#GivngTuesday2020.TurnerStation: Born in an Out-of-the-way Spot as a Consequence of Prejudice

“The place was born in an out-of-the-way spot, before racial integration and as a direct consequence of racial prejudice.” So wrote Sun Reporter, Jonathan Pitts, in an article about the Dundalk neighborhood of Turner Station in 2019. NeighborSpace is drawing attention to it, once again, because of land the organization has acquired in a section called “Old Turners” (see map below), a place steeped in history and a parcel that, with your help, will soon become a thriving neighborhood park. Let me explain.

If you visited Old Turners in the late 19^th Century, your gaze would have fallen upon a vast collection of frame cottages, cabins, and tents, home to the many African-American workers at the Pittsburgh Steel Company on Sparrows Point who literally had nowhere else to go. They had migrated to Dundalk from the South to seek employment after the plant opened in the 1880s. At that time, public transportation to and from Baltimore City was nonexistent. Other communities in Dundalk and Middle River barred African Americans from living there. So, they came to “the Meadows” in Old Turners, squatting on pasture land owned by a white businessman, Joshua Turner, and making homes for themselves as best they could.

When the Pittsburgh Steel Company was bought out by the Maryland Steel Company, Joshua Turner sold a portion of his land for a railroad line that ran to Sparrows Point. The station erected on that land was named for Turner, providing an explanation for the neighborhood’s unique moniker.

An entrepreneurial, young newcomer, Anthony Thomas, persuaded Turner to sell additional land to the squatters. Thomas even started a savings and loan association to help them. When the onset of World War I created a pressing demand for steel ships, the need for labor skyrocketed and more African-Americans migrated to the area. By the 1920s, a small, thriving town began to emerge and expand toward the water.

The tight-knit Turner Station community continued to grow by leaps and bounds. Pitts notes that: "By the 1950s Turner Station boasted its own junior-senior high school, an amusement park with rides, a beach, a 2,000-seat ballpark and a sandlot Negro leagues baseball team, an air-conditioned 700-seat movie theater [The Anthony, shown below], three successful taxicab businesses, and a night club. The Adams Cocktail Lounge drew big-name black acts such as Redd Foxx, Cab Calloway and Pearl Bailey."

The thriving neighborhood was the childhood home of many people whose success and fame have made them household names today: Kevin Clash, the original voice of “Sesame Street’s” Elmo, astronaut Robert L. Curbeam, Jr., former NFL player Calvin Hill, and Congressman Kweisi Mfume. But the boom market for steel did not last forever and, after World War II, the community began a slow decline.

A 2003 assessment by the Baltimore County Department of Planning revealed a plethora of needs in the community in terms of decaying infrastructure, an aging housing stock, a dearth of social services, and a shortage of recreational opportunities, among other things. A Community Conservation Plan resulted and for over a decade since its creation, the Turner Station Conservation Teams, Inc. (TSCT) has taken up the mantle to ensure its implementation.

The group is remarkable both for its vitality and for its integrity. Witness this virtuous list of principles that guide TSCT’s work:

1. UNITY: To strive for and maintain unity in the family, community and race.
2. SELF-DETERMINATION:  To define ourselves, name ourselves, create: for ourselves and speak for ourselves.
3. COLLECTIVE WORK AND RESPONSIBITY:  To build and maintain our community together and make our community’s problems our problems and to solve them together.
4. COOPERATIVE ECONOMICS: To build and maintain our own stores, shops and other businesses and to profit from them together.
5. PURPOSE: To make our collective work the building and developing of our community to restore our people to their traditional greatness.
6. CREATIVITY: To do always as much as we can, in the way we can, in order to leave our community more beautiful and beneficial than we inherited it.
7. FAITH: To believe with all our heart in our people: our children, our parents, our teachers, our leaders and the righteousness and victory of our struggle.

The group also has a track record of success. They have: "worked with the county to develop the Sollers Point Multipurpose Center, which includes a gym, an auditorium, a county library branch, a computer center and a Turner Station museum …  helped attract $25 million in private and government investment to renovate Lyon Homes, a federal housing project built in the 1940s that has been converted into rental property … [and] regularly [held] fairs to educate renters about programs that can lead to home ownership. They are also trying to persuade the Army Corps of Engineers to provide money to bolster the eroding shoreline in Fleming Park." (J.Pitts., “In its day Baltimore County’s Turner Station was a beloved African-American enclave. Now some seek a revival,” The Baltimore Sun, 2/2/2019).

All of this made us eager to honor their request last year that NeighborSpace acquire a half-acre site north of Chestnut Street and bordering Dundalk Avenue in Old Turners for a small park. With the help of so many of you, NeighborSpace completed the acquisition in March and has been working with TSCT over the summer and fall to ready the site for construction.

But a necessary precursor to park construction is coming up with a design concept, and for that we need design expertise. That’s why this #GivingTuesday, we’re asking you to give what you can toward the goal of raising $1500 to pay a stipend to a design professional/student to work with TSCT and NeighborSpace this spring on a design concept for the park. Together, TSCT and NeighborSpace will use that design document to raise funds to build a park that will serve community needs and wants, while also managing stormwater naturally and improving the tree canopy.

Already, NeighborSpace Board member, Kathy Martin, has agreed to match contributions up to $750, putting us half way toward achieving our $1500 goal. As an added bonus, every monthly gift of at least $2 earns one of our great new logo tees.

Help this great community realize an important goal in its Community Conservation Plan! Click here to learn more and make a contribution  or mail your check payable to NeighborSpace of Baltimore County to P.O. Box 6715, Towson, MD 21285.