Historic marker installed in Morgan Park, community designed during segregation for Black faculty

A roadside marker unveiled Wednesday in Morgan Park details the community’s historic role in Baltimore’s development.

The Morgan Park neighborhood was designed in 1917 by Morgan State University’s fourth president, Dr. John O. Spencer, as a place where Black school faculty and professionals could live during Jim Crow era segregation, according to the marker, which was created and installed by the Maryland Historical Trust and Maryland Department of Transportation. It was also the city’s first planned Black suburb.

Former residents include civil rights activist and author W.E.B. DuBois; Baltimore Afro-American newspaper publisher Carl J. Murphy; and Rebecca Carroll, Baltimore City Public Schools’ first Black female deputy superintendent of curriculum and instruction. She was also the first Black woman to earn a doctorate from the University of Maryland, College Park.

Watching the marker unveiled on a hot and shadeless field by the road at a Maryland Department of Transportation ceremony Wednesday afternoon was particularly rewarding for Leonore Burts, the Morgan Park Improvement Association History Committee co-chair who wrote the language on the plaque. Burts grew up in the neighborhood in a home her parents purchased in 1949 from DuBois, who wrote “The Souls of Black Folk” essay collection and was a founding member of the NAACP.

Burts, who moved to Morgan Park, when she was 5, remembers her childhood there well — the sheep on the hill that meandered near her house, lunches down by the creek with the other neighborhood kids, the rotation of homes that hosted weekend morning cartoons.

Like her, many of Burts’ neighbors are still in the area living in their parents’ homes. Burts returned in 2008 when her family members who were living in the home previously had died and she wanted to make sure the house “remained standing,” she said.

Residents have been pleased with how the neighborhood has remained a peaceful suburban haven for both those who are and aren’t connected to the university. Its closeness and sense of safety harks back to decades prior, they said.

“When you think about Black excellence and Black neighborhoods — a historically Black university having a historically Black neighborhood for professors and teachers to be able to actually live and commute to work — it’s a lot of history and a lot to be proud of,” said April Martin, who was raised in Morgan Park in the 1980s and graduated from Morgan State.

The community put in significant time and energy to reach this point, Burts said, noting that its application to the National Park Service’s National Register of Historic Places, which preceded getting the marker, was almost 100 pages long.

“That was a big project,” Burts said. “We just kept working.”

After all that legwork, applying for the marker was fairly easy.

Part of Burts’ motivation to get involved in the preservation efforts came from a book former resident and historian Roland C. McConnell wrote about the area titled “The History of Morgan Park: A Baltimore Neighborhood 1917-1999.” McConnell documented each neighborhood house, researched its architectural style and interviewed its occupants.

“We had to be true to him and continue to build on what he had done,” Burts said.

Many Black neighborhoods have historical significance, but not all receive the recognition they deserve, added Melanie Martin, April Martin’s mother and a current Morgan Park resident.

“Black history doesn’t always get celebrated or there are just a few people that get celebrated, but there’s a breadth and depth of Black history and this is part of it,” she said.

When people drive by decades from now, Burts said, she hopes young Black people will learn a little about the sacrifices and advancements made by the area’s past residents in the name of education between DuBois, Carroll and those connected to Morgan State and other academic institutions.

“Morgan Park is going to be known as having always been a Black neighborhood, even if the neighborhood changes completely and anybody moves in,” Burts said. “That’s important to me. That’s the reason for making sure the legacy continues.”