Ten years ago this spring, police chased a young man through the streets of West Baltimore, detained and searched him, and arrested him for carrying a pocketknife. They placed him face down, shackled and handcuffed, on the floor of a transport van. By the time Freddie Gray arrived at the Western District police station, he was unconscious and unbreathing, his spinal cord severely injured. He died a week later.
Protests erupted onto Baltimore’s streets, culminating in a night of violent unrest on the day of Gray’s funeral, not because the community was shocked at what happened to him but because it was all too familiar. His death was a personal tragedy for those who knew him, but it also came to symbolize broader injustices inflicted on countless Baltimoreans. And for once, it seemed, the broader community could no longer gloss over those truths or pretend it didn’t have a responsibility to address them.
Whatever lessons Baltimore learned from the reckoning surrounding Grays’ death, it took us years to get there. It is only recently that the city has adopted a more holistic public safety strategy, which is already yielding promising results.
The Abell Foundation has long focused its efforts on alleviating poverty and in recent years has more consciously framed its work in terms of addressing the effects of Baltimore’s historic segregation, disinvestment, and persistent racial discrimination. Like many, we have been prompted by the anniversary of Gray’s death to assess what has changed in the last 10 years.
Rather than using our annual report as we typically do to highlight a few organizations and projects we have supported in the previous year, we have sought to take a longer view. The essays that follow are by no means a comprehensive assessment of the work the Abell Foundation has supported during that period, much less of all the efforts Baltimoreans have undertaken to address inequality in our city. Rather, they aim to highlight promising new approaches and new resources that have been brought to bear in the last decade. There is much to tell.
Centuries of injustice have not been erased in a decade, but thousands of people in this city remain dedicated to making a difference, bit by bit and day by day, through service and advocacy. We have been privileged to support many of their efforts and stand committed to helping them foster a Baltimore where everyone has the chance to thrive.