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Blockbusting in Baltimore: The Edmondson Village Story
This innovative study of racial upheaval and urban transformation in Baltimore, Maryland investigates the impact of "blockbusting"―a practice in which real estate agents would sell a house on an all-white block to an African American family with the aim of igniting a panic among the other residents. These homeowners would often sell at a loss to move away, and the real estate agents would promote the properties at a drastic markup to African American buyers.
In this groundbreaking book, W. Edward Orser examines Edmondson Village, a west Baltimore rowhouse community where an especially acute instance of blockbusting triggered white flight and racial change on a dramatic scale. Between 1955 and 1965, nearly twenty thousand white residents, who saw their secure world changing drastically, were replaced by blacks in search of the American dream. By buying low and selling high, playing on the fears of whites and the needs of African Americans, blockbusters set off a series of events that Orser calls "a collective trauma whose significance for recent American social and cultural history is still insufficiently appreciated and understood."
Blockbusting in Baltimore describes a widely experienced but little analyzed phenomenon of recent social history. Orser makes an important contribution to community and urban studies, race relations, and records of the African American experience.
In this groundbreaking book, W. Edward Orser examines Edmondson Village, a west Baltimore rowhouse community where an especially acute instance of blockbusting triggered white flight and racial change on a dramatic scale. Between 1955 and 1965, nearly twenty thousand white residents, who saw their secure world changing drastically, were replaced by blacks in search of the American dream. By buying low and selling high, playing on the fears of whites and the needs of African Americans, blockbusters set off a series of events that Orser calls "a collective trauma whose significance for recent American social and cultural history is still insufficiently appreciated and understood."
Blockbusting in Baltimore describes a widely experienced but little analyzed phenomenon of recent social history. Orser makes an important contribution to community and urban studies, race relations, and records of the African American experience.
- GenresNonfictionHistory
256 pages, Paperback
First published September 1, 1994
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December 11, 2021
“Blockbuster,” today, is a term that we would associate with big-budget summer movies that make a great deal of money – or with a once-prominent video-rental chain. But terms like “blockbuster” and “blockbusting” once had a much grimmer connotation – one that had to do with unethical real-estate practices in U.S. urban neighborhoods that were undergoing changes in their racial demographics. W. Edward Orser chronicles that process in his 1994 book Blockbusting in Baltimore.
Orser, a professor of American studies, teaches at the University of Maryland Baltimore County; therefore, his office in suburban Catonsville is only 5.9 miles, or 11 minutes by car, away from Edmondson Village, the West Baltimore neighborhood that is the subject of his study (the book’s subtitle is The Edmondson Village Story).
And he opens this study by describing a question he often asks of his students at UMBC – one that illuminates the process of demographic change that occurred in Edmondson Village between 1955 and 1970: “Imagine an American community of twenty thousand people; then imagine that ten years later its population is still twenty thousand, but virtually none of the residents are the same; how do you account for that?” (p. ix)
The answers that the students offer are thoughtful, but incomplete – a nuclear accident or a flood or a factory closure would explain why large numbers of people left a community, but would not explain why an equal number of other people subsequently moved in. But “Then someone eventually asks: ‘Racial change?’ And invariably, throughout the room there is a collective 'oh – yes, sure!'; and then class members settle back as if nothing more need be said, because we all, presumably, ‘understand’” (p. ix).
Such a thing is exactly what happened in Edmondson Village. In 1955, it was virtually all white; by 1970, its population was virtually all African American. And the speedy rate of change in the racial demographics of this West Baltimore neighborhood was helped along by blockbusting.
Orser provides a helpful definition of “blockbusting” as “the intentional action of a real estate speculator to place an African American resident in a house on a previously all-white block for the express purpose of panicking whites into selling for the profit to be gained by buying low and selling high” (p. 84).
The early chapters of Blockbusting in Baltimore set forth the context against which Edmondson Village came into existence. That historical context, one of rigid residential segregation, involved what Orser aptly refers to as a “dual housing market.” Through a practice known as “redlining,” African Americans were restricted to one specific area of central Baltimore where housing conditions were crowded and substandard. Whites, by contrast, could live where they liked.
Within that context, Edmondson Village developed, starting in the 1920’s, as a “streetcar suburb”; it was (and is) still within Baltimore’s city limits, but it offered, to whites who aspired to a more comfortable middle-class lifestyle, an attractive residential tableau of homes with lawns, from which one could commute by streetcar to one’s workplace in downtown Baltimore.
The rowhouse suburb was a great success, and Edmondson Village’s original white residents came to love their way of life there, particularly in the decade after the Second World War. The opening of the Edmondson Village Shopping Center in 1947 gave residents not only a place to shop but also a number of social gathering places and even a heightened sense of community identity:
The Edmondson Village Shopping Center filled a vacuum, both in the physical development of the Edmondson Avenue rowhouse area and in the lifestyle of its residents. Seeking a village-like atmosphere in their suburban quest, they found it in this cluster of colonial-style shops and stores that gave a sense of completion to their residential environment, not only filling their shopping needs but serving as meeting places and entertainment as well. That there may have been a vacuum is suggested by the rapidity with which Edmondson Village [Shopping Center] became the focal point for the area, providing it a point of reference, an identity, and a name. Technically Edmondson Village was the shopping center itself, but increasingly the term was used to refer to the community as well. (p. 57)
Orser and his research team diligently interviewed many Edmondson Village residents, from both before and after the time of racial change. The recollections of white former residents of the Village – many of whom were teenagers at the time – are often strongly nostalgic, as they recall their time hanging out with friends at the bowling alley or the soda fountain.
But by the late 1950’s, changes in public policy, spurred by an increasingly active Civil Rights movement, meant that the days of “redlining,” and of an openly maintained dual housing market, were coming to an end. And within that time of change, the “blockbusters” set their sights on Edmondson Village, and went to work.
Once a couple of white residents of any given block in Edmondson Village sold to a real-estate agent who subsequently sold the property to an African American family, the process of “white flight” began, with white homeowners sometimes selling their property for significantly less than its nominal value. Sadly, the majority of white Edmondson Village residents from those times came to “the conclusion that once racial change began, racial succession was inevitable”, and “believed that racial change meant inevitable decline in the socioeconomic status of neighborhoods” – impressions and beliefs that they “accepted…as social reality” (p. 101).
The first generation of African Americans to move into Edmondson Village, as Orser notes in a chapter titled “African American Pioneers,” resembled in many ways their white predecessors; they hoped to better their families’ lives and achieve solid middle-class status by moving out of crowded inner-city conditions and into a greener, more spacious, more comfortable, more suburban version of Baltimore City life. But they faced a number of obstacles in the process.
Locked out from many of the conventional venues for securing home financing, the African American pioneers of Edmondson Village often had to seek alternative forms of financing that were more costly and provided fewer protections for the home buyer – part of what Orser refers to as the “black tax.” African Americans faced ongoing discrimination in the job market, adding to the challenges of achieving and maintaining a middle-class lifestyle. And real-estate “blockbusters,” eager to turn over properties quickly and profitably, sometimes sold to buyers who might not have the ability to maintain the property well.
Orser describes well the way in which factors like declining city services and gradual socioeconomic change have posed challenges for the African American residents of Edmondson Village, from the time of racial change to the present day:
Moving out to Edmondson Village under circumstances of blockbusting and white flight has brought measures of both satisfaction and frustration, as if the lines between stability and security, on the one hand, and stagnancy and deterioration, on the other, have been fine indeed in the experience of African American pioneers. The black tax has had its social as well as financial dimensions. (p. 159)
Today, Edmondson Village continues to face challenges. The Edmondson Village Shopping Center – among some white former residents, the locus of neon-tinted, soft-focus nostalgia like what one might see in American Graffiti or Happy Days – has been damaged by two major fires in recent years, and residents continue to express frustration with the center’s relatively low-end retail offerings. As the residents of Edmondson Village continue to work on building a better future, for themselves and for their community, Orser’s Blockbusting in Baltimore provides a salutary reminder of dramatic and disturbing patterns of racial change that occurred in many American communities over the last 60 years.
Orser, a professor of American studies, teaches at the University of Maryland Baltimore County; therefore, his office in suburban Catonsville is only 5.9 miles, or 11 minutes by car, away from Edmondson Village, the West Baltimore neighborhood that is the subject of his study (the book’s subtitle is The Edmondson Village Story).
And he opens this study by describing a question he often asks of his students at UMBC – one that illuminates the process of demographic change that occurred in Edmondson Village between 1955 and 1970: “Imagine an American community of twenty thousand people; then imagine that ten years later its population is still twenty thousand, but virtually none of the residents are the same; how do you account for that?” (p. ix)
The answers that the students offer are thoughtful, but incomplete – a nuclear accident or a flood or a factory closure would explain why large numbers of people left a community, but would not explain why an equal number of other people subsequently moved in. But “Then someone eventually asks: ‘Racial change?’ And invariably, throughout the room there is a collective 'oh – yes, sure!'; and then class members settle back as if nothing more need be said, because we all, presumably, ‘understand’” (p. ix).
Such a thing is exactly what happened in Edmondson Village. In 1955, it was virtually all white; by 1970, its population was virtually all African American. And the speedy rate of change in the racial demographics of this West Baltimore neighborhood was helped along by blockbusting.
Orser provides a helpful definition of “blockbusting” as “the intentional action of a real estate speculator to place an African American resident in a house on a previously all-white block for the express purpose of panicking whites into selling for the profit to be gained by buying low and selling high” (p. 84).
The early chapters of Blockbusting in Baltimore set forth the context against which Edmondson Village came into existence. That historical context, one of rigid residential segregation, involved what Orser aptly refers to as a “dual housing market.” Through a practice known as “redlining,” African Americans were restricted to one specific area of central Baltimore where housing conditions were crowded and substandard. Whites, by contrast, could live where they liked.
Within that context, Edmondson Village developed, starting in the 1920’s, as a “streetcar suburb”; it was (and is) still within Baltimore’s city limits, but it offered, to whites who aspired to a more comfortable middle-class lifestyle, an attractive residential tableau of homes with lawns, from which one could commute by streetcar to one’s workplace in downtown Baltimore.
The rowhouse suburb was a great success, and Edmondson Village’s original white residents came to love their way of life there, particularly in the decade after the Second World War. The opening of the Edmondson Village Shopping Center in 1947 gave residents not only a place to shop but also a number of social gathering places and even a heightened sense of community identity:
The Edmondson Village Shopping Center filled a vacuum, both in the physical development of the Edmondson Avenue rowhouse area and in the lifestyle of its residents. Seeking a village-like atmosphere in their suburban quest, they found it in this cluster of colonial-style shops and stores that gave a sense of completion to their residential environment, not only filling their shopping needs but serving as meeting places and entertainment as well. That there may have been a vacuum is suggested by the rapidity with which Edmondson Village [Shopping Center] became the focal point for the area, providing it a point of reference, an identity, and a name. Technically Edmondson Village was the shopping center itself, but increasingly the term was used to refer to the community as well. (p. 57)
Orser and his research team diligently interviewed many Edmondson Village residents, from both before and after the time of racial change. The recollections of white former residents of the Village – many of whom were teenagers at the time – are often strongly nostalgic, as they recall their time hanging out with friends at the bowling alley or the soda fountain.
But by the late 1950’s, changes in public policy, spurred by an increasingly active Civil Rights movement, meant that the days of “redlining,” and of an openly maintained dual housing market, were coming to an end. And within that time of change, the “blockbusters” set their sights on Edmondson Village, and went to work.
Once a couple of white residents of any given block in Edmondson Village sold to a real-estate agent who subsequently sold the property to an African American family, the process of “white flight” began, with white homeowners sometimes selling their property for significantly less than its nominal value. Sadly, the majority of white Edmondson Village residents from those times came to “the conclusion that once racial change began, racial succession was inevitable”, and “believed that racial change meant inevitable decline in the socioeconomic status of neighborhoods” – impressions and beliefs that they “accepted…as social reality” (p. 101).
The first generation of African Americans to move into Edmondson Village, as Orser notes in a chapter titled “African American Pioneers,” resembled in many ways their white predecessors; they hoped to better their families’ lives and achieve solid middle-class status by moving out of crowded inner-city conditions and into a greener, more spacious, more comfortable, more suburban version of Baltimore City life. But they faced a number of obstacles in the process.
Locked out from many of the conventional venues for securing home financing, the African American pioneers of Edmondson Village often had to seek alternative forms of financing that were more costly and provided fewer protections for the home buyer – part of what Orser refers to as the “black tax.” African Americans faced ongoing discrimination in the job market, adding to the challenges of achieving and maintaining a middle-class lifestyle. And real-estate “blockbusters,” eager to turn over properties quickly and profitably, sometimes sold to buyers who might not have the ability to maintain the property well.
Orser describes well the way in which factors like declining city services and gradual socioeconomic change have posed challenges for the African American residents of Edmondson Village, from the time of racial change to the present day:
Moving out to Edmondson Village under circumstances of blockbusting and white flight has brought measures of both satisfaction and frustration, as if the lines between stability and security, on the one hand, and stagnancy and deterioration, on the other, have been fine indeed in the experience of African American pioneers. The black tax has had its social as well as financial dimensions. (p. 159)
Today, Edmondson Village continues to face challenges. The Edmondson Village Shopping Center – among some white former residents, the locus of neon-tinted, soft-focus nostalgia like what one might see in American Graffiti or Happy Days – has been damaged by two major fires in recent years, and residents continue to express frustration with the center’s relatively low-end retail offerings. As the residents of Edmondson Village continue to work on building a better future, for themselves and for their community, Orser’s Blockbusting in Baltimore provides a salutary reminder of dramatic and disturbing patterns of racial change that occurred in many American communities over the last 60 years.
December 31, 2024
This book is based on a 20 year study of Edmondson Village in West Baltimore. It looks at this community, which was all-white in the 60s and how the practice of discriminatory and predatory practice of blockbusting changed that to an all-black community.
It shows how the community changed and suffered after predatory real estate practices shaped Edmondson Village, and the city of Baltimore, in negative ways.
For people who ask "how did Baltimore end up with its negative reputation?" or "why are some neighborhoods in Baltimore so 'bad'?", I highly suggest you read this book or something along the lines to educate yourself on the history of Baltimore and how it has been abused and shaped by people in power who are greedy and profited off of racism and hate.
The only reason I took this book down a star is because of how meaty and unapproachable it can be. It reads like a text book and goes a little too deep in to the weeds in some parts for my liking. I'm bummed it isn't an easier read because I think people might be offput and not read this book because of how intellectual and scientific it is.
It shows how the community changed and suffered after predatory real estate practices shaped Edmondson Village, and the city of Baltimore, in negative ways.
For people who ask "how did Baltimore end up with its negative reputation?" or "why are some neighborhoods in Baltimore so 'bad'?", I highly suggest you read this book or something along the lines to educate yourself on the history of Baltimore and how it has been abused and shaped by people in power who are greedy and profited off of racism and hate.
The only reason I took this book down a star is because of how meaty and unapproachable it can be. It reads like a text book and goes a little too deep in to the weeds in some parts for my liking. I'm bummed it isn't an easier read because I think people might be offput and not read this book because of how intellectual and scientific it is.
July 16, 2025
a really fine piece of UMBC scholarship
Read
July 18, 2020I heard so many stories of Edmonson Village and West Baltimore from my aunts and uncles, grandparents, and family friends, there's a part of me that feels like they are my own memories. Such a sad, crazy history for a place filled with so much hope.
June 7, 2016
This is an excellent history in its own right but is now propelled into the fore by its graphic illustrative support for the Harvard Study "The Curley Effect". http://jleo.oxfordjournals.org/conten...
The Curley Effect neatly links the political decline of Boston, Detroit and now, Baltimore, into an excellent preview of a possible future success at the national level.
Don't let this concept escape your attention and try not to succumb to political Stockholm Syndrome.
The Curley Effect neatly links the political decline of Boston, Detroit and now, Baltimore, into an excellent preview of a possible future success at the national level.
Don't let this concept escape your attention and try not to succumb to political Stockholm Syndrome.
December 26, 2010
Brown v board / white flight / predatory lending / pre FHA housing laws / rise of the civil rights movement.
Case study helps me make better sense of a community that today still demands a peaceful and opportunity filled suburban / city way of life.
must read for anyone trying to understand how second tier cities grow and become robust centers of technology industry education and the arts
Case study helps me make better sense of a community that today still demands a peaceful and opportunity filled suburban / city way of life.
must read for anyone trying to understand how second tier cities grow and become robust centers of technology industry education and the arts
October 14, 2008
I never actually finished this. The subject matter is interesting but it's very dry and boring. Obviously a textbook.
Displaying 1 - 7 of 7 reviews