Linda Grace Morris: Baltimore Boomer Tales from the Hood

Send us Fan Mail The year was 1965, and we were all ready to get out into the world. What a world it was! Baltimore City was booming with industry, and jobs were plentiful. The Civil Rights Act of 1964 opened up opportunities for us that our parents didn't have. The Vietnam War was calling up our generation to serve as soon as we graduated and consumed so many lives. Demonstrations were every...

Send us Fan Mail When Shamara Collins was a little girl growing up in Columbia, Maryland, she appreciated nature and the green spaces designed throughout the planned community. So much so that when she grew up, she became what I call a professional steward of planet Earth and the galaxy. As you listen to her speak, you can't help but hear the passion that she has for her work as an electrical...

Send us Fan Mail The National Institutes of Health is not a typical Federal work environment. It is located on a 300+ acre campus in Bethesda, MD. There are over 30 buildings on the grounds, and it has its own power plant, police department, and fire department. Every single employee has a hand in the great research that comes out of this premier biomedical research facility--from the maintenance...

Send us Fan Mail Friendship is golden. Particularly when it is lifelong. My closest friends are the ones I met in school. Today, two of my best friends and I discuss growing up in Baltimore and our friendship with the late Sidney Rauls Ellis. We are pictured above in Atlantic City for what used to be our annual girls' trip. From left to right, me, Sandra Green Johnson, Carol Matthews, and Sid...

Send us Fan Mail When little Myneca Offord was catching a ride to her babysitting certification class in downtown Tulsa at the age of 10, little did she know she would one day be the Mayor of Hanover, PA. If you listen to Myneca's episode, you will understand how  the drive and determination to get what she needed was instilled in her at an early age. Shout out to Myneca's fur babies, My...

Send us Fan Mail If you know of any African American research scientists/medical doctors 50 and under, chances are they came through some training experience funded by the National Institutes of Health (NIH). If they did, they were probably introduced to the NIH by Joe Ager. I had a front row seat at the NIH to watch how Joe and several other colleagues traded their careers in the labs to become E...

Send us Fan Mail Minnie Conyers Carter has made her mark on many aspects of life in Baltimore. As with many in this generation, she is part of the Great Migration of African Americans from the south to seek better lives up north. She and her mother, Mrs. Ida Mae Conyers Dates, came up on the train and first settled with Minnie's aunt, Mrs. Mattie Stukes, on Barre Street in South Baltimore. Fr...

Send us Fan Mail When 8-year-old Geraldine Wilford first saw New York City, she could not believe her eyes. She learned that there was a world very different from the one she was born into in Miami, Florida, and she was determined to get a piece of it. She was the only child of Jesse James Wilford and his wife Marie Sanders Wilford. After her mom and dad divorced when she was two, her mother marri...

Send us Fan Mail Sandra Aldridge was one of the first people I noticed when I came to Payne Memorial A.M.E. Sunday School at 6 or 7 years old. She was a preteen who was beautiful and impeccably dressed. She was probably the most popular girl in Sunday School because everybody liked her. I never traveled in her circle because I was too young. But I was always impressed with her. I think you will be...

Send us Fan Mail If you are from Baltimore City, chances are your education has been touched by something that Dr. Hayman influenced, proposed, sponsored, or initiated. Having over 60 years of international experience, he has devoted his life to inspiring young people and adults to learn. Listen as he shares his memories of growing up and how basketball played a major role in setting him on his ed...

Send us Fan Mail Joseph Yvette is a multitalented artist who has pursued each and every one of those talents in the service of others. Born and raised in Washington, DC, she shares with me memories of growing up in Jim Crow DC and later moving out into the world on her very special journey. Make every moment count! E-mail me at Lindagracemorris@gmail.com and tell me in 25 words or less why I shoul...

Send us Fan Mail I have my good friend, the late Maxine Richardson, to thank for my career at the National Institutes of Health (NIH). Maxine was the Equal Employment Opportunity (EEO) Officer at the National Cancer Institute when she hired me in 1980 as an EEO Specialist. I was working for the Baltimore Field Office of the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission at the Rotunda in Roland Park, and...

Send us Fan Mail If you were just meeting Dr. Vivian Pinn today, you might think that she was someone of Hollywood fame. She says that at one point in her very young life, she wanted to be a singer or dancer--except for the fact that she could neither sing nor dance. Fortunately for us, she found her calling in the world of medicine. Listen to how this child of rural Halifax County, Virginia, foun...

Send us Fan Mail In this episode, you will hear from another member of the iconic Luck family. Season 1, episodes 10 and 25 featured descendants of a slave in Danville, VA, freed at the end of the Civil War, Jerry Luck. Jerry valued education because the law forbade him from obtaining it. He was determined that all of his children would have a good education. He and his newly freed wife, Luvenia,...

Send us Fan Mail Linda Wade and her brother, William, were fortunate enough to grow up in Turner Station, a community in the shadow of the Bethlehem Steel plant in Sparrows Point, Baltimore County. I say fortunate because residents of Sparrows Point and Turner Station had the highest per capita income in the country during the war years into the 1970s. It should be noted that Linda and William&apo...

Send us Fan Mail Serina is the first guest I have interviewed remotely by cell phone. It took a few minutes to get everything working together, but the wait was worth it. Someone referred her to me as having an interesting story, and she certainly does. I'm not just saying that because there are a lot of similarities with our stories. Listen as Serina's story unfolds. Make every moment c...

Send us Fan Mail Kai Jackson is the most down-to-earth television personality that you ever will meet. I should have known this because we have been chatting over the past few years about me helping him with a project on Cherry Hill. A native of Washington, DC, he grew up in the Glen Arden section of Prince George's County. Kai was born in 1964, so he just did make it into the Boomer generati...

Send us Fan Mail Betty Baze lives and breathes Cherry Hill. She was born in Cherry Hill, and with the exception of three years when she was traveling with her husband in the military, she has lived in Cherry Hill her entire life. She credits her mother as being her role model for advocacy because her mother was always active in the community. As you listen to this episode, you will see how hard it...

Send us Fan Mail Sarah is 90 years old, but she remembers details like it was yesterday. She was a hard-working little girl because she was the oldest of four sisters. She helped with diapers and bottles as soon as her sister Mable was born 2 years after her. She was cooking by the time sisters Helen and Gracie came along when she was 5 years old. She always wanted to be helpful. Maybe that's...

Send us Fan Mail Helen Harmon Rowley is a loyal daughter of Virginia's Eastern Shore. Born in Nassawadox of Northampton County in 1939, she has always wanted to live there. She had a very colorful journey to becoming a successful career educator despite deficiencies that could have made that impossible. In her early adult years, she desired a government job. However, along the way, she bypass...

Send us Fan Mail Deborah Butler Johnson is another Cherry Hill success story because of the "village" that affirmed, supported, and loved on us. When Deborah was six-years-old, she was as tall as her Mother. At about that age, she was becoming aware that her Mother was a little person, at the time called a dwarf. Throughout her life, Deborah has learned that her Mother's height was...

Send us Fan Mail From the moment you hear Patricia introduce herself, you can tell she is a take charge person. Her childhood and adolescence in Cherry Hill prepared her to make her way in the world. And no wonder. As it turns out, she has no-nonsense ancestors who have left documentation of their contributions to American history. Listen as Patricia shares her journey. Make every moment count! E-...

Send us Fan Mail Rita Toy-Carr is a 2nd cousin gifted to me by Ancestry.com shortly before COVID hit. The reason I can remember is that I am so grateful that she got to speak with the Speaks family historian, in the oral tradition. Leon was the family's greatest storyteller, possibly because he was the oldest cousin and had seen more relatives than the rest of us. However, it was COVID that t...

Send us Fan Mail Donald Jones did not set out to be a minister. He took a very circuitous route. However, he got there, he's there. His family migrated to Baltimore in the early 1940s like so many black families searching for better lives. They moved to Baltimore before he was born which makes him the only member of his family born in Turner Station. Listen as Pastor Jones shares his Boomer p...

Send us Fan Mail When Leon Bailey won first place for his wrestling division weighing 136 ½ pounds at the Quonset Point Navy Base in Rhode Island in 1964, he became the first African American to win a Navy wrestling championship in New England. Leon had been preparing to box and wrestle all his life in the recreation centers and gyms of East Baltimore. When he found out that he could execute those...