“The Negro invasion in Baltimore is principally in a north and northwesterly direction, comprising the most beautiful, most exclusive and most valuable residential sections. About the year 1885 steadily but insidiously the Negro began to invade white residential sections. In Pennsylvania Avenue, beginning at Franklin Street in the downtown district and running north about twenty-six blocks to the intersection of North Avenue and Druid Hill Avenue, beginning at Paca Street in the downtown district and running north about twenty blocks to the intersection of North Avenue, as well as all blocks lying between Pennsylvania and Druid Hill Avenues and containing substantially built three-story houses, are now in the exclusive possession of the Negroes. They are now beginning to invade McCulloh Street, Madison Avenue, Eutaw Place and Linden Avenue, which run parallel with Pennsylvania and Druid Hill Avenues.” Some papers see in this indubitable evidence of the rise of colored people. As the Fitchburg (Mass.) Sentinel puts it: “This is one of the most hopeful situations regarding the Negro which has been painted. It is enough to send shivers down the backs of the people who believe that ‘Cursed by Canaan’ is to hold good for all time. But it is an immense reassurance to those who are looking for the uplift of the black race. It seems, from this picture, that they must be getting rich rapidly. They are obtaining possession of fine residential property. They want to live in fine houses, the same as white folks with money. Doubtless, too, the same as white folks, they want to have the good things which money will buy. “Judged by any test other than color, they seem to be very desirable citizens.” Other papers, like the Bridgeport Telegram, scent danger: “If they are deprived of the right to build homes where they please which is accorded to the most degraded white man who lands upon these shores provided people will sell land to him, and robbed of the right to become skilled workmen, their situation will be a much graver one than that from which the Civil War delivered them.” Dr. Henry Moskowitz, in the New York Evening Post, points to the Russian analogy and the Boston Globe also insists on the failure of the Ghetto idea: “Segregation has never been a very successful solution of the race problem, as may be seen in the experience of European cities with ghettos and in Russia’s attempt to keep Jews confined within certain pales. The Baltimore city council, however, by a piece of special pleading in its report, tries to justify the ordinance by saying that its ‘underlying purpose is the maintenance of peace and good order and the avoidance of friction and irritation between the two races.’ The ordinance ‘aims to prevent the whites from becoming a disturbing element to the blacks and likewise to prevent the Negroes from becoming a disturbing element to the whites.’ Ahem!” The New York Journal calls the experiment dangerous: