Technological advances in the years after the Civil War, along with the loss of enslaved labor, led to fundamental changes for plantation economies such as Hampton. The invention of steam powered equipment meant that fewer people were needed to farm the same amount of land, but farm jobs also paid far less than factory work in Baltimore City. By 1888, a shortage of agricultural labor across Maryland led the state to recommend that farmers break up large tracts of land and sell them to white migrants from other states, who they believed would “work them properly.” These kinds of discriminatory practices contributed to the economic difficulties faced by African Americans who remained in rural areas.
A government report blamed the labor shortage in part on African Americans, due to their,
“uncertain, precarious existence, and their exodus to urban areas in search of easier, more renumerative work.” Report of the Commissioner of the Land Office of Maryland, 1888
Misconceptions and sterotypes like these being created, contributed to difficulties faced by African Americans, that continue to this day.
Bromley Atlas, 1898
Image courtesy Baltimore County Public Library
By the last quarter of the 19th century, the neighborhoods of East Towson and Sandy Bottom on York Road grew as segregated communities for Black residents. Several freed people from Hampton settled in these two communities, where they helped establish institutions that served the needs of the people and provided social stability during a period of restrictive and discriminatory state and local laws.
“Towsontown seems to be a sort of haven of rest to the emancipated darkies and I scarcely ever ride through the place without seeing some new arrivals in the shape of our former slaves. . .” Charles Ridgely to Julian White, Dec. 24, 1866.
This is an aerial view of Hampton Lane in 1955, during the time Hampton Lane was developing more.
Photo taken by U.S., Naval Air Station, Patuxent River, MD in 1955.
One example of how racial discrimination impacted local history comes from this racial covenant in a 1947 deed for property on Hampton Lane from John Ridgely Jr to Hampton Village Inc. In this covenant it says,
“At no time shall the land included in said tract or any part thereof or any building erected thereon be occupied by any negro or person of negro extraction. This prohibition however is not intended to include the occupancy by a negro domestic servant or other person while employed in or about the premises by the owner or occupant of any land included in said tract.”
Agreements and covenants such as these were common up until the Civil Rights Act. Then, different ways to push people out continued such as redlining.
