1834 McCulloh Street - W. Ashbie Hawkins

In 1910 Margaret Franklin Brewer sold 1834 McCulloh Street to W. Ashbie Hawkins. Three weeks later, The Baltimore Sun published an article highlighting the purchase and stating there was a “negro invasion” taking place in Mount Royal. Though he was a well known lawyer, Hawkins did not purchase the house on McCulloh as an act of rebellion or to assert his civil rights in housing. After his purchase, Ashbie rented the McCulloh Street house to his law partner George F. W. McMechen. McMechen was a Yale University Law alumni and the first graduate of Morgan College, now Morgan State University. The purchase and rental of 1834 McCulloh marked the beginning of an ongoing trend for housing markets in Baltimore as it refers to race. The trend followed the progression of: White, Non-Jewish, Jewish, and finally Black owners or tenants. McCulloh Street was along the racial divide demarcation line. Blacks lived on the west side of the street and Whites lived on the east and onward toward Eutaw Place. The fear of a “negro invasion” reached all the way to City Hall. 

After a confrontation with a black resident, Hamer, white resident M.Z. Hammen launched a campaign for an ordinance that would make it a crime for a black person to move into a white block and vice versa. Mayor J. Barry Mahool and City Council member Samuel L. West and Milton Dashiell pushed the legislation in City Council and passed on December 9th, 1910. Baltimore used government legislation to achieve city-wide systemic segregation.