The Fireball in Baltimore That Ignited a Climate Justice Movement

Residents of Curtis Bay Set Out to Save Their Neighborhood. Instead, They Built a Coalition With Global Aspirations

On December 30, 2021, residents of Curtis Bay, a neighborhood in southern Baltimore, felt a loud boom. The foundation of the row homes and two-story buildings shook as though there had been an earthquake. Instead, a fireball had exploded, engulfing the south service entrance of a tunnel at the CSX coal pier. Maryland Department of the Environment (MDE) issued a cease-and-desist to CSX, a multi-billion-dollar rail corporation, due to poor air quality and the damage to the structure. But once MDE agreed that the air quality levels were acceptable, the …

How Do We Get White People Out of Their ‘Racially Concentrated Areas of Affluence’? | Zocalo Public Square • Arizona State University • Smithsonian

How Do We Get White People Out of Their ‘Racially Concentrated Areas of Affluence’?

Integrating West Baltimore’s Sandtown Neighborhood Required Sacrifice From White Newcomers as Well as Black Residents

West Baltimore has been an Empowerment Zone. It is currently an Opportunity Zone. It was home to HOPE VI—a program since succeeded by Choice Neighborhoods—and it contains a Promise Neighborhood.

Empowerment, …

When Baltimore Medical Students Were Free to Rob the City’s Graves

In 19th-Century Maryland, Stealing Corpses Wasn’t a Crime. And a Half-Dozen Medical Schools Needed Cadavers.

Railroads changed everything. The formation in 1828 of the nation’s first common carrier, the Baltimore & Ohio Railroad, revolutionized transportation, altered people’s sense of time and place, and knitted America …

Baltimore Is Still Troubled, Still Racist—and Still My City

Absolutely Anything Is Possible in Crabtown, Which Is Why I'm Keeping the Faith as It Burns Around Me

When things turned very ugly in Baltimore on Monday—widespread looting, massive property destruction, arson, and assaults on police, motorists and pedestrians—I called a friend to see if she was okay.

Riots …

Tinseltown Cab Fare

A Girl from Baltimore’s Trip to L.A., and Back

“I hate drunks, they are so obnoxious. I should know, I used to be one …” –Mary Carol Reilly on the fundamentals of being a cabbie

She used to lie in …

The Pitcher and the Poet

Coping with Loss in Baltimore

I never had the chance to meet Mike Flanagan, the former Baltimore Oriole pitcher and baseball executive who took his own life over the summer.

But if given the chance, I …