Tales of Baltimore (2020)

Intro

Throughout time, Baltimore had a larger population of African Americans than any northern city. The new Maryland state constitution of 1864 ended slavery and provided for the education of all children, including blacks. The Baltimore Association for the Moral and Educational Improvement of the Colored People established schools for blacks that were taken over by the public school system, which then restricted education for blacks beginning in 1867 when Democrats regained control of the city. Establishing an unequal system that prepared white students for citizenship while using education to reinforce black subjugation, Baltimore's postwar school system exposed the contradictions of race, education, and republicanism in an age when African Americans struggled to realize the ostensible freedoms gained by emancipation. Thus blacks found themselves forced to support legislation and urged that the "colored schools" be staffed only with black teachers. From 1867 to 1900 black schools grew from 10 to 27 and enrollment from 901 to 9,383. The Mechanical and Industrial Association achieved success only in 1892 with the opening of the Colored Manual Training School. Black leaders were convinced by the Rev. William Alexander and his newspaper, the , that economic advancement and first-class citizenship depended on equal access to schools.

In the 1930s and 1940s the local chapter of the , the black churches, and the Afro-American weekly newspaper took charge of organizing and publicizing demonstrations with no rioting.

In the late 1950s and his national inspired black ministers in Baltimore to mobilize their communities in opposition to local discrimination. The churches were instrumental in keeping lines of communication open between the geographically and politically divided middle-class and poor blacks, a chasm that had widened since the end of World War II. Ministers formed a network across churches and denominations and did much of the face-to-face work of motivating people to organize and protest. In many cases they also adopted King's theology of justice and freedom and altered their preaching styles. 

However, after Martin Luther King Jr's Assassination in 1968, several African-Americans began rioting which resulted in several stores being burned, looted, and many injuries and deaths......

47 years later, in 2015, Freddie Gray, a young African-American man, is pursued by two police officers in West Baltimore. What happens next will change the city of Baltimore.