A few hours after Brown spoke, the burning began.
Arsonists set fire to the black elementary school, destroying it and much of Cambridge’ s black business district. Some rioters and police began shooting at each other, and an officer was wounded.
Photo by The Baltimore Sun
Brown, who was nicked in the head by shotgun pellets, fled town as the National Guard was again sent into Cambridge to put down a racial disturbance.
‘ MARYLAND’ S MISSISSIPPI’
Unlike the disillusionment that sparked riots in cities such as Detroit, Newark, N. J. and Los Angeles – places that blacks had left the South for in hopes of a better life – Cambridge’ s violence flared not because of some perceived mistreatment by police. Blacks in this town took to the streets because of white resistance to their demands of for equal rights.
Cambridge, which is located on Maryland’ s Eastern Shore, has more in common with the Deep South than the rest of the state. It is isolated, is largely agricultural, and was a hotbed of Confederate sympathizers during the Civil War.
“ Since the Civil War,” wrote historian John R. Wennersten in“ Maryland’ s Eastern Shore: A Journey in Time and Place,”“ the history of race relations on the Eastern Shore of Maryland has been a story of struggle and tragedy.
“ Although the Eastern Shore counties are within a two-hour drive of the nation’ s capital, the communities in spirit and sense of place have been
Guardsmen stand watch
more like the Deep South when it comes to racial attitudes. Like slavery, segregation and white supremacy died hard as a sustaining ethos of Chesapeake country life,” he wrote.
That bit of history is one explanation for why the Eastern Shore came to be known to many as“ Maryland’ s Mississippi.” But there are other explanations.
In 1931, the trial of Euel Lee – a black man accused of killing four members of a white family in the town of Taylorville, not far from Cambridge – was moved to Towson, on Maryland’ s Western Shore. The change of venue came after Lee’ s lawyer complained that his 61-yearold client couldn’ t get a fair trial on the Eastern Shore.
He had good reason to worry.
Lee was allegedly beaten by police while being transported to a jail in the town of Snow Hill and there was talk of an attempt to lynch him. As it turned out, Lee wasn’ t lynched, but Matthew Williams, a 35-year-old black man accused of killing a white businessman, was.
After Williams’ killing Lee’ s trial was moved. Even so, an all-white jury quickly found him guilty, and Lee was executed.
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In 1933, George Armwood, a 27-year-old black man accused of assaulting a white woman, was lynched in the Eastern Shore’ s Somerset County. When Maryland Gov. Albert Ritchie sent a detachment of National Guardsmen to arrest the four white men state police identified as ringleaders of the lynch mob more than 1,000 townspeople lobbed rocks and bricks at the guardsmen.
COUNTDOWN TO CHAOS
Cambridge is the county seat of Dorchester County, Md. Today it has a population of around 11,000 that is about 50 percent black and 47 percent white.
But in the 1960s Cambridge was a predominantly white city whose black population was largely confined to one municipal legislative district.
Schools in Cambridge were officially desegregated, but local black students who dared try to integrate Cambridge’ s high schools faced harassment from white students and teachers Businesses, too, were segregated.
Blacks in Cambridge could vote, but only one black sat on the town’ s city council. White unemployment was