The city ofBaltimore,Maryland includes a significantAppalachian population. The Appalachian community has historically been centered in the neighborhoods ofHampden,Pigtown,Remington,Woodberry,Lower Charles Village,Highlandtown, andDruid Hill Park, as well as the Baltimore inner suburbs ofDundalk,Essex, andMiddle River. The culture of Baltimore has been profoundly influenced byAppalachian culture,dialect, folk traditions, andmusic. People of Appalachian heritage may be of any race or religion. Most Appalachian people in Baltimore arewhite orAfrican-American, though some areNative American or from other ethnic backgrounds. White Appalachian people in Baltimore are typically descendants of earlyEnglish,Irish,Scottish,Scotch-Irish, andWelsh settlers.[1] Amigration ofWhite Southerners fromAppalachia occurred from the 1920s to the 1960s, alongside a large-scalemigration of African-Americans from theDeep South and migration ofNative Americans from theSoutheast such as theLumbee and theCherokee. These out-migrations caused the heritage of Baltimore to be deeply influenced by Appalachian andSouthern cultures.[2]
In the early 20th century, many Appalachian farm youth from eastern andnorthernWest Virginia migrated to Baltimore, following theBaltimore and Ohio Railroad.[3] Many Appalachian migrants settled in the neighborhood of Hampden due to the abundance of jobs provided by mills. Hampden was originally created as a residential community for workers at the various mills along theJones Falls. Most of the Appalachian people in Hampden hailed fromEastern Kentucky,West Virginia, andWestern Pennsylvania. This influx of predominantly white Appalachian hillfolk cemented Hampden's reputation as a white working-class neighborhood.[4]
During theGreat Depression, thousands of white residents of theAppalachian Mountains migrated to Baltimore as well as to other industrial northern cities such asDetroit,Chicago,Washington, D.C.,Cleveland,Pittsburgh,Milwaukee, andMuncie, Indiana. This migration of white Appalachian and Southern people paralleled theGreat Migration of African Americans from Appalachia and the South during the same time period. The great white migration from Appalachia has become known as theHillbilly Highway. During these migrations, approximately 11,000,000 Southerners migrated north; approximately two thirds of them white and one-third of them black.[5] Appalachian migrants to Baltimore were negatively affected bypoverty,unemployment,welfare dependency,mechanization of industry, and the decline of thecoal industry. Baltimore's factories filled with Appalachian economic migrants between 1910 and 1960, especially in the years during and following World War II. White working-class Appalachian families from the hills of Kentucky, Ohio, Virginia, and West Virginia created Appalachiandiasporaenclaves throughout Baltimore and many other cities.[6] So many Black Appalachian and Southern people settled in West Baltimore during the Great Migration that there were whole communities and congregations that earned nicknames such as "Little Virginia", "Little North Carolina", and "Little South Carolina."[7]
Armistead Gardens in East Baltimore, sometimes referred to as "the white ghetto",[8] was originally built by theHousing Authority of Baltimore City aspublic housing forwhite people coming to work in industries supplyingWorld War II. Most of these white workers were from Appalachian states such asWest Virginia,Kentucky, andTennessee and came to Baltimore to work at theGlenn L. Martin Company and other major defense plants.[9]
During and following World War II, many Southern and Appalachian workers also settled inSparrows Point, an industrial area just outside of Baltimore city. These migrants came to work for theBethlehem Steel plant and largely hailed from rural areas and mining towns of West Virginia andCentral Pennsylvania.[10][11] Many descendants of these migrants still live in the area, particularly in Dundalk, Essex, Middle River, and Armistead Gardens.
In 1984, 1,100 households of Appalachian heritage lived in the neighborhood of Remington. Many of these families traced their origins back to coal towns inWestern Pennsylvania and hollows in southernWest Virginia. These coal-mining families settled in Baltimore in the 1950s and 1960s, searching for better jobs and better socioeconomic conditions than their parents and grandparents generations had access to. Many of the Appalachian people who settled in Remington worked in factories and mills upon moving to Baltimore. By the 1980s, many of the factories and mills had shut down, resulting in high levels of unemployment. Few wished to relocate back to Appalachia, where economic conditions were even worse. One-third of Remington lived in poverty during the early 1980s, many of them under the age of 18. The majority of Appalachian children in Remington at this time did not graduate high school. Due to low voter turn-out, poor Appalachian whites in Remington had little political clout.[12]
Baltimore was a major destination forAppalachian African-Americans, with many coming fromCentral andNorthAlabama,NorthGeorgia,UpstateSouth Carolina, andWesternNorth Carolina.[13]
Baltimore has a long and distinguished tradition of bluegrass music. TheBaltimore–Washington region is home to a thriving bluegrass music community. The bluegrass scene began in the 1930s, as Appalachian migrants to Baltimore brought their musical traditions with them. Following World War II, Baltimore was known as the capital of bluegrass. One of the first breakout bluegrass groups in Baltimore was theStoney Mountain Boys, the first bluegrass band to play atCarnegie Hall.[14]
Since 2013, the annualCharm City Bluegrass Festival has been held to celebrate the Appalachian musical tradition in Baltimore.[15] In 2015,McFarland & Company published a book byTim Newby titledBluegrass in Baltimore, which provides a detailed history of Baltimore's bluegrass scene.[16]
One of the most well-known bluegrass musicians in Baltimore wasHazel Dickens. Dickens was born inMontcalm, West Virginia in 1925 and migrated to Baltimore in the 1950s, following in the footsteps of her siblings who left the coal mines of West Virginia for the better conditions of Baltimore's factories. Her song "Mama's Hand" is a lyrical account of her saying goodbye to her mother before departing to Baltimore by bus. Dickens became the most prominent woman in bluegrass music and was a lifelong champion of the issues of women and theworking-class through herpro-labor union,feminist lyrics.[17][18]
The majority of Southern and Appalachian migrants during the Hillbilly Highway and the Great Migration, both white and black, werenative-born andProtestant. This wave of Protestant migrants transformed the religious fabric of northeastern cities such as Baltimore. Previously, the working-class in the northeast was dominated by "white ethnic" immigrants fromCatholic countries of Europe. This "Southernizing" of the American working-class resulted in a large increase of both white Protestant and black Protestant populations in the northeast.[5]
The construction of the Baltimore & Ohio railroad through theAppalachian Mountains to theOhio River opened up a large market for the Jewish community of Baltimore, with the expanded economy allowing Jews from Baltimore to establish businesses and communities throughout Appalachia.[19] Deborah Weiner, an historian affiliated with theJewish Museum of Maryland, has published a history ofJews andJudaism in Appalachia titledCoalfield Jews: An Appalachian History. Weiner, who is Jewish and has lived in West Virginia, chronicles the intersection of Appalachia's coal boom from the 1880s to the 1920s and the wave ofEastern European Jewish immigrants to the United States during that same time. According to Weiner, Appalachian Jews find it difficult to fully experience their Jewish heritage in rural areas of Appalachia and so many Appalachian Jews have to leave the mountains to visit relatives in Baltimore and other cities such asNew York.[20][21] Historically, Jewish communities in Appalachia maintained ties to the Jewish community of Baltimore. During the 1920s, the Hebrew Ladies Aid Society ofWelch, West Virginia was an annual benefactor to thematzo fund of Baltimore.[22] A strong link has long existed between the Jews of AppalachianWestern Maryland and the Jews of Baltimore. The architecture ofB'er Chayim Temple inCumberland is modeled after the earlier Eden Street Synagogue in Baltimore. Many historical items from B'er Chayim are on permanent loan at the Jewish Museum of Maryland.[23]
The Jewish community in Baltimore helped fund the construction of the B’nai Shalom Congregation inBristol, located in the Appalachian region ofWestern Virginia.[24]
White Appalachian people in Baltimore have experienced both discrimination against theirsocioeconomic andregional identities, as well asprivilege for their race. White Appalachian people and Southern African Americans (including African-Appalachians) were migrating to Baltimore in great numbers between the 1920s and the 1960s, prompting comparisons between the two groups of newcomers. In a 1960 article fromThe Baltimore Sun, J. Anthony Lukas praised the "pride and independence" of Appalachian white people while lamenting that "after two centuries of isolation in the hills, these original Americans are forced into the cities where they find themselves scorned by relative newcomers to these shores." Lukas cited the sociologist Dr. Olive Quinn's racist claim that white Appalachian people's "deep pride in standing on his own two feet" set them apart from the "Southern Negro [who] comes from a paternalistic society in which he is accustomed to accepting hand-me-downs from whites." Many commentators, including Lukas and Salisbury, conflated white Appalachians with white settler heritage and promoted the view that white Appalachians were noble pioneers whose spirit was being degraded by the experiences ofurbanization andindustrialization.[25]
In his diaries, the Baltimore journalistH. L. Mencken derided the poor white Appalachian and Southern workers in Baltimore's war plants as "oakies, lintheads, hill-billies and other anthropoids" as well as "vermin". He claimed that white Appalachian people were the only pure Anglo-Saxons left in America, but bemoaned that they were in his view "a wretchedly dirty, shiftless, stupid and rascally people." Mencken believed that "filthy poor whites from Appalachia and the Southern Tide-water" engaged in incest and were animalistic in their "habits and ideas".[26][27][28][29]
Discrimination against Appalachian people existed in housing and accommodations, which contributed to Appalachian migrants clustering into enclaves which became known as "hillbilly ghettos".[1] According to Hazel Dickens, when she was searching for an apartment in 1954 she encountered signs reading "No dogs or hillbillies".[30]
In 1961, the Baltimore section of theNational Council of Jewish Women released a report titled "The Unaccepted Baltimoreans", which was a study of white rural Southern migrants in Baltimore. The report concluded that "within recent years, and especially now, the minority of Southern Mountaineers, an increasing drain on the city's economy, is crying for citizen interest and action." The report also examined the cultural and behavioral characteristics of these migrants and claimed there was an urgent need to promote "acculturation" of Appalachian migrants and to persuade them to abandon their allegedly hostile attitude towards education.[31] The author of the report, Ferne K. Kolodner, was a community and civil rights activist who sought to ameliorate the ails of urban poverty. In the course of the study she visited 40 Appalachian homes in Baltimore and interviewed numerous civic leaders. She believed that Appalachian people had a "limited cultural background" and settled in "cultural islands" at odds with the norms ofmiddle class life.[32]
Poor white Appalachian residents ofPigtown report discrimination from the police on the basis ofclass. Pigtown's Appalachian population hails from West Virginia and Western Maryland, economic migrants who came after World War II. Some poor white residents of Pigtown allege that while poorblack people in Pigtown and the nearby neighborhood ofSandtown experience more discrimination due to the combination ofracism andclassism, poor whites nonetheless experience targeting andharassment from thepolice. According toDavid Simon, a police reporter from theBaltimore Sun, a nickname for Pigtown among police officers is "Billyland", derived from the termhillbilly, a derogatory term for poor white Appalachians.[33]
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