History of White Americans in Baltimore

White Americans have played a substantial impact on the culture, dialect, ethnic heritage, history, politics, and music of the city.

Numerous white immigrants from Europe and the European diaspora have immigrated to Baltimore from the United Kingdom, Germany, Ireland, Poland, Italy, the Czech Republic, Slovakia, Lithuania, Russia, Ukraine, Spain, France, Canada, and other countries, particularly during the late 19th century and early 20th century.

Smaller numbers of white people have immigrated from Latin America, the Caribbean (particularly Haiti), the Middle East, North Africa, and other non-European regions.

[5] During the time of the Hillbilly Highway, between 1910 and 1970, thousands of white people from Appalachia and the Southern states moved to Baltimore in search of better socioeconomic conditions.

[11] In the early 1600s, the immediate Baltimore vicinity was populated by Native Americans who had lived there since at least the 10th millennium BC, when Paleo-Indians first settled in the region.

[13] The Baltimore County area northward was used as hunting grounds by the Susquehannocks living in the lower Susquehanna River valley who "controlled all of the upper tributaries of the Chesapeake" but "refrained from much contact with Powhatan in the Potomac region.

In 1608, Captain John Smith traveled 210 miles from Jamestown to the uppermost Chesapeake Bay, leading the first European expedition to the Patapsco River, a word used by the Algonquin language natives who fished shellfish and hunted[18] The name "Patapsco" is derived from pota-psk-ut, which translates to "backwater" or "tide covered with froth" in Algonquian dialect.

The English were initially frightened by the Piscataway in southern Maryland because of their body paint and war regalia, even though they were a peaceful tribe.

[20] During the civil rights movement between the 1930s and the 1960s, many white Americans in Baltimore reacted violently to African-Americans and were intransigent in their support for segregation.

Some white residents of Baltimore engaged in acts of terrorism against African-Americans, including the 1911 lynching of King Johnson in the neighborhood of Brooklyn.

As the city's white population has increased and the rate of poverty has dropped, income and property values have been rising.

Minorities of White Americans belong to other religions such as Judaism, Buddhism, Hinduism, and Islam, while some are atheist or agnostic.

One such neighborhood, Roland Park, was developed as a wealthy white Christian enclave for "discriminating" people that used racially restrictive covenants to exclude African-Americans.

[30] As late as the 1930s and 1940s it was not uncommon for Slavic Catholics, such as Poles and Czechs, to be called ethnic and religious slurs such as "bohunks" and "fish eaters."

In the early 21st century, Roman Catholic authorities began to acknowledge the long legacy of racism from the majority-white leadership of the Church.

Between the 1880s and the 1920s, Baltimore received tens of thousands of white Ashkenazi Jewish immigrants arriving from Central and Eastern Europe.