Officers of the
Colored Law and Order League
Baltimore, Md.
------------------
President—Rev. John A. Holmes
Vice-President—John W. Rich
Secretary—Heber E. Wharton
Treasurer—Dr. Thomas S. Hawkins
Executive Committee
Rev. John A. Holmes
Harry T. Pratt
Dr. Whitfield Winsey
Heber E. Wharton
Josiah A. Diggs
Mason A. Hawkins
Rev. John T. Jenifer
W. C. McCard
W. Ashbie Hawkins
Dr. J. H. N. Waring
------------------------------------------------------------------------
PRESS OF
E. A. WRIGHT BANK NOTE CO.
PHILADELPHIA, PA.
------------------------------------------------------------------------
Work of the Colored Law and
Order League :: Baltimore, Md.
----------------------------------------------------------------
----------------------------------------------------------------
[Illustration: Publisher’s Logo]
by James H. N. Waring
COMMITTEE OF TWELVE
FOR THE ADVANCEMENT OF THE INTERESTS OF THE NEGRO RACE
CHEYNEY, PA.
------------------------------------------------------------------------
MAP
SHOWING
LOCATION OF SALOONS
[Illustration:
A map of the lower Druid Hill Avenue District. In this district there
were forty-two saloons, fifteen churches, twelve schools, one home
for old people, one home for friendless children, the colored Y. M.
C. A. and the colored Y. W. C. A.
]
------------------------------------------------------------------------
Work of the Colored Law and Order League of Baltimore
THE Atlanta riot had sent a thrill of horror throughout the country, and
colored people generally, whenever they met, were eagerly and anxiously
discussing it, not only because of the desolation it left behind it, and
the misery and suffering it had entailed to the families of the victims,
but because as they discussed it they saw in their own neighborhoods
more or less of the causes which led to that unfortunate affair.
With the colored people here in Baltimore it was for a long time a
common topic of conversation. True, Baltimore had no incendiary press to
inflame the passions of the poor whites of the city, nor had she a class
of hysterical women to take fright at the sudden appearance of a black
face, nor was there here that loose attitude toward law and order which
permits the disorderly elements of the population to disregard and defy
the authorities in their enforcement of the laws of the city and State.
But there were sections of the city, where the colored people in large
numbers reside, infested with saloons kept principally by white men of
the lowest type; there were dens of vice in too large numbers scattered
throughout the city—all of which were exercising a demoralizing effect
upon the colored youth and furnishing schools of crime for colored
children. These places appeared to have a quasi-police protection, and
as it appeared later, in the testimony before the Liquor License Board,
at least one policeman regarded the saloons about which there had been
complaint from the best citizens of the town, white and black, as “less
troublesome than the colored churches in the neighborhood.”
There were saloons of the lowest type in the most densely populated
colored residence neighborhoods, and some of the public schools were
within 300 feet of from two to eight of them. It was such conditions as
these that laid the foundation for the trouble in Atlanta, and surely
the existence of similar conditions in Baltimore justified the
apprehensions felt by many of Baltimore’s best colored citizens.
[Illustration:
THE DISTRICT SURROUNDING PUBLIC SCHOOL No.
105
This district is infested with dives and disorderly houses. The small
dots indicate the disorderly houses; the large dots liquor saloons;
the crosses around them are liquor saloons which have disorderly
houses connected with them; the small triangles are houses that are
suspected.
In this district some of the women who keep these houses have their
names printed over the doors.
]
Finally, after some casual conferences and informal discussions at
promiscuous meetings and gatherings, Rev. John Hurst, one of the most
useful of Baltimore’s colored men, took the initiative and called
together at his house a number of representative colored men to discuss
the situation more formally. At this meeting there were present: W.
Ashbie Hawkins, one of the leading lawyers of the city; Dr. Howard E.
Young, one of the leading druggists; Dr. Whitfield Winsey, a physician
who has practised among the colored people for about thirty years; Dr.
Thomas S. Hawkins, one of the younger physicians, and a man who has
always been prominent in every movement looking toward the betterment of
the condition of the colored people; Heber E. Wharton, a vice-principal
of one of the public schools; Harry T. Pratt, a grade supervisor in the
public schools; Rev. J. Albert Johnson, who has recently been made a
bishop in the A. M. E. Church; Rev. E. F. Eggleston, pastor of Grace
Presbyterian Church; and Dr. J. H. N. Waring, principal of the Colored
High and Training School. This group of men, after an informal
discussion of the situation, decided to organize into a committee of
ten, and elected Rev. Mr. Hurst as chairman of this committee, a
position in which he served through the whole campaign with tact and
firmness and wisdom. Later Dr. Hurst, who moved to Washington to live,
was succeeded by Rev. John A. Holmes, who took up the fight with the
same earnestness, intelligence and zeal which have characterized his
entire life in this community.
It was from this little band of men, all of whom were colored, that the
Law and Order League grew. The larger body was likewise made up entirely
of colored men, all of them deeply interested in the general development
of the whole colored population and fully determined, so far as lay in
their power, to make the best possible contribution to good citizenship
in Baltimore. The membership of the League was composed not only of the
best colored men of the city, but they were the men who are always
foremost in any movement for civic betterment, and men who are occupying
the most prominent and influential positions in the city.
MAP showing LOCATION of
SALOONS and DISORDERLY HOUSES
● SALOONS
• DISORDERLY HOUSES
× BOTH
[Illustration:
Public School No. 105 surrounded by houses of prostitution and
saloons.
]
At this meeting in October, 1906, it was decided to investigate the
conditions in colored neighborhoods, and learn more in detail of the
environments of their homes and schools and churches, to study the
sanitary conditions of colored neighborhoods and to collect all the
reliable data possible to be used in the effort to improve conditions
among the colored people. It was thought best to limit the size of this
committee to the ten men who met at Dr. Hurst’s house. They divided
themselves up into sub-committees to study and report on the sanitary
conditions in colored neighborhoods, to investigate the school
conditions with special reference to their surroundings, and to secure
such printed matter and collect such reliable statistics as they might
need in their future work.
At the subsequent meetings reports from these committees brought out
many interesting and startling facts. In Baltimore, as in most other
cities, the colored people are grouped together in certain neighborhoods
whose white population is very small and composed of the degraded
rum-seller or the small shopkeeper, who has no social antipathy toward
his black neighbors so long as business is good.
[Illustration:
MAP SHOWING LOCATION OF SALOONS
A poor white neighborhood in Baltimore, in a section composed of four
blocks, with 36 saloons.
]
It was reported that there were at least three neighborhoods in the city
in which the conditions with reference to schools for colored children
and housing of colored families were deplorable in the extreme.
There was the Caroline and Bank Streets district, in which a colored
school was surrounded by a network of saloons and houses of
prostitution. It was found that within a block of the school there were
nine saloons and no less than forty-seven houses of ill-repute. It was
learned that it was most difficult to keep girls in this school after
they became thirteen or fourteen years of age. So powerful were the
influences of this neighborhood upon them that at thirteen some of them
passed from the school to the houses of prostitution and to lives of
shame. In a tour of inspection of this neighborhood young girls were
pointed out one after another, who, the previous year, had been pupils
of the school. One mother, who had recently moved to Baltimore from the
country, told how she had rescued her twelve-year-old daughter from one
of those dens, and how a policeman, to whom in her agony and distress
she had appealed, threatened to arrest her for disorderly conduct!
[Illustration:
Public School No. 116, surrounded by eleven saloons, 8 of which are
within 300 feet of the school premises.
]
The Rogers Avenue district, in which another colored school was located,
while not quite so bad so far as the number of saloons and questionable
houses was concerned, was yet a neighborhood infested with both kinds of
places, and the block just below the school, on the street through which
nearly half of the children must pass on their way to and from school,
was lined on both sides with houses of prostitution, over whose doors,
in some cases, the women who kept them had their names printed. Such a
condition as this existed nowhere else in the city, and made this
particular street a demoralizing influence which was different from any
other and in many ways more powerful for harm than any other which was
found.
[Illustration:
(Click on the map for a slightly-larger version.)
DRUID HILL AVENUE DISTRICT
Deaths due to tuberculosis in ten years, 1891–1900, inclusive, in all
11,542. The tuberculosis map of Baltimore City. The lower Druid Hill
Avenue district is outlined on the map. This is the tuberculosis
center of Maryland and the City of Baltimore.
]
The Druid Hill Avenue district is the largest and most populous colored
neighborhood in Baltimore, if not in the world. It probably contains
more homes owned and occupied by colored people than any similar
residential neighborhood anywhere. It extends from Eutaw Street to North
Avenue, and with the adjacent streets covers an area a mile and a half
long by from one-sixteenth to one-half a mile wide. The upper part of
this district is as fine a colored neighborhood as one would wish to
see, and is comparatively free from nuisances of any kind.
In the lower Druid Hill Avenue district, which was the largest district
studied, it was found that in a section seven blocks long and two blocks
wide there were located forty-two saloons, fifteen churches, twelve
schools, one home for old people, one home for friendless children, the
Colored Young Men’s Christian Association and the Colored Young Women’s
Christian Association. This section was honeycombed with gambling dens,
known not only to the initiated, but carrying on unblushingly a business
which was known to the citizens if not to the police. There were
numerous dance houses, clubs and billiard halls which were in actual
practice only assignation places for girls and young women, and to which
many of them owed their downfall.
The Health Office furnished a map which showed that the lower Druid Hill
Avenue district was the “tuberculosis centre” for the city of Baltimore
and the State of Maryland. From “A Study on Housing Conditions in
Baltimore,” an investigation prepared under the direction of the
Association for the Improvement of the Condition of the Poor and the
Charity Organization Society, the following is quoted, showing the bad
conditions of health, sanitation and morals with reference to one alley
in this district:
“The Biddle Alley district, of all sections of the city, holds
the record for the tuberculosis death rate. In the year 1906
eight deaths from tuberculosis occurred in families known to the
agent of the Federated Charities, and according to the statement
made a short time ago by a Health Department official, there is
not a house on Biddle Alley in which there has not been at least
one case of tuberculosis.”
“From morning until midnight the beer can circulates with a
regularity that is almost monotonous.”
“Another striking characteristic of the occupants of this
district is what appears to be in many cases an entirely
undeveloped moral sense.”
“Gambling is also prevalent and there is reason to believe that
the cocaine habit hastens the decay of many of these
degenerates.”
As to the sanitary conditions, the report states further:
“Of the two hundred and fifteen houses in the Biddle Alley
district, seventy-one had leaking roofs.”
“Dirty, dark, damp and dilapidated are adjectives that fairly
describe nearly two-thirds of the four hundred and thirty-eight
basements and cellars included in the investigation.”
“In several cellars in the Biddle Alley district the surface
drainage from the adjoining alley or street was found to be
oozing through the foundation walls.”
“A basement apartment in the Biddle Alley district had no light
or ventilation except that afforded by a window 3½ feet square
in area, placed so high in the wall that it was necessary to
stand on a chair to take measurements. The walls and ceiling of
this dungeon-like apartment were damp and in bad repair. From
the physical condition of the occupant it seemed likely he was
suffering from tuberculosis in its incipient stage.”
One of the most conspicuous features of the houses lining the small
streets and alleys in the lower Druid Hill Avenue district were the
stacks of washing, tons of which are gathered weekly from the best homes
of the city, to be laundered in this neighborhood reeking with filth,
infected with tuberculosis and other infectious diseases, and presenting
the most unwholesome conditions from which the family wash could
possibly be sent home. And yet hundreds of white families are in this
way subjecting the members of their households to these great dangers.
One interesting fact which developed in connection with the
investigation of these conditions was the attempt on the part of the
keepers of these places to bulldoze and browbeat the committee out of
their work. The writer received a warning from the keeper of one of
these dives that unless his activities ceased personal injury would be
visited upon him. Another man, who kept a business which was patronized
by many of these divekeepers, lost all of that business on account of
his connection with the Law and Order League. Another man, who kept a
store, was forced to give up active work for the League because he could
not afford the loss which threatened him if he continued. Others, who
were weaker or who could not stand the financial loss which activity in
the work of the League entailed upon them, began to hedge and criticise
and finally openly assail the League as a movement which was seriously
affecting the business interests of the colored people.
It was found that these saloons were meeting places of the idle, loafing
element among the colored people, of the crap shooters, of dissolute
women, and many of the saloonkeepers did not hesitate to sell liquors to
women and children. One of the discoveries in this lower Druid Hill
Avenue district was that in the small streets, which were practically
alleys, there were three of these saloons—two in one alley, and one at
the intersection of two other alleys.
The saloon which is kept by a white man for colored trade is usually the
lowest possible type of saloon. The cheapest grades of liquors are
dispensed. Many of them have back entrances and depend upon their Sunday
trade for a large part of their revenue. The writer has frequently seen
a string of Sunday drinkers filing through the back gates into some of
these saloons. Other members of the League had also seen these Sunday
violations of the law, and there were many outsiders, particularly
women, who were the wives and mothers of men and boys whose earnings
went largely to the saloonkeepers instead of to the support of their
families, who were ready to testify that for many of the saloons Sunday
was the busiest day. On one occasion a colored man interested in
assisting the committee bought a pint of whisky from one of these
saloons, and then telephoned the police that this saloonkeeper was
selling liquor on Sunday. A raiding party was immediately sent out from
the station house, and when the place was reached everything was as
quiet as the most exact observance of Sunday closing law would seem to
require. It was evident that in some mysterious way the proprietor had
received a tip that the raiding party was coming. And so it happened
with nearly every attempt at raiding for Sunday selling. The places
would be found either absolutely empty and quiet or those in the places
would swear that they were mere visitors. It was rather openly asserted
about at least one saloon that there was a secret door from it into the
adjoining house. At any rate, in this district detection and conviction
seemed well nigh impossible.
The alley saloon, being off the thoroughfare, has advantages for
conducting this sort of an illicit business with far greater safety and
with more profit than the saloon which is out on the front street, and
hence alley saloon franchises, so far from being undesirable, are
eagerly sought by that type of white men who will run a place for that
class of trade.
In one of these saloons it developed that, in addition to the bar, a
dance hall was run by the proprietor. Nightly orgies of half-drunken men
and women made this neighborhood particularly objectionable to
surrounding residents. One high school girl, who was compelled to leave
school on account of her condition, was said to have met her ruin in
this place. A member of this committee, who for a while lived next door
to this saloon, saw the proprietor go out of the saloon one night about
midnight, and apparently put something down by the side of the lamp post
on the opposite corner. Shortly afterward a policeman came along and
picked it up and went on. At the hearing before the Liquor Board the
sergeant and night officer on this beat testified in the strongest terms
to the good character of this place. One white business man across the
street said that his best customers had been run off by the people who
patronized this dive.
When the sub-committees made these reports it was decided to undertake
the work of cleaning up the lower Druid Hill Avenue neighborhood alone,
and to leave the work in the other neighborhoods to a future movement.
It was felt that by centering all of their efforts upon the one
neighborhood there was more hope of success than there would be from
undertaking the work in all of them at the same time. It was decided to
make a most earnest effort to secure the removal of the saloons from the
alleys and the vicinities of the schools and churches in this lower
Druid Hill Avenue district. They decided to make charts and secure
pictures showing the conditions in this neighborhood and publish them,
as far as possible. A sub-committee was appointed to carry these plans
into execution.
As the committee progressed in its labor of collecting statistics and
came gradually to the point of action, the absolute dependence of the
colored people generally upon the mercies of the whites, and the
helplessness of the committee acting by itself became more and more
apparent. Liquor Boards in the past almost totally ignored the protests
of colored churches and colored individuals. Police Boards were but
little less inclined to consider their complaints. There had been and
still was a general feeling that the colored people were either of
themselves so criminal or were so disposed to shield and protect their
criminals that they were not taken seriously when protesting against
lawlessness and lawbreaking.
The committee early realized that in undertaking to secure these reforms
they would have to contend with the powerful saloon interests, which
were most firmly intrenched, and would have to work without the
co-operation of the police department, whose efforts should always be on
the side of law and order. And so they saw that it would be necessary to
form a combination with the best white people of the city and if
possible bring them into active co-operation in this work. The most
important work, then, was to secure the active interest of leading white
men. A sub-committee was appointed for this purpose, and they visited
the late Dr. Daniel C. Gilman, ex-President of Johns Hopkins University,
and one of Baltimore’s most distinguished citizens; Mr. Douglas H.
Wylie, at that time President of the Chamber of Commerce; Mr. Eugene
Levering, President of the Commercial National Bank and one of the most
distinguished philanthropists of Baltimore; Bishop Paret, the head of
the Episcopal Church in this diocese; Mr. Joseph Packard, at that time
President of the Board of School Commissioners and one of Baltimore’s
leading citizens; Mr. Robert H. Smith, a leading lawyer; Mr. John C.
Rose, United States District Attorney, who as legal adviser and advocate
performed most helpful service for this committee; Mr. Isaac Cate, a
retired capitalist; Mr. John M. Glenn, who is now Secretary of the Sage
Foundation, and who threw himself most heartily into the work; Judge
Alfred S. Niles, a member of the Supreme Bench of Baltimore City, and
Mr. W. Hall Harris, the city postmaster.
The committee was encouraged by the heartiness with which, with one or
two exceptions, our request for co-operation was met by all of these
men. The committee was not only impressed with the sympathetic interest
which their mission raised, but they were struck with the frequency with
which certain questions entered into nearly all of these conferences.
MALES OF MARYLAND ENGAGED IN GAINFUL
OCCUPATION
[Illustration:
A common belief is that colored men will not work. The United States
census shows more colored men at work in Maryland than whites.
]
For instance, there was a query as to why the colored man will not work.
They intimated that in some cases the conditions of vice and immorality
grew out of the laziness and idleness of the men of this neighborhood as
well as out of the environments of the saloons and dives. A study of the
statistics prepared by the United States Census Bureau, however, shows
that a larger percentage of the colored men of Maryland are at work than
of the whites.
[Illustration:
A = Farm homes owned free of debt.
B = Farm homes owned but mortgaged.
C = Farm homes rented.
]
[Illustration:
A = Farm homes owned free of debt.
B = Farm homes owned but mortgaged.
C = Farm homes rented.
The progress in home-getting since emancipation has been rapid in
Maryland.
]
The committee was also asked why there is so little home life among the
colored people. It is true that the home life is not as desirable among
colored people as it ought to be and as most of us would have it; but
the influx of the colored population from the alleys and small streets
of south and east Baltimore into the more desirable neighborhoods of
northwest Baltimore, particularly upper Druid Hill Avenue and the
adjacent streets, shows an upward movement along this line, and the fact
that there is a most healthy and promising growth of the home spirit.
Not only this, but statistics from the United States Census Bureau show
that out in the country districts of Maryland the colored people are
procuring homes for themselves. While it is true that there is a
scarcity of labor, it is also true that there has been a phenomenal
increase in the number of farm homes in the State of Maryland. At the
present time the colored farmers of the State own fifty-seven per cent.
of the farm lands they are tilling.
The committee was also asked why there was so much immorality among
colored women and girls. The exhibition of the charts showing the
conditions surrounding the colored public schools, particularly the
Caroline and Bank Streets neighborhood and the Rogers Avenue
neighborhood, are complete answers to this question. It was not
difficult to see that girls who attended school among such surroundings
as these could not in the very nature of the case have high ideas of
virtue and morality. It was found that at least five of the colored city
schools are surrounded by such conditions. Little girls and boys receive
daily object lessons in prostitution, gambling, drunkenness, profanity
and thieving.
Another distressing question which the committee was constantly called
upon to meet was—Why is the colored jail population so large? The
statistics show that about three-fourths of the population in the
Baltimore jail and the Maryland Penitentiary are colored men and women—a
most disgraceful showing on the part of the colored people. The
committee could only admit that the undue proportion of colored
criminals in the jail and the penitentiary is a reflection upon the
citizenship of the colored people.
ISAAC WINDER
[Illustration:
Educating a Negro is cheaper than hanging him.
]
The committee made the general plea, though, to the white men upon whom
they called, that the colored children should have the opportunity as a
result of their environments and the general advantages offered them, to
grow up into decent citizenship. These gentlemen were shown the
conditions which surrounded our schoolhouses, and readily admitted the
handicap which such surroundings imposed upon little children. We were
able to show them that the Colored High School, which the city has
maintained for about twenty-five years, has in all of its history
furnished but one inmate for the penitentiary or the jail. Those who are
graduated from this school not only do not join this jail population,
but they are engaged in such occupations in this community as prove
their usefulness to the people with whom they are associated and of whom
they are a part, and at the same time the wisdom of a liberal policy of
education.
The committee was able to show another striking illustration of the
value of education in presenting the history of the notorious Ike
Winder, who murdered a tollgate keeper in Baltimore county. To arrest,
try, imprison, recapture and execute Ike Winder cost the State two
thousand dollars more than it cost to educate one of the graduates of
the Colored High School. The State not only lost in this expenditure the
money involved in the expense connected with the case, but lost the
economic value of an educated citizen. The educated, trained graduates
of the high school exert a most helpful influence in the community.
Assuming that Winder, if he had graduated from the High School, would
have been like the other graduates, the State lost also the moral
influence of this kind of citizen.
EDUCATION VS. IGNORANCE.
[Illustration:
The educated man is a more valuable citizen than the ignorant one.
]
The facts presented to these men as they were visited formed the basis
of a plea for co-operation between the best whites and blacks of the
city, and the formulation of a plan of action to be mutually worked out
by them. Dr. Gilman, who had taken such an enthusiastic interest in the
matter, offered the use of his home and invited a conference of
gentlemen, which marked an epoch in the approach to the ideal working
relation between the best people of both races. There were present at
this meeting: Postmaster W. Hall Harris; Dr. J. H. Hollander, a Johns
Hopkins professor and one of the noted sociologists of the age; Dr.
Bernard C. Steiner, librarian of the Pratt Library; Professor Charles W.
Hodell, of the Woman’s College; Lawyers A. M. Tyson and P. C.
Hennighausen, R. H. Smith, John C. Rose, Joseph Packard, Mr. Douglas M.
Wylie, Professor James H. Van Sickle, the Superintendent of Public
Instruction; Bishop Paret, Judge Heuisler, of the Supreme Court; Mr.
John M. Glenn, Mr. Eugene Levering, Dr. Ira Remsen, President of Johns
Hopkins University; Dean Griffin, of Johns Hopkins University, and Dr.
Gilman. Many of these men had been visited by the sub-committee and had
had the matter partially explained to them, but at this gathering in Dr.
Gilman’s house the committee was able to present in detail the charts
which had been prepared, many pictures which had been collected, and
were able to give a full and detailed description of the conditions
which existed in this neighborhood, and to make an appeal for the
co-operation of these white men in studying and remedying the bad
conditions prevailing in this lower Druid Hill Avenue district.
The discussion of the question, which was full and free, took in every
phase of the subject with which these men were more or less familiar,
and various remedies were suggested. They finally decided to appoint an
advisory committee to act in conjunction with a similar committee of
colored men in taking such steps as were necessary to secure the desired
relief. The committee was empowered to act for the full body and to call
upon them for such assistance, material or otherwise, as might be needed
to carry out their plans. This committee consisted of Messrs. Packard,
Glenn, Heuisler, Rose and Hollander.
CHART OF GRADUATES
C. H. & T. S.
TEACHERS 213
MARRIED (Women) 42
IN BUSINESS 61
GOVERNMENT SERVICE 5
IN COLLEGE 37
NOT FOUND 3
DEAD 18
IN JAIL 0
—
TOTAL 379
This chart shows the occupations of the graduates of the Colored
High and Training School, and in a general way the fact that
education insures against a criminal life.
The colored committee of ten appointed a committee consisting of Drs.
Hurst, Hawkins, Eggleston and Waring to meet this Advisory Committee of
white men and to prepare a plan of action. The conferences were held in
the office of District Attorney Rose, who from first to last took a most
active part and was always ready to give of his time and his wisdom and
his influence to further the cause.
It was decided, as the result of the first conference, that the colored
committee should proceed to the organization of a larger and more
representative body of colored men, to be known as the Law and Order
League, which organization should seek to arouse and cultivate
sentiments among the colored people which would not only lead them to
seek the betterment of the colored population and the improvement of the
opportunities for the rearing of their children, but should also arouse
a distinct sentiment against all forms of wickedness, vice, immorality
and crime, and especially against the low saloon and dive. The joint
committee agreed that petitions should be drawn up and addressed to the
Liquor Board and the Police Board, praying for such relief as might be
within the power of these respective bodies to grant. It was decided
that District Attorney Rose should be the legal adviser of the committee
and pass upon these petitions in order that they might be presented in
proper form, and he was also requested to appear before the Boards when
the petitions were filed. Plans were formed to secure, if possible,
through members of the committee who were best able to reach the
newspapers, their specific indorsement of the petitions when presented
to the two Boards.
The definite and immediate result of this joint conference was the
organization of the Colored Law and Order League. This organization was
formed, after a series of meetings at Grace Presbyterian Church, by
colored men—ministers, lawyers, doctors, teachers and business men—all
of whom entered enthusiastically upon a program whose one great object
was to give Baltimore’s colored children a real chance in life. They
drew up a constitution which expressed briefly its object: “To improve
the moral, economic and home conditions among the colored people, and to
do whatever would promote good citizenship.” “Any citizen of the city of
Baltimore, interested in the object for which this Association is
organized, is eligible for membership.” With this object broadly,
clearly and definitely stated, and with the opportunity for any
well-meaning citizen to enlist in this work, about one hundred of the
representative colored men of Baltimore joined the Law and Order League.
Officers and an Executive Committee were elected and instructed by the
League to draw up a petition to the Liquor License Board and to take
such steps as were necessary to carry out the object of the League.
Three different lines of work were decided upon by the Executive
Committee. First, it was determined to secure, if possible, legislative
action, which would include the lower Druid Hill Avenue district within
the territory in which the sale of liquor is prohibited. A sub-committee
was appointed to draw up a suitable bill for presentation to the
Legislature. One of the white men whom the committee visited was
particularly desirous of having action of this kind undertaken, and
offered his services in urging the passage of the bill. But he was
suddenly and unexpectedly called away to New England just about this
time, and was away from Baltimore until after the adjournment of the
Legislature, which made this action impossible.
“An act to prevent the Sale of Liquor and Intoxicating Drinks within an
Area or Section of Baltimore City.”
Section I. Be it enacted by the General Assembly of Maryland,
that it shall not be lawful for any person, house, company,
association or corporate body to sell, directly or indirectly,
or to give away at his or its place of business, any spirituous,
fermented or intoxicating liquors of any origin whatever, or
alcoholic bitters, within an area or section of Baltimore City
bounded on the East by McCulloh Street, on the South by St.
Mary’s Street, on the West by Myrtle Avenue and on the North by
McMechen Street.