2020 History Honors
2020 has been an unusual year requiring organizations like the BCHS to change and adapt with the circumstances. Usually, in the Fall we hold a ceremony to present the BCHS History Honors. You can read about the honors here. This year, board memeber Kathleen Kotarba, chair of the BCHS History Honors Event Committee, found a way to present some of the honors virtually or in person while socially distanced. Here are some photographs from those presentations.
Dennis Patrick Halpin was a recipient of the 2020 BCHS Historian/Scholar Honors. (image courtesy of Dennis Halpin)
Halpin is an associate professor of history at Virginia Tech where he also serves as Associate Chair of the Department of History. He earned a B.A. in 2002 and an M.A. in 2004 at Florida Southern University and completed his Ph.D. in 2012 at Rutgers University. He is the author of A Brotherhood of Liberty: Black Reconstruction and Its Legacies in Baltimore, 1865-1920.
Dennis is no stranger to BCHS! An earlier essay, “For My Race Against All Parties” was awarded the Joseph Arnold Prize by the Baltimore City Historical Society in 2014. The paper later appeared in The Maryland Historical Magazine. He has been awarded research grants by the Mellon Foundation and was named a Lord Baltimore Fellow by the Maryland Historical Society.
Dr. Martha S. Jones was a recipient of 2020 BCHS Historian/Scholar Honors. (image by Kathleen Kotarba)
Martha is the Society of Black Alumni Presidential Professor and Professor of History at Johns Hopkins University. She is a legal and cultural historian whose work examines how Black Americans have shaped the story of American democracy. Professor Jones holds a Ph.D. in history from Columbia University and a J.D. from the CUNY School of Law. Prior to the start of her academic career, she was a public interest litigator in New York City.
She is being honored for her book Birthright Citizens: A History of Race and Rights in Antebellum America, winner of the Organization of American Historians Liberty Legacy Award for the best book in civil rights history.
But we would be remiss if we did not mention her most recent work, which is receiving incredible praise, Vanguard: How Black Women Broke Barriers, Won the Vote, and Insisted on Equality for All. Martha has again used archival records to illuminate the lives of Black Americans, allowing us a glimpse at the dedicated and steadfast activism of Black women.
Dr. Joanne Martin was a recipient of 2020 BCHS Historian/Scholar Honors. (image by Kathleen Kotarba)
Dr. Joanne Martin and her husband Dr. Elmer Martin are the incredible founders of The National Great Blacks in Wax Museum (Facebook). In the late 1970s, the couple visited a wax museum in Florida and noticed very little Black representation. Returning to Baltimore, they used their savings to begin a collection of Black wax figures, which they exhibited at schools, churches, and other locations. In 1983, they opened a storefront museum on Saratoga Street with 21 wax figures. Since then, the collection has grown to over 150 figures and the museum is housed in a collection of buildings (a firehouse, a mansion, and two apartment buildings) on East North Avenue. Considered the oldest such museum in the nation, it showcases Black history and the importance of Baltimore’s African American story.
In 2018, Dr. Joanne Martin was the recipient of The William Donald Schaefer Baltimore Visionary Award from Visit Baltimore.
Johns Hopkins was a recipient of the 2020 BCHS Living History Honor. (image by Kathleen Kotarba)
The executive director of Baltimore Heritage, Johns and his team have pivoted during the pandemic to offer some of the best virtual programming (in our opinions!) on Baltimore History. Their "Five-Minute Histories" series should not be missed
Originally from St. Louis, Johns earned degrees from Yale University, George Washington University Law School, and the University of Michigan’s School of Natural Resources and Environment. He came to Baltimore to work on Smart Growth programs, including directing the State’s “Smart Codes” program that eliminated barriers to rehabbing older buildings.
Since assuming the position at Baltimore Heritage in 2003, Johns and has initiated projects that include: documenting Baltimore’s Civil rights history for the National Register of Historic Places; public archaeology in Lafayette Square and Patterson Park; coordinating nearly 500 in-person tours of over 300 historic places; launching Explore.BaltimoreHeritage.org, a free smartphone app and website with information and images on over 500 historic places in Baltimore; and successful advocacy to save the Baltimore Hebrew Orphan Asylum, Castalia (the headmaster’s house at the Calvert School), and Read’s Drugstore on Lexington Street (the civil rights lunch counter site).
Nicholas and Brigitte Fessenden were recipients of the 2020 BCHS Living History Honor. (image courtesy of Kathleen Kotarba)
This duo led the effort that resulted in the opening of the Baltimore Immigration Museum in 2016. Located in Locust Point in the historic Immigrant House, where thousands of newly-arrived European immigrants found temporary housing and assistance during 1904-15, the Baltimore Immigration Memorial, Inc. operates the museum. Brigitte is President, and Nick is the Treasurer of the organization.
In their professional lives, Nick taught History at Friends School (1972-2010) and at various local colleges. Brigitte was a historic preservation planner for Baltimore’s Commission for Historical and Architectural Preservation (1993-2010). Together, they combined his historic and pedagogical background and her interest in Baltimore's immigration history, to tell the little-known story of Baltimore’s role as America’s third largest port of entry from 1830 to 1914. They continuously support students, teachers, researchers, family historians, and anyone they can with their vast knowledge of this important part of Baltimore's history.
James Crockett (obituary), who died in 2019 at the age of 94, was a recipient of the 2020 BCHS In Memoriam Honor. (image by The Baltimore Sun)
A Baltimore native and World War II combat veteran, James was a pioneer in many ways. He was one of the first Blacks to join the Baltimore City Fire Department, and eventually became president of the Board of Fire Commissioners. After resigning from the Fire Department in 1964, he opened a real estate office, and in 1971, the Maryland Senate appointed him to the Maryland Real Estate Commission, the first African American to hold that seat. He also served on Baltimore’s Commission on Historical and Architectural Preservation, often advocating for maintaining the historic integrity of Baltimore’s less affluent neighborhoods. A current effort to recognize firefighters of color would not have been possible without Mr. Crockett’s legacy.
Edward Vincent Rutkowski, Ed, was a recipient of the 2020 BCHS In Memoriam Honor. (above, courtesy Patterson Park Public Charter School; below, Ed’s wife Kay Rutkowski, courtesy of Heather Hairston)
Ed, as he was known, was born and raised in Highlandtown and led the revitalization and economic stabilization of neighborhoods around Patterson Park. After a career as an electrical engineer with IBM, he decided he wanted to get back to Baltimore and moved to a three-story row house on East Baltimore Street across from Patterson Park in 1986. Ed joined United Parcel Service (UPS) as a software developer working on making drivers’ routes more efficient and on creating electronic signatures. From his new home, he observed changes in the neighborhood that alarmed him, including crime and vacancy. He left UPS and concentrated on making Patterson Park more economically stable. He and three other neighbors started buying properties, the first of hundreds of home restorations he would oversee in the coming years. In 1996, with the help of volunteers and community representatives, he formed the Patterson Park Community Development Corporation, which eventually grew to 25 employees, buying, rehabbing, and selling properties. He is widely regarded as a visionary whose work stabilized the area and prevented the growth of disinvestment and dilapidation that otherwise would have moved southward.
To read more about this work and incredible impact on Patterson Park, go here, and go here to read an op-ed about his humble personality and drive.
Evelyn T. Beasley (obituary) was a recipient of the 2020 BCHS In Memoriam Honor. (above, The Baltimore Sun; below, Beasley’s family accepts the award at Roland Park Elementary-Middle School, courtesy of Kathleen Kotarba)
Beasley’s legacy is felt most clearly in Baltimore’s schools. Beasley was the highly successful principal at Roland Park Elementary-Middle School. Born and raised in West Baltimore, she began teaching in city public schools in 1954, and shortly thereafter, was asked to assist with the professional development of her peers by serving as a demonstration teacher and a supervisory teacher. In 1965, Mrs. Beasley was promoted to elementary specialist at the old city school headquarters on 25th Street, where she worked for four years until being named assistant principal at Hazelwood Elementary School. Her experiences at Hazelwood served her well when in 1976 she was sent to Roland Park Elementary-Middle School as principal. She quickly turned the low-performing school around. So successful was Mrs. Beasley that by 1986 there was a front-page article about her and Roland Park Elementary-Middle School in The Wall Street Journal. Even though she ended her career in 1993, she continued to work for the state Department of Education mentoring new principals. Here is a profile of Beasley written on the occasion of her retirement.
Ethel Ennis (obituary, obituary) was a recipient of the 2020 In Memoriam Honors. (above, from The Afro; below, husband Earl Arnett, by Kathleen Kotarba)
Born in a row home on North Calhoun Street and raised in Sandtown-Winchester, Ethel Ennis was Baltimore’s “First Lady of Jazz” who, during her seven-decade career, performed with such musical luminaries as Benny Goodman, Duke Ellington, Louis Armstrong, Cab Calloway, the Miles Davis-John Coltrane Sextet and Wynton Marsalis, and thrilled audiences at the Newport and Monterey jazz festivals.
She signed her first recording contract in 1951, and four years later, made her first album for Jubilee Records, “Lullabies for Losers,” which earned her a national following and bookings across the country. In 1984, she and her husband opened “Ethel’s Place,” an upscale jazz club on Cathedral Street that featured local and national acts. She received an honorary Doctor of Humane Letters degree from Johns Hopkins University, and last October she was given a star at Maryland Public Television’s Walk of Fame at its Owings Mills headquarters.
Go here to watch and hear Ennis talk about her life and career.
