Let's write about America's violent voting history- In the past Slavery was a divisive issue today it is called "racism"

We often hear that the November 2026, midterms are the most important election in our country’s history. Really❓ 

Honestly, America has gone through worse. Much worse.

Essay opinion published in the Baltimore Sun by Tom Denes

If you think this election season is bad, remember 1876 | GUEST COMMENTARY

The current political turmoil in America is not new. 

During the run-up to the Civil War, people were already shooting at each other. After the Kansas-Nebraska Act was passed in 1854, pro-slavery Kansas residents, aided by outsiders from Missouri (known as “border ruffians”), voted in a pro-slavery legislature that quickly established pro-slavery laws. Other Kansas residents opposed to slavery, known as “Jayhawkers” and aided by outside abolitionists, set up a separate government and adopted an anti-slavery constitution. President Franklin Pierce called them traitors and threw his administration’s weight behind the pro-slavery legislature. Fights broke out, including an attack by abolitionist fanatic John Brown, who with his followers hacked five pro-slavery settlers to death in an act that became known as the Pottawatomie Massacre.

The violence was not confined to Kansas. In Congress, anti-slavery Sen. Charles Sumner of Massachusetts was almost murdered by the cousin of pro-slavery Sen. Andrew Butler of South Carolina after Sumner launched a personal attack on Butler. The cousin, Rep. Preston Brooks, attacked Sumner in Congress’ chambers, beating him with a cane so badly that Sumner couldn’t attend the Senate for four years.

In 1859, Brown and a band of anti-slavery zealots took over Harpers Ferry, Virginia (now West Virginia), in an attempt to start a major slave revolt. For 24 hours, Brown controlled one of the mightiest arsenals in the world, including 100,000 guns. His goal: free the 4 million enslaved people of the United States. It didn’t work, and Brown was hanged.

On the morning of December 2, 1859, Brown rolled to his execution on a wagon, sitting atop his own coffin. Earlier that morning he had composed a note that read: “I, John Brown, am now quite certain that the crimes of this guilty land will never be purged away, but with Blood. I had, as I now think, vainly flattered myself that without very much bloodshed, it might be done.”

His prediction was right, of course. By the end of the Civil War, more than 600,000 Americans lay dead.

And then there were the voting shenanigans that ended Reconstruction.

In 1876, the presidential election was a cliffhanger. Although Democrat Sam Tilden had won the popular vote (4.3 million to 4 million), neither Tilden nor Republican Rutherford B. Hayes had reached the magic number of 185 electoral votes. Tilden stood one vote shy at 184 electoral votes, and Hayes was well behind at 165 votes.

But the election results in Louisiana, Florida, South Carolina and Oregon were still up for grabs. Both parties claimed the 20 unaccounted-for electoral votes.

Many issues clouded the votes. One was the controversy regarding who could or couldn’t be an elector. If someone held any kind of position with the federal government, he couldn’t be an elector. 

In Florida, one of Hayes’ electors, F.C. Humphreys, held an appointment as a U.S. shipping commissioner. The controversy over his vote was whether he had resigned in time to become a legitimate elector.

To solve the impasse, Congress created an Electoral Commission consisting of five members of Congress, five members of the Senate and five Supreme Court justices. The commission’s makeup was controversial and took a long time to establish. The final seated commission was skewed by exactly one Supreme Court justice on the Republican side. And ultimately each of the 20 electoral votes reviewed by the commission was awarded to Hayes on a party-line vote of 8-7.

Congress still had to approve the commission’s findings. A compromise was forged. The Compromise of 1877 called for the withdrawal of all federal troops from the South, federal funding for infrastructure improvements, the appointment of at least one Southerner to the Cabinet, aid for the Texas and Pacific Railroad and the presidency to Hayes.

Although the republic lived, Reconstruction in the South was over. The notorious Black codes returned. Black residents were jailed for minor crimes and were then used as unpaid laborers, often for years — a de facto return to slavery.

As we approach the 2026 midterms, let’s appreciate how far we’ve come. And, as always, in all elections, please don’t forget to vote.

Tom Denes is the co-author of “The Last President: Our 15-Year Journey Through American History.” He lives in Maryland.

Let's Write about Maryland's affection for Ocean City

Ocean City is just a tiny dot on the map of Maryland's Eastern Shore; but Marylander's support generations of nostalgic memories "Down the Ocean".

Memories reflected in "Down the Ocean" by my high school friend, a prolific author and poet, Michael Wright. We grew up in the shadow of a culture where going to Ocean City, was more or less a right of passage during of our teen age years.

Check out this link to take a virtual tour of the Ocean City Life Saving Museum at this link here.

Plus, an interesting history article published in the Baltimore Sun by Josh Davis. Ocean City demolition unearths piece of Senior Week history. Remnants of a 1930s, garage tied to early Senior Week history found on Fifth Street.

Ocean City Museum, Maryland

OCEAN CITY Md.- Hal Adkins has developed a reputation for uncovering pieces of Ocean City’s past during major construction projects. Last year, crews building a new police substation unearthed the town’s original 1929, electrical substation, once responsible for powering all of Ocean City, said Adkins, the Public Works Director, told the Ocean City Council on Tuesday.

Now, another demolition project has revealed a different chapter of the resort’s history. Workers tearing down the former Fifth Street Post Office last week discovered remnants of the Safe Garage, a 1930s-era building, linked to the early days of Senior Week — the long-standing tradition that draws thousands of graduating high school students to Ocean City each year.
“That lot has an interesting history before the post office building opened there in 1962,” Katz said. “As the late George Hurley was fond of saying, ‘Gordon, there is a story under every lot in Ocean City.’”
The lot, at Philadelphia Avenue and Fifth Street, was vacant until 1928, Katz said. E. Preston Disharoon, a lumber dealer in Berlin, bought the three contiguous lots that make up the property and built a 65-car parking garage.
Disharoon sold the garage in 1930, to husband and wife Samuel and Dellie Ayres, who renamed it the “Safe Garage,” a mechanic shop with rooms to rent and parking. Katz said it was advertised in a local chamber of commerce booklet in 1937, as “Safe Garage and Rooms. Fireproof Storage Garage. Nice cool rooms.”

An advertisement published in The Baltimore Sun in May 1947, promoted the “Safe Garage” as a lodging spot for young men visiting the beach resort.
“Boys, we have lots of improvements that consist of new floors, newly painted walls, hot showers and Englander Innerspring mattresses with rates the same,” the ad stated.
The concrete slab of the old building was still intact beneath the former post office, Adkins said.
He reached out to local historian Gordon Katz, of the Ocean City Life-Saving Museum, who shared the story with The Sun.
Collins Ayres, the couple’s son, took over management in 1940 and bought the building a year later. An ad in The Sun on June 30, 1945, read “STOP at safe garage. Storage. Simonizing, washing & greasing, also rooms for rent.”

According to Katz, the 1947, ad in The Baltimore Sun is notable because it mentions, “We will cater to fraternities this season,” likely a reference to an early version of Senior Week.
“The first such documented event in Ocean City took place in June 1946, when college students and ex-servicemen descended on the town in an impromptu pilgrimage that is now repeated (and expanded to include high school seniors) annually,” Katz said. “The Safe Garage offered 15 rooms to house the ‘boys’ for their romp in Ocean City.”
The building was sold to Frank Baker in 1948, and renamed Columbus Garage, though the same services continued, Katz said. During the 1950s, Baker offered the property to the town for $55,000 as a possible location for a new convention center. The town passed.
Baker had several run-ins with local police in 1957, Katz said. In early June, he was denied a permit to convert the garage into a service station but did the alterations anyway until a Circuit Court halted the project with an injunction.
“That the site had been the location of Ocean City’s first electric power plant, built in 1892, which had been converted to an oil-fired engine in 1923,” Katz said. “The power plant burned down in 1925, taking with it the Atlantic Hotel, the neighboring Seaside Hotel, much of the south side of Wicomico Street, and the pier.”
Future owners “simply covered the old tanks when erecting their new structures,” until Public Works discovered it in 2024.
In another example, Katz said the north side of Worcester Street between Baltimore and Philadelphia avenues once housed a thriving Black community in the late 1890s and early 1900s.
“You would never know it today,” Katz said. “You can pick almost any site in Ocean City, especially in the area south of 15th Street, and there is likely a story there, even if the lot is vacant today.”
“Just a few weeks later, Baker was back in court, this time accusing four teenagers from Washington with malicious destruction at his rooming place,” Katz said. “The underage boys had persuaded someone to buy them beer and then apparently went on a rampage – not an unusual occurrence.”
The building was sold again in 1961, mostly torn down and leased to what was then called the U.S. Post Office Department, Katz said.
“These stories come up quite often, given Ocean City’s 150-year history,” Katz said. “Ocean City is almost continuously reinventing itself.”
Katz pointed to another recent discovery: the town’s first substation, unearthed at the southwest corner of Baltimore Avenue and Somerset Street near the Boardwalk.

Let's write about a remarkable physician

Dr. Theodore C. Patterson, a Dundalk Maryland, family physician who was my late mother’s doctor. 

He died at 86 years old in Maryland. He grew up in the neighborhood where Henrietta Lacks lived.

By JACQUES KELLY in the Baltimore Sun

JUL 12, 2019 AT 12:50 PM

Reporter Jacques Kelly came to the Evening Sun as a summer intern in 1969 and later joined The News American. He’s been with The Baltimore Sun since 1986. As a local columnist and reporter, Jacques writes about neighborhoods for readers who like learning more about their city. He also writes local obituaries.

Obituary- Dr. Theodore C. Patterson, a retired physician who practiced in Dundalk and was called as a beloved community figure, died of Parkinson’s disease complications on July 9, 2019, at his Annapolis home. He was 86 years old.

“Dr. Patterson represented the epitome of good hard work and academic success,” said former U.S. Presentative Kweisi Mfume. “As a young person, in my formative yeaers, I sat in awe of him. He went on to become a friend and mentor. As a physician, he was a counselor to the many families he treated. He had a comforting spirit about him,”

Born in Sparrows Point, he was the son of Doward B. Patterson, Sr., a Bethlehem Steel Corporation foreman and his wife Louie Marshall, a homemaker. According to a biography prepared by his family, Dr. Patterson spent his youth in a house on J Street, one of the first at Turner Station to have indoor plumbing.

Dr. Patterson graduated from Sollers Point High School, in 1949, which ws then a segregated black institution. “But, the Class of 1949, accustomed to race-based barriers, didn’t give segregation mush thought,” said a 1999, Baltimore Sun article about a reunion. “You persevered,” said Dr. Patterson, recalling his high school years. He said that his classmates went on to careers in medicine, teaching, architecture, manufacturing and government.

“We’ve never really had a reunion. This is more of an anniversary,” said Patterson who co-organized that reunion.

He earned a pre-med degree at Morgan State University, and as an ROTC second lieutenant, he served as a training officer at Fort Dix, New Jersey for two years.

His family biography said that on a visit to New Orleans with a friend, the late Joe Thomas, Dr. Patterson me Sylvia Tureaud*, his future wife. They married on July 14, 1956.

He and his wife settled in Dundalk and raised their children. Dr. Patterson commuted by train daily to graduate school at Howard University in Washington, DC.. In 1958, he was accepted to the University of Maryland Medical School. Upon graduation he interned at Sinai Hospital. In 1965, he started his family practice in Turner Station. He later practiced in an office in the Logan Village Shopping Center.

“He was very friendly and jovial, and everyone loved Dr. Patterson,” said Dr. Willarda V. Edwards, with whom he practiced until his retirement in 1993. “He really was a true family physician. People brought all their relatives to him and they in turn told others about him. At Christmas, his office would be filled with the cakes and candies people brought him.”

His family said he made house calls evenings and weekends. He also called on patients when they were hospitalized and stopped in their rooms to say hello and offer support.

Dr. Patterson remained active in Dundalk and Sparrows Point community affairs and participated in events that promoted local history.

“It has been a close-knit community,” said in a 1973 Evening Sun article. “You rarely locked your doors and always went to your neighbors’ houses uninvited.” He said that he grew up not going into Baltimore City much, maybe two or three trips a year.

Dr. Patterson went on to be the first African American president of the Gilman School Parents’ Association during 1978-1979. He was a member of the Board of the Patapsco Federal Savings and Loan Association, the County Planning Board, a member of the Dundalk Community College Advisory Board, the Dundalk Jaycees and was a past president of the Dundalk Optimist Club.

From 1969 to 1970, he served as president of the American Medical Association, Baltimore County Chapter. He was also first African American to hold the post. He group awarded him its Physicians’ Community Service Award in 1993.

Entry in Dr. Patterson’s obituary guestbook (below) describes the way I remember how others in the community would remember him:

“Mr. Alvin and Diane Lewis and family from 5471 Moores Run Drive, wrote on Jul. 13, 2019: On behalf of Christ The King Church of Turner Station: I had the pleasure of seeing Dr. Theodore Patterson and his family attending church there for many years as a little girl. My grandfather and grandmother The late Sidney and Maggie Small, Mr. and Mrs. Mary Branch, The Howard family and Mrs. Good and Mrs. Moore attended the same church. Dr. Theodore Patterson left a Legacy for his family, his community and friends serving us all. We had a saying during church service "Peace be with you" telling one another. Dr. Theodore Patterson aka (cousin Teddy) in my words will be greatly missed by all who knew him. Earth has lost a great and good man but Heaven has gained a true and faithful Angel. We are keeping his dear wife and family in our prayers for days to come. Love Always Mrs. Diane Moss-Lewis and family

*Alexander Pierre "A. P." Tureaud, Sr. (February 26, 1899 – January 22, 1972) was an African-American attorney who headed the legal team for the New Orleans chapter of the NAACP during the Civil Rights Movement. With the assistance of Thurgood Marshall and Robert Carter from the NAACP Legal Defense and Educational Fund, A. P. Tureaud filed the lawsuit that successfully ended the system of Jim Crow segregation in New Orleans. That case paved the way for integrating the first two elementary schools in the Deep South. (From Wikipedia).