Baltimore's Upton neighborhood looks to future while remembering rich history as civil rights hub

BALTIMORE - There is a story in West Baltimore in the Upton neighborhood.

These blocks are rich in history with deep roots in the abolitionist movement and Civil Rights activism.

To many, it's long faded from view. 

"Justice Thurgood Marshall called Baltimore 'Way up south," retired Senator Michael Mitchell said.

Mitchell remembers the neighborhood's glory days when Druid Hill Avenue rose to prominence which shaped its identity as the Heart of Baltimore's Civil Rights Movement. 

"You see Dr. Martin Luther King walking by, imagine Medgar Evers, who was assassinated June 13 in 1963 by the KKK in Jackson, Mississippi," Mitchell said. "You saw Wilma Rudolph who won the 1960 Olympics. Even Muhammad Ali came to my mother's office while he was appealing his case to the Supreme Court."

In an office space in Baltimore, Thurgood Marshall prepared his fight in Brown vs Board of Education. Union Baptist Church is where people gathered to hear Mary McCleod Bethune speak. 

This neighborhood is part of the district represented by the late U.S. Representative Elijah Cummings. 

Mitchell said the time has taken the people who remember it best, like his grandparents, who are on the 1200 block of Druid Hill Avenue.

"This is hallowed ground," Mitchell said. "This was the home of Keefer Albert Jackson and Dr. Lillie May Carroll Jackson, long-time president of the Baltimore branch of the NAACP."

The Civil Right Rights era central to the community's reputation provides vivid memories.

"While I'm sitting here, I must tell you these are white marble steps, and all along these blocks, we as young people, including Dr. Hathaway had to scrub these white steps before people went to church," Mitchell said. "My grandmother would say you don't want people talking about your grandmother not having her white steps"

Not far from this stoop and just a block over is the once segregated elementary school where Supreme Court Justice Thurgood Marshall learned to read and write and where many of Baltimore's history-making sons and daughters attended in its heydey.

"I went to it in the 1950s," Mitchell said. "I graduated in 1957 and out of that comes incredible people."

The historic elementary school is now in the process of transformation. That sound of construction evoke feelings of pride.

"This was a school of excellence, just think about it," Mitchell said. "If there is any message that we need to communicate today is that our schools can be places of excellence, so here we're going to have a school that's going to be transformed into an amenities center that's going to have such rich offerings."

Dr. Alvin Hathaway spearheaded the project as workers restore the once crumbling and decaying structure.

"I think that's how you begin to transform communities when you do things that are meaningful to people," Dr. Hathaway said. "You don't just parachute in, it comes from their sense of being. This was a $14 million investment in this community."

On that corner, another is symbol of progress for Mitchell whose own family is entangled in West Baltimore's history.

The building is to be named after his mother.

"The Juanita Jackson Mitchell Center will be an incredible help to the neighborhood for young women who have been abused and who need employment who need drug counseling, who simply want to get a scholarship and pursue their education, who need help raising their families," Mitchell said.

Despite many setbacks and challenges, Mitchell said the weight of the past still presses down on him.

"In Brown vs Board of Education, I remember that day vividly because the bells at Methodist African Episcopal Church began to toll and the street cars coming down Druid Hill Avenue because the news had just come from the Afro that we won," Mitchell said.

These blocks remain a place where he can still see the footprints of activists from his grandmother's steps where it all began.