THE GREAT MIGRATION

HOW BLACK FAMILIES CAME “UP SOUTH,” FACED DOWN JIM CROW, AND BUILT AN INDUSTRIAL POWERHOUSE, MIDDLE CLASS, AND GROUNDBREAKING CIVIL RIGHTS MOVEMENT.

- RON CASSIE

JACOB LOGAN SAW AN OPPORTUNITY.

It was 1945, and Cherry Hill was finally being developed to alleviate housing shortages for the Black veterans and World War II defense workers that had flooded into Baltimore.

After years of delays because of white backlash at other proposed sites, the Cherry Hill project—the first suburban-style planned community for African Americans, and perhaps most conspicuous example of residential segregation by design ever in the United States— went up quickly once it got the go-ahead. Families rushed into the new rowhouses and apartment buildings before basic infrastructure, such as a school, shopping center, or grocery store, were even in place.

Originally from the rural South, Logan worked at the BethlehemFairfield docks, having come to Baltimore during the war to build Liberty ships. Despite a fifth-grade education, he’d also managed to save and invest in a small corner grocery in a nearby Black section of South Baltimore by the time construction in Cherry Hill began. His wife, Estelle, a former downtown elevator operator, ran the store during the day while he toiled at his union job at the port. She was also from North Carolina, but they’d met in Baltimore.