Before we start, a quick history lesson. [Census data show segregation goes on, Baltimore Sun, July 7, 1991]:
Racial makeup changes
The most significant change in the Baltimore area's racial makeup since 1970 has been the 25 percent growth in the black population. By contrast, the white population has only increased by 7 percent in the same period.
But it was not black population growth that transformed Baltimore from a majority-white city (46.4 percent black in 1970) to a majority-black one (59.2 percent in 1990). The city's black population edged up a scant 3.7 percent in two decades.
Instead, white population decline -- a drop of more than 190,000 residents, or about 40 percent -- changed the city. The white withdrawal, due to deaths and migration, was nearly twice as fast in the 1970s as in the 1980s.We now return you to your regularly scheduled program. [ City ties deadliest month with 45th homicide, Baltimore Sun, July 31, 2015]:
Baltimore Detective Roderick Mitter was at his desk at the police station when he got a call from his mother telling him a family member had been shot.
Within minutes, the 10-year veteran was at Johns Hopkins Hospital, where his 18-year-old nephew, Jermaine Mitter, was pronounced dead Thursday. "I was telling somebody yesterday, 'You get numb to it. It's just work,'" the detective said Friday of the violence he regularly sees on the job.
But with family, he said, "It's totally different. I wasn't just Roderick the police officer. I was someone who lost someone."
Jermaine Mitter was among 45 people killed in July, the deadliest month in the city in at least 45 years. July's total surpassed the 42 homicides in May and tied the previous record monthly homicide count in August 1972, when the city had about 275,000 more residents.
As the month drew to a close Friday, police also announced the death of Donte Dixon, 29, a popular local rapper known as "G-Rock," who was shot Thursday night in the 4500 block of Edmondson Ave.
Police have not announced arrests in either case. City violence has surged since the April 19 death of Freddie Gray. The 25-year-old died after suffering a severe spinal cord injury while in police custody. Six officers involved with his arrest and transport have been charged and are scheduled for trial in October.
All have pleaded not guilty. Mayor Stephanie Rawlings-Blake fired Police Commissioner Anthony W. Batts in early July, and immediately replaced him with interim Commissioner Kevin Davis.
She has praised Davis' leadership, calling the department's recent response to the violence "more nimble" after it announced several arrests this week.
The mayor has begun holding regular public safety forums, and is planning an anti-crime walk Monday at the AME Zion Church on Pennsylvania Avenue.
Detective Mitter said when he arrived at the hospital Thursday, he believed his younger brother, Jermaine Mitter Sr., had been shot. "I was kind of in pieces at that point," Mitter said. "I told my partner I had to call my mother," and he broke the news to her.Baltimore was 54 percent white in 1970, when the city had 275,000 more residents; now, Baltimore is only 26 percent white and is roughly 65 percent black.
Do you understand now what a world devoid of the white man looks like?
Where a world completely dominated by a democratically elected black power structure exists?
We call this Baltimore.
Most normal people would call the conditions collectively created by individual black people, and governed by almost entirely democratically-elected black people, hell.
Hell.