Exile and Shunning

Unlike Washington, D.C.—a Cold War capital radiant with power—Baltimore in 1965 was on the decline, aging ungracefully as its southern neighbor matured into a city of the world. Baltimore, however, retained much of its character. The red-brick row-house neighborhoods still held sizable blue-collar enclaves, with their eclectic politics of union-based progressivism and social conservatism, working-class solidarity and middle-class aspirations. An Old South elite ruled city hall, more or less blessed by the churches, while a large black population simmered unnoticed in the slums. A community of old-left loyalists endured, as their political heirs but temperamental opposites in the countercultural new left grew to strength. These younger radicals tended to congregate in a relatively integrated neighborhood near Johns Hopkins University— 112"one hundred to one hundred and fifty activists living along Guilford and Abell Avenues awaiting the Revolution," one school official recalled. ¹ This was the scene of what was supposed to be Phil Berrigan's quiet exile.