MAPPING BALTIMORE ARABBERS

Introduction

In the late 19th century street peddling was a common occupation in the United States.  The popularity of street peddling as a viable job is explained by two speculative theories, both of which fit circumstances across the United States.[1]  The first is known as the disadvantage theory, which “argues that exclusion from the labor market impels members of oppressed groups to become self-employed in marginal enterprises.”[2] As the result of competition and unfair hiring practices, many ethnic and racial minorities created their own jobs and became their own bosses.  The second is known as the urban adjustment theory, which suggests ethnic minorities pursued self-employment to achieve economic stability as part of a larger effort to assimilate into American culture.[3]  Both these theories still shape academic discussions of modern day street sellers. In Baltimore, street peddling evolved from similar historical conditions. During the 20th century it became a locally specific, African American tradition. Called “Arabbing,” street peddling in Baltimore became a means by which black people could achieve some economic independence and demonstrate their ability to succeed in the context of an American culture that limited their opportunities.

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Street Peddlers

Although street peddling existed in the colonies and in early America, its most important history has roots in the late 19th century. As immigrants arrived in America from Eastern and Southern Europe, they encountered tremendous resistance.[4] Native born white Americans feared that the influx of immigrants would alter American values. Immigrants with darker complexion or features were referred to as “temporary Negroes,” “not-yet-white,” and “off-white,” “…new immigrants often existed between nonwhiteness and full inclusion as whites…”[5] This racial hierarchy meant that new immigrants experienced daily prejudices.

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While many were drawn to the United States with the promise of high paying industrial jobs, they encountered a job market that was not friendly to non-white workers and jobs that were dangerous and difficult. “Race functioned to distribute the right to full citizenship and access to good jobs.”[6] In response to prejudices that kept them out of the most lucrative jobs, many of these “new immigrants” entered into the “small-scale entrepreneurial” job market. [7]  Street peddling was one of the most common options. One in ten New York City immigrants were peddlers in the late 19th century and early 20th century.[8]  Street peddling enabled immigrants to achieve some independence and to serve diverse communities who might otherwise lack access to healthy food. Street peddling allowed these new immigrants a certain level of clout amongst their marginalized peers.[9]  

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Street peddling also became common in Baltimore because of the unique circumstances of the city’s development. Baltimore grew very rapidly at the turn of the 19th century, taking the spot of the third largest city in America.[10] Throughout the 19th century new immigrants and African Americans flocked to Baltimore in hopes of acquiring a job in the thriving city. Instead they found an unstable job market based on exploitation and abuse based on racism and discrimination.[11] Wealthy employers, empowered by the early republic capitalism, “constantly adjust[ing] their workforces shifting between and combining laborers who were enslaved, indentured, and free…”[12]  Thus, street peddling has remained an option for desperate laborers, a form of resistance against an exploitative system, and method of giving agency back to the laborer.

 

Public Markets

Baltimore’s food distribution system has always been distinct. Even before Baltimore was a sanctioned city, its residents’ reliance on public markets was great. While other cities had public markets, few had as many as Baltimore. By the turn of the 20th century, Baltimore could boast ten public markets and one wholesale distribution center, which also served as a fish market.[13] Not only were they a pillar of the community, Baltimore’s public markets were run and managed by the city, so all revenue the monthly stall rent from the food vendors went to the government.[14]

 

With so much official support for public markets, many entrepreneurs believed they were the key to both significant income and to ensuring food accessibility.[15] However, in 1913 a nationwide survey was completed by the American Academy of Political and Social Science, highlighting the status of the public markets in cities across the country as a means to reducing the cost of food. The survey challenged the optimistic view of Baltimore’s markets. The city was not making money from its public market ventures. In fact, it was costing the city money to operate them. Baltimore officials admitted they were unsure of best practices for successful markets, but they restated their commitment to them. Mostly, they were interested in turning a profit.[16] Members of Baltimore’s government, determined to make the markets successful, encouraged the farmer-consumer relationship by establishing zero taxes, charges, or annual fees on these markets.[17]

 

To add to Baltimore’s problems of making a successful public market system, public markets across the country had a rather negative public as places troubled by criminal activity, danger, and the lower class of people. Wealthier folks sent their servants to do the shopping.[18] Despite the negative view that public markets were dangerous, Baltimore continued to support its public markets, discouraging retail stores from opening.[19]  At the turn of the 20th century Baltimore was one of the least expensive cities in the United States, an image Baltimore wished to maintain.[20] The idea that public market products were less expensive than any certified retailer was emphasized, and helped the popularity of the markets.[21]

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Public Markets and Hucksters

The popularity of the public markets directly affected the success of hucksters in Baltimore. The fact that the government was committed to the success of the public markets meant that street peddlers were seen as a threat  to the financial stability of city government.[22] Their efforts not only threatened public revenue, they also reduced the already small profits made by farmers who rented stalls and relied on public markets to sell their food. In response to complaints from the public market vendors, and clearly also serving the needs of the city, Baltimore’s government passed a series of laws designed to control the hucksters and limit their influence.[23]  As early as 1807, Baltimore had passed a law forcing people vending from the streets to use tables or baskets, as opposed to walking or using a mule or horse. This forced hucksters to pay a vending fee and to become part of the public market rather than branching out as independent sellers.[24]  The government even made selling fruits and candles outside of public markets illegal. They imposed fines on many hucksters, who, in turn, gathered to protest.[25]  In 1826, Baltimore approved a law that forced a licensing tax on the hucksters.[26]

 

The hucksters developed creative responses to these restrictions in order to continue selling fruits and vegetables from the street. Across the country, their strategies were met with suspicion. William Waldron the Superintendent of the Department of Weights and Measures in Trenton NJ, wrote about his effort to enforce standards and stabilize the cost of living. His report included a cautionary section titled, “Hucksters Should be Watched.” He accused street peddlers of dishonesty, recording an example of hucksters hiding heavy objects at the bottoms of large produce bags to sell their produce for more money. “This trick is a favorite with hucksters and produce men, but they escape detection by operating quickly out of range of the buyer… Hucksters claim to sell cheaper, but the apparent reduction is made up by giving short weight and short measure [claiming more produce than there actually is].”[27] Waldron warned housewives stay away from hucksters for fear of getting scammed. His department staff was legally able to stop any huckster at any time in order to weigh or count his pre-packaged bags and boxes of produce to make sure that the huckster sold them at the correct quantity for the right price. “If the measures [their produce] have been sealed they are allowed to continue their operations; but if the measures have not… they are tested without further delay. More than one huckster has had occasion…as any equipment [wares they are selling]in use found short of standard is at once confiscated.”[28] As hucksters fought against fines and protested new laws, they were portrayed as deceptive criminals.[29]

 

Despite their negative image, constant attention from law and code enforcement officers, and high fees and fines, there were advantages to street peddling that public markets could not reproduce. Hucksters could move from street to street, providing an element of convenience to Baltimoreans who were shut in, or without means to travel.  Furthermore, during the 1910s, hucksters obtained their produce from the same supplier from which the public food markets obtained theirs. This most likely allowed the two parties to sell their wares at the same price, further fueling competition.[30]

 

Arabbers in the 20th Century

Many historians describe 1910 as the beginning of the phenomenon known as the “Great Migration.” Between 1910 and 1940 “the percentage of African Americans living in urban areas increased markedly, from 27% to 44%.”[31] But Baltimore’s African American residents made up a significant percentage of the city’s population even before the beginning of the migration. By 1900, 79,000 black people lived in Baltimore, “giving the city the nation’s second-largest black community after Washington, D.C.” By the beginning of the migration, the number of black residents had “swelled to nearly 85,000, 15.5 percent of the city’s total.”[32] African Americans were seeking asylum from violent discrimination in the Jim Crow South. “They were fleeing a world where they were restricted to the most menial of jobs, underpaid if paid at all, and frequently barred from voting. Between 1880 and 1950, white mobs lynched more than one African-American person per week for some perceived breach of the racial hierarchy[33] African Americans continued to migrate into American cities, in both the North and the South, through the pre-WWII era.  Prior to the Great Migration, European immigrants had dominated the peddling trade, along with most assembly line and factory jobs. But World War I slowed European immigration creating a labor shortage in the North.[34] As increasing numbers of black migrants arrived in Baltimore, racial dynamics became increasingly hostile and black people worked to become as independent as possible. Through a variety of entrepreneurial projects black Americans attempted to create the best living environment possible within a society that continually tried to limit their freedom[35]

 

Whites resisted African American efforts to integrate city life. The Baltimore City government passed legislation to marginalize black citizens economically, geographically, and politically.[36] “Democratic Party leaders tried to disenfranchise blacks… [and] the Grand Old Party requires that African Americans be seated separately at party functions to ease the anxieties of the white members.”[37] Baltimore was the first American city to successfully pass city-wide residential housing bill in 1910, serving as a model for the rest of the country to follow.[38]

 

In the 1930s and 1940s, as a partial response to these conditions, more African American men joined the street peddling trade.[39]  In general, African American street peddlers were more populous in southern cities compared to the percentage of African American peddlers in northern cities.   In the 1930s and 1940s there were twice as many African American peddlers in the South than in the North.[40] Baltimore had one of the highest percentages of African American street peddlers.[41]  There are two likely causes for the high percentage of African American street peddlers in Baltimore may have occurred for two reasons.  First, that street peddling was more prevalent in cities with insufficiently diversified economies.[42]  Second, immigrants from European decent were mostly moving to north eastern and Midwestern cities, which created competition in the North for even the lowest paying industrial jobs.[43]  By 1940, there were 187 recorded African American men hawking on the streets of Baltimore, a large portion of the total hucksters on the streets.[44]  

 

African American peddlers in Baltimore adopted the term “Arabbing” to describe their work. The term is unique to Baltimore and there is no clear evidence of when the name officially emerged.  Some argue it is derived from a similar term used in London during the mid-1800’s which described “the nomadic of London street gangs.” [45] The term had been used at the turn of the century, but did not gain traction until street peddling became associated with African Americans and other “non-white” minorities. Therefore, it can be argued that although the Arabbers were performing the same tasks, purchasing from the same wholesale markets, and subjected to similar criminalization, Arabbing was a trade of its own established by African Americans as a direct response to the specific, restrictive, racial dynamics within Baltimore.

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Mid-Century Arabbing

By the middle of the 20th century, the nature of food purchasing had changed. Fewer residents traveled to the public markets. They preferred more convenient, local access to food. Housewives began relying more heavily on both street peddlers and on emerging independent grocery stores.[46] In this atmosphere, Arabbers and independent stores competed with one another. Although they were both more convenient and reliable, consumers perceived them in significantly different ways. Independent groceries were described as “a deeply institutionalized element of American economic and social life, ingrained in the prevailing concept of community, and a key link in the opportunity structure that was then seen as a foundation of American democracy.”[47] Independent stores were positive, impactful, pillars of the community, taking over a position once held by the public food markets. Arabbers, in contrast, were not seen in a positive light, as a lucrative trade. It is probable that this dichotomy was shaped by racial prejudices. Whatever the case, neither the independent grocers nor the Arabbers could command the food market permanently.             

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Grocery Stores and Food Desserts

Independent grocers and their loyal customers were threatened by the rise of the chains. Opponents argued that they disrupted the uniqueness of cities, making each one looks the same.[48]  Several states attempted to limit chains’ power by imposing regulations. Maryland was the second state to attempt to pass anti-chain store legislation. The legislation proposed a licensing fee for chains owning more than five stores. It passed, but was quickly challenged by chain store owners, and ruled unconstitutional in 1928.[49] For close to a decade, this trend continued: communities and business owners threatened by chain stores attempted to limit their impact, but all attempts to pass regulation or fees were eventually declared unconstitutional. In 1936, a piece of national legislation entitled the Robinson-Patman Act, often called the “Anti A&P law” was proposed.[50] Again, the act was meant to tax individual stores, and although it was unable to pass nationally, efforts to limit the influence of the chains at the state level began to win support. Between 1931 and 1939, 27 states, including Maryland successfully passed legislation to tax chain stores based on the number of stores they owned and managed.[51]

 

After a decade of expanding within urban areas, chain stores responded to the anti-chain store movement by abandoning smaller markets. As early as the 1930s, with the onset of the anti-chain store movement and rumors of new taxation policies, hundreds of chain stores closed. In fact, A&P, the largest chain in America, closed more than 300 of its stores in 1930 and 1931 nationwide.[52]  After abandoning their smaller and less-successful branches, chain store companies focused their efforts on expanding existing stores, and building new, larger stores.

 

By the 1940s, then, American chains stores were moving out of cities and into the more spacious and sprawling suburbs. These quickly expanding suburbs were promoted as the way to live out the “American Dream.”[53]  Eager to expand the businesses within their communities, suburbs offered incoming businesses cheap prices on land, and could do so thanks to the massive amount of government funding provided to large-scale suburban developers in the mid-1940s.[54] With more square footage available to them in the suburbs, chain stores were built larger and with larger parking lots. Chain stores continued to leave urban areas for the benefits of the suburbs throughout the 20th century. Unfortunately, they left a massive need in their wake. There initial success wiped out much of their competition, and so leaving for the suburbs left urban families without adequate access to food.

 

During this same period, black Baltimoreans were experiencing a very different series of circumstances. Thanks to the GI Bill, a government sponsored program, suburban living became more accessible to white families. [55] The GI Bill is credited to have started America’s middle class and promoted the success of the suburbs.[56]  But active racial discrimination in the real estate and mortgage lending industries made the benefits of the GI Bill inaccessible to black American families. These families became increasingly isolated in urban areas with a declining tax base and dwindling services. [57]

 

Perhaps ironically, even as the city’s population became more black than white, most businesses engaged in active discrimination against black people, both as customers and as potential employees. Black Baltimoreans organized protests and boycotts to end racist hiring practices within retail spaces. This movement, known as the “Buy Where You Can Work Campaign,” impacted the grocery store industry, because it focused attention on white-stores like A&P that depended on black customers but refused to hire black people. A young Baltimorean, Evelyn Burrell was part of a large-scale protest outside of her local A&P. She described the scene: “Tuesday, November 21, the stores were practically closed down because, believe it or not, we had young people going from door to door, acquainting people. We had trucks and loudspeakers going all around the neighborhood. People really were not going in the stores. Consequently, the stores were hurting. I mean hurting.”[58] A regional director came to Baltimore and made a deal with protest organizers, “promising to hire 21 Black clerks within 2 weeks, to continue hiring Blacks until ‘every boy is colored,’ and to have three Black managers in place by March 1, 1934.”[59] The A&P stood by their word. However, the chain also continued to close stores within Baltimore, partly in response to the protests and partly because suburban stores were more profitable. Overtime, these conditions further limited access to fresh foods in many Baltimore neighborhoods.

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Food Scarcity

By the 1960s, while the term was not yet used, Baltimore had become a food desert. The success of supermarket chains had, as many independent grocers predicted, pushed small stores out of business. Then, as the white middle class moved into the suburbs after WWII, the chains followed, leaving many city neighborhoods without access to fresh food. Cities across the country faced similar issues, inspiring national studies, led by social scientists, to identify the cause and suggest cures for food in urban neighborhoods.[60] The studies came to two major conclusions. First, urban corner stores stocked lower quality items and sold them at the same price as the higher quality food found in larger suburban grocery stores. [61] One study gave an example, “the vegetables and fruits were shriveled and bruised. Flies were also observed around unsprayed produce sections.”[62] Second, the majority of lower income families in the city were without cars. If they wanted access to supermarkets, they typically relied on taxis, adding an additional cost to their food budget. While many used public transportation for this purpose, this was time consuming and inconvenient.[63] None of these studies took seriously the impact of street peddlers, like the Arabbers. The Arabbers provided an opportunity for Baltimore residents to access fresh food.

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The Anti-Arabber Bill of 1966

The city of Baltimore also seems to have failed to consider the Arabber’s value. In 1966, the Baltimore City government passed a health ordinance calling for the removal of stables from densely populated areas. Enforcement of the law threatened the Arabber’s livelihoods and put many neighborhoods at risk of losing access to fruits and vegetables. The bill emphasized the stables as a danger to health and the animals as a nuisance. It read:

No. 895 (Council No. 1698): An ordinance requiring the removal of stables for housing of horses, mules, colts, or other animals of the horse or mule family, now existing in any Use District, within 300 feet measured in a straight line to the next boundary line of any public playground, or to any building or structure used as a church, orphanage, school, hospital, theatre or motion picture theatre, or any building used as a residence in the City of Baltimore not later than September 1, 1969; and providing a certain exception to these provisions….the maintenance of stables for the housing of horses, creates a health menace to the people of our City and is detrimental to their welfare…stables tend to depreciate the value of public and private property…residential neighborhoods are now blighted or threatened with blight by the continued maintenance of stables…[cannot keep your property if it is] detrimental to his neighbors.[64]

To properly enforce this regulation, the City’s Department of Zoning needed a list of Arabber stables. At the time, there was no such list, because the Arabbers operated outside of regular business practices. Many practiced without a business license and used a variety of structures as stables. Therefore, although the bill was passed, it proved to be unenforceable because the location of stables was difficult to know for certain. The city relied on a variety of informants, including the Maryland Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Animals (MdSPCA). Officers from the Zoning Department asked for the organization’s assistance in identifying stables.[65] The group provided zoning officials with a list of 15 locations, building owners, and home addresses of the owners.[66] The Sanitary Services of the City Health Department used the list provided and make an official round of inspections.[67]

 

One stable location was added to the Zoning Department’s list in a letter from the Chief of Renewal Area Operations. He explained that there was an Arabber stable which was not on the city’s list, at 1214-1244 North Gay Street, and that his department had received complaints regarding this stable. The chief explained that he would appreciate if its closing be a primary concern for the Zoning Department’s enforcements. He did not mention who wrote the complaints, or what they entailed. He just wanted it closed.[68] Two weeks after the letter was received, the Zoning Department created a new list of stables, including the stable mentioned by the chief, as well as updated addresses for several of the stables on the previous list.[69]

 

The law was also difficult to enforce because it did not provide a clear line of authority on which agencies were required to identify and shut down the stables. Near the end of October 1969, after spending nearly two months gathering information on the Arabbers, a city commissioner wrote to Judge Russell, a city solicitor, and asked for clarification on this matter[70] By October 24th, the date of the correspondence, termination notices had been delivered to twenty-six locations.[71]

 

Confusion continued around the enforcement of the bill, and three days later the city hosted a meeting for Baltimore City government representatives, neighborhood improvement association representatives, as well as Arabber stable owners and operators. While there are no minutes from this meeting, according to a letter to the Zoning Enforcement Officer, the Arabbers in attendance reviewed the city’s list of stables and found that several were missing, and asked for another way to acquire a more complete list of stables so that they could “most accurately know the dimensions of our problem?”[72]

 

On October 28th, 1969 the Baltimore Sun published an article discussing the matter. It was titled “Stable Law Changes; Enforcement Not Near.”[73] The article discussed the city’s decision to better enforce the ordinance, but claimed that, according to the ordinance regulations, only two stables were affected by this ordinance. It is never said whether this journalist attended the meeting, but the timing seems to suggest that they may have. If that is the case, it is possible that the city explained to the group of Arabbers and stable owners that the ordinance would not affect many of them. And yet, if the ordinance was enforced, nearly every Arabber stable from the city’s list would be shut down. Baltimore City’s government was well aware of the fact that the ordinance would affect close to all of the stables, as shown from a letter from George W Schucker, the Assistant Commissioner of Health Sanitary Services, to Franklin W Aschemeier Jr., Zoning Enforcement Officer, which listed the effected stables “in violation” of the ordinance.[74]  If, in fact, the public knew this ordinance would shut down nearly every Arabber stable, it is possible the public and the community of Arabbers would have joined forces and rallied against the bill more effectively.

 

The Zoning Commission wrote a letter to city Council requesting an extension of the bill. The original date for the bill was no later than September 1, 1969, considering that date had passed, City Council granted them an extension to September 1972.[75] Although there was no explanation for the reasoning of the extension, it can be assumed that the city realized the extent of the situation, and the extreme lack of information they had.  Once the extension was granted there was no further information of additional inspections, no records of inquiries about additional addresses, no concerted effort from the government at all. It appears the extension allowed Baltimore City to once again ignore the Arabbers existence.

 

The Arabbers were in a difficult position. On one hand, while the bill was unenforced, they could continue their work. Over time, they gained recognition as a symbol of Baltimore in newspapers, books, and magazines. At the same time, their effort and ongoing work in the city was in violation of Ordinance 895. The city essentially allowed stable to be shut down by neglect. Developers acquired land occupied by Arabber and their horses, and destroyed them without protest[76] This tactic was cruel, but it was also inefficient. The Arabbers were able to continue operating out of several stables well into the 1980s. In fact, an article from the Evening Sun stated that as many as 15 stables still existed near Baltimore homes.[77]

 

When you ask an Arabber why a particular stable was shut down, they most often answer “urban renewal.”[78] Stables were shuttered as developers moved into poor neighborhoods. In a documentary entitled, “We Are Arabbers,” the Arabbers seemed more frustrated by the way in which the government promoted urban renewal, rather than by the codes themselves.  Rather than helping the Arabbers to make their stables “housing code friendly,” they neglected existing stables and blocked the construction of new stables, intimidating the Arabbers who worked in existing stables.[79]

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Conclusion

While the Arabbers continued their trade throughout the late 20th century, living and working in Baltimore continued to pose many challenges. The Civil Rights movement peaked in the late 1960s, bringing with it some new respect for African American businesses. Unfortunately, the dream of economic, social, and political equality was never fully realized, particularly for poor black people in urban neighborhoods slated for demolition and redevelopment. In Baltimore, like in many other American cities, government funding came in waves and, for the most part, encouraged the destruction of neighborhoods in favor of retail and entertainment venues, businesses that benefitting tourists and suburban commuters, rather than black city residents. This was not specific to Baltimore, “the period between 1970 and the end of the 1980s, cities were faced with a set of formidable challenges, including population loss, the movement of firms outside of central cities, growth of the poverty population, a declining tax based… and the appearance of crack cocaine.”[80]

 

As part of urban decline, access to food became even more limited in the late 20th century. “Supermarket redlining,” is a term “used to describe a phenomenon when major chain supermarkets are disinclined to locate their stores in inner cities or low-income neighborhoods and usually pull their existing stores out and relocate them to suburbs.”[81] The term was first made popular during the Conference of Mayors in 1992.[82] Clearly these trends had their roots in the 1940s, but rates of urban disinvestment and food chain mergers exacerbated the trend. By the end of the 20th century, chains opened fewer but bigger stores, mostly in wealthy, white, suburban neighborhoods. “Between 1978 and 1984, Safeway closed more than 600 stores in inner city neighborhoods. Many of those stores were the primary or only source of reasonably priced (minimally processed) meat and produce in their neighborhoods.”[83]

 

The phenomenon of supermarket redlining, led to the coining of another useful term, “food deserts.” Also created in the 1990s, the term was used to describe many of Baltimore’s neighborhoods. A community is defined as a food deserts when more than 100 households have no vehicle available, when 20% of the community is below the poverty rate, and more than one mile from the nearest supermarket.[84] While the term was not used until the 1990s, the conditions define food deserts have plagued urban communities for decades. The neighborhoods in which the Arabbers have lived, worked, and stabled their horses are the very same neighborhoods now deemed as food deserts.  Studies designed to address these trends only took brick and mortar supermarkets and independent stores into consideration. However, juxtaposing the Baltimore City Food Environment map, which identifies food deserts, against the locations of Arabbers stables suggests that Arabbers have been providing fresh food to underserved communities in need for decades.

 

Arabbers continued to face a constant barrage of government rules and regulations. In 1989, “the Horse Bill” required licenses for all Arabbers.  Among other things, it also declared that the minimum age to get a license was 18 and that the horses were required an annual checkup by a licensed veterinarian.[85]  While this act positively enforced humane treatment of the Arabber’s horses, it required the Arabbers to pay an additional Arabbing license fee on top of their wagon license, required horse owners to pay the hefty fee for the veterinarian, and made it illegal for any adolescents to Arab, an element of the trade that increased bonding across generations.  Additionally, the requirement of a license with a fee made the job less attractive to Arabbers who used the profession as a backup option, a last minute or temporary job, to make ends meet.

Despite the challenges, the Arabbers have survived. The creation of the Arabber Preservation Society in 1994, has helped the Arabbers successfully navigate rules and regulations. Currently, there are three Arabber stables in the city, and one continues to actively send out Arabbers with their horse-drawn wagons to sell fresh produce to loyal customers.

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[1] Robert L. Boyd, “Urbanization, Disadvantage and Petty Entrepreneurship,” Sociological Inquiry 69 (1999): 1.

[2] Boyd, “Urbanization, Disadvantage and Petty Entrepreneurship,” 1.

[3] Boyd, “Urbanization, Disadvantage and Petty Entrepreneurship,” 1.

[4] David Roediger Working toward Whiteness: How America’s Immigrants Became White: The Strange Journey from Ellis Island to the Suburbs (Basic Books: 2006), 11.

[5] Roediger, Working Towards Whiteness, 13.

[6] Roediger, Working Toward Whiteness, 14.

[7]John Gaber, “Manhattan’s 14th Street Vendors’ Market, Informal Street Peddlers’ Complementary Relationship with New York City’s Economy.” Urban Anthropology and Studies of Cultural Systems and World Economic Development 23, no. 4 (1994): 2.

[8] Boyd, “Urbanization, Disadvantage and Petty Entrepreneurship,” 2.

[9] Boyd, “Urbanization, Disadvantage and Petty Entrepreneurship,” 1.

[10] Seth Rockman, Scraping By: Wage Labor, Slavery, and Survival in Early Baltimore (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 2010), 3.

[11] Rockman, Scraping By, 4.

[12] Rockman, Scraping By, 8.

[13] John W. Farley, “A Questionnaire on Markets.” Reducing the Cost of Food Distribution ed. Clyde Lyndon King (American Academy of Political and Social Science, November 1913), 140-141.

[14] James F. Thrift and William T. Childs, “Baltimore’s Markets.” Reducing the Cost of Food Distribution ed. Clyde Lyndon King (American Academy of Political and Social Science, November 1913), 120.

[15] Thrift and Childs, “Baltimore’s Markets,” 121.

[16] Thrift and Childs, “Baltimore’s Markets,” 122.

[17] Thrift and Childs, “Baltimore’s Markets.” 123.

[18] Tracey Deutsch, Building a Housewife’s Paradise: Gender, Politics, and American Grocery Stores in the Twentieth Century. (University of North Carolina Press: 2010), 27.

[19] Thrift and Childs, “Baltimore’s Markets,” 123.

[20] Thrift and Childs, “Baltimore’s Markets,” 127.

[21] Farley, “A Questionnaire on Markets,” 145.

[22] Farley, “A Questionnaire on Markets,” 148.

[23] Thrift and Childs, “Baltimore Markets,” 124.

[24] Rockman, Scraping By, 127-128.

[25] Rockman, Scraping By, 100.

[26] Rockman, Scraping By, 128.

[27] William L Waldron, “Effect of the New Jersey Department of Weights and Measures on the Cost of Living.” Reducing the Cost of Food, 88

[28] Waldron, “Effect of the New Jersey Department of Weights and Measures on the Cost of Living,” 88.

[29] Rockman, Scraping By, 128.

[30] Thrift and Childs, “Baltimore Markets,” 119.

[31] Boyd, “Urbanization, Disadvantage and Petty Entrepreneurship,” 7.

[32] Stephen Grant Meyer, As Long as They Don’t Move Next Door: Segregation and Racial Conflict in American Neighborhoods, (Rowman & Littlefield: 2001), 16.

[33] Isabel Wilkerson “The Long-Lasting Legacy of the Great Migration” Smithsonian Magazine, online September 2016 http://www.smithsonianmag.com/history/long-lasting-legacy-great-migration-180960118/ (accessed June 2017).

[34] Isabel Wilkerson “The Long-Lasting Legacy of the Great Migration.”

[35] Phillips, Christopher. Freedom’s Port: The African American Community of Baltimore, 1790-1860, (Chicago: University of Illinois Press, 1997), 154.

[36] Meyer, As Long as They Don’t Move Next Door, 16.

[37] Meyer, As Long as They Don’t Move Next Door, 16.

[38] Antero Pietila, Not in My Neighborhood: How Bigotry Shaped a Great American City, (Rowman & Littlefield: 2012), 22.

[39] Boyd, “Urbanization, Disadvantage and Petty Entrepreneurship,” 7.

[40] Boyd, “Urbanization, Disadvantage and Petty Entrepreneurship,” 10.

[41] Boyd, “Urbanization, Disadvantage and Petty Entrepreneurship,” 10.

[42] Boyd, “Urbanization, Disadvantage and Petty Entrepreneurship,” 16.

[43] Boyd, “Urbanization, Disadvantage and Petty Entrepreneurship,” 17.

[44] Boyd, “Urbanization, Disadvantage and Petty Entrepreneurship,” 9.

[45] Charles Camp, “The Arabber’s World,” introduction to The Arabbers of Baltimore, by Roland Freeman (Centreville: Tidewater Publishers, 1989), 6.

[46] Alan M. Kraut, “The Butcher, The Baker the Pushcart Peddler: Jewish Foodways and Entrepreneurial Opportunity in the East European Immigrant Community 1880-1940,” The Journal of American Culture, volume 6, issue 4 (Winter 1983).

[47] Paul Ingram and Hayagreeva Rao, “Store Wars: The Enactment and Repeal of Anti-Chain-Store Legislation in America,” American Journal of Sociology, volume 110, issue 2 (2004), 447.

[48] Daniel Scroop, “The Anti-Chain Store Movement and the Politics of Consumption,” American Quarterly volume 60, no. 4 (2008), 925.

[49] J. Edward Collins “Anti-Chain Store Legislation” Cornell Law Review, volume 24, issue 2 (February 1939): 198.

[50] Elizabeth Eisenhauer, “In Poor Health: Supermarket Redlining and Urban Nutrition.” GeoJournal, volume 53 (2001), 127. This law would have prevented wholesalers from unfairly charging different prices to retailers. The law also attempted to tax the number of stores owned by a chain.

[51] Ingram and Rao, “Store Wars,” 447.

[52] Deutsch, Building a Housewife’s Paradise, 138.

[53] Adam Rome, The Bulldozer in the Countryside: Suburban Sprawl and the Rise of American Environmentalism, Cambridge University Press, 2001, 37.

[54] Adam Rome, The Bulldozer in the Countryside, 16.

[55] Bernadette Kristine Buchanan Mencke, “Education, Racism, and the Military: A Critical Race Theory Analysis of the GI Bill and its Implications for African Americans.” (PhD. Diss., Washington State University, 2010), 22.

[56] Juan F. Perea “Doctrines of Delusion: How the History of the G.I. Bill and Other Inconvenient Truths Undermine the Supreme Court’s Affirmative Action Jurisprudence,” University of Pittsburgh Law Review, volume 75 (Summer 2014), 585.

[57] Bernadette Kristine Buchanan Mencke, “Education, Racism, and the Military,” 5.

[58] Gloria Aull, interview by Helen Szablya, January 13, 1982, transcript, Baltimore Neighborhood Heritage Project, University of Baltimore, Box 2, Folder 76.

[59] Aull, interview, January 13, 1982.

[60] Donald E. Sexton Jr., “Comparing the Cost of Food to Blacks and Whites—A Survey.” Journal of Marketing 35 issue 3, (July 1971).

[61] Sexton, “Comparing the Cost of Food to Blacks and Whites—A Survey,” 45.

[62] Burton H. Marcus, “Similarity of Ghetto and Non-Ghetto Food Costs,” Journal of Marketing Research, volume 6, (August 1969), 367.

[63] Phyllis Groom, “Prices in Poor Neighborhoods.” Monthly Labor Review, 2506 (1966).

[64] Ordinance no. 895, Baltimore City government, council no 1698

[65] Letter, David M. Stewart to Mr. Franklin W Aschemeier Jr., September 3, 1969, box 8, folder 4, Collection BRG48, Administrative Files, Neighborhood Development Division, Baltimore City Archives.

[66] “Licensed Stables in the City of Baltimore, Md.,” The Maryland Society for the Prevention of Cruelty, September 3, 1969, box 8, folder 4, Collection BRG48, Administrative Files, Neighborhood Development Division, Baltimore City Archives. 

[67] Letter, George W. Schucker to Mr. Franklin W. Aschemeier Jr., September 12, 1969, box 8, folder 4, Collection BRG48, Administrative Files, Neighborhood Development Division, Baltimore City Archives. 

[68] Letter, John M. Dupont to Franklin W. Aschemeier Jr., October 31, 1969, box 8, folder 4, Collection BRG48, Administrative Files, Neighborhood Development Division, Baltimore City Archives. 

[69] “Stables Operating after September 1, 1969 apparently in violation of Ordinance 895,” November 28, 1966, box 8, folder 4, Collection BRG48, Administrative Files, Neighborhood Development Division, Baltimore City Archives. 

[70] Letter, R. C. Embry, Jr. to Honorable George L.Russell, Jr., “Ordinance No. 895, Approved November 28, 1966 – Stables,” October 24, 1969, box 8, folder 4, Collection BRG48, Administrative Files, Neighborhood Development Division, Baltimore City Archives. 

[71] In no list found in the archives were there 26 separate locations. I believe they sent out several for certain stables because they were unsure of the official address.

[72] Letter, Franklin W Aschemeier, Jr. to W. Sanderson, Jr., “Stables—Locations—Owners’ Addresses,” October 20, 1969, box 8, folder 4, Collection BRG48, Administrative Files, Neighborhood Development Division, Baltimore City Archives. 

[73] Sue Dinges “Stable Law Changes; Enforcement Not Near” The Morning Sun, October 28, 1969.

[74] “Stables Operating after September 1, 1969 apparently in violation of Ordinance 895, approved,” November 28, 1966, box 8, folder 4, Collection BRG48, Administrative Files, Neighborhood Development Division, Baltimore City Archives. 

[75] Letter, William Donald Scheafer to Community Relations Commission, Model Cities, Health Department, Department of Housing & Community Development, Board of Municipal & Zoning Appeals, Planning Commission, and Community Action Agency. “Ordinance NO. 1179,” December 8, 1969, box 8, folder 4, Collection BRG48, Administrative Files, Neighborhood Development Division, Baltimore City Archives. 

[76] The Film Foundry, Inc. We Are Arabbers, DVD, (2005).

[77] “If Enforced, City Law Would Ban Stables,” Evening Sun, (February 18, 1976).

[78] The Film Foundry, Inc. We Are Arabbers, DVD, (2005).

[79] The Film Foundry, Inc. We Are Arabbers, DVD, (2005).

[80] Patrick Sharkey, Stuck in Place: Urban Neighborhoods and the End of Progress Towards Racial Equality, (The University of Chicago: 2013), 88.

[81] Mengyao Zhang and Ghosh Debarchana “Spatial Supermarket Redlining and Neighborhoods Vulnerability: A Case Study of Harford, Connecticut.” Transactions in GIS: TG, 20.1 (2016) 79-100. http://doi.org/10.1111/tgis.12142

[82] Elizabeth Eisenhauer, “In Poor Health: Supermarket Redlining and Urban Nutrition.” GeoJournal, volume 53 (2001), 128. Eisenhauer, “In Poor Health,” 128.

[83] Eisenhauer, “In Poor Health,” 127. This law would have prevented wholesalers from unfairly charging different prices to retailers. The law also attempted to tax the number of stores owned by a chain.

[84] “Food Access Research Atlas: Documentation” United States Department of Agriculture, Economic Research Service. Last Updated Monday, May 22, 2017. https://www.ers.usda.gov/data-products/food-access-research-atlas/documentation/

[85] Freeman, The Arabbers of Baltimore, 47.