Linda Grace Morris: Baltimore Boomer Tales from the Hood
Baltimore was the place to be in the 1950s and 1960s, bustling with all the industry and social change about to come. For African Americans, it was a jobs magnet with all the major manufacturers. Those living in Turner Station and Sparrows Point, the company town built to host the Bethlehem Steel Company, had the highest per capita income for African Americans in the nation. Cherry Hill, the only planned community built for African Americans by the Federal Government, lifted many Baltimore Boomers into the middle class. This podcast walks down memory lane through the neighborhoods and good times--despite segregation--that those growing up there can never forget.
Linda Grace Morris: Baltimore Boomer Tales from the Hood
Jacqueline Sewell-Thomas's Tale of Two Loving Mothers
In 1948, 16-year-old Harriet Eleanor Taylor found herself struggling to be a mother to two children, one a year old and the other 4-months-old. Her prominent black middle-class family shunned poor Harriet as they tried to take her babies away from her. They found an aunt in Cleveland who was willing to take the older child, but Harriet was so fearful of losing the child she had known for more than a year, that she decided to give up the 4-month-old, Jacqueline, for a local adoption with the Family and Children's Society in Baltimore. She hoped against hope to find her baby and informally searched for her through the years. Shortly thereafter, Harriet married the father of the two children, and they had 3 more children.
Fast forward 38 years, and as a result of a search initiated by Jacqueline, who by now was a Social Worker with the same agency from which she was adopted, Harriet's search ended. This episode details the journey of these two women, now 77 and 93, and how their lives were blessed by the mother who adopted Jacqueline, the late Mrs. Helen Sewell.
Make every moment count! E-mail me at Lindagracemorris@gmail.com and tell me in 25 words or less why I should interview you.
