Last Saturday, some friends and I braved crazy winds (and lovely sunshine) to attend the Feisty Females of Fells Point tour run by Baltimore Heritage. Covering a broad range of women over hundreds of years, our guide Robin talked to us about (among many others):
Mary Elizabeth Lange (1784 - 1882), a French-speaking Catholic originally from Cuba, who founded the first African American religious congregation in the United States, the Oblate Sisters of Providence in Baltimore. Pope Francis recently declared her venerable, another step forward in becoming a saint.
Barbara Mikulski, former US Senator of Maryland and former resident of Fells Point, who found her way into politics by way of successful activism to keep a highway from being built in Fells Point.
Billie Holiday, American jazz singer, who spent part of her turbulent childhood in Baltimore. The house she lived in now has a plaque, and the street features several beautiful murals of Lady Day.
We also passed by several women-owned restaurants. Sofia's Place European Deli is owned by Sofia Para who has been selling perogies and other tasty items in The Broadway Market for over thirty years. Cocina Luchadoras's owner made waves more recently by posting a sign in Spanish that suggested President Trump is no intellectual giant, which generated death threats from those who disagreed, and brisk sales from those who wanted to offer support after those threats.
The tour ended near the Baltimore American Indian Center, a nonprofit originally founded by Lumbee Tribal members in the late 60s to support the many members of Native American communities then living in Fells Point. Much of the American Indian population eventually moved away from the city, and the nonprofit began to focus on heritage preservation. Archeological evidence points to Paleo-Indians living in the Baltimore area from at least the 10th millennium BC.