Blockbusting in Baltimore

In Blockbusting in Baltimore W. Edward Orser examines Edmondson Village, a west Baltimore rowhouse community where an especially acute instance of blockbusting triggered white flight and racial change on a dramatic scale. Between 1955 and 1965, nearly twenty thousand white residents, who saw their secure world changing drastically, were replaced by blacks in search of the American dream. By buying low and selling high, playing on fears of whites and needs of African Americans, blockbusters set off a series of events that Orser calls "a collective trauma whose significance for recent American…