THE PLACE:
1320 Eutaw Place, Baltimore, MD USA 21217
From the website: (
visit link)
"Circa 1868, Charles H.H. Brown purchased the unimproved lot at 402 Eutaw (now 1320 Eutaw Place) and immediately built a home for his family. The U.S. Census of 1880 lists Mr. Charles H.H. Brown, an 81-year-old retired merchant, living there along with his son Frederick S. Brown (38), his daughter Fannie W. Brown (30), a 55-year-old servant named Betsey Hall, and a 17-year-old servant named Sophia Levy.
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On the 31st of August 1925, Edward L. Robinson & his wife Hester Maria sold the house to the Dental Alumni Club of Baltimore, Inc. aka, the Alpha Omega Fraternity; which, according to their website at www.ao.org. is "the oldest international dental organization in the world and was founded in Baltimore, Maryland in 1907 by a group of dental students originally to fight discrimination in dental schools." The property served as a fraternity house for the next 28 years.
In 1953 the property was sold by the Dental Alumni Club of Baltimore Inc. to Dorothy R. Kleiman and David Kleiman, who held the property briefly, then sold it to Lillie M. Jackson and her daughter Juanita Jackson Mitchell in December of 1953. It remained in their possession until September of 1969 when Lillie Carroll Jackson established a life estate that conveyed the property, upon her death, to Virginia Jackson Kiah, Lillie Jackson's oldest daughter, for the purpose of developing the Lillie Carroll Jackson Civil Rights Museum, and upon Virginia's death to be conveyed to Michael Bowen Mitchell for the same purpose.
The property was then transferred to Morgan State University in June of 1996 to continue the development of the Lillie Carroll Jackson Civil Rights Museum.
The museum reopened its doors on June 11, 2016 after considerable restoration, rehabilitation, and modernization. To learn more about the restoration process, see the "restoration" section of our Resource Center page.
THE PERSON:
TEXT FROM THE HISTORICAL MARKER affixed to the house:
Lillie Carroll Jackson Civil Rights Museum-Dr. Lillie May Carroll Jackson, born in Baltimore on May 25, 1889, was a tireless freedom fighter. As an “American of African descent, “she endured the humiliation of Jim Crow segregation, but did not take this plight sitting down. Using her abiding faith nurtured at Sharp Street United Methodist Church, she believed that “with God, all things are possible.”
As president of the Baltimore branch of the NAACP from 1935 to 1970, Jackson---along with Afro-American Newspaper publisher Carl J. Murphy---organized the community to protest Eastern Shore lynchings, segregated schools, residential restrictive covenants, discriminatory practices of Baltimore retailers and public accommodations establishments, and police brutality.
Jackson made common cause with legal scholars Charles Hamilton Houston and Thurgood Marshall to make the U.S. Constitution a reality. Her leadership resulted in successful litigation of several Supreme Court decisions, including the striking down of racially restrictive covenants in property deeds (1948) and finding segregated public schools unconstitutional (1954).
Jackson was the matriarch of the politically-active Jackson-Mitchell clan that included her son-in-law Clarence M. Mitchell Jr. (known as “the 101st Senator); her daughter Juanita Jackson Mitchell, the first black woman to practice law in Maryland; her grandson Clarence M. Mitchell III (who at age 21 was the youngest person in the nation to be elected to a state legislature); and U.S. Representative Parren J. Mitchell, the first black U.S. Representative from Maryland.
“The successful struggle for civil rights in Maryland was a defining achievement of this century,” the Baltimore Sun wrote. “Lillie May Carroll Jackson was a key general in that battle.” She died on July 5, 1975.
(Inscription under the image on the right)
Lillie Carroll Jackson “ It is somehow fitting that Lillie May Carroll Jackson, a direct descendant of Charles Carroll of Carrollton, a signer of the Declaration of Independence, would confront an unjust government asking it to fulfill its creed that all men are created equal.”—Baltimore Sun, August 1999-