By Tashi McQueen
AFRO Political Writer
tmcqueen@afro.com
Celebrating 40 years since Maryland’s divestment from apartheid-era South Africa, the “Marylanders Cry Freedom: Civil Rights At Home and Abroad” is an exhibition that opened inside of Baltimore’s City Hall on June 18, highlighting impactful contributions to the Civil Rights Movement.
Photo credit: AFRO Photo / Dana Peck
During the opening ceremony Baltimore City Mayor Brandon M. Scott (D) emphasized that the fight for civil rights is ongoing, acknowledging the 400 years of slavery, decades of segregation and the battle to stop police brutality and “realize the liberty and justice for all promised centuries ago.”
“We must acknowledge our state and our city’s deep ties to this challenging part of America’s past,” said Scott. “Baltimore, as a port city, played a significant role in the transatlantic slave trade. Baltimore was where some of the strictest policies and codes in the country were created, worsening the mistreatment of African Americans.”
Scott acknowledged the people who didn’t settle for the harmful past of Baltimore and worked to change things for the better.
“Because of their perseverance and unwillingness to back down we are here,” he said, to the large crowd in the rotunda of City Hall. “You are here able to hold power in these halls that used to serve laws to prevent those who look like us from achieving our excellence. We can never forget the history, the good and the bad.”
The exhibit was created through the partnership of Baltimore City, the Maryland and KwaZulu-Natal Sister State Committee, a partnership between Maryland and the Province of Kwazulu-Natal, South Africa and the Sister States of Maryland, a conduit for Maryland’s sister state relationships.
“It’s important for us to ensure that something like art, that is a living tool, a living symbolic representation of that struggle, continues,” said Baltimore City Council President Nick Mosby (D). “That’s why we must continue to support our artists, that’s why we must tell our own stories.”
The exhibit will be open to the public weekdays from 8:30 a.m. to 5 p.m.
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