JARED BALL: Welcome back to the Real News Network. I'm Jared Ball here in Baltimore.
As a kind of followup to our previous coverage of the Cherry Hill community in Baltimore,
specifically the report conducted by our colleague Jaisal Noor about Cherry Hill's ability to
prevent crime and violence better than the police, we sit now with Dr. Ray Winbush, director
of the Institute for Urban Research at Morgan State University, also here in Baltimore,
to discuss a new report he and his colleagues have recently presented to the community titled
A Comprehensive Demographic Profile of the Cherry Hill Community in Baltimore City. The
report gives both the history of that section of the city, assesses the material conditions
of the residents, and offers programmatic steps going forward designed to address persistent
articles to advance.
Welcome, Dr. Winbush, back to the Real News.
RAY WINBUSH: How you doing, Jared?
BALL: As good as can be expected, my man. So let's start if we can with where you conclude,
saying in your report that this is even a departure from what you normally do in terms
of offering recommendations, where you do recommend that the 2008 Cherry Hill community
master plan that you say was shelved be reinstituted and applied to the people of Cherry Hill,
the community of Cherry Hill. So if you would tell us what that plan calls for, and why
you recommend that it be followed up on.
WINBUSH: Well, a lot of times when you do these reports it's already been done. And
recommendations that have not been implemented, you know, just are in the past. We decided
to do something very different. We decided, said, look. We've got this excellent report
that was done under the Sheila Dixon administration that outlined over 100 points with accountability,
who was supposed to be tasked to do it, and they gave them five years to put it in place.
So we used that as our conclusion rather than say, let's put another 100 points out for
the community. And in doing that we feel that we did a service because we reignited interest
in what the Dixon administration had already recommended for Cherry Hill, which was excellent
stuff. I mean, I think just from a cultural point of view one of the biggest issues that
they recommended is the cultural preservation of Cherry Hill historically. And the idea
of gentrification was something that was going to be viewed as a no-no, rather than something
that should be welcome. Cultural preservation of African-American communities around the
country, very important. And a lot of times developers neglect that.
BALL: So we started at the end, so to speak. Let's go back a little bit. Because as we
were talking a little bit before, when people hit in this general area here, Cherry Hill,
even for those of us who grew up out in the county, back in the day Cherry Hill brings
a certain connotation.
WINBUSH: Bang, bang.
BALL: Bang, bang, you know, that's been associated with many black communities in this country.
And really around the world, actually. So give us, your report does a great job of outlining
the history of Cherry Hill. Tell us that history if you would, and what actually is the community
all about?
WINBUSH: Well that area, down by the Patapsco area, was always isolated from the rest of
Baltimore City. So if you talk about the ancient history, it goes back over 200 years, when
you lived in that area--white settlers of course--that it was kind of viewed as being
kind of outside of the city.
BALL: And is that the southern--.
WINBUSH: Southern, kind of southwest of the city. Baltimore City.
BALL: Like a peninsula. Yeah.
WINBUSH: It is a peninsula, actually. So in the 1930s and 1940s, World War II was kind
of gearing up. The big issue was all of the black folk from the great migration were moving
to Baltimore. Baltimore was one of the most heavily populated African-American cities
in this country. But after World War II they said, we have to have a place for the black
veterans who didn't want to go back south to Mississippi. In fact, many of their relatives
during the war had moved up there.
BALL: Which by the way is part of that great migration, for those who may not know. This
is African people moving from the South to the North to escape all kinds of horrors and
find jobs.
moving to Maryland was like moving from down South to up South. And specifically the residents
of white Baltimore didn't want that integration. They had seen enough black folk between Baltimore
and Washington, DC. I always tell people that Washington was becoming chocolate city at
that time, maybe whatever the early stages of chocolate would be. And they said, well,
where can we put these residents? They said, let's put them in Cherry Hill.
Cherry Hill at that time was polluted. The city incinerator was down there. The water
was nasty, all type of stuff. But white folks go, put them over there. The NAACP actually
protested it. The Afro [day 2] editorialized against it. But that's where Cherry Hill became
Cherry Hill, if you want to mark it right at about the cusp of World War II.
BALL: So we're talking about Cherry Hill becoming, as we talk about the first African-American
planned suburb, or what was at one point called the model negro village.
WINBUSH: It was literally called that. And Baltimore bragged about it nationally. They
said, we've got a suburb. And it's kind of an exaggeration. But when we think about suburbs
we think about mowed lawns, white picket fences, all of that. It was an area where a lot of
middle-class black folk moved because they didn't experience some of the racism that
was going on in Baltimore City. So it was a suburb in a very loose definition of the
term
So it was a suburb in a very loose definition of the term, but it was planned. Lot of opposition.
But it's almost like the residents eventually said, look. We want to be here. We'll make
the best of it. And it's just almost like the way HBCUs were planned to fail. Cherry
Hill was planned to fail, the Cherry Hill community. But it succeeded. Very much so.
BALL: And developed a sense of community that still exists to this day.
WINBUSH: Still to this day.
BALL: That defies the popular image of Cherry Hill as this wasteland of violence. In fact,
the report we were talking about from Jaisal Noor was talking about how that community
had in its own way reduced the violence to almost nonexistent, relatively speaking, without
police help, without the state officially drawing, assuming at least, on this history
of a sense of community.
WINBUSH: Well, yeah. And you know what it is, Jared, that it seems that historically
neighborhoods that were all black, that were self contained, had their own sense of community,
were viewed as dangerous.
On a personal note, I was raised on Huff Avenue in the East side of Cleveland. When you said
you came from Huff, you know, the old saying. Huff is rough. Harlem. South Side of Chicago.
Bill Street in Memphis.
BALL: Southeast DC.
WINBUSH: Southeast DC. And Cherry Hill. In fact if you look at the history, there was
violence in these communities but it wouldn't be like they were moreso than other parts
of the country or anything else like that. So now we find that Cherry Hill most recently
has gone 400 days, over 400 days, without a homicide. Baltimore City can't say that.
And some communities in the nation--.
BALL: This is happening in the midst of Baltimore City's--some are saying it's the most violence
in many decades.
WINBUSH: In decades. So the answer, what we want to know, why. Why is that. There is a
remarkable--and this sounds very abstract and kind of new-agey. But there's a remarkable
sense of community in that community. We made several trips down there doing this research,
and people know each other. You walk down--hey man, what's going on. Not just hello, but
call [inaud.] and so and so.
There's another thing, and I know some people might be upset about--there's not that many
churches down there. And the number of churches that are there are very involved with the
community. So you have this sense that we want, we were just surprised that all the
meetings we called, especially because Morgan State and not Johns Hopkins, another white
institution, people came out. They wanted to talk. They'd love their community. They'd
brag about the fact that Montel Williams, Dewayne Wickham are from that area. And other
famous people as well.
It wasn't the stereotype I believe is one that has been created by white America historically
to demonize these communities, to make people feel afraid of them. And in fact, these communities
are very good places to live. I would live in Cherry Hill right now, and I'm not just
saying that. I would live in it, because it's a place that you can feel the sense of safety
surrounded by your people, and people belong, and they feel that in the community.
BALL: Now in just the few minutes we have left, there were a couple of things I wanted
to quickly address with you that are not all perfect about Cherry Hill. But most of it
seems to stem not from the people's behavior as often as reported, but from a history of
institutional and state-sponsored inequality. So you talk about in the report that Cherry
Hill is a food desert. You talk about the difficulty with transportation. And the, as
you mentioned already, the general resistance to a desire for gentrification, which again
goes against the popular tide in terms of what we often hear about these communities.
But you, if I read it correctly--and please correct me if I'm wrong here. You are saying
that a lot of these issues have their origins from the impact of segregated housing as it
was developed there from the 1940s and '50s. Could you just say a couple words about that?
WINBUSH: We found that almost every problem that Cherry Hill has comes from poor governance,
history, not of the community but I'm talking about coming down from City Hall, institutionalized
racism and classism, where people said we're not going to do certain things for this community.
Cherry Hill is over there.
Transportation, for example. We had several residents tell us that buses will pass them.
They'll be at the bus stop with groceries because they've got to go outside of their
community to get groceries oftentimes, because it is a food desert by definition. And buses
will pass them. And then some bus drivers will open up the door and say, you can get
on the bus, but you can't let your groceries get on the bus. Which doesn't make sense.
What does that do? Residents have to catch cabs, paying more money just to get food.
So all of that has nothing to do with the residents of Cherry Hill. Those are policies
both deliberate and tacit saying well you know, that's Cherry Hill, let it go. The buses
are not as new in Cherry Hill as in other parts of the city. And all of those type of
things go to make the community under stress--Mindy Fullilove and her book Root Shock talks about
communities that are under shock, and Cherry Hill has always been under assault from the
powers that be.
BALL: Well Ray Winbush, I want to thank you very much for talking to us about this report.
We want to let people know they can get it at the Institute for Urban Research website
at Morgan State University's website, to see the whole report.
And we're going to do a quick transition, and to have a part two of this conversation
coming up, to talk--because I want to talk with you about how, or why maybe, the same
issues that are faced by people in Cherry Hill have been faced not only historically
but today in other parts of the country, but have been responded to very differently, including
what's happening there in Ferguson. So thank you very much, and thank you for joining us.
We're going to have a part two with Prof. Winbush here in just a second here at the
Real News. For all involved, again, I'm Jared Ball here in Baltimore. And as always as Fred
Hampton used to say, to you we say peace if you're willing to fight for it. So peace,
everybody. We'll be back in a minute.