page_title: History of the Appalachian people in Baltimore
section_title: History
hierarchical_section_title: History of the Appalachian people in Baltimore / History
caption_attribution_description: English: Charm City Folk &amp; Bluegrass Festival 2015
context_page_description: The city of Baltimore, Maryland includes a significant Appalachian population. The Appalachian community has historically been centered in the neighborhoods of Hampden, Pigtown, Remington, Woodberry, Lower Charles Village, Highlandtown, and Druid Hill Park, as well as the Baltimore inner suburbs of Dundalk, Essex, and Middle River. The culture of Baltimore has been profoundly influenced by Appalachian culture, dialect, folk traditions, and music. People of Appalachian heritage may be of any race or religion. Most Appalachian people in Baltimore are white or African-American, though some are Native American or from other ethnic backgrounds. White Appalachian people in Baltimore are typically descendants of early English, Irish, Scottish, Scotch-Irish, and Welsh settlers. A migration of White Southerners from Appalachia occurred from the 1920s to the 1960s, alongside a large-scale migration of African-Americans from the Deep South and migration of Native Americans from the Southeast such as the Lumbee and the Cherokee. These out-migrations caused the heritage of Baltimore to be deeply influenced by Appalachian and Southern cultures.
context_section_description: In the early 20th century, many Appalachian farm youth from eastern and northern West Virginia migrated to Baltimore, following the Baltimore and Ohio Railroad. Many Appalachian migrants settled in the neighborhood of Hampden due to the abundance of jobs provided by mills. Hampden was originally created as a residential community for workers at the various mills along the Jones Falls. Most of the Appalachian people in Hampden hailed from Eastern Kentucky, West Virginia, and Western Pennsylvania. This influx of predominantly white Appalachian hillfolk cemented Hampden's reputation as a white working-class neighborhood.
  During the Great Depression, thousands of white residents of the Appalachian Mountains migrated to Baltimore as well as to other industrial northern cities such as Detroit, Chicago, Washington, D.C., Cleveland, Pittsburgh, Milwaukee, and Muncie, Indiana. This migration of white Appalachian and Southern people paralleled the Great Migration of African Americans from Appalachia and the South during the same time period. The great white migration from Appalachia has become known as the Hillbilly Highway. During these migrations, approximately 11,000,000 Southerners migrated north; approximately two thirds of them white and one-third of them black. Appalachian migrants to Baltimore were negatively affected by poverty, unemployment, welfare dependency, mechanization of industry, and the decline of the coal industry. Baltimore's factories filled with Appalachian economic migrants between 1910 and 1960, especially in the years during and following World War II. White working-class Appalachian families from the hills of Kentucky, Ohio, Virginia, and West Virginia created Appalachian diaspora enclaves throughout Baltimore and many other cities.
  Armistead Gardens in East Baltimore, sometimes referred to as "the white ghetto", was originally built by the Housing Authority of Baltimore City as public housing for white people coming to work in industries supplying World War II. Most of these white workers were from Appalachian states such as West Virginia, Kentucky, and Tennessee and came to Baltimore to work at the Glenn L. Martin Company and other major defense plants.
  During and following World War II, many Southern and Appalachian workers also settled in Sparrows Point, an industrial area just outside of Baltimore city. These migrants came to work for the Bethlehem Steel plant and largely hailed from rural areas and mining towns of West Virginia and Central Pennsylvania. Many descendants of these migrants still live in the area, particularly in Dundalk, Essex, Middle River, and Armistead Gardens.
  In 1984, 1,100 households of Appalachian heritage lived in the neighborhood of Remington. Many of these families traced their origins back to coal towns in Western Pennsylvania and hollows in southern West Virginia. These coal-mining families settled in Baltimore in the 1950s and 1960s, searching for better jobs and better socioeconomic conditions than their parents and grandparents generations had access to. Many of the Appalachian people who settled in Remington worked in factories and mills upon moving to Baltimore. By the 1980s, many of the factories and mills had shut down, resulting in high levels of unemployment. Few wished to relocate back to Appalachia, where economic conditions were even worse. One-third of Remington lived in poverty during the early 1980s, many of them under the age of  18. The majority of Appalachian children in Remington at this time did not graduate high school. Due to low voter turn-out, poor Appalachian whites in Remington had little political clout.
  Baltimore was a major destination for Appalachian African-Americans, with many coming from Central and North Alabama, North Georgia, Upstate South Carolina, and Western North Carolina.
caption: Charm City Bluegrass Festival, April 2015.
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