A Letter by a White Baltimore Woman from 1917 vs. Spike Lee's Rant Against Gentrification

It was something Miss Alice J. Reilley wrote in 1917, in a letter addressed to the mayor of Baltimore.

Spike Lee: white people and gentrification is modern Christopher Columbus style genocide of my culture...

In the wake of the Supreme Court decision Buchanan v. Warley (declaring civil governments instituting racial segregation in residential areas unconstitutional), Miss Reilley would ask a penetrating question that, almost 100 years later, still goes unanswered. [Apartheid Baltimore Style: the Residential Segregation Ordinances of 1910-1913, Maryland Law Review: Volume 42 Issue 2, 10-9-2012]:

Black Baltimoreans seized the opportunity to renew their movement into white neighborhoods. Two black families moved into the 1100 block of Bolton Street, one of the oldest middle-class residential sections of the city; another family moved into the 1200 block of McCulloh Street.' White Baltimoreans responded with petulance and frustration. Miss Alice J. Reilley asked, "What is the use of trying to beautify a city or put in any civic improvements if Negroes are to acquire all of the property?"

A haunting query from 1917 (penned when the city had a population of 558,000 and was 85 percent white), one that, the longer it goes unanswered, proves its eternal truth: "What is the use of trying to beautify a city or put in any civic improvements if Negroes are to acquire all of the property?"

Today, Baltimore has a population of 620,961 people (28 percent white/63.6 percent black); after reaching a peak population of just under one million people in 1950, the city has completely collapsed since Miss. Reilley’s question went unanswered. [Blighted Cities Prefer Razing to Rebuilding, New York Times, 11/12/13]:

BALTIMORE — Shivihah Smith’s East Baltimore neighborhood, where he lives with his mother and grandmother, is disappearing. The block one over is gone. A dozen rowhouses on an adjacent block were removed one afternoon last year. And on the corner a few weeks ago, a pair of houses that were damaged by fire collapsed.  

The city bulldozed those and two others, leaving scavengers to pick through the debris for bits of metal and copper wire. 

For the Smiths, the bulldozing of city blocks is a source of anguish. But for Baltimore, as for a number of American cities in the Northeast and Midwest that have lost big chunks of their population, it is increasingly regarded as a path to salvation. 

The result of this shrinkage, also called “ungrowth” and “right sizing,” has been compressed tax bases, increased crime and unemployment, tight municipal budgets and abandoned neighborhoods. The question is what to do with the urban ghost towns unlikely to be repopulated because of continued suburbanization and deindustrialization.

Just shy of 100 years to the date Miss. Reilley’s letter arrived to the mayor Baltimore, attempts to beautify the city and engage in civic improvements literally mean tearing down the white past to accommodate the black, bleak future.

Had Alice J. Reilley's 1917 letter been heeded, Baltimore nearly 100 years later would be a safe place for the raising of families, instead of a city where plexiglas installation at convenience stores/bars/gas stations is big business

Those “city blocks” – filled with once beautiful, now inhospitable rowhouses - Shivihah Smith laments being torn down in 2013 were built by a people far different than the one that oversaw their ruin. 

Far different.

But in their removal, Miss. Reilley’s question finally receives an answer.

97 years later.

Instead, Baltimore is a city where black people marching against (black) violence is a yearly occurrence

Which brings up Spike Lee, the reigning champion of black directors, who recently commented on the gentrification (settlement of “blighted” black real estate by whites, which instantly improves every ‘quality of life’ indicator/measurable) of his beloved Brooklyn. [Spike Lee’s Amazing Rant Against Gentrification: ‘We Been Here!’, New York Magazine, 2/25/14]:

I mean, they just move in the neighborhood. You just can’t come in the neighborhood. I’m for democracy and letting everybody live but you gotta have some respect. You can’t just come in when people have a culture that’s been laid down for generations and you come in and now shit gotta change because you’re here? Get the fuck outta here. Can’t do that!

Democracy only applies to using the law to screw over white people on behalf of blacks (and increasingly all non-whites). Spike Lee understands this fact, why can’t you Trader Joe’s/Whole Foods shopping, Apple product buying, granola chewing, Crossfit participating, white-bread motherfuc*kers understand that fact?

Baltimore once had a culture, cultivated by a people represented by Miss. Reilley (a culture swiftly terminated when Shivihah Smith’s took over), whose 1917 letter presents a question no modern-day advocate of equality can dare answer.

Today, its culture is a byproduct of the majority population: and the plexiglas protecting employees (and the entire contents of convenience/liquor stores) from this population is a powerful statement addressing Miss. Reilley’s 1917 question.

Powerful.

The ability for a community to see wealth creation, an increase of property value, the maintaining of a tax-base, and the integrity of a business district is reliant on social capital flourishing. Which was the underlying thesis of Miss. Reilley’s 1917 letter to the mayor of Baltimore.

A Justice Policy Institute Report from June of 2010 detailing Baltimore's jail population (adult daycare center for unemployable, argumentative, and often-times violent black people)

Wherever the white Diaspora of Baltimore fled to [Rating the 'Burbs: Schools, safety, parks, pools, taxes, population, hospitals, incomes, home values, and much more!, Baltimore Magazine, May 2003], prosperity followed; what was left behind in Baltimore was the breeding/proliferation of the exact type conditions Spike Lee praises as the culture of his people being uprooted by gentrification.

What was left behind in Baltimore? Renowned liberal crime-fighter David M. Kennedy (director of the Center for Crime Prevention and Control and a professor of criminal justice at John Jay College) dubbed it “hell.”

Hell.

In his book Don't Shoot: One Man, A Street Fellowship, and the End of Violence in Inner-City America Paperback (purported to the Bible on how to combat black crime in urban America) writes of his efforts to lower crime:

Baltimore was hell. The worst of it was on the streets, but the rest of it was pretty bad too. (p. 107)  

The result made your blood run cold: gangs and drug markets and homicides everywhere. When we looked at a year’s worth of homicides, it was 303 victims and 210 suspects… Three quarters of victims and almost 90 percent of offenders had criminal records, the highest we’d ever seen, averaging 8.5 and 9.6 priors respectively. Nearly 60 percent of the killings happened in or near a street drug market. Despite the superheated street drug scene, only about 20 percent of killings had to do with drug business; the usual beefs, vendettas, and respect killings were the order of the day. (p. 108) 

What was it Miss Reilley wrote back in 1917?

Oh: "What is the use of trying to beautify a city or put in any civic improvements if Negroes are to acquire all of the property?"

So almost 100 years to the date of Miss Reilley’s letter to the mayor of Baltimore, current citizens of the United States have a lot of empirical evidence that helps conclude her fears were 100 percent correct.

Just as bad money drives away good money, bad citizens drive away good citizens.

It’s not a crazy question to ask: What would property values be like in Baltimore was the city 85 percent white today (as it was around 1917, when Miss Reilley wrote her letter)?

It’s not a crazy question to ask: What would the jails of Baltimore (housing the people who helped turn the city into, as David Kennedy described, “hell”) look like was the city 85 percent white today?

With an average daily jail population of 4,010 (in 2008), Baltimore City (Baltimore is not a county, but considered a city of Maryland) has the highest percentage of its population incarcerated for the top 20 largest jails in the United States. With .629% of the jurisdiction in jail (Shelby County, TN -home of Memphis - and Philadelphia City, PA close seconds), the astounding cost of policing the 63 percent black city should be obvious.

A network of surveillance cameras throughout the city (initially costing $10 million to install and $1.4 million per year to operate) works as a 24/7/365 deterrent to crime. Now who might be committing that crime?

Nine of the 10 people in the jails are black.

A Justice Policy Institute Report from June of 2010 [BALTIMORE BEHIND BARS: How to Reduce the Jail Population, Save Money and Improve Public Safety] points out:

African Americans make up the largest percentage of the people in the jail. 

Despite making up only 64 percent of Baltimore residents, African Americans comprise 89 percent of the people held in the jail; currently more than 2,900 African American men are incarcerated in the jail. The reasons for the high number of African Americans in the jail are numerous, but studies show that it is not related to actual behavior differences. 

 In cities and states around the country reasons for the disproportionate number of African Americans in jail can include policing practices and enforcement in certain communities, disproportionate allocation of resources, disparate treatment by the courts and lack of quality defense, amongst other reasons. The responsibility for alleviating these disparities falls not only on criminal justice agencies, but on society as a whole, and needs to be addressed appropriately through both policy and practice at all levels of government and the community.

Actually, it is behavioral differences between the races that account for the high number of blacks in jail (in not just Baltimore, but all across America).

•           Low-impulse control
•      An aversion to saving money for the future (poor future-time orientation)
•      A toxic level of self-esteem (hence, the high frequency of respect killings
•           Though certain black individuals can achieve the cultural standards set by whites, collectively, blacks have one-standard deviation lower IQ than whites

The outcome of these behavioral differences being played out in a community is what drove Miss Reilley to write her letter to the mayor of Baltimore in 1917, asking: "What is the use of trying to beautify a city or put in any civic improvements if Negroes are to acquire all of the property?"

When Kennedy came to Baltimore to implement his magical “Operation Safe Neighborhoods” plan, the Baltimore Sun published a story completely absolving the black citizens of personal responsibility/accountability for the condition of the aptly named Langston Hughes neighborhood in the Northwest District of the city. [Police, residents team up for a safer Park Heights: Gun violence targeted initiative aims to establish `new rules on the street', 3/6/2000]:

As a mother of nine, Jean Yahudah worries about whether her children are safe in her Park Heights neighborhood. 

She has had windows shot out of her Woodland Avenue home, bullets fired through her van, and every one of her children, ages 8 to 31, knows a friend or acquaintance who was shot or murdered during the past few years. 

"There's just too much violence," she said. "I want to live in a normal, safe and healthy neighborhood." 

Yahudah offered her home yesterday as a gathering point for volunteers, who picked up fliers and spread the word that gun violence will no longer be tolerated in Park Heights in Northwest Baltimore. 

Yahudah was also one of dozens of people who went yesterday to Agape Fellowship Miracle Church for a service aimed at winning support for a crackdown on gun violence called Operation Safe Neighborhoods. The service was at Langston Hughes Elementary School in the 5000 block of Reisterstown Road. 

The effort occurred two weeks after state and federal law enforcement officials took 27 convicted felons from Park Heights into the Baltimore City state's attorney's office to warn them that prosecutors and police are intensifying their focus on gun violence in the community. 

State and federal officials chose Park Heights for the initiative because of recent gun violence, she said. In 1999, 13 homicides and 36 nonfatal shootings occurred in the area and 49 firearms were seized by police, according to statistics compiled by Operation Safe Neighborhoods. 

"This is unprecedented in that we never warn people that we're watching them and go after them if they use guns," said Kimberly Bowen Morton, a prosecutor and gun violence coordinator for the Baltimore City state's attorney's office.

You can’t live in a normal, safe, and healthy neighborhood, because such a community requires a different racial group to create the conditions necessary for such an outcome.

It all boils down to Miss Alice J. Reilley’s 1917 letter (fearing the negative effects of a majority black community), juxtaposed with Spike Lee’s rant against gentrification (lamenting the positive effects of a majority white community).

"What is the use of trying to beautify a city or put in any civic improvements if Negroes are to acquire all of the property?"

versus;

I mean, they just move in the neighborhood. You just can’t come in the neighborhood. I’m for democracy and letting everybody live but you gotta have some respect. You can’t just come in when people have a culture that’s been laid down for generations and you come in and now shit gotta change because you’re here? Get the fuck outta here. Can’t do that!

It is the official policy of the United States of America to turn every neighborhood, community, city, and state into nothing more than a Baltimore.

Alice J. Reilley, writing back in 1917, knew how it would all turn out, just as Spike Lee knows how gentrification of “blighted” black communities turns out.

If she could be resurrected today and see the state of her beloved city, well, she’d smile.

Her letter from 1917 prophesized why private Baltimore business owners would one day need to install Plexiglas to protect their employees and products; and Spike Lee celebrates the very conditions that Reilley correctly attributed as a byproduct of blacks (their culture).