mill was one of the largest employers in Baltimore. During this time, Baltimore was the sixth-largest city in America; it had a population of about 1 million. The mill provided relatively secure and well-paying jobs, and it primarily employed black Americans. Historian Linda Zeidman notes that starting in the 1930s, many of the mill’s black employees began to settle in the neighborhoods of West Baltimore, the primary location of the rioting this past April. [12]
In the late twentieth century, however, foreign competition for steel gutted the economic backbone that the mill had provided for the city. For instance, the mill cut around 3,000 jobs in 1971. In the late 1980s, it employed only 8,000 steelworkers, a dramatic drop from the 30,000 it employed in the 1950s. The growing economic damage caused many of the city’s white residents to move to the newly built suburban neighborhoods between Baltimore City and Baltimore County. Yet, as historian Eric Singer points out, several of these areas specifically prohibited black Americans from moving in.[13]
This was not the first time black Baltimoreans had faced unfair housing policies, nor would it be the last. In the 1930s, for example, there was the infamous policy of redlining in which federal officials drew red lines across maps of major American cities to designate certain areas as being places with “undesirable racial concentrations.”[14] Until the mid-1970s, banks used these maps to refuse to lend to the residents of the redlined neighborhoods.[15] The consequences of redlining still effect the residents of West Baltimore today. According to researchers at Virginia Commonwealth University’s Center on Society and Health, the neighborhoods of West Baltimore that the federal government had redlined continue to have lower rates of homeownership and college attainment, and higher rates of poverty. In a more recent example of the unfair housing policies that have afflicted black Baltimoreans, Wells Fargo was forced to pay millions of dollars to residents of Baltimore to settle a landmark lawsuit. The city had sued the bank for unfairly steering minorities into subprime mortgages.[16]
The urban landscape of Baltimore that took shape in the mid-to-late twentieth century also created new modes of segregation. For example, from 1941 to 1971, black families constituted 80-90 percent of the 25,000 families displaced in Baltimore to build new highways and schools.[17] Throughout this time, urban renewal projects physically tore neighborhoods apart as thoroughfares and highways ripped through the center of West Baltimore. Other construction projects (such as high-rise housing developments), demolished the region’s playgrounds and parks. As Singer persuasively argues, discriminatory housing policies and an oppressive urban landscape essentially confined poor black Americans to the fortified inner-city of Baltimore “as whites and those with means moved into the country.”[18]
The underlying issues that spawned the recent riots in Baltimore are not unique to the region; indeed, they are not even unique to current times. For example, the Kerner Commission on the 1967 race riots reported that “What white Americans have never fully understood, but what the Negro can never forget is that white society is deeply implicated in the ghetto. White institutions created it, white institutions maintain it, and white society condones it.”[19] Even before that, E. Franklin Frazier, appointed by Mayor Fiorello La Guardia to examine the 1935 Harlem riots, contended that “injustices of discrimination in employment, the aggressions of the police, and the racial segregation” of the neighborhood had incited the unrest. As William Faulkner put it so eloquently years ago, “The past is never dead. It’s not even past.”[20]
The deaths of Freddie Gray in Baltimore, Michael Brown in Ferguson, Eric Garner in New York, Tamir Rice in Cleveland, and countless others have motivated protesters in cities across America to repeat a single and succinct slogan: “Black Lives Matter.” They chant this slogan because many of the policies and practices of America’s leaders and institutions have historically disregarded the value of black lives. In 1967, Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. bemoaned the suffering of poor black Americans who were trapped in a society that seemed “more concerned about tranquility and the status quo than about justice, equality, and humanity.”[21] Sadly, his words still ring true today as too many public figures have readily dismissed the rioters of Baltimore as mere thugs. But, they are not thugs. They are like so many Americans that came before them; they are rebelling against the systems of power that have served as instruments of oppression for far too long.
—RebeccaDeWolf, PhD
[1] I am indebted to Heather Cox Richardson’s recent piece on the history of rioting in America. See Heather Cox Richardson, “Rioting: An American Tradition,” We’re History, 30 April 2015, http://werehistory.org/riots/.
[2] Ibid.
[3] Ibid.
[4] Ibid.
[5] Ibid.
[6] TA-Nehisi Coates, “Nonviolence as Compliance,” Atlantic, 27 April 2015, http://www.theatlantic.com/politics/archive/2015/05/asking-martin-omalley-to-explain-baltimore/392441/. See also Heather Ann Thompson, “America’s Real State of Emergency: Baltimore and Beyond,” Huffington Post, 28 April 2015, http://www.huffingtonpost.com/heather-ann-thompson/americas-real-state-of-emergency-baltimore-and-beyond_b_7157656.html.
[7] Coates, “Nonviolence as Compliance.”
[8] Coates, “Nonviolence as Compliance.” David Von Drehle, “The Roots of a Riot,” Times, 11 May 2015, 35-40.
[9] Robin Kelley, “Baltimore and the Language of Change,” Los Angeles Times, 4 May 2015, http://www.latimes.com/opinion/op-ed/la-oe-0504-kelley-baltimore-rebellion-20150504-story.html.
[10] Kelley, “Baltimore and the Language of Change.”
[11] Ed Vulliamy, “The Rebellion in Baltimore is an Uprising Against Austerity, Claims top US Academic,” Guardian, 2 May 2015, http://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2015/may/02/baltimore-rebellion-is-uprising-against-austerity-freddie-gray.
[12] Eric Singer, “Why Baltimore Burns,” Nation, 1 May 2015, http://www.thenation.com/article/206057/why-baltimore-burns.
[13] Singer, “Why Baltimore Burns.”
[14] Emily Badger, “The Long, Painful and Repetitive History of How Baltimore Became Baltimore,” Washington Post, 29 April 2015, http://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/wonkblog/wp/2015/04/29/the-long-painful-and-repetitive-history-of-how-baltimore-became-baltimore/.
[15] Singer, “Why Baltimore Burns.”
[16] Badger, “The Long, Painful and Repetitive History.”
[17] Badger, “The Long, Painful and Repetitive History.”
[18] Singer, “Why Baltimore Burns.”
[19] Vulliamy, “The Rebellion in Baltimore.”
[20] Sarah Fenton, “Understanding Ferguson,” Perspectives 53, no. 3 (March 2015): 24-25.
[21] Kelley, “Baltimore and the Language of Change.”