By Kamaiyah Lineberger
Baltimore Watchdog Staff Writer
Historic East Towson, the first free Black community in Baltimore County and a neighborhood steeped in America’s struggle with slavery, has seen many changes over the years that some locals and historians fear could alter its character.
Whether it was BG&E’s decision to locate an electrical grid station in the middle of East Towson in the 1960s or the neighborhood’s recent fight over the Red Maple Place affordable housing complex, some residents say this once thriving community is at risk of hollowing out.
“I think what you’re seeing now is a skeleton of a community that really started to disappear in the 60s,” said Joanne Robinson, a former East Towson resident whose husband, Osborne Robinson, is the reverend at the St. James African Union Methodist Protestant Church on Jefferson Avenue.
“In the ’50s and ’60s East Towson was a self-sustaining place,” she added. “It was community-oriented, and people were driven by relationships.”
Today, the Rev. Robinson said, the once flourishing Black neighborhood has become a victim of race-based zoning, gentrification and politics.
Others agree.
Nancy Goldring, the president of the Northeast Towson Improvement Association and a direct descendant of an enslaved person from the nearby 18th-century Hampton Estate, said when it comes to those looking to use the neighborhood to make money, “It feels like East Towson is low-hanging fruit.”
Goldring says the historical significance of East Towson is overlooked by local political and business leaders for the sake of commerce.
She adds that the relationship between Historic East Towson and Baltimore County has been civil and productive, but not perfect.
“If you’re a dying community to your leadership, then what you really know is that your leadership hasn’t invested in the community,” Goldring said.
The Robinsons said these changes began in the 1960s when BG&E displaced many people who lived in the small row houses along Railroad Avenue so the company could build a 5-acre grid station.
As the Rev. Robinson put it, the company displaced these residents “just because they could. Just because they had the authority.”
This once prosperous community was founded in 1853 and was built by freed enslaved people from the Hampton Estate, located less than two miles away on Hampton Lane.
Charles Carnan Ridgely, the 15th governor of Maryland, inherited the Hampton Estate after his uncle, Capt. Charles Ridgley, died. For almost a century, the Ridgley family enslaved between 600 and 800 African Americans.
After Gov. Ridgley died in 1829, his will provided for the gradual emancipation of the enslaved people, also known as manumission.
In 1853, Daniel Harris, who was freed from the estate, purchased 1.25 acres of land in East Towson for $187.50, making him the first African American landowner in Baltimore County, according to The Baltimore Afro. As time went on, and more enslaved people were freed, East Towson turned from former swamp land to a thriving Black community.
It is this history that makes so many residents of East Towson feel connected to their neighborhood.
For example, Goldring, who’s lived in Towson all her life, recently learned about her family’s connection to the Hampton Estate, a 25,000-acre former plantation build around a Georgian-style manor house, which also included gardens and a stone slave quarters.
Goldring said one of her relatives, Nancy Davis, was only 5 years old when her mother was freed through Ridgley’s manumission in 1829 and so wasn’t old enough to qualify for freedom.
Ridgley had written in his will that women ages 25 to 45 and men ages 28 to 45 were the only ones able to leave.
As a result, the enslaved children over the age of 2 and under the ages of 25 and 28 had to remain on the plantation until they were old enough. This clause tore apart families.
Davis remained on the plantation and took care of the Ridgley children. They referred to her as “Aunt Nancy.”
Unbeknownst to Goldring until 2020, “Aunt Nancy” Davis is her biological aunt.
Many descendants of the enslaved people from Hampton Mansion didn’t know their connection until ethnographic studies were done.
“‘Mama never talked about it,'” is what Goldring recalled her grandmother saying regarding her family’s history with enslavement. “Which was common for the generation that came out of slavery.”
Residents and local historians feel the neighborhood’s past is important and worth preserving.
They don’t want to see that history lost under the guise of redevelopment and so-called progress.
Dr. Zosha Stuckey, a professor of English/Professional Writing at Towson University and founder of the G.I.V.E Project, is currently working with Historic East Towson and its residents on an oral history project in an effort to memorialize the community.
Stuckey says that her efforts are due to East Towson slowly being chiseled away by gentrification.
Historian Emily Leib, who wrote the book “Road to Nowhere: How a Highway Map Wrecked Baltimore,” said she thinks that policy makers not only disregard communities like East Towson, but they actively see them as piggy banks.
One example of this is the construction of proposed Red Maple Place, a 56-unit, four-story apartment building planned for a site on East Joppa Road. Last Wednesday and Thursday, contractors finished clearing trees on the site. As of last Friday, further construction was put on hold by the Maryland Department of Environment because of non-compliance with state regulations. The development is missing stormwater permits, a public permit notice, and inspections, state authorities said.
Local officials were hoping that the affordable housing complex could help satisfy part of a 2011 agreement between the county and the federal government to build 1,000 low priced housing in more affluent areas of the county.
However, the Red Maple Place project, which began in 2018, received pushback from residents and some elected officials like state Sen. Mary Washington, a Democrats who represents the neighborhood.
One way to protect the neighborhood from changes like this, Stuckey said, is through education and making people more aware of East Towson’s importance.
Through a campuswide survey, Stuckey and her research team have found that approximately 99% of people on Towson’s campus don’t know the significance of Historic East Towson.
Even with the Auburn House, the historic mansion on campus previously owned by Rebecca Ridgley, not many people know the role that slavery played in the area.
“We need to really, as a campus, acknowledge some of the realities. The Auburn House reality, the reality that TU is connected to economies of enslavement,” Stuckey said.
East Towson used to have up to 400 families, according to Stuckey. East Chesapeake Avenue used to be called the Great Black Way, but in her research, Stuckey found that there’s almost no more Black residents.
Goldring agrees that more people should know the history behind East Towson.
“I want people to know that East Towson is central to Towson’s origin story,” Goldring said. “You don’t get Towson without East Towson.”
Correction: Dr. Zosha Stuckey is a professor of English and professional writing at Towson University. A previous version of this story mistakenly identified her as a history professor.