A so-called "spite wall" built to hold back the Black students of Baltimore's Morgan State University has finally been torn down after standing for 81 years—more than twice as long as the Berlin Wall. University president David Wilson watched a portion come down on Tuesday, WBAL reports. "In 1939, the neighbors started building what was labeled a 'spite wall, a hate wall, to prevent Morgan State students from simply walking across the street into the all-white neighborhood and to shop at an all-white shopping center here," he said. The wall was completed in 1942 and remained in place during the civil rights struggles of the 1960s, which included sit-ins at the Northwood Plaza shopping center. In later decades, its original purpose was largely forgotten.
Dale Green, a professor and architectural historian at Morgan State, says that for the white community of the time, the wall was "to send a signal and to physically create a divider that would symbolize the segregation that they stood for." It was demolished as part of a reconstruction and expansion project at the university, which is the largest historically Black university in Maryland. "This was an easy decision for us," Wilson tells NBC. "It was time for us to tear down that hate." The university plans to keep a portion of the segregation wall in place as a reminder of what Wilson calls a "nasty period" in history, and as a demonstration of how much the area has transformed, the MSU Spokesman reports. (More Morgan State University stories.)
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