Sandtown-Winchester is a neighborhood in West
Baltimore, Maryland
Baltimore ( , locally: or ) is the List of municipalities in Maryland, most populous city in the U.S. state of Maryland, fourth most populous city in the Mid-Atlantic (United States), Mid-Atlantic, and List of United States cities by popula ...
. 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, 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. 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 s ...
and
Diana Ross performed there and it was sometimes referred to as Baltimore's
Harlem
Harlem is a neighborhood in Upper Manhattan, New York City. It is bounded roughly by the Hudson River on the west; the Harlem River and 155th Street on the north; Fifth Avenue on the east; and Central Park North on the south. The greater Ha ...
, by the time of the
2015 protests and rioting over the
death of Freddie Gray, 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
''The Wall Street Journal'' is an American business-focused, international daily newspaper based in New York City, with international editions also available in Chinese and Japanese. The ''Journal'', along with its Asian editions, is published ...
''
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, grades 9 to 12
Notable people
*
Cab Calloway, 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, 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 s ...
, jazz singer
*
Thurgood Marshall
Thurgood Marshall (July 2, 1908 – January 24, 1993) was an American civil rights lawyer and jurist who served as an associate justice of the Supreme Court of the United States from 1967 until 1991. He was the Supreme Court's first African-A ...
, 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