Black History Month 2025 x BALT 10 Year

As we wrap up Black History Month, it is clear that history repeated time and time again has brought us to this current moment. 2025 marks 10 years since the senseless murder of Freddie Gray and subsequent Baltimore Uprising. What happened 10 years ago was not unique, but a piece of the larger history of black uprisings in America brought upon by white political violence, police escalation and instigation. 

2025 also marks BALT’s 10th year of operation, formed in response to the unrest in Baltimore after years of mistreatment at the hands of BPD. Even ten years after Freddie Gray lost his life, we are still combating and fighting a lot of the same issues that we had before. 

The Baltimore Uprising and subsequent formation of BALT 10 years ago is a part of a long history of unrest. There is no easy answer to end racist, violent policing, but a movement maintained and fought together weakens the status quo.  

Learn More:

• The New Yorker: “The Unknown History of Black Uprisings” by Keeanga-Yamahtta Taylor

  “In a new book, the historian Elizabeth Hinton reveals that, in the late sixties and early seventies, there were hundreds of local rebellions against white violence and racial inequality.”

• “America on Fire: The Untold History of Police Violence & Black Rebellion” by Elizabeth Hinton

  “Black rebellion, America on Fire powerfully illustrates, was born in response to poverty and exclusion, but most immediately in reaction to police violence. In 1968, President Lyndon Johnson launched the “War on Crime,” sending militarized police forces into impoverished Black neighborhoods. Facing increasing surveillance and brutality, residents threw rocks and Molotov cocktails at officers, plundered local businesses, and vandalized exploitative institutions. Hinton draws on exclusive sources to uncover a previously hidden geography of violence in smaller American cities, from York, Pennsylvania, to Cairo, Illinois, to Stockton, California.”