While the world recognizes Johns Hopkins Hospital for its great medical leaps and bounds, Baltimoreans see the ugly, contentious side of the "great" medical institution.
The ugly side, according to ongoing articles and reports from former residents, is the act by Johns Hopkins (JH) of minimizing the value of lives of the nearby black residents in order to expand its facilities. Residents have been forced to move away from the East Baltimore neighborhoods for a number of years now because JH keeps building and expanding its schools of medicine and hospital facility.
These residents know no other community than the East Baltimore neighborhoods where they were born and raised in and share with family and life-long friends. These residents have an emotional stake in their neighborhood, but JH seems to always be able to prove their financial stake is greater than the emotional and physical stability of a community.
In a recent article published in the Baltimore Afro-American Newspaper, June 20, 2009 - June 26, 2009, Volume 117, No. 45, (www.afro.com) residents are being continuously uprooted and sent packing to areas completely foreign to them. Many have been forced to move to a whole new county where they know no one and are not welcomed by the county residents.
Meanwhile, homes in East Baltimore have been leveled into parking lots and buildings for JHH operations and staff. This is outrageous and it has caused strong hurtful feelings by East Baltimore residents and their families. Personally, I am equally outraged, too! Not only have I witnessed relatives being forced into far away counties, I have physically driven through these neighborhoods and see the results of wealth v. poverty. The residents of East Baltimore are mostly poor people who have little education or a lack of education in order to do better to improve their quality of life. These residents inclcude a high number of elderly who only know East Baltimore as home since birth. Yes, I agree with those residents fighting to stop JH from expanding further in East Baltimore, that it is an issue of race.
I agree because I cannot imagine JH tearing down homes in a middle class white neighborhood and forcing those people to have to move into the inner city or another county. I cannot imagine white people of means allowing JH to level their entire community to build a parking lot!!!!!!! The voice of a white community association is stronger and gets good media coverage. That leads to strong political support to put a halt to the situation which really should be considered a crisis by now.
On the other hand, not enough people of power are speaking up for these residents. Consider these other factors:
1) JH has never been able to live down its reputation of "kidnapping" black folks to conduct illegal medical research experiments;
2) There is documented proof that JH conducted illegal researches up to about 50 years ago. In one case, women were tested for a PAP smear research, but never treated after the specimen was voluntarily given to JH!;
3) Children in the JH area still believe in the urban legend to be off the streets by dark or JH will "kidnap" you. This is a frightening way to grow up!;
4) JH has earned a reputation with the East Baltimore residents forced to move of going back on their word to help low-income families find affordable housing elsewhere;
5) JH has demonstrated little respect for family unity for black residents in exchange for profit from continually growing and building;
6) JH has plans to continue its expansion even though hundreds of families have already been forced out and remain displaced;
7) Tearing down homes by JH has caused remaining homes to lose value;
8) The homes that are being restored, renovated, or built are unaffordable to most of the former East Baltimore residents and thereby turning the ratio of race around as higher-income whites move into the nearby vicinity while blacks remain displaced;
9) The tension between JH, new white residents, and East Baltimore residents is mounting steadily;
10) The affects of being forced to relocate has caused documented mental health issues such as depression and anxiety and physical problems such as high blood pressure. Meanwhile JH shut down its community organization of supports and services for depression.....
There is a term known as "Terra Incognita" which refers to the western days when the white man rode into an unknown, unexplored region or territory that had not been mapped or documented. It was avoided in the early days of exploration as being inhabited by the wild, strange beasts, and ridden with danger. The areas on early maps were marked with drawings of skull and bones or monsters. Then along came the westerners who explored the region and chased the "wild" away. The region was then claimed by the westerners, developed, and usually sold for profit.
Is JH engaging in Terra Incognita? I wonder because East Baltimore has been allowed to really deteriorate with slum housing, etc. and Baltimore was looking for ways to develop the city to attract businesses, etc. With poverty, residents will find illegal ways to earn income in some cases. Perhaps because of crime in the area, East Baltimore was considered "wild." I'm reaching here to try to make sense of how a hospital grew into an institute and now practically owns all of East Baltimore with no end in sight.
So, it does seem to me that East Baltimore City has somehow slipped into becoming a twenty-first century Terra Incognita.
A recent drive through East Baltimore left me saddened by the increased number of boarded up houses and parking lots where houses once stood. There was a time when I shared many laughs with relatives and friends in those neighborhoods as a child. I played on the sidewalk and raced with my cousins to the corner store and back. I ran into my aunt’s three-story home and screamed for Kool-Aid. As my car idled, I remembered how I would join my cousins in racing up the front stairwell, through the short and narrow hallway, and down the rear stairwell. We would land in the kitchen panting, but energized enough to steal slices of the homemade, three-layered Coconut cake. For a second, I could hear my aunt yelling at us for running in the house. It was pure fun for me on those visits. Those days are obviously gone, but more disappointing was that the whole block was also gone. The African-American families who lived in the tight-knit community watching over all the children had vanished. My cousins who lived up the street and my other cousins who lived around the corner, were older and spread out in the county. The close friends that my parents grew up with who would stop us kids from playing in the street had moved. They were all gone. How do you explain to a child that their home is now a parking lot?
In place of where their homes once stood, were two black-top parking lots jammed with parked cars. The signs posted on the parking lots were very clear, “Parking for Hospital Staff With Permit Only.” Wow! Families were removed from decades of generational living for a mere parking lot? Wow, wow, wow!
Across the street from that scene, an immaculate glass building stood firm up to the sky with a beautiful bridge linking it to another beautiful building. The medical school had expanded. The families who once lived there had been displaced like a cancer to far away places. Is medical research that more important? How do you find a balance in this situation?
I was not totally disappointed, however, because there were some very gorgeous homes mixed in with the new décor. These homes had very nice brick fronts with fancy iron gates surrounding the entire block. Pretty flower boxes adorned the contemporary windows. These new homes were the creation of a lot of developers. Developers who believed that the old African-American families would chase away more affluent families planning to move to my wonderful city to work for the bio center and expansion of JH. Without a doubt, the tax dollars will help towards the City’s infrastructure and hopefully, education. Unfortunately, it will be at the expense of the average African-American generation of families who once occupied those neighborhoods.
Agnes B. Levine is the Author of "Cooling Well Water: A Collection of work By An African-American Bipolar Woman" ISBN 13 978-0-9754612-0-4. Order your copy TODAY at
http://www.amazon.com/Cooling-Well-Water-C...
Posted By: agnes levine
Sunday, June 21st 2009 at 8:57PM
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