NARRATOR: This program was made possible in part by... The Corporation for Public Broadcasting, a private corporation funded by the American people.

And by... Debbie Driesman and Frank Islam, honored to support Maryland Public Television with pride in America's 250th and the state of Maryland.

♪ ♪ NARRATOR: Maryland, the Free State.

But freedom here has never been simple.

Maryland's story runs from tidewater to ridgeline, through city alleys and farm roads: a crossroads of the nation's ideals and arguments.

For 250 years, this small state has embodied the country's contradictions, fierce and fractured but always pushing towards the unfinished work of democracy.

And down near the Chesapeake, that restless energy still gathers beneath one dome.

The Maryland State House, where 250 years of American struggle and promise refuse to grow quiet.

BRYAN SEARS: All of the things that we recognize as really important parts of this country have ties to this building and to Annapolis.

For me, as a native Marylander, it really gives me a deep sense of pride about the state that I live in.

(indistinct crowd chatter).

NARRATOR: Today in the State House, senators and delegates are racing to the finish line.

Because tonight at midnight, the legislature's 90 days of debate and negotiation will culminate in a series of votes leading to the final gavel.

ANNOUNCER: Senate bill 181, from Kettleman Correctional Services.

NARRATOR: Anything that doesn't pass before the stroke of 12 dies and must begin again next year.

MEMBER: I do believe that this is already in the bill, but... NARRATOR: They call it, "Sine Die."

MEMBER: Alright senators, on this Monday April 7th, sine die, with 38 members in the chamber and a quorum being present.

NARRATOR: Over the coming hours, legislators will blast through almost 900 bills.

Journalist Bryan Sears will keep an eye on it all, as he's done for 20 years now.

BRYAN: It means "without a day."

The, sine die, it's a sprint.

It's non stop.

I start my day here probably around seven in the morning and I don't walk out of here usually until about 3 a.m.

the next day.

NARRATOR: Sine die distills Maryland democracy into a single charged day.

Governor Wes Moore, Maryland's 63rd, arrives with the awareness that he stands in a line stretching back to the revolution.

BRYAN: Hey Wes, can I ask you the importance of today?

WES MOORE: Of course, yeah, I mean, today is a big day, sine die, you know, the legislature is here for, for 90 days.

It's actually one of the few states in the country that actually sets it up like this.

But, you know, come here for 90 days and just do the people's business.

We're excited about today's hearing.

Sine die is an important day.

MEMBER: Members in the chamber and a quorum being present, the Senate in Maryland remains in session.

We have a third reading calendar.

NARRATOR: This building has hosted the hard work of democracy, loud, messy, human, for over a quarter millennium.

(indistinct chamber conversation).

NARRATOR: As the oldest State House in the nation still in use, no other setting in America better reflects the full story of our nation's journey toward a more perfect and more inclusive union.

MOORE: Maryland really epitomizes some of the great glories of this country and frankly, some of the great heartbreaks of this country.

It is pretty wild where every time I go to work in the morning, I walk past a portrait of King Charles.

But, you know what I also walk past when I'm on my way to work, is a statue of Thurgood Marshall.

And that's, that's the dichotomy.

You know, it is not lost on me at all, that when I look at the walls of the other governors that have come before me, I look different than every single one of them.

And I do think about, for some of the people that are staring down from their portraits, what they would think of me?

...you could not find, you could have not got to this point.. I think it's one of the things that makes me so in love with this state.

The arc of this state is long.

And also know that, that history is also what you lean on, even during your most challenging days.

...about our laws, and so, keeping your streets safe... NARRATOR: Today, we take a house of, and for, all the people for granted.

But there was a time when the very idea that power could belong to the governed was nothing short of revolutionary.

It took place here, in the Old Senate Chamber, preserved exactly as it was back on a winter afternoon in 1783 when General George Washington was about to do something no victorious general had ever done before.

DAVID RUBENSTEIN: Historically, when you were a general and you won a war, you stayed on and you became a king.

Most kings in Europe actually came about because the original king was a military leader.

NARRATOR: But after seven years of brutal war, Washington doesn't want a crown.

He wants to go home to Mount Vernon.

The question is, how will he give up his power?

When angry soldiers demanding back pay threatened to march on Philadelphia, Congress fled south to Maryland.

For the next nine months, the Annapolis State House will serve as the nation's capital.

So it is here, in this quieter place that George Washington drafts his resignation as commander in chief.

ELAINE RICE BACHMANN: He wrote the resignation speech at Mann's Tavern, where he was staying, essentially off Main Street.

What was unusual and what historians are so focused on in this resignation speech, is that he did not write it in advance.

He really wasn't sure what the protocol was going to be when he arrived.

Only three members of Congress, including Thomas Jefferson, know exactly what is planned.

They design a brief but powerful ceremony.

EDNA GREENE MEDFORD: It was a staged affair.

When he finished, he was to bow to the Congress, which suggested that he was transferring power from himself back to Congress, the, the organization that had given him that authority to begin with.

NARRATOR: By late afternoon, the Old Senate Chamber is packed.

Members of Congress sit in silence.

As Washington pulls the letter from his coat pocket, many notice that the great man's hands are trembling.

An unusual show of nerves from someone who had never flinched under fire.

LARRY HOGAN: He was a tall, you know, strong guy.

The, the general who just won the war.

And yet he was very humble with his hands shaking because it was a, it was a, he realized the importance of it.

NARRATOR: Witnesses recalled Washington's voice catching as he spoke his final words.

GEORGE WASHINGTON: "Bidding an affectionate farewell to this August body, under whose orders I have so long acted, I here offer my commission, and take my leave of all the employments of public life."

ELAINE: There were tears shed, according to our two eyewitness accounts.

Washington exited quickly.

Uh, his horse and aides were waiting outside the building, and he rode off to Mount Vernon and was home in time for Christmas Eve.

MOORE: He walked in the building as General George Washington, and he left the building as a farmer.

Without that resignation letter, there would be no 63rd governor of the state of Maryland.

That every election that has happened in this country, including mine, they stand on the shoulders of George Washington and this decision of humility.

That if we were going to build a more perfect union, than the more perfect union needs to be the one that lets the people decide its own future.

RUBENSTEIN: King George, who we had fought the war against, said that if in fact Washington did turn down the opportunity to be the leader of the country, he would be the greatest character of his generation.

And he was.

NARRATOR: Today, Washington's resignation speech, preserved in the State House's main hall, is considered one of the nation's most sacred texts, behind only the Declaration of Independence, the Constitution and the Bill of Rights.

Upstairs, a copy of it sits in a place of honor in Governor Wes Moore's office.

MOORE: It's right there, it's right there.

I'll, I'll show you.

This is the foundation of every single election that we've had.

Every one.

Because there's this idea of the, the peaceful transfer of power.

And I think that's why as Marylanders, it's something we take very seriously because we're the birthplace of it.

Like, literally downstairs was where George Washington said the power belongs to the people.

When you understand your history, you understand your power.

When you understand that, that the journeys of those who came before us, in the state of Maryland alone, what their journeys were, you understand your power.

EDNA: This American experiment was, was just that, an experiment.

But it, it was important to us, but it also resonated across the waters, you know, around the globe.

Because people understood that there was a new type of government that was being formed and that the people would be in charge.

NARRATOR: But there's another side to this heroic story, one that reveals the fundamental contradictions at the heart of America's founding.

RUBENSTEIN: George Washington inherited some slaves.

And when he married Martha Custis, he got a lot more slaves under his command.

And he struggled with slavery throughout his life.

ELAINE: But not just him, in that room in Congress, he was surrounded by enslavers.

EDNA: So it's, it's hard to look at these great men in American history and understand their reasoning for enslaving people while they're fighting for their own freedom.

We know that people are motivated by wealth, and certainly enslaved people gave Washington and Jefferson and Madison and all of those founders a great deal of wealth.

They said one thing and they did another when it came to the enslavement of African-Americans.

ELAINE: Can we cancel Washington because he was an enslaver?

There are those who would say yes.

You know, why do we have a statue of Washington in the State House?

Why have those not been pulled down?

Um, all we can do is look on balance at his achievements and what they contributed toward that more perfect union that we are still striving to accomplish.

NARRATOR: When Washington engaged in his selfless act, the building in which he did it looked quite different than it does today.

The Annapolis State House cornerstone was first laid in 1772, atop what was once known as Church Hill, the highest point in the city.

Built in Georgian style, its brick walls, evenly spaced windows, and clear center line reflect Enlightenment values of the day, that prize reason, balance and civic restraint.

Brick is abundant in the Colonies, making the building fire resistant and practical for a public structure meant to endure.

When completed in 1784, the building is a masterpiece, but for one thing, it lacks the iconic dome we know today.

(keys jingling, unlocking).

ELAINE: When the original State House was built, there was a sort of insufficient cupola, as everyone describes it, that was leaky.

So in 1784, they endeavored to design a dome, which is what we see today.

Here in Annapolis with shipbuilders there's certainly the expertise to build tight and fast wood structures.

So it was built entirely of wood without nails.

NARRATOR: Moving up through the scaffolding today is like stepping back in time.

Many of the original cypress beams are adorned with the signatures of those who came before.

MOORE: When you're going up into the dome, you realize you're going somewhere that not many people have seen.

And so it's pretty special being able to work in a building that the building itself is history.

And to see all the signatures on the wood and to know that, you know, we're all part of that history as well.

ELAINE: The dome of the State House is the highest point in Annapolis.

It has become, you know, the icon of the city.

At the top of the dome is an acorn, a gilded acorn.

We associate acorns with wisdom, with the oak tree.

It's six feet tall, essentially.

It's sheathed in metal around wood.

And then that metal is gilded.

It's gold.

NARRATOR: But by 1996, after more than two centuries of wind, rain and lightning strikes, the dome was showing its age.

In a feat equal parts artistry and engineering, craftsman stripped, repaired and repainted every inch.

But when they looked at the acorn, they discovered it was falling apart, from the inside.

ELAINE: The rot was extensive.

NARRATOR: Workers also cleaned and restored the dome's lightning rod, which has protected the State House for over 200 years.

Built to Benjamin Franklin's specifications, it was the largest of his inventions ever made at the time.

But it generated quite a buzz in a fiery dispute between Franklin and King George.

ELAINE: At the time, King George the Third espoused that the most effective lightning rod was something that was blunted on the end.

Franklin's design is pointed.

NARRATOR: The King viewed the pointed rods as a sign of American rebellion, and ordered all lightning rods in the British Empire to be topped with cannonballs.

Benjamin Franklin took notice, writing to a friend, he said... BENJAMIN FRANKLIN: "The King changing his rods to blunt conductors is a matter of small importance to me.

It is only since he thought himself and his family safe from thunder of heaven, that he dared use his own thunder in destroying his innocent subjects."

ELAINE: Even then, Maryland was allying itself with independent thought, with an American thinker.

NARRATOR: Eventually science had the last word.

Rounded tops are better protection.

But Maryland is sticking to her guns.

ELAINE: The State House's lightning rod is pointed on the end to this day.

MOORE: I think it's one of the most beautiful views that I have ever seen.

And by the way, it's one of the best places to watch a 4th of July because you get to see multiple firework shows at once from, from up top there.

And it's one of the best places to watch the Blue Angels, because the entire building shakes when the Blue Angels fly over the State House for the Naval Academy graduation.

NARRATOR: Ten stories tall, still one of the largest wooden structures of its kind in the world.

For nearly 250 years, this dome has watched over Maryland's journey from colonial rebellion to modern democracy.

But the path has been anything but straight.

By the 1840s, Maryland's journey towards a more perfect democracy is chugging along in fits and starts.

And, in like most every other state in the young nation, the quiet dignity of the voting booth and integrity of Election Day haven't quite arrived.

JOHN GRINSPAN: There's basically no registration.

There's no I.D.s.

People do things like they'll show up at the polling place with a full beard and vote and shave it down to a mustache and vote and shave the mustache and vote.

NARRATOR: Welcome to Maryland politics of the first half of the 19th century, where democracy looks more like a barroom brawl and your vote might literally cost you your life.

JOHN: It's called Baltimore Mob Town for a reason.

There's all this political violence and, and open violence in the street around elections.

NARRATOR: In 19th century Maryland, Election Day isn't a civic duty, it's a contact sport.

And since the private voting booth hasn't been invented yet, everything is out in the open.

JOHN: When people voted, there's a large population that gathers at the polling place, which is often just a saloon.

They hold the ballot, it's usually given to you by a party activist or pushed on you, and you vote in front of the population around you, your, your boss, your friends, your enemies, your father-in-law all watch you vote.

Obviously, there's some big problems with that.

Boss is saying you better vote the way I want if you want a job on Monday.

Ballots are color-coded often so you can tell who's voting how.

NARRATOR: Voting in Maryland isn't just public, it's transactional.

Party bosses run the show.

And freedom of choice often depends on who pays your wages or who pours your drink.

Oftentimes, many who vote aren't even from Maryland.

JOHN: Because Baltimore is one of these chain of cities up and down the East Coast, from Washington to Baltimore to Philly to New York to Boston, people start to use kind of itinerant populations from these different cities to swing elections in other cities.

So I get some guys from Philly, I get some guys from D.C., maybe give them some whiskey, maybe give them some Bowie knives and bring them down to Baltimore and have them try to take over polling places and cast extra votes and swing elections in an illegal and, and often violent way.

NARRATOR: Even the literary world may not have been spared Maryland's rough and tumble democracy.

The death of the state's most famous bard remains a mystery.

But one theory holds that Edgar Allan Poe fell victim to "cooping."

A brutal election day practice in which victims were kidnapped, plied with liquor, dressed in different clothes and forced to vote again and again.

JOHN: Edgar Allan Poe is, is believed to be in one of these voting coops, where people are kind of impressed into vote or forced him to vote.

And there's theories that he'd been given so much alcohol and maybe abused in the process and that, that led to his death during an election.

♪ ♪ NARRATOR: By 1860, Americans face their most bitter presidential election yet.

It will turn largely on slavery.

And in Maryland, slavery's roots run deep.

ELAINE: Maryland had one of the largest populations of enslaved people across all the Colonies.

At one point being nearly 50% Black enslaved.

The foundation of Maryland's economy was tobacco.

Tobacco was grown on the backs of enslaved labor.

RUBENSTEIN: When Lincoln ran for president in 1860, he only got about 2.5% of the vote in Maryland, 2.5%.

And there were several counties in Maryland that he didn't get a single vote.

EDNA: And so there are people who are very annoyed that he was elected.

More than annoyed.

Absolutely angered that he has been elected.

NARRATOR: Lincoln's journey to his inauguration will prove treacherous.

Maryland, a slave state bordering the nation's capital, seethes with Confederate sympathy.

RUBENSTEIN: And his security people said, you can't take a direct route by train because you'll be captured.

So ultimately, he took a circuitous route that took him through most of the northern states.

But the most dangerous part was in Baltimore.

Because it was widely rumored, there's a plot to kill you if you get through Baltimore.

EDNA: And he has to disguise himself as he comes through Maryland, which is absolutely hilarious because how do you disguise someone as tall as Lincoln?

He had a very unusual appearance, and he does make his way through Maryland, you know, without being attacked.

NARRATOR: Just weeks after his inauguration, the first blood of the Civil War is spilled, not at Fort Sumter, but in the streets of Baltimore.

JOHN: Northerners, Southerners, Union, Confederate, fighting in the streets, killing each other.

This is this conflict that had been predicted for so long, that it sparks the whole bloodshed of the war.

EDNA: Maryland was a hotbed of secessionism.

They, they didn't secede, but they didn't only because Lincoln would not allow them to.

Had he allowed them to just go their own merry way, I, it is very likely that the Union would not have won the war because then the capital would have been surrounded.

NARRATOR: In Annapolis, the Maryland State House becomes a pressure cooker of divided loyalties.

Before war's end, dozens of legislators will be summarily jailed by Lincoln for sedition.

ELAINE: When the legislature was going to convene that summer for a special session to discuss the federal occupation, Governor Hicks wisely moved it out of the city of Annapolis to Frederick, and that is where the legislature met in the summer of 1861.

And by doing so, and sort of de-escalating the crisis taking place here in, in the city, it enabled Maryland to maintain that neutrality and not vote to secede.

EDNA: When they write the new state constitution in 1864, and the abolition of slavery is a part of those stipulations, Marylanders do not support it.

It only passes, it's only ratified because of the soldiers, the Union soldiers from Maryland who vote on it.

NARRATOR: In the end, the 1864 constitution passes by just 375 votes out of 60,000 cast.

One of the most punitive in the nation, it imposes a draconian loyalty oath that excludes every Confederate sympathizer from voting, holding office, serving in civic life or even teaching in public schools.

But three years later, the oath is repealed and the old forces surge back in reclaiming State House power almost overnight.

Proof of how fragile Maryland's wartime moral reckoning really is.

After the Civil War, the nation struggles through Reconstruction.

Many former slave states begin to reframe the Civil War with the mythology of a lost cause.

The war, they claim, was fought for honorable reasons, despite the fact that every Confederate secession declaration cited slavery as their justification for leaving the Union.

RUBENSTEIN: Many people in the South were arguing that the southern states were fighting for states rights.

EDNA: The idea that the war was waged for honorable reasons, that the South was being colonized by the North.

Never mind that most of the early presidents were southern.

NARRATOR: As the Lost Cause myth swept across the former slaveholding states, public squares became stages for a rewritten past.

Maryland was no exception.

In 1872, a new statue goes up outside the State House of former State House delegate, Roger Taney.

ELAINE: Roger Brooke Taney was a native Marylander born in Frederick and of course became the Chief Justice of the United States Supreme Court.

EDNA: He was someone who had been a slave holder and supposedly got rid of his enslaved laborers because he hated Black people so much.

Which I find fascinating.

MARCIA CHATELAIN: And his legacy is very much remembered in Maryland and the entire country because of his decision in the Dred Scott case.

NARRATOR: Dred Scott v Sandford came before Taney's court in 1857, on the eve of the Civil War.

It was one of the most infamous Supreme Court decisions ever made.

EDNA: The issue was whether or not Dred Scott was free because he had been taken into free territory and had resided in a free state.

What he says is that enslavers can take their property anywhere they want in the country.

Doesn't matter.

They still remain enslaved.

The second thing was that Black men had no rights that White men were bound to respect.

Certainly devastating to African-Americans, enslaved and free.

NARRATOR: And yet, in 1872, the Maryland State Legislature chose to erect a statue to Taney.

MARCIA: It sends a message to African-American Marylanders that they are not part of the body politic, that they are not essential to the state, past and present, and that their futures may be decided by people who also celebrate the legacy of someone like Taney.

NARRATOR: Taney's statue sits there for the next 143 years.

Then in 2017, everything changed.

CROWD: You will not replace us.

ELAINE: After Charlottesville, I remember it very vividly, that fear that our State House could become a site of, of, of a riot.

NARRATOR: When the country began to question the stories cast in bronze a century ago, Maryland faces its own quiet reckoning.

HOGAN: You know, I'm not for erasing history.

I think we should look at all of our history that was good and all of our history was bad, but there was no reason to celebrate it.

We only have a handful of of statues at the State House.

And with this 250 year history nearly, and the founding of the nation, why celebrate one of our worst moments?

The Dred Scott decision, and, and, and a terrible Supreme Court justice with a terrible decision and we have a statue sitting there.

Why don't we highlight something that we can be proud of?

NARRATOR: On August 22nd, 2017, just before sunrise Taney's statue is quietly removed.

MARCIA: We don't celebrate the losers of history.

We don't celebrate the evil of history.

NARRATOR: Today where Taney's statue once stood, a new monument is being sculpted in its place.

One that will honor the Black patriots who fought in the Revolutionary War.

MOORE: All of our history matters.

Now we can say, what history are we lifting up, which history are we celebrating versus what is the history that we are glad we grew from?

And I think that that takes a certain level of maturity that a state or country has to have.

Going from Taney to Revolutionary War soldiers, you talk about one person who was actually used his time and his perch to restrict humanity.

And this other group, in many ways, this nameless group who used their sacrifice in order to provide humanity a chance at growth.

NARRATOR: By 1904, the Civil War is in the past, slavery abolished, and the 15th Amendment has long promised Black men the right to vote.

In that year, the Maryland legislature will take a symbolic but important step.

MOORE: If you look at Maryland's state flag.

Maryland's state flag in many ways is a contradiction.

Our state flag that I literally have right here, you know, it's, it's part Union symbol and part Confederate symbol.

It highlights the fact that Maryland is really the northernmost southern state inside this country.

NARRATOR: On March 9th, 1904, Maryland legislators approve a new state flag, melding together shields once flown by Marylanders who fought on opposite sides of the Civil War.

It's a public gesture of healing.

A declaration that the state is ready to move forward.

But beneath this new banner of unity, Maryland is undergoing an upheaval.

Immigrants from the old countries: German, Polish, Italian, Eastern European Jews arrive through Baltimore's port in staggering numbers.

Their presence promises a more diverse Maryland but stokes fears that the changing electorate will erode power long held by native born White men.

And demographic change isn't only coming by ship.

The Great Migration is beginning to pull Black Americans from the Deep South into cities like Baltimore, where their growing political influence poses another challenge to the State House's old order.

JOHN: You do get a growing urban African-American population.

There are people coming up from Virginia, from North Carolina.

That increases the voting power.

Just sheer numbers.

NARRATOR: In response, nativist White legislators in Annapolis create a series of Jim Crow ballot box literacy tests meant to curtail both Black and immigrant voting rights.

DAVID TAFT TERRY: Silly, goofy even.

You, you walk into the registrar's office and the registrar would tell you, well you can sign to be able to vote as soon as you tell me how many bubbles are in this bar of soap?

NARRATOR: Facing disenfranchisement, Blacks and new immigrants, find common cause united by the simple belief that in America, your voice should count.

Across Maryland, interracial coalitions rise up and defeat voter suppression efforts more effectively than in any other former slave state.

Stung by these electoral defeats, State House legislators simply double down on their efforts to restrict voting rights.

So when American women win the right to vote in 1920, most Maryland women will be forced to wait another 20 years for suffrage.

But even that doesn't stop a Maryland suffragist and teacher named Mary Ristau from shattering the glass ceiling.

In 1917, Mary launches a relentless campaign to strengthen Maryland public schools.

Four years later, she makes history as the first woman elected to the Maryland House of Delegates.

Smart, unyielding and impossible to ignore, Ristau helps open the doors of the State House to yet another group of Marylanders long kept outside.

(explosions).

World War II will reshape Maryland's political landscape yet again, especially in Baltimore.

The city becomes one of the nation's great engines of war, Bethlehem Steel, the shipyard at Sparrows Point.

(shipyard noises).

Black migrants from the South and White immigrants from Europe flood in for jobs that promise steady pay and a better life.

DAVID: The war industry brought all sorts of Americans into the city.

The city grew by hundreds of thousands of people.

NARRATOR: Among them is U.S.

Army Private Thomas Broadus, a young Black soldier in Baltimore on leave wearing the uniform of a nation that still denies him equality.

DAVID: There was an historic rift between African-Americans and the all-White police force.

Who in many ways saw as part of their duty to reinforce and maintain White supremacy in the city.

African-Americans in uniform were especially targeted for dehumanizing and belittling to remind them that simply because they're wearing the uniform of the United States Army, that didn't make them more than what they traditionally had been.

NARRATOR: On a cold February night on Pennsylvania Avenue, Private Broadus, a father of new baby twins, meets the reality of Jim Crow.

Leaving a nightclub with some friends, the group is confronted by a White cop, who attempts to arrest them for boarding an "illegal taxi."

Multiple witnesses say that Thomas tries to de-escalate the situation and turns away, presenting no threat to the officer.

When a shot rings out.

(gunshot).

DAVID: The officer shoots him in the back, in cold blood in front of a sidewalk full of people.

NARRATOR: Then, as Thomas tries to crawl under a car for safety, the police officer shoots him again.

(gunshot).

Thomas's killer is a cop already accused of murdering another Black man.

At a time when Black soldiers are fighting for democracy abroad, the murder strikes a deep nerve in the city's Black community.

Baltimore's Black citizens, along with new immigrant allies, begin to organize.

The Afro-American newspaper's editor, Carl Murphy, takes the lead.

A Harvard trained intellectual with a readership in the hundreds of thousands, Murphy has spent years pushing for equality through the courts and the press.

Now he calls for something more visible, a march on the Annapolis State House.

DAVID: They organize a caravan of busses and cars and commuter trains from the city, down to Annapolis.

NARRATOR: They come by the thousands, workers, teachers, veterans, preachers.

Families dressed in Sunday best.

Filling the seats of the Senate chamber, 2,000 Black Marylanders demanding recognition and reform.

DAVID: They have speakers and they have all sorts of other uh, uh demonstrations.

They met with the governor.

They met with legislature.

NARRATOR: Their demands go far beyond justice for Broadus.

They want housing, jobs, equal representation and a seat at the table of democracy.

Many had been inside the State House since morning.

Standing.

Waiting.

Listening.

Some without food or water.

All carrying the weight of a young American serviceman's death.

Then, when words no longer seemed enough, history found another way to speak.

♪ CROWD: Sweet land of liberty, of the I sing... ♪ DAVID: It was very much par for the course that at the end they're singing My Country 'Tis of Thee, because they mean that specifically.

You know, they're not asking... They're, they're demanding that the fact of their Americanness be recognized because it, it is a fact.

♪ CROWD: ...mountainside, let freedom ring.

♪ NARRATOR: 2,000 voices echo through the same chamber where Washington once resigned his command.

♪ CROWD: Sweet land of liberty... ♪ NARRATOR: The sounds carry farther than anyone expects.

That next week, Maryland's political order begins to shift.

Soon, Black uniformed policemen appear on Baltimore streets for the very first time.

And many historians now say that the 1942 March on Annapolis is the catalyst for the larger Civil Rights Movement to come.

It proves that the disenfranchised can engage in nonviolent marches, protests, sit-ins and freedom rides, and win.

The march is also a clarion call to the powers that be, that the basic calculus of voting in Maryland has truly changed.

DAVID: So you see politicians like Theodore McKeldin, who is a two time mayor of Baltimore and once governor, you see people like, Tommy D'Alessandro, both the father and the son who become mayors of Baltimore, they begin to understand that uh, this constituency has some punch behind it now and it grows with each election.

JOHN: And there are a lot of politicians who the thing they care about most is not necessarily some racial dogma, but winning power.

And if power is going to come from Black voters, that's fine.

If it's going to come from Polish voters, that's fine.

So there are people who just they see, they see the numbers and so they read the tea leaves.

NARRATOR: 1954, a breakthrough year.

The elections of Truly Hatchett and Harry and Emory Cole, the first African-Americans in the Maryland State House, convince many that nonviolent grassroots power has finally paved a way into the system.

An experiment whose limits are about to be tested in a town 50 miles south and a world away from the Annapolis State House.

The next major milestone in Maryland's march toward a more perfect union will emerge from a quiet bayside town where activist Gloria Richardson will push nonviolence to its breaking point.

MARCIA: Cambridge, Maryland, is on the Eastern Shore of the state, and it was a town that existed in many ways like a Deep South town.

And the economic and social inequality that plagued African-Americans was shocking, even to visitors from the South.

NARRATOR: Black residents lived in chicken shack houses beside factories that refused to hire them... ...coped with half funded schools and one, Whites-only hospital.

With unemployment four times that of their White neighbors, this was a town where Black poverty was public policy.

Soon, Black residents begin to mobilize, led by Richardson and the newly formed Cambridge Nonviolent Action Committee.

MARCIA: And so they're sitting in, they're praying in, they're involved in direct action and they are met with violence.

Local police and local White supremacists are starting to attack peaceful protesters.

NARRATOR: As tensions rise, clashes escalate into open riots and violence.

Before it's over, Maryland Governor Millard Tawes, himself a former State House delegate, declares the most sweeping use of martial law in modern American history.

MARCIA: And eventually the violence explodes to the point where the National Guard are deployed into Cambridge.

(indistinct crowd noise).

MARCIA: Gloria Richardson was an incredible spokesperson for her movement.

MARCIA: And there's a famous picture of a National Guardsman pointing a bayonet at Gloria Richardson, and she has a look of like, "Don't even think about it."

And her hand is pushing away this firearm.

NARRATOR: The image, a Black woman pushing aside a soldier's bayonet, becomes one of the defining photographs of the Civil Rights Era.

It captures more than defiance.

It embodies the impatience of Black Marylanders, who have begun to lose faith in Dr.

King's call to turn the other cheek.

MARCIA: She starts to wonder, what is the point of sitting in an integrated restaurant if you can't afford the food, if you do not have a quality job, if you do not have a good place to live.

NARRATOR: At an impasse, Maryland legislators decide to steer Gloria and the Cambridge crisis to the White House.

They know federal power can do what Annapolis cannot: enforce civil rights, and spare the State House from confronting its own failures.

Down in Washington, Gloria meets with Attorney General Robert Kennedy.

And over the course of nine hours, they hash out what is called the Treaty of Cambridge.

The treaty promises desegregation and protection.

But Richardson sees through it.

Words on paper that ignore the deeper disease of inequality.

MARCIA: Gloria ultimately understands that the Treaty of Cambridge is not a strong agreement.

NARRATOR: Despite Gloria's reservations, on March 14th, 1964, in response to the treaty and violence that had taken place, the Maryland General Assembly passes the Public Accommodations Act, making it illegal to deny accommodations, advantages, facilities, or privileges in any public space based on race, creed, color or national origin.

Gloria Richardson's courage reminds us that progress is rarely polite, but when grounded in equality, compromise can build the world her movement envisioned.

In 2017, Maryland lawmakers honored her legacy by declaring February 11th Gloria Richardson Day, recognizing her as one of the strongest advocates for economic justice and desegregation.

Whose leadership helped define a pivotal era in America's struggle for for civil rights.

A generation after Cambridge State House leaders confront a new challenge.

The battles are no longer over lunch counters and ballots, but over whether cities hollowed out by decades of disinvestment can be rebuilt, and for whom?

By the 1970s, nowhere embodied that question more starkly than Baltimore's Inner Harbor, once a thriving industrial port, now a blighted waterfront.

The revitalization of the Inner Harbor would become one of America's most celebrated urban turnarounds.

But its story, like so many in Maryland, began beneath the dome of the State House.

In the 1980s, legislators in Annapolis got to work crafting tax incentives to anchor a new public aquarium and create an innovative public agency called the Maryland Stadium Authority, designed to conjure major civic projects.

One site would become the boldest test of that vision yet.

Its name, Camden Yards.

RUBENSTEIN: When this concept of Camden Yards was developed, the idea was to replicate what had happened in Chicago with Wrigley Field, or replicate what happened in Boston with Fenway Park, which is to build something downtown area and make it really just for baseball.

NARRATOR: From an abandoned rail yard rose a cathedral of sport unlike anything built in nearly a century.

A ballpark that rejected concrete domes and reached back to the old time intimacy of Wrigley and Fenway.

But renewal came at a price.

Building the Inner Harbor meant bulldozing a number of small businesses that had been in the city for decades.

Progress, as Maryland has learned time and again, comes at a cost.

And yet, the Inner Harbor and Camden Yards helped transform Baltimore.

Thousands of jobs were created, tourism surged and Marylanders across the state, rural, urban and suburban alike, found something shared to root for.

ANNOUNCER: ...and the Orioles return home with a... RUBENSTEIN: I think when Camden Yards opened, it was something that made everybody realize we had created something here that was unique and different and ultimately rooting for your hometown team.

CROWD: Let's go O's!

Let's go... ANNOUNCER: There's a ground ball off the shoe of the pitcher.

It'll kick into centerfield.

NARRATOR: Camden Yards was a compromise between past and future, public investment and private gain.

Neighborhood loss versus statewide benefit.

HOGAN: I, I believe that maybe pragmatism is a part of Maryland's DNA.

And if you go through our history, you know, we were sometimes divided, but we usually found a middle path, you know that, that common ground where we could all stand together as other states, you know, maybe we're heading off in opposite directions.

You know, we kind of found a way to bring people together.

NARRATOR: The middle temperament, born of geography and history, may be Maryland's most enduring virtue.

JOHN: You can't be too far from Annapolis and Baltimore in Maryland.

Because you can't get too far from your enemies, you have to find some way to get along.

NARRATOR: Perhaps that is the lesson of Maryland's 250 year experiment: from Washington's surrender of power through the founder's contradictions, Civil War and reunion, and repeated efforts to narrow democracy even as it widened.

Despite setbacks and moments of bitter, even violent conflict, Marylanders keep returning to the same unfinished work, creating a polity where government serves the people, not the other way around.

MEMBER: Anyone should change their vote, explain their vote.

If not, the clerk will take... NARRATOR: Back in the Maryland State House midnight is approaching.

Legislators have been at it for 16 hours now and have passed some 900 bills in the process.

Yet somehow, relations across the aisle remain civil.

MEMBER: Very interesting bill, I was just wondering, are there any other states that uh recognize... NARRATOR: Across the country, political battle lines are hardening.

But here in this room, Maryland still practices something increasingly rare: cooperation.

It's imperfect, fragile... but real.

MEMBER: Would the good senator from Frederick, is there any other restrictions... HOGAN: You know, unlike just down the road in Washington, where it seems as if things are coming apart and where nothing gets done, where here we try to set a better example and show a better path forward for the rest of the country.

And, you know, I think Maryland, Maryland has done that for a long time.

There are strong disagreements and sometimes they're, you know, not always, you know, the, the friendliest.

But there, there is a decorum in the State House.

There is a respect.

And, um, you know, I think we try to, even when you disagree, we try to do it, you know, without being disagreeable and to try to respect the history of our State House and all that's happened there.

BRYAN: It allows people to be heard.

I mean, when you're, when you're attacking um, someone who's on the opposite side of, of a piece of policy, you're not, they're not listening to you and you're not listening to them.

(indistinct chamber noise).

MEMBER: Alright, thank you Mr.

President, I move that the Senate of Maryland stand adjourned, sine die.

MEMBER: Without objections, so ordered.

(cheering).

NARRATOR: With the final gavel, the Maryland Senate adjourns sine die.

It marks the passing of the latest chapter in Maryland's long experiment in democracy.

150 years before this moment, another visitor stood in this building, a man who had been held in bondage not far from here, but had reshaped the moral conscience of our nation, Frederick Douglass.

In 1874, Douglass returned to the Maryland State House and paused before the great painting of Washington's resignation.

ELAINE: And the newspaper accounts of that visit say he paced across that large painting and recited from memory Washington's resignation speech.

Even he who was always the first to point out that those founding documents did not include enslaved people, did not include him.

And he always pointed out the hypocrisy.

But what Washington did in, in that peaceful transfer of power, and, and setting that precedent for the rest of the world, he revered enough to memorize that.

NARRATOR: Douglass understood something timeless: that the health of a nation depends not on pretending its past was perfect, but on confronting it honestly.

MOORE: And I think it is important for people to embrace that Maryland is a remarkable place, but in many ways, the history of our state still is very much a paradox.

Loving your country doesn't mean lying about its history.

MARCIA: I think Frederick Douglass sees the possibilities of what America can be in his experiences in Maryland.

NARRATOR: In Douglass's choice to speak Washington's words aloud, we glimpse a remarkable truth: that even someone denied the promises of the nation could still see meaning in the ideals it aspired to.

MOORE: I, during my inauguration day, I was very specific about how I wanted the inauguration to go and I knew I wanted to start down at the Annapolis docks.

And the reason is not just because they're beautiful, but the reason is because the Annapolis docks were one of this country's first and largest slave ports.

And I started my inauguration day down there.

We did a wreath laying, and we said a prayer to the ancestors.

And then we marched.

Hundreds of us marched from those docks to the State House, a building that was built by enslaved people, that now was the place that I was about to get sworn in as the 63rd governor.

EDNA: Yeah, a patriot to me is someone who believes in the country but recognizes where we come from.

Recognizes the flaws that have existed and still do exist in the country, while celebrating the great things about the country as well.

It's about America as it was, America as it is and America as it can be in the future.

(indistinct chamber noise).

MEMBER: Clerk read next bill.

CLERK: House Bill 704 delegate Wivell, higher education Maryland graduate professional scholarship.

MEMBER: Change your vote, explain your vote.

If not, the clerk will take the call.

(crowd cheering).

NARRATOR: This program was made possible in part by... The Corporation for Public Broadcasting, a private corporation funded by the American people.

And by... Debbie Driesman and Frank Islam, honored to support Maryland Public Television with pride in America's 250th and the state of Maryland.

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