At the beginning of this project I thought Pennsylvania Avenue was a place that was dominated by owned and operated successful black businesses. The fact is that once the Jewish and white population moved on blacks did operate the clubs and stores on the Avenue; however, they only owned a small portion of the real estate. This proved to be a major problem when the riots of 1968 swept threw the city.
Another false claim that floats around our city is that Pennsylvania Ave was destroyed buy heroin and other popular drugs of the 70’s. This is only partially true because while heroin did contribute to the Avenues decline, it was a combination of the riots of 68, and the desegregating of downtown department stores that gave Pennsylvania Avenue its most devastating blow.
According Dr. Nix, “The Avenue’s stores and night spots were hurt not only by the loss of middle-class residents, but also by competition from newly-desegregated downtown stores, restaurants, and entertainment venues—and perhaps even more important, by American society’s changing consumer patterns, as television and car-oriented shopping malls took business away from downtown and local commercial districts alike. “Stores on Gay Street, Pennsylvania Avenue, West Baltimore Street, which had had a monopoly on the black dollar, they suffered,” pointed out longtime Pennsylvania Avenue merchant Herman Katkow in a recent oral history.
Baltimore’s shrinking industrial base meant that as opportunities increased for middle class blacks, they decreased for the poor. Edsall reported “large numbers of young men hanging around on the street corners every day. . . . The unemployment rate in the area is very high.” Crime worsened and illegal drugs became more and more prevalent. Unfortunately, urban renewal, one of the city’s primary tools for combating inner city “blight,” only served to add to the problem, as large-scale projects such as the proposed East-West expressway dislocated residents and businesses. The neighborhood’s population “declined between 20 per cent between 1950 and 1960,” Edsall noted, “and this downward trend is continuing as more and more clearance is being done for urban renewal.”
The combined impact of middle class flight, competition from new sources, increased crime, and displacement from urban renewal took a toll on Pennsylvania Avenue merchants throughout the 1950s and 1960s. As Edsall describes, “Stores began to close, theaters became movies and many of the bars began putting in juke boxes to replace live bands.” Though still a viable commercial center, by 1967, Pennsylvania Avenue was far from what it once had been. “Both the mood and the physical state of the avenue have changed,” Edsall observed. On the lower part of the strip, “About a third of the stores and many of the homes appear empty. Junk-covered vacant lots, broken windows and crumbling buildings combine to give the area an overwhelming aura of decay.” Conditions were better in the upper blocks: “Merchants on the hill have less of a sense of defeat than those on the bottom and although they complain, they still seem to think there is the possibility of improvement.” Nevertheless, one “hill” merchant, Joseph Rodman, told him that “the crime problem ‘gets worse and worse, the streets are dark and there are more and more dope pushers.”1
If the black business owners owned their real estate then maybe they could have survived the riots and combated the drug problem. The Jewish and white business owners were scared to reinvest into the neighborhood, because of the rise of violence and the rapid decline of residents, and with that said, the avenue was done. From that point on the Avenue continued decline.
Today the Avenue looks like a battle zone. Its streets are riddled with trash and drug paraphernalia. Zombie like dope fiends roam around hopeless and lost as the murder rate continues to climb. The generation of children growing up will never know what Pennsylvania Avenue once meant to the black community. Unless they read this blog!



1 Elizabeth Nix, Pivot in Perception: The Impact of the 1968 Riots on Three Baltimore Business Districts (Unpublished, 2009), 19.

Pennsylvania Avenue

I wanted to post this for my non Baltimore residents. Live footage of Pennsylvania Avenue in 2009. It is also what a open-air drug market looks like. Enjoy.

Ike Dixon Jr

Early on in my blog I alluded to the notion that Pennsylvania Avenue was full of black business owners after the white and Jewish population fled to the suburbs. That is false. The stories that were passed down to me never mentioned the fact that 79% of the businesses on the Avenue were white owned, although many of the business were managed and operated by Negros. Mr. Ike Dixon was one of those minority owners. That fact alone would have made my interview with Dixon more important to this study.
At this point in the semester, I don’t think the interview is going happen so I poked around and found out a little information about his personal life and career. My primary goal was to find out what made him different from other Negro operated businesses. Why was he smart enough to own his properties and where did the legacy end. My mother in-law worked on Pennsylvania Avenue while Dixon was active, but unfortunately she was not able to tell me much about him. However she turned me on to an older woman, Mae Scott an 82-year-old who was actually employed at his Comedy Club. We had one phone interview that ran about 5 minutes and this was all the information that I could get out of her about Dixon, the Comedy Club, and her time spent there.
Dwight: What was the Comedy Club like?
Mae: It was a lovely place, a lovely place. Classy and everyone came.
Dwight: Everyone meaning…
Mae: Whites, blacks, your affluent’s
Dwight: What was your role at the establishment?
Mae: I did everything, everything. Cook, clean, booked shows and all. My two years there I did a little of everything.
Dwight: What was Ike Dixon like?
Mae: He was fair, a fair man. Sharp too. Very popular, everybody knew Ike was, ha ha.
Dwight: Did he spend a lot of time at the club?
Mae: No. Big nights only. He’d sit at his table during big nights, but other then that, no, big nights only. He had a lot going on and he use to like to travel.
Dwight: So I know that he was in to politics. Do you know any thing about his political career?
Mae: No, I really don’t follow politics. He was in to a lot of things.




After that we went in circles for a minute or two before I ended the session. After reading several of my posted news clippings I came to the conclusion that Dixon’s intelligence and background separated him from the pack. His dad was also an entrepreneur that experienced success in Baltimore. He passed the legacy down to Ike Jr. and Ike Jr. continued to carry the torch until he fell in love with politics. Mr. Dixon served as a delegate in the 70’s and lost his seat in 1982. According to the Sun, he took the lost like a champ and continued to run his businesses. At this particular time Ike Dixon Jr. was not in the nightclub business. He owned a Bail Bonds and an Insurance company. And just like many other successful African Americans before Dixon, he left the city for the suburbs and closed his businesses with out passing the torch to his son. (Ike Dixon III decided to practice law. His office is located in Towson, MD.).

The Royal

The Royal Theater was once the center of African American art and entertainment in Baltimore. During a time when African Americans were prohibited from entering (white only) mainstream theaters, the Royal provided a venue for them to enjoy shows performed by some of the most successful African American entertainers in the world. Greats like Duke Ellington and Billy Holiday graced the halls of the Royal on a weekly basis.
The club opened its door is 1922 and fortunately experienced an immense amount of success. Many Baltimore residents today remember it as Baltimore’s version of “Broadway”, or as fellow fans of that era would call it, a major leg of the “Chitlin’ Circuit”. The Royal had several sisters in the Chitlin Circuit, which were the Cotton Club, Apollo Theater, Uptown Theatre, Ritz Theatre, Hippodrome, and Victory Grill. It is important to mention that even though African Americans were always the headline performers, whites loved to frequent these nightspots as well. Which is something that needs to be considered when studying race relations, because when places like the Royal and surrounding theaters or clubs were jamming, almost everyone black and white partied together, participated, and had a great time.
Another important part of the Royal’s legacy often forgotten is its role in the black business community. I say this because its status as a major entertainment draw bought patrons from all over the city and its surrounding areas. The rise of racial integration led to the destruction of the Royal in 1971, but its memories will out live its short existence. These stories are explained best in some of the articles I found in African American room at the Pratt.

Black Residents

The African American room at the Pratt library has an immense amount of information about Pennsylvania Avenue. I stayed there for about two hours on Saturday and came across about two-dozen news articles. Many of which were from old out of print papers like The Evening Sun. Over the next week or so I will post the visible articles to the site so that everyone can see what the Avenue looked like before its dramatic decline.
The City Paper article I posted touched on the early ethnicities that frequented Pennsylvania Avenue before the black population arrived. It also sites the late Alvin K. Brunson, former director of exhibits and programs for the Center for Cultural Education. (We will be using this center as a source in the near future)
Brunson credits the rise of the suburbs and the migration of blacks to West Baltimore from downtown as the primary reason for racial changes on Pennsylvania Avenue. African Americans studied the advancement of other ethnicities and implemented their community building strategies. Brunson states “Pennsylvania Avenue did not become a predominately Black community until the 1920s. With the rise in Black churches, schools, night clubs, restaurants, hotels, barbers shops, beauty salons, insurance companies, banks, newspapers and a thriving medical facility named Provident Hospital, located at 1514 Division Street, Pennsylvania Avenue became a thriving community. Because Baltimore at that time was a segregated city, many Black residents considered Pennsylvania Avenue “a City within a City.”
In 1920, the census showed that 90 percent of Baltimore’s Black population lived along Pennsylvania Avenue. “The Avenue,” as it is affectionately known, was in the heart of the Black community. It played the most important role in the development of Black culture in Baltimore. Day and night, this street was always crowded. It was where Blacks attended school, worked, and shopped. At night, this street became a place where people hung out, listened to live music, ate, danced and spent their money fulfilling their wants and desires”.

Some of the more popular venues were…

1) The Royal
2) Gamby’s
3) Sphinx Club
4) Club Casino
5) Ike Dixon’s Comedy Club

Many of these once Jewish or white owned businesses were successful, but The Royal was by far the most popular of them all. Next week were going to dedicate a whole blog to the Royal Theater.

Slow Week

This was a slow research week. None of my interviews came through so I am prepping for next week. Some of my advisors recommended the Maryland room over at Enoch Pratt. Hopefully I could go there and get some pictures and oral histories of Avenue residents.

I would also like to shift the direction of this project. Don't get me wrong, a blog about Pennsylvania Avenue is great; however, I feel like I am going over information that everyone already knows. So hopefully by the end of next week , I can formulate some sort of specific question about the Avenue which would allow me to move away from a more general study.

Evening Sun 1967

Another week, another failed attempt at interviewing Mr. Dixon. But all is not lost. I had a meeting with one of my advisors (Dr. Nix) about another project that I am participating in and she turned me on to the writings of Thomas Edsall. Currently Mr. Edsall a Pulitzer Prize winning journalist is a political writer for the Huffington post, but prior to that he wrote for the Baltimore Sun. One of the areas he covered was Pennsylvania Ave. So I took the info I received from Dr. Nix and dug up some additional info from Langsdale Library. Here is article he wrote back in 1967 for The Evening Sun. (I didn’t want to jump ahead to this period in Pennsylvania Avenue’s history, however this article was so brilliant that I had to post it this week!)
“Evening Sun, May 10, 1967 D1
"Pennsylvania Ave. Declining for Generation" by Thomas Edsall
It was a street crowded with shoppers patronizing busy shops by day that at night became the center of jazz in Baltimore. Before the Second World War Pennsylvania avenue [sic] was the hub of Negro life and activity in Baltimore. The stretch between Franklin Street and North Avenue was packed with movie theaters, tailor shops, food stores, nightclubs and barbershops. Downtown was more or less off limits to Negroes and Pennsylvania Avenue [provided both the day-to-day necessities of food and clothing and a place to spend one's leisure time in the evenings. "You felt free there," Dr. Furman Templeton, head of the Urban League, remembers. "You felt it was there for you."
Regular Parades
The Elks and the Mason[s] used to have parades regularly on the avenue and one elderly man remembers the avenue as "the place everyone went with their fancy costumes on Halloween [sic]. On Sundays Negroes came from other parts of the city and surrounding counties to stroll or to watch others strolling in their finery. The Pennsylvania Avenue Easter parade was famous. At night, clubs like Ike Dixon's Comedy Club, Gambee's and the Ritz Cafe lighted up the avenue with neon signs advertising the best in jazz -- performers like Pearl Bailey and Charlie Barnet. "Downtown you couldn't try on a dress or stop and have a snack with a friend," one woman recalled, "but the avenue was ours and, I'll tell you, it was a mighty fine place to go."
Best Dresses, Food
"The stores had the best looking dresses yo ever saw," she continued, "and at night you could get some of the best food in Baltimore at some of those restaurants." After the Second World War, as Negroes began to make advances, the middle class began to move out. By 1945, businessmen along the avenue were beginning to complain of a decline in sales and the clubs were getting less and less business. South of North Avenue, stores began to close, theaters became movies and many of the bars began putting in juke boxes to replace live bands. Since then both the mood and the physical state of the avenue have changed. Recently a group of twelve Negro youths who live in East Baltimore went to West Baltimore to play basketball. They were all big and could take care of themselves. On the way back they were walking down Pennsylvania Avenue to a bus stop. Approaching them was another group of Negro youths. One of the basketball players asked, "What do we do if there is trouble?"
"Run," was the reply.
Avenue's Reputation
The reply reflects the kind of reputation Pennsylvania Avenue has gained in recent years -- toughness.
Wesley Aydelett, a 23-year-old rock 'n' roll singer and neighborhood assistant for the Community Action Agency, compared the avenue to other places in the city with similar reputations: "It's tougher and more sophisticated." Guys out to prove themselves "come to Pennsylvania Avenue from Greenmount Avenue and Gay Street, but you won't find them going from Pennsylvania to Greenmount or Gay."
The avenue is also many different areas, some residential. Each has characteristics of its own.

Heart of the Ghetto
The one feature that unites is that it is the heart of Baltimore's Negro ghetto. As one observer put it, "The only whites you ever see down here are cops, social workers and embarrassed looking men who drift into bars late at night." It starts at Franklin Street and from there to the 1200 block is known as "the Bottom." The title, the bottom, probably began because the area is the base of a hill, but now the word is even more apt, for it is one of the poorest sections of Baltimore.
Buildings Empty
About a third of the stores and many of the homes appear empty. Junk-covered vacant lots, broken windows and crumbling buildings combine to give the area an overwhelming aura of decay. Most of the young people have moved out, leaving behind those who don't have the ability to move. Although the decline of the bottom has been caused by a variety of factors, one of the immediate problems is that the bottom is adjacent to the Mulberry-Franklin section of the proposed East-West expressway and may be the site of a connector.
No Repairs
Consequently, neither landlords, tenants or homeowners have wanted to invest in repairs, because the area is liable to be completely torn down. In the old days, the bottom had a reputation as the center of prostitution. It still goes on to a lesser degree, according to the police, but as one worker for the poverty program put it: "There's not much prostitution left because the men are sacred to come down here." None of the residents interviewed expressed any hope that their neighborhood could be helped and they all just want to move out.

Relocation Aid
If the area becomes the site of a connector, the residents will be helped to relocate and receive some assistance to meet the expense of moving. A liquor storeowner located at the bottom of the bottom said his business ahs been on the decline for the last ten years. Asked if he wanted to sell the store, he replied, "You want to buy it?"
At The Top
Farther along the avenue to the northwest is the area known as the hill or the top. Geographic definitions vary but it seems to extend from the 1300 block to the 1800 block. This is the area economically better off that the bottom with a shopping area, nightclub section, and some thriving pawnshops. The hill is also, along with sections of the bottom, a center of narcotics traffic. The narcotics problem has prompted one group of businessmen in the area, the Pennsylvania Avenue-Lafayette market Association, to hire a detective to protect their stores, especially from shoplifters.
Undercover Agents
There are eight or nine undercover agents working around the clock, according to Lt. Jacob Simonson, chief of the Narcotics Squad. On weekend nights the bars, which are centered in the 1400 and 1500 blocks, do a very good business. By 10:30 p.m. they are packed. Two of the bars, the York and the Casino, have live bands while the others have constantly playing jukeboxes. The manager of the Casino was careful to point out that the go-go girls there are more than adequately clothed. In fact, the girls have more clothes on than the go-go girls in most other East Coast cities.
Not Much Danger
Although the hill has a reputation of being dangerous, especially among middle-class Negroes, the impression gained from spending a number of evening in the clubs is that there is not much danger of being mugged. Police statistics show that the avenue has a crime rate about equal to the rest of crime-conscious Western district. One man who has spent much time on the hill and agreed that there is not much danger of being attacked said: "The people there have learned that to be outwardly violent doesn't do them or the reputation of the street any good. It just brings trouble."
Merchants Hope
Merchants on the hill have less of a sense of defeat than those on the bottom and although they complain, they still seem to think there is the possibility of improvement. Joseph Rodman, who has owned Rodman Hats in the 1500 block for 40 years, said the crime problem "gets worse and worse, the streets are dark and there are more and more dope pushers. “But the shopkeepers there still have the energy to complain to the city fathers and, like those in P.A.L.M.A to form improvement groups. Pennsylvania Avenue above North Avenue is a very different street. It is not as poor and is more of a residential area and it does not have the sense of decay that is so striking about the "top and bottom" below North avenue. The upper section also has one of the few remaining jazz clubs in Baltimore, Peyton Place, in the 2700 block. Both the bottom and the hill below North Avenue are in the poverty program's "target area" and statistics show that they deserve to be. A study made by Sidney Hollander and Associates, a local research firm, found that the average income per family is $3,750 with an average of 4.2 mouths to feed. In recent years middle-class professional and white collar workers have been moving out with a consequent increase in the percentage of very poor people, especially those on welfare. Only 3 percent of those who shop in the area are white, the study showed.
Population Decline
The population declined between 20 per cent between 1950 and 1960 and this downward trend is continuing as more and more clearance is being done for urban renewal. The nine blocks that make up the bottom and the hill average one liquor store and one bar each. Although the area is almost exclusively Negro, 79 per cent of the stores are owned by whites, according to a P.A.L.M.A. survey. But 85 per cent of the employees are Negro. The percentage of storekeepers who own their stores is relatively low: about 30 per cent.
Large Families
Large families are common. Over a quarter of the households have six or more members. Of the buildings in this section of Pennsylvania Avenue, only 3.2 per cent are in "acceptable condition." Also, 41.2 per cent were found to be "deficient" to varying degrees, and a majority 55.5 per cent, were in poor condition. The buildings are on average 58.7 years old. From 1953 to 1963, the assessed value of the land dropped by 10.8 per cent.
Summer Problems
These statistics show the area is on the decline and they reflect the same conditions that Negro leaders have pointed to in cities that have experienced severe problems in recent summers. Dennis P. Mello, Captain of the Western Police district, said there have been no incidents between the police and residents with racial overtones but said his men "have to be ready for a fight" when they make an arrest. The unemployment rate in the area is very high and there are large numbers of young men hanging around on the street corners every day.
Rights Advances
Ironically, one of the major reasons for the decline of Lower Pennsylvania avenue is the increased number of advantages available to middle-class Negroes that have come with civil rights advances. Robert Matthews, head of a C.A.A. center in the 1100 block commented that as more housing and decent jobs become available to educated Negroes, they move out of the area. His comment was echoed by almost everyone interviewed. The exodus of the middle class and the influx of hard-core poverty combined with narcotics and the increase in crime have changed the face of Pennsylvania Avenue.
Days of Jazz
Vernon Savage, former business agent of the Negro musicians union, remembers the days when Cab Calloway and Billie Holliday, the great jazz singers, used to come to the clubs on the avenue. In the days when Baltimore was completely segregated, the avenue was the only place a Negro could go shopping or even see a movie. It was the center of Negro life.
"Day Downtown"
One woman in her forties remembers that "when I was a little girl and the family was going to spend the day downtown, that meant we were going to Pennsylvania Avenue and we sure looked forward to it." One of the movie theaters we used to go to is now a vacant lot where a used furniture store displays its wares. Asked what the avenue is like now, Mr. Savage said, "It's just a memory."”
Edsall article gave a brief history of the beginning of the avenues decline. His writing style was both graphic and unique, something that we don’t see in news papers today. Next week we will be back on schedule with the arrival of blacks on Pennsylvania Avenue and the ethnic groups who fled once Negro’s arrived.