Existing comment:
Early Civil Rights Era:
In pre-Civil War Baltimore, African Americans -- such as Frederick Douglass, Daniel Coker, and William Watkins -- wrote some of the earliest and most important abolitionist treatises. After the Civil War, African Americans founded the Douglass Institute, many churches, and one of America's earliest civil rights organizations, the Mutual United Brotherhood of Liberty. The Brotherhood's mission was "to use all legal means within our power to procure and maintain our rights as citizens of this common country." They fought for the rights of unwed African American women, foe new African American schools and teachers, and against lynching. By challenging many racist laws in court, the Brotherhood became a model for subsequent civil rights organizations, especially the NAACP Legal Defense and Education Fund.
In 1905, the Niagara Movement formed on the Canadian side of Niagara Falls to declare civil rights for African Americans. Dr. Garnett Russell Waller, minister of Trinity Baptist Church (which now stands on Druid Hill Avenue), represented Baltimore, and became one of only 29 founding members of the Niagara Movement. By 1908, Baltimore formed the state branch of the Niagara Movement, which met at Sharp Street Methodist church.
On April 4, 1912, Baltimore opened a branch of the NAACP, the second branch chartered in the United States. Dr. Garnett Russell Waller served as the branch's first president. Throughout the 20th century, the Baltimore Branch supported both local and national civil rights activities, including legal support for the 1917 Supreme Court decision to declare neighborhood segregation through local ordnance unconstitutional, the "Buy where you can work" campaign of the 1930s, legal representation for local and national civil rights activists in the 1940s and '50s, increased voter registration in the 1950s, and direct legal representation for civil rights activists of the 1960s. |