Behind the Backlash: An Historical Look at Baltimore Politics

by Lisa Greenhouse

For several decades now, the Democratic Party has been slowly hemorrhaging one of its traditional constituencies.  In the late 1960s, Richard Nixon targeted some of these voters as part of his “Silent Majority.”  In the 1980s, they were called Reagan Democrats.  In 2016, the trend continued as many white working-class voters turned out for President Trump.

Behind the Backlash
by Kenneth Durr
Book

There have been several theories as to why this has happened.  Many scholars, journalists, and political observers attribute it to racial resentments.  One book from the Maryland Department Collection, Kenneth D. Durr’s, Behind the Backlash: White Working-Class Politics in Baltimore, 1940-1980 (University of North Carolina Press, 2003), looks at this phenomenon on a local level in Baltimore and attributes it not to racism per se but rather to frustration with what the white laboring class saw as the liberal establishment’s lack of concern for its interests.

Durr recounts the formation of Baltimore’s New Deal Coalition when white liberals, black activists, CIO labor organizers, and white and black working people found common cause under Roosevelt’s banner.  As long as the issues at hand were bread and butter, the coalition held.  As civil rights and especially desegregation came to the forefront in the Postwar Period, the white working-class began its long, slow abandonment of the coalition, which is still ongoing at the end of the second decade of the 21st Century.

Durr suggests that working-class Baltimore’s populism, while initially focused during the Great Depression and WWII on challenging the capitalist class, eventually came to focus on opposition to perceived elites in government.  The anti-Communism of the McCarthy era, which Baltimore’s workers embraced, served as a way-station along this path.

Blue collar Baltimore, as described in Durr’s book, was comprised of white ethnics as well as the Southern and Appalachian migrants who arrived in large numbers during WWII to take jobs in the steel and shipbuilding industries.  Durr paints a picture of a white-working class in Baltimore that valued self-sufficiency and volunteerism.  Identity was not so much tied up in work life as in the churches and clubs that were a part of community life.  Their sense of responsibility, while highly developed in the neighborhood context, didn’t extend much beyond it. 

Blue collar Baltimoreans recognized that the New Deal and the unionization efforts that the New Deal supported had raised their standard of living.  Much of the increase in leisure time and income they experienced was invested in their communities.  Yet they were ambivalent about union leadership and government bureaucrats, and they distrusted public sector unions.  According to Durr, the 1950s were a prosperous time for Baltimore’s working class but external pressures were beginning to be felt.  The exodus to the suburbs only increased the sense of protectiveness blue collars felt toward their neighborhoods.

According to Durr, in the 1960s, as Baltimore’s white working-class began to experience pressures for racial integration supported by Baltimore’s liberal establishment, they expressed their antagonism through “race talk.” Blue collar Baltimore was highly supportive of racist George Wallace’s 1964 Democratic primary run and George Mahoney’s 1966 race for Governor on an anti-open housing platform.  Mahoney’s campaign slogan was “Your home is your castle; protect it.” Yet, in the author’s view, just as the national media began around 1970 to cover what it referred to as a backlash among the white working class to civil rights gains, blue collar Baltimoreans had already moved beyond focusing their anger at Blacks. They had begun to see liberal assaults on working people as the crux of the problem. 

Durr’s book sometimes draws too fine of a distinction between racism and anger at liberals.  After all, much of blue collar Baltimore’s problem with liberals — such as the ire directed at Baltimore Mayor Thomas D’Alesandro III — had to do with liberal support for racial integration.  However, it is true that not all the issues that the working class had with liberals and experts in government were racial.  The Supreme Court’s 1963 School Prayer decision (based in part on a suit brought by the Baltimore atheist, Madeline Murray O’Hare) seemed particularly egregious as did the various proposals that city planners came up with to run highways through city neighborhoods.  The latter issue even united black neighborhoods and white working-class neighborhoods against government bureaucrats.

Durr sees blue collar Baltimore’s abandonment of “race talk” in favor of a language emphasizing law and order and responsibility as being more effective as well as a truer picture of laboring class concerns.  Durr takes the law and order language at its face rather than seeing it as coded racism.  The fondness of Baltimore’s largely Democratic urban working-class for the suburban (Baltimore County) Republican, Spiro Agnew, captured this movement away from explicit racism to a more generalized disdain for the liberal establishment and the forces of disorder that it seemed to be in league with.  In today’s lingo, Agnew was “owning the libs” when he referred to liberal intellectuals as “an effete corps of impudent snobs.”

Whether or not we buy Durr’s nuanced argument that racism was not the prime driver of working-class alienation from the Democratic Party, the historical detail in Behind the Backlash makes it worth the read.  We learn about conflicts between union leadership and rank and file union members and fissures in the local Catholic Church around issues of racial integration.  We also learn about Baltimore figures like Charles Luthardt and his Fighting American Nationalists, a type that, unfortunately, never seems to have truly departed the American scene.  Behind the Backlash delves deeply into battles we are still fighting and makes for a fascinating read.

Cross-Class Alliances And The Birth Of Modern Liberalism
by George Bache, Du Bois Book

A New Deal For All?
by Andor Skotnes
Book

Readers interested in working-class Baltimore will find other books to interest them on the Maryland Department shelves.  George Bach Du Bois’s Cross-Class Alliances and the Birth of Modern Liberalism: Maryland Workers, 1865-1916 (Chesapeake Books, 2009) treats the Post-Civil War era through the Progressive Era when parts of the later New Deal coalition were coming into focus.  Andor Skotnes’s A New Deal for All: Race and Class Struggles in Depression Era Baltimore (Duke University Press, 2013) is an intricate look at two parts of the New Deal alliance in Baltimore: civil rights activism and labor activism. Both nicely compliment Behind the Backlash.

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Check out what’s available in the Marvel collection on Overdrive now!

X-Men Phoenix
by Greg Pak and Greg Land
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World War Hulk
by Greg Pak and Davis Finch
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The Unworthy Thor
by Jason Aaron and Olivier Coipel
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Spider-Man/Deadpool (2016) Volume 1
by Joe Kelly and Scott Aukerman
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Marvel Zombies
by Robert Kirkman and Arthur Suydam
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Black Panther (2016), Volume 1
by Ta-Nehisi Coates and Brain Stelfreeze
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Thanos (2016), Volume 1,
by Jeff Lemire and Mike Deodato
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New Mutants (2009), Volume 1 by Zeb Wells and Adam Kubert
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Inhumans
by Paul Jenkins and Jae Lee
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The Runaways (2003), Volume 1
by Brian K. Vaughan and Adrian Alphona
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Fantastic Four Volume 1
by Jonathan Hickman and Dale Eaglesham
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S.H.I.E.L.D. (2015), Volume 1
by Mark Waid and Carlos Pacheco
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The History of Native Americans in Maryland

by Amanda Hughes, she/her, Librarian

The Friday after Thanksgiving is largely thought of as a day to rest, digest and shop; but did you know it is also Native American Heritage Day? This year as we celebrate and give thanks in slightly different circumstances, let’s also take the time to remember the original inhabitants of the lands we now call home.

Long before European Settlers reached these shores Maryland was home to dozens of thriving, vibrant societies. Today their ancestors and cultures live on. They have overcome centuries of hardship, dispossession, genocide and discrimination yet still they persist and flourish.

Prior to European contact, Maryland was an important crossroads along the Atlantic coast and home to many tribes. Each region of the state was home to distinct nations which were in turn linked by greater trade networks. The names of these nations are still with us, in the familiar names we use everyday; Assateague, Choptank, Piscataway, Nanticoke, Susquehanna, Powhatan, all of these come to us from the native inhabitants of what would become Maryland.

Prior to European contact, Maryland was divided among a few major nations by region. Among them were the Shawnee and Ohio Valley Tribes in the west, the Susquehanna in northern central Maryland, the Lenape in north eastern Maryland, The Powhattans around what is now Washington D.C. and the Choptank and Nanticoke on the Eastern Shore.

During the Colonial and early American period, the native inhabitants of Maryland were systematically removed from their lands and relocated westward, often to Oklohoma. The first group to gain recognition from the Maryland Government was the Nanticoke tribe in 1881. Other tribes, nations and confederacies followed throughout the 19th and 20th centuries. Today, three tribes are formally recognized by the State of Maryland: the Accohannock Tribe, the Piscataway-Conoy Tribe and the Piscataway nation. The Maryland Commission on Indian Affairs serves eight distinct native groups: the Accohannock Indian Tribe, the Assateague Peoples Tribe, the Cedarville Band of Piscataway Indians (Sub-group of the Piscataway Conoy Tribe), the Nause-Waiwash Band of Indians, the Piscataway Conoy Confederacy and Subtribes (Sub-group of the Piscataway Conoy Tribe), the Piscataway Indian Nation, the Pocomoke Indian Nation and the Youghiogheny River Band of Shawnee Indians. In the second half of the 20th century the population of Native Americans in Maryland began to go as many southern tribes migrated to the north along with other minorities. Part of this migration included many members of the Lumbee tribe of North Carolina. The Lumbee settled in East Baltimore and in 1968, established the Baltimore American Indian Center and were the driving force behind the campaign to rename Columbus Day to Indigenous Peoples Day in Maryland. Today, Baltimore is home to the largest number of Lumbee outside of their traditional tribal lands. As of the last census, more than 40,000 people in Maryland identified as Native American.

To learn more about the native peoples of Maryland check out these titles from the Pratt Library catalog.

Indians of Southern Maryland
by Rebecca Seib

Book
Meet Naiche
by Gabrielle Tayac

Book
Lumbee
by Gerald Sider

Book

The Native American community in Baltimore City : a special report by Morgan State University. Community Development Resource Center.

The origin and meaning of the Indian place names of Maryland by Hamil Kenny

Indian lands in Dorchester County, Maryland: selected sources, 1669 to 1870 by James McAllister

Indian paths of the Delmarvia [!] Peninsula. by William Marye

Lancaster County Indians by H. Frank Eshleman

Indians in Maryland and Delaware : a critical bibliography by Frank Porter

Maryland Indians, yesterday and today by Frank Porter

The only land I know : a history of the Lumbee Indians by Adolf Dial

Misgivings About Thanksgiving

Food for Thought about a Holiday’s True Meaning

by Tom Warner, Best & Next Department

This Thanksgiving Day, feast your eyes on the true meaning of a holiday that too often highlights football games, turkeys and trimmings while glossing over the plight of Native Americans. As we loosen our belts and count our blessings on this day that celebrates the romanticized story of the Wampanoag people feasting with the Massachusetts colonists in 1621, be aware that for many Native Americans it is a day of mourning signaling the end of a way in life in what became America. The following documentaries are invaluable tools for understanding why as they raise awareness of indigenous people’s culture and the many issues they face today. For, as New Day Film’s John Osaki observes, “Only by examining America’s faults can we learn from them and understand how to build a more perfect union.” 


Let us give thanks that Kanopy has dozens of Native American-themed films in its library that you can watch for free using your library card, including ones addressing such forgotten parts of American history as the cultural fusion of Native- and African-Americans (see Black Indians and By Blood) and TMW Media’s Native American History series for K-12 audiences. Following are some highlights from Kanopy’s collection.

Water Warriors
Movie

Water Warriors (Michael Premo, 2017)Water Warriors is the story of a community’s successful resistance against the oil and gas industry. When an energy company begins searching for natural gas in New Brunswick, Canada, indigenous and white families unite to drive out the company in a campaign to protect their water and way of life. Winner of Best Documentary at the Blackstar and Austin Under-the-Stars Film Festivals.

Spirit of the Dawn
Movie

Spirit of the Dawn (Heidi Schmidt Emberling, 2008)Spirit of the Dawn explores the dramatic changes in Indian education from the boarding schools of the past, where children were beaten for speaking their language in school, to the more culturally-sensitive classrooms of today.

In Whose Honor
Movie

In Whose Honor? (Jay Rosenstein, 1997)In Whose Honor? was the first film of its kind to take a critical look at the long-running practice of “honoring” American Indians – the Cleveland Indians, Washington Redskins, Atlanta Braves, the Kansas City Chiefs – as mascots and nicknames in sports. Originally broadcast on PBS’s POV, the film tackles issues of racism, stereotypes, minority representation and the powerful effects of mass-media imagery.

More Than A Word
Movie

More Than a Word: Native-American Sports Mascots (John and Ken Little, 2017). This is another exploration of Native American-based mascots, especially the controversially-named Washington Redskins (now simply the “Washington Football Team”), and their impact on real-life attitudes, issues and policies. The film explores the history of the offensive term “redskin,” delving into cultural stereotypes of Native Americans and arguing for representations that honor and celebrate the humanity of Indigenous people.

Up Heartbreak Hill
Movie

Up Heartbreak Hill (Erica Sharf, 2012)Up Heartbreak Hill examines the lives of three Native American teenagers in Navajo, New Mexico, as they navigate their senior year at a reservation high school. As graduation nears, they must decide whether or not to stay in their community or leave in pursuit of opportunities elsewhere. Up Heartbreak Hill is a moving look at a new generation of Americans struggling with what it means to be Native American in the contemporary world.

A Good Day To Die
Movie

A Good Day To Die (David Mueller and Lynn Salt, 2011). This film chronicles the life story of Dennis Banks, the Native American who co-founded the American Indian Movement (AIM) in 1968 to advocate and protect the rights of American Indians from discrimination and exploitation.

Urban Rez
Movie

Urban Rez (Lisa D. Olkin, 2013). Urban Rez explores the controversial legacy and modern-day repercussions of the Urban Relocation Program (1952-1973), the greatest voluntary upheaval of Native Americans during the 20th century. Interviewees speak about the challenges of maintaining one’s own tribal traditions, from language to hunting, while assimilating into the larger society.

Pine Ridge
Movie

Pine Ridge: The Lives and Dreams of Today’s Native American Youth (Anna Eborn, 2013)Filmed on a South Dakota reservation, Pine Ridge explores what shapes the lives and dreams of today’s Native American youth, whose future is uncertain and whose traditional way of life is fast fading away. Winner of the Dragon Award for Best Nordic Documentary at the Goteborg Film Festival.

Indians Like Us
Movie

Indians Like Us (Sylvie Vàng Jacquemin, 2013). Every weekend, a small group of French citizens dress up in Native regalia and make appearances at various village fairs alongside their countrymen in France. But after traveling to the United States to meet “real Indians,” they discover that the reality of contemporary Native Americans is quite different from their portrayed envisioning.

We Shall Remain
Movie

We Shall Remain (American Experience, 2009). Want to learn more about Native Americans? Be sure to check out this acclaimed five-part PBS television series that shatters stereotypes of American Indians as simply ferocious warriors or peaceable lovers of the land with five inspiring stories of Native ingenuity and resilience over the course of 300 years.

Stream up some Holiday Cheer Now!

Need more than 25 Days of Christmas? The Pratt has you covered with the Holiday movie collection on Hoopla. There’s no need to wait for December (or even Thanksgiving) to celebrate.  Hoopla is ready for the holiday season whenever you are!

Go ahead and grab your blanket, mug of apple cider, and make it a movie day. Don’t forget you can download up to 15 movies, books, and books instantly on Hoopla

Marry Me for Christmas Movie
A Baby for Christmas
Movie

A Christmas Wish
Movie
A Very Country Christmas Movie
Always and Forever Christmas
Movie
The Christmas Contract Movie
Christmas On The Range Movie
Grounded For Christmas Movie
Mistletoe & Menorahs Movie
The Tree That Saved Christmas
Movie
Twinkle All the Way
Movie
A Storybook Christmas Movie

Find even more holiday cheer in the holiday collection and the A+E Networks collection.