HOME

TheInfoList



OR:

Sandtown-Winchester is a neighborhood in West
Baltimore, Maryland Baltimore ( , locally: or ) is the most populous city in the U.S. state of Maryland, fourth most populous city in the Mid-Atlantic, and the 30th most populous city in the United States with a population of 585,708 in 2020. Baltimore was ...
. Known locally as Sandtown, the community's name was derived from the trails of sand that dropped from wagons leaving town after filling up at the local sand and gravel quarry back in the days of horse-drawn wagons. It is located north of Lafayette Street, west of
Fremont Avenue This is a list of notable streets in the city of Baltimore, Maryland, United States. A B C D E F G H Heath St. Route 64. (MTA Maryland) K L M N O P R Ramsay st S U W Y Numbered streets In Bal ...
, south of North Avenue, and east of Monroe Street, covering an area of 72 square blocks, patrolled by the Baltimore Police Department's Western District. The community is 98.5% black.


History

Sandtown is located in a historically black area of West Baltimore neighboring the once affluent
Upton Upton may refer to: Places United Kingdom England * Upton, Slough, Berkshire (in Buckinghamshire until 1974) * Upton, Buckinghamshire, a hamlet near Aylesbury * Upton, Cambridgeshire, Peterborough * Upton, Huntingdonshire, a location in Cambridg ...
. In the second half of the 20th century, Sandtown experienced economic depression, housing abandonment, crime, and the effects of the
Baltimore riot of 1968 The Baltimore riot of 1968 was a period of civil unrest that lasted from April 6 to April 14, 1968, in Baltimore. The uprising included crowds filling the streets, burning and looting local businesses, and confronting the police and national gua ...
. Whereas in the 1950s and 1960s famous African American performers such as
Billie Holiday Billie Holiday (born Eleanora Fagan; April 7, 1915 – July 17, 1959) was an American jazz and swing music singer. Nicknamed "Lady Day" by her friend and music partner, Lester Young, Holiday had an innovative influence on jazz music and pop si ...
and
Diana Ross Diana Ross (born March 26, 1944) is an American singer and actress. She rose to fame as the lead singer of the vocal group the Supremes, who became Motown's most successful act during the 1960s and one of the world's best-selling girl groups o ...
performed there and it was sometimes referred to as Baltimore's Harlem, by the time of the 2015 protests and rioting over the
death of Freddie Gray On April 12, 2015, Freddie Carlos Gray Jr., a 25-year-old African American, was arrested by the Baltimore Police Department over his legal possession of a knife. While being transported in a police van, Gray sustained injuries and was taken to ...
, 3% of its population was incarcerated, a third of its housing abandoned, 20% of working age people were unemployed, and a third of residents were living in poverty. In 2015 '' Wall Street Journal'' op-ed columnist
William Galston William Arthur Galston (; born January 17, 1946) holds the Ezra K. Zilkha Chair in Governance Studies and is a senior fellow at the Brookings Institution; he joined the think tank on January 1, 2006. Formerly the Saul Stern Professor and Dean at t ...
drew lessons from the history of
Port Clinton, Ohio Port Clinton is a city in and the county seat of Ottawa County, located at the mouth of the Portage River on Lake Erie, about 44 miles east of Toledo. The population was 6,056 at the 2010 census. The city has been nicknamed the "Walleye Capit ...
, to Baltimore and reported 52% unemployment among 16 to 64 year-olds in the Sandtown-Winchester neighborhood, twice the unemployment rate of Baltimore as a whole.


Schools

*Gilmor Elementary School, grades Pre-k to 5 *New Song Academy, grades Pre-k to 8 *William Pinderhughes Elementary/Middle School, grades Pre-k to 8 *
Youth Opportunity Academy Youth Opportunity Academy (alternately YO! Academy) is a public, alternative high school located in the Sandtown-Winchester neighborhood of Baltimore, Maryland. The school allows students who have dropped out to obtain either high school diplom ...
, grades 9 to 12


Notable people

*
Cab Calloway Cabell Calloway III (December 25, 1907 – November 18, 1994) was an American singer, songwriter, bandleader, conductor and dancer. He was associated with the Cotton Club in Harlem, where he was a regular performer and became a popular vocalist ...
, late jazz great *
Gervonta Davis Gervonta Davis ( ; born November 7, 1994) is an American professional boxer. He has held multiple world championships in three weight classes, including the WBA (Regular) lightweight title since 2019; the IBF super featherweight title in 2017; ...
, world champion boxer *
Ethel Ennis Ethel Llewellyn Ennis (November 28, 1932 – February 17, 2019) was an American jazz musician whose career spanned seven decades. Ennis spent the majority of her life in her hometown of Baltimore, Maryland, where she was affectionately known as t ...
, jazz singer *
Billie Holiday Billie Holiday (born Eleanora Fagan; April 7, 1915 – July 17, 1959) was an American jazz and swing music singer. Nicknamed "Lady Day" by her friend and music partner, Lester Young, Holiday had an innovative influence on jazz music and pop si ...
, jazz singer * Thurgood Marshall, first African-American justice on the Supreme Court of the United States * Melvin Williams aka "Little Melvin", former drug lord of Baltimore *Davante Harrison (rapper) YGG Tay, serving 15 years for drug conspiracy


See also

*
List of Baltimore neighborhoods Neighborhoods in the City of Baltimore are officially divided into nine geographical regions: North, Northeast, East, Southeast, South, Southwest, West, Northwest, and Central, with each district patrolled by a respective precinct of the Baltim ...


Notes

{{coord, 39, 18, 14, N, 76, 38, 34, W, region:US-MD_type:city, display=title African-American history in Baltimore Neighborhoods in Baltimore Poverty in Maryland Working-class culture in Baltimore