BALTIMORE — Baltimore City is honoring "the Year of Civil Rights" - marking 60 years since the passage of the Civil Rights Act - with a new series of banners downtown.
Each streetscape banner is dedicated to a major Civil Rights leader who has deep roots in Baltimore.
They were unveiled by the Baltimore National Heritage Area, according to a press release.
The banners are mostly in the area of President Street and Pratt Street.
The leaders on the banners include:
- Thurgood Marshall, the first African American appointed to the United States Supreme Court
- Lillie May Carroll Jackson and Juanita Jackson Mitchell, who led desegregation and was instrumental in advancing voting rights
- Frances Ellen Harper Watkins, an abolitionist and writer
- Verda Welcome, the first Black woman in the Maryland State Senate
- Parren J. Mitchell, the first African American elected to Congress from Maryland
- Elijah Cummings, Civil Rights leader, orator, and first African American in Maryland history to be named Speaker Pro Tempore
The banners are also outside the Reginald F. Lewis Museum of Maryland African American History and Culture.
Shauntee Daniels, executive director of BNHA, said in a statement:
These banners will educate our community about the impactful roles these individuals played in the struggle for voting rights and social justice.
The Civil Rights Act of 1964 was seminal for ending "Jim Crow" laws by banning discrimination on the basis of race, color, religion, sex or national origin.
