Opinion: Baltimore’s roads were built on Black suffering; now it’s time to build something different

By Steven K. Ragsdale

Baltimore does not easily forget the past, but far too often, it is forced to move on too quickly past its painful history. But there are some stories we can’t afford to leave behind. Not when the very streets we pay for the privilege to walk today were paid for by people in chains, not when today’s injustices echo so loudly from our collective yesterdays.

Maryland, and Baltimore in particular, didn’t just participate in the domestic slave trade. We helped build it. From the early 1800s through the Civil War, Baltimore became a major port for the buying and selling of Black people—not across oceans, but within the borders of the United States. The so-called “peculiar institution” wasn’t just a Southern phenomenon. It thrived right here.

On the same National Road that still cuts through West Baltimore—Route 40—Black families were bound together, marched in shackles and led south to the cotton fields of Alabama and Mississippi and the sugar plantations in Louisiana. It is less than ironic that the street name on the east side of the city bears the name Orlean Street. The city’s waterfront, now lined with shops and tourists, once launched ships packed with enslaved men, women, and children bound for places like New Orleans. These were not discrete crimes. They were part of the city’s business that ported between 800,000 and 1.2 million captives to the industrial agricultural South.

This was not a shadow economy, it was big business and out in the open. Baltimore traders like Austin Woolfolk, Hope Slater, James Franklin Purvis, John Denning and Joseph Donovan were not fringe figures—they were city politicians, business leaders, respected men. Banks gave them loans. Insurance
companies protected their “cargo.” The Baltimore Sun ran ads for slave auctions with average sales prices, with prices ranging to a premium for the light-skinned female prodigy of a White enslaver. The machinery of human commodification ran smoothly, backed by legislation, policy and public silence. In a city where 91 percent of its African-American population lived with free legal status, selling humans was legal in every corner of the fourth largest city in America from its founding in 1728 until the advent of the Civil War.

That silence has lasted too long and continues to haunt the way that local politics are waged in Maryland.

Today, West Baltimore is still one of the most disinvested, under-connected areas in the city. And it is no accident. The same corridors that once trafficked in Black bodies now lack reliable public transit. The Red Line—a long-promised light rail system meant to connect isolated Black neighborhoods to opportunity—was shelved in 2015 with barely a shrug from Annapolis and its bevy of lobbyists. Only now – after years of organizing and resistance – has the project been revived by our recent governor, but the project will undoubtedly face more scrutiny, criticism and attacks.

Make no mistake: This fight isn’t over because this isn’t just about trains and tracks. It’s about history. It’s about reparative justice. The same state that helped move thousands of African ancestors into bondage owes much more than words—it owes access, infrastructure, and investment.

The AFRO has always stood on the front lines of truth for generations. For over 130 years, this paper has held systems accountable and printed what others refused to say. That same courage is necessary now.

Citizens must say what many are unwilling to say publicly: Baltimore’s past isn’t just tragic for some—it is instructive. Do we need to reexamine the Road to Nowhere? Like in that slice of civic history, the Red Line demands constant vigilance and action.

Baltimore isn’t asking for charity. Its people are demanding accountability. The same systems that once extracted profit from a people’s pain must now work and invest to repair the damage. That includes fully funding the Red Line–not just breaking ground but following through. That includes honoring the communities historically left behind with more than ribbon cuttings, but with real, sustained investment that funnels much-needed economics into a city that still struggles almost 75 years after White flight began.

Let the roads that once carried our people in chains now take us to opportunity. Let the harbor that once tore families apart now reconnect neighborhoods. Let Baltimore’s future not erase its past but redeem it.

Baltimore citizens have been asked repeatedly to move on. But they are still here, and many more are moving in. The citizens of Baltimore and all those cities sitting along the planned route cannot afford to wait any longer.