I took a walk around the old neighborhood, this evening.
When I first moved to Baltimore in 1982 (from Chicago), one of the first things that greeted me was a row house with a Confederate flag prominently displayed in the front room window. Well, as I rolled into Maryland the sign DID say “Mason-Dixon Line”.
Another reminder that this was not exactly The North was only two blocks from my apartment. The Wyman Park Dell is an odd geographic feature just south of Johns Hopkins University’s Homewood Campus, and right across from the Baltimore Museum of Art. At the western end is a large bronze statue, depicting the last meeting of Robert E. Lee and “Stonewall” Jackson. Yep, definitely south of the Mason-Dixon Line.
It’s easy to miss the statue. It’s tucked away at one end of the Dell. You can’t see it well from the steps of the art museum. You can really only see it if you drive past on Art Museum Drive, or walk past it. It’s not forgotten, but it’s hiding in plain sight, still there.
Tonight I gathered with hundreds of other folks who responded with 24 hours notice or less to the call to Stand with Charlottesville. We assembled under that Jackson-Lee statue that will almost certainly be removed and relocated in the near future. Baltimore hopes to avoid all the attention that Charlottesville has gotten, I am sure. But I doubt many actual Baltimoreans will protest the removal. The statue is an anachronism. Baltimore today belongs to those who remember Freddie Gray, and now Heather Heyer. Emmett Till was also mentioned in the speeches. I don’t remember if Matthew Shepard was mentioned, but he might as well have been. There are too many others, besides.
Across the US, there were probably hundreds of thousands who mobilized, on a moment’s notice really, after the events in Charlottesville. Think of that: we are responding nationwide, faster and faster. And, there are more of us than there are of them. We have to show them that we will not be cowed, and that we will not be drawn into their violence. Because that is all that white supremacists have: anger and violence. They have nothing else. And they want to drag us into a fight and then they want us to submit. We will not do either. And we will win.
So, on a warm August Baltimore evening, we marched around the old neighborhood. The BMA still has an art installation that was put up when I lived in Charles Village. I could see it from my bedroom window back then, a neon sign that flashed, in sequence, “VIOLINS….VIOLENCE …..SILENCE.” But the Confederate flag house is gone: torn down and replaced with a multi-use condo/retail building.
And the Jackson-Lee statue is still there.
Much has changed, but much more has not. And some things MUST change. We must DEMAND that they change.