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Maryland History (state and local): Baltimore County
General Overview of Maryland history and historical events.
Baltimore County by Gayle Neville BlumIn its beginnings, Baltimore County was covered with dense ancient forests of deciduous trees and so little undergrowth that it was said a man could gallop horses within them. Today horses gallop over bucolic pastures of renowned Thoroughbred farms amidst quaint historic towns seen dotting the rolling landscape. Named for the Lords Baltimore, Baltimore County was originally an expansive area extending well beyond today's boundaries. Founded in 1659, the county has evolved from tobacco farming to diverse industries ranging from steel manufacturing to picturesque vineyards. Both then and now, nearby Baltimore Harbor on the Chesapeake Bay provides lucrative opportunities for merchants to trade their crops and commodities. The county offers endless recreational pursuits on over 175 miles of shoreline. Baltimore County is proud to claim among its residents the noted neurosurgeon Dr. Benjamin Carson; baseball's all-time iron man, Cal Ripken; and famous author Tom Clancy.
Spooky Creepy Baltimore County by D. P. RoseberryCome closer to the flames as you read the contemporary campfire haunts of spooky, creepy Baltimore County, Maryland. Learn how a love spell goes terribly wrong for a Parkville woman--or maybe it worked too well... Cringe as you hear about the bloody destruction of the police communications department in Towson. Feel the horror of murder at a flower shop in Reisterstown, when a premonition came too late to save a woman. Hear demons in an attic at a Harford Road residence. See shadow people in Perry Hall, and meet a murderous ghost in Middle River who haunts a basement waiting for a victim. These new and scary stories will have you reading into the night--or at least until the fire dies!
Includes many resources including Historic Baltimore County Maps and Resources, Baltimore County Architectural History, Maryland Inventory of Historic Properties, and Turner Station Interactive Map.
Articles on arts like visual arts, architecture, design, music, literature, and theatre,
and humanities like history, philosophy, and cultural studies.
HathiTrust is a partnership of academic & research institutions, offering a collection of millions of titles digitized from libraries around the world.
Primary documents as well as essays about historical topics and people.
Sources include: Great Lives from History, Notorious Lives, Inventors, Milestone Documents in American History Milestone Documents in African American History.
Books on topics including literature, health and medicine, science, careers, and history to start your research. You can use an essay from a book on your topic.
Articles, essays, and primary sources on the history of the United States.
Online from CCBC Libraries
How the Sun Lost Its Shine by Elaine TassyHow the Sun Lost Its Shine: A Newsroom Memoir is award-winning journalist Elaine Tassy's no-holds-barred account of her four years working as a reporter at The Baltimore Sun. As one of few black female staff writers, she noticed and spoke out about the vast differences she saw in how editors, mostly white and male, utilized reporters, and how they covered local news-decisions often seemingly based on race, class and gender. With humor, brutal honesty, statistics from the Sun's website, and references to scholarly works, Tassy describes dozens of workplace experiences and the ensuing consequences, both physical and emotional, to being a 'Job Socialization Failure.' She gives evidence that should both comfort and support those who face unanticipated office politics, while offering an eye-opening reality check to professionals entering the workplace under the impression that their gender, race, age and willingness to challenge authority will not influence their working life.
Publication Date: 2010-01-01
The War on Poverty by Amy JordanLyndon Johnson's War on Poverty has long been portrayed as the most potent symbol of all that is wrong with big government. Conservatives deride the War on Poverty for corruption and the creation of "poverty pimps," and even liberals carefully distance themselves from it. Examining the long War on Poverty from the 1960s onward, this book makes a controversial argument that the programs were in many ways a success, reducing poverty rates and weaving a social safety net that has proven as enduring as programs that came out of the New Deal. The War on Poverty also transformed American politics from the grass roots up, mobilizing poor people across the nation. Blacks in crumbling cities, rural whites in Appalachia, Cherokees in Oklahoma, Puerto Ricans in the Bronx, migrant Mexican farmworkers, and Chinese immigrants from New York to California built social programs based on Johnson's vision of a greater, more just society. Contributors to this volume chronicle these vibrant and largely unknown histories while not shying away from the flaws and failings of the movement--including inadequate funding, co-optation by local political elites, and blindness to the reality that mothers and their children made up most of the poor. In the twenty-first century, when one in seven Americans receives food stamps and community health centers are the largest primary care system in the nation, the War on Poverty is as relevant as ever. This book helps us to understand the turbulent era out of which it emerged and why it remains so controversial to this day.
Publication Date: 2011-11-01
Brown in Baltimore by Howell S. BaumIn the first book to present the history of Baltimore school desegregation, Howell S. Baum shows how good intentions got stuck on what Gunnar Myrdal called the "American Dilemma." Immediately after the 1954 Brown v. Board of Education decision, the city's liberal school board voted to desegregate and adopted a free choice policy that made integration voluntary. Baltimore's school desegregation proceeded peacefully, without the resistance or violence that occurred elsewhere. However, few whites chose to attend school with blacks, and after a few years of modest desegregation, schools resegregated and became increasingly segregated. The school board never changed its policy. Black leaders had urged the board to adopt free choice and, despite the limited desegregation, continued to support the policy and never sued the board to do anything else. Baum finds that American liberalism is the key to explaining how this happened. Myrdal observed that many whites believed in equality in the abstract but considered blacks inferior and treated them unequally. School officials were classical liberals who saw the world in terms of individuals, not races. They adopted a desegregation policy that explicitly ignored students' race and asserted that all students were equal in freedom to choose schools, while their policy let whites who disliked blacks avoid integration. School officials' liberal thinking hindered them from understanding or talking about the city's history of racial segregation, continuing barriers to desegregation, and realistic change strategies. From the classroom to city hall, Baum examines how Baltimore's distinct identity as a border city between North and South shaped local conversations about the national conflict over race and equality. The city's history of wrestling with the legacy of Brown reveals Americans' preferred way of dealing with racial issues: not talking about race. This avoidance, Baum concludes, allows segregation to continue.