Nancy Pelosi – Baltimore Magazine

Saving Little Italy

Aaron Hope — Mon, 18 Jan 2021 15:48:02 +0000

The iconic ethnic neighborhood has outlasted all of Baltimore’s old-world enclaves.
Now it faces its greatest challenge in more than a century.

By Ron Cassie

PHOTOGRAPHY BY THOMAS C. SCILIPOTI WITH RICHARD M. HATCH & GREGORY MCKAY

History & Politics

Saving Little Italy

The iconic ethnic neighborhood has outlasted all of Baltimore’s old-world enclaves. Now it faces its greatest challenge in more than a century.

By Ron Cassie

Mario Scilipoti left his newly wed and, unbeknownst to him, pregnant wife behind in their mountainside Sicilian village when he departed for the United States. The 23-year-old did not speak English. He did not have, or need, a visa when his ship, the Patria, sailed past the Statue of Liberty and landed at Ellis Island. He did not have a lucrative job or graduate school admission waiting. Arriving 100 years ago this spring, he only had hopes of a brighter future for his soon-to-be-family and an uncle in Baltimore who was a barber. Following a lengthy apprenticeship while his still-unmet bambina spoke her first words back in Sicily, Scilipoti received his own license from the Maryland Board of Barber Examiners on July 24, 1922. Over time, he built a clientele and opened a shop on East Pratt Street. After five years, he returned to Sicily to reunite with his wife, Domenica, and daughter, Josefa, and they later followed him back to Baltimore.

Mario Scilipoti’s original barber’s license, July 1922.

In 1930, Tommaso, the couple’s second child, was born above that rowhouse Pratt Street barbershop. He, too, would earn a barber’s license and place a spinning red, white, and blue pole outside the window of his rowhouse. However, the younger Scilipoti, nicknamed “Mazzi” in the neighborhood, also had his eye on another career, which would prove fortuitous for the section of Southeast Baltimore already known by then as Little Italy.

Tom “Mazzi” Scilipoti had been in grade school at nearby St. Leo’s when his father, recognizing his interest in photography, bought him his first Ansco folding camera. By 20, he was shooting for the Baltimore Guide, an ongoing freelance gig that the award-winning, now- 90-year-old photographer held for 66 years, until the community paper shuttered in 2016. Over that time, the son of the immigrant barber took more pictures of the iconic Italian-American enclave in its heyday than any other photographer, capturing everyday life from its kitchens, corner stores, sandlot ballfields, Easter processions, and annual festivals—as well as the communions, graduations, and weddings of generations of immigrant families.

Perry Como meets and greets at Pisa’s restaurant, 1953.

He also documented many of the celebrity visitors to Little Italy’s narrow streets and famed eating establishments, from heavyweight champion Rocky Marciano and the Yankees’ Mickey Mantle and Whitey Ford, to burlesque legend Blaze Starr and pop stars such as Perry Como, to politicians from John F. Kennedy to Bill Clinton.

He even served as the official photographer of both childhood pal Tommy D’Alesandro III’s mayoral inauguration and the wedding of Tommy’s daughter, a certain future U.S. Speaker of the House, Nancy née D’Alesandro Pelosi.

“I’d get a call from Roma’s or Maria’s restaurant, and they’d say, ‘so-and-so just came in,’ and I’d grab my camera and run over,” Scilipoti recalls from his Bank Street home, a few blocks away from the heart of Little Italy. It’s the same rowhouse where he and his deceased wife Concetta, an Italian immigrant, raised their three children and where he has remained for nearly seven decades. “It was an exciting place to be a young photographer,” he continues, with a nod and smile, flipping through some neighborhood photos, which include a 1950s parade led by three young aspirational Little Italy politicians—Tommy D’Alesandro III, John Pica Sr., and Joseph Bertorelli (see opening photo). “It was an exciting place to be an old photographer, too.”

“I’D GET A CALL FROM ROMA’S OR MARIA’S RESTAURANT, AND THEY’D SAY, ‘SO-AND-SO JUST CAME IN,’ AND I’D GRAB MY CAMERA AND RUN OVER.”

Tom “Mazzi” Scilipoti (front, second from left) and neighborhood boys in front of the old Luge’s Confectionary, which is now Sabatino’s.

Sabatino's at night. Photography by Jon Bilous

Today, nearly all of Scilipoti’s contemporaries have passed, of course, including D’Alesandro, whose death in 2019 marked the end of an era for the once politically powerful Little Italy voting bloc. Popular across the city, he was known as “Young Tommy” to distinguish him from his father, Tommy D’Alesandro Jr., a former congressman whose election as mayor in 1947 had people dancing in the streets of Little Italy. Meanwhile, many, if not most of Scilipoti’s friends and their descendants moved over the years to Baltimore County for more square feet and larger, grassy backyards. By 1980, assimilation—the very thing Italian immigrants hoped for their children and grandchildren—posed a threat to the Italian haven’s long-term viability. St. Leo’s School, which had educated some five generations of Little Italy kids, was forced to close that year because of the shrinking number of young families in the neighborhood.

“You can’t blame them,” Scilipoti says with a shrug, speaking of those who decamped for the suburbs while he stayed put. “The people who left, they come back for the festivals or to go to Mass at St. Leo’s or to see people they know, anyhow. But it wasn’t for me. My studio was here. The church was here. I had a boat in the marina. It was convenient. It’s still convenient. My son Mario, he lives close by in Highlandtown. I know the restaurants are struggling terribly now, but the restaurants were here, and they’re still here. I’ve got an exhibition up right now at Chiapparelli’s.

“The future of Little Italy?” Scilipoti says, considering the impact of the deadly pandemic on the dozen-plus local eateries, a couple dating back to the 1940s and 1950s, and the broader neighborhood, which has been forced to cancel its annual festivals, events, and activities, and severely limit church attendance. Scilpoti says he’s not too worried—after all, Little Italy has held on to its identity longer than all of Baltimore’s other Old-World enclaves. “All I know is that it’s been here as long as I’ve been here.”

The tight-knit, roughly 15-square-block neighborhood, with its family—owned restaurants, bocce leagues, cabaret, annual festivals (St. Gabriel, St. Anthony, and Madonnari Arts), homespun spaghetti and ravioli fundraising dinners, culinary and language classes, and church listed on the National Registry of Historic Places—in other words, the Little Italy we know today—was in many ways born out of the first crisis it weathered. In 1904, the Great Baltimore Fire swept across the city, leveling downtown over a day and a half before it threatened to cross the Jones Falls and reach what was then referred to as the Italian “colony.” At St. Leo’s, the devout offered prayers that their homes and church be spared. As the flames continued to move closer, they cried out to St. Anthony of Padua, one of Italy’s most beloved saints, pleading for intercession. Eventually, terrified residents watching from the banks of the Jones Falls raced back to St. Leo’s, where they removed the statue of St. Anthony and carried it to the harbor for its protection, promising to honor the saint with an annual feast if the neighborhood survived, which it did because of a sudden, some said miraculous, early morning shift in the winds.

Soon after, The Baltimore Sun began noting and covering the community’s new St. Anthony festival, now describing the neighborhood no longer as a “colony” or “settlement,” but more affectionately as Little Italy. “The night scenes along the streets of Little Italy are as if they were transported from the streets of Naples or Genoa,” The Sun wrote in the summer of 1911, highlighting the neighborhood’s talented accordion players, as well as the immigrant laborers’ love of good wine, spaghetti and tomato sauce, imported sardines, and Italian soups and stews. “True, there are American trolley cars, the [row] houses are of the American architecture . . .the streets are paved with Baltimore cobbles. But the language is the language of Italy, the pleasure of the people of those of Italy and, by stretching the imagination, one might think he were in the land of King Victor Emmanuel.”

“TRUE, THERE ARE AMERICAN TROLLEY CARS, THE [ROW]HOUSES ARE OF THE AMERICAN ARCHITECTURE . . . THE STREETS ARE PAVED WITH BALTIMORE COBBLES. BUT THE LANGUAGE IS THE LANGUAGE OF ITALY. . . AND, BY STRETCHING THE IMAGINATION, ONE MIGHT THINK HE WERE IN THE LAND OF KING VICTOR EMMANUEL.”

Bocce and pinning dollar bill donations to St. Anthony are among the St. Gabriel Festival traditions (August 2017). Photography by Richard M. Hatch

Over the past 50 years, Little Italy’s imminent death has been greatly exaggerated many times. But there has been no threat akin to the deadly COVID-19 pandemic, with its suddenness, stay-at-home orders, and public closures, except the deadly 1918 flu pandemic. It is worth pointing out, however, Little Italy survived that, too. One way or another, the neighborhood has rolled with every punch, ever since its mid-century heyday. First, it was beckoning suburbs, school desegregation and white flight, and plans for an East-West expressway that would’ve destroyed the harbor neighborhoods. Then came the 1968 riots, which shuttered businesses in East and West Baltimore and hastened the departure of more city residents. By the 1970s, sharp declines in church and Catholic school attendance, not just in Baltimore, but across the country, presented existential challenges to the fabric of the neighborhood and, finally, cracks in the community’s stronghold did emerge. The looming aforementioned shuttering of St. Leo’s school, in particular, was widely predicted as Little Italy’s death knell. In 2007, the removal from ministry of Fr. Michael Salerno, the parish’s beloved “Father Mike,” accused of molesting a boy when he was a brother at a New York church in 1970s, proved another punch to the gut for many people in Little Italy.

Neighborhood kids during a May processsion at St. Leo's.

Still, the neighborhood and St. Leo’s persisted.

In fact, Little Italy not only withstood all those blows, it has always rebounded. Sometimes from just faith and good luck. At other times, by the dint of its own stubbornness and creativity. The same year that St. Leo’s school closed, the Inner Harbor opened and gave birth to the city’s tourism industry. The established Little Italy restaurants got a huge shot in the arm, while new ones opened in the mid-1980s, including Dalesio’s and the swanky Da Mimmo, attracting the likes of Tony Bennett, David Bowie, Faye Dunaway, Luciano Pavarotti, Stevie Wonder, Dustin Hoffman, Danny DeVito, Sylvester Stallone, Tom Selleck, and Johnny Depp at a time when Baltimore became a go-to set piece for mainstream Hollywood movies. (Named after original owner Domenico “Mimmo” Cricchio, who died in 2003, that restaurant, long an anchor, closed in January as owner Mary Ann Cricchio announced she was launching Da Mimmo Tours of Italy.)

Similarly, the opening of Camden Yards in the mid-’90s provided another major boost. The acclaimed, retro-style ballpark brought new legions from Boston, New York, Philadelphia, Washington—every city with a Major League club, really—to the neighborhood all summer long as new restaurants opened up again.

Night shot of Roma and gaslight streetlamp near High and Fawn streets, 1957.

In terms of its own initiatives, the neighborhood’s bocce courts, refurbished last year with help from the Department of Recreation & Parks, were built in 1993. They have been well-used ever since, with leagues, pre-coronavirus, run several nights a week by Giovanna Blatterman, a Sicilian immigrant whose daughter Gia Fracassetti and son-in-law chef Gianfranco Fracassetti, own Gia’s Café. The neighborhood’s annual film festival, which was the first of its kind in Baltimore when it began in 1999, drew international attention to Little Italy. (However, that has been on hiatus for the past three years and doesn’t seem likely to return any time soon with the purchase of the parking lot that previously hosted the summer movie nights.) In 2008, Germano Piattini co-owners Cyd Wolf and Germano Fabiani brought live music to the neighborhood with a regular cabaret, on hold as well. They also founded the annual three-day Madonnari Arts Festival in 2015 and are making plans to bring that back next September after being forced to cancel this fall.

And three years ago, Joe Gardella, owner of Joe Benny’s, which introduced Sicilian-style focaccia pizza to the neighborhood, created an annual “best meatball” contest. Not surprisingly, it sells out the Little Italy Lodge.

Meanwhile, while many of the older restaurants here—like Sabatino’s, Chiapparelli’s, Dalesio’s, and La Scala—emphasize traditional Italian-American fare, others, such as Germano’s, Aldo’s Ristorante Italiano, and La Tavola, have added modern twists.

A wedding at St. Leo's.

Still, Ray Alcaraz, who co-founded the Promotion Center for Little Italy, Baltimore and whose parents reside in the same Little Italy rowhouse where he was raised, says it is the presence of St. Leo’s, the beating heart of the community since 1881, that has been the key to the neighborhood’s longevity. Even though the treasured church no longer packs every pew each Sunday, about 300 parishioners attended weekend services before the pandemic. During the ongoing COVID-19 crisis, that number has dwindled to just two dozen or so at each of the church’s three Saturday and Sunday Masses, so St. Leo’s has been forced to provide online services to maintain contact with its parishioners. “The staying power of the neighborhood, with and without the school, which I attended, has primarily been St. Leo’s,” says Alcaraz, an usher at the church for 30 years now. “Everything changes around it, including the restaurants, but the St. Anthony and St. Gabriel festivals, the spaghetti and ravioli dinners, those things, all these years—the connection has been St. Leo’s.”

With nine years spent in Rome, the avuncular Fr. Bernie Carman, clearly the right pastor for St. Leo’s, maintains the tradition of Italian masses at the church. The first full weekend of every month, the first reading and hymns are read and sung in Italian. “We only have a handful of parishioners, mostly the older women, who still speak Italian,” he says, “but it’s important to remember the generations that came before and built this church. It’s one way we recognize the history of the church, and keep the spirit of this community alive, which means everything here.”

St. Gabriel procession

All that said, even before the coronavirus brought Little Italy, like the rest of the city, to a standstill, the past five years have been some of the most challenging in recent memory. One of the unfortunate consequences of 2015 Baltimore Uprising after the death of Freddie Gray, according to restaurant owners, was that it pushed away both regular county and potential out-of-town visitors. At the same time, Orioles’ attendance has been way down—some speculate because of the 2015 Uprising, but the team has also been terrible of late—which subsequently affects downtown hotels and restaurants. One more recent challenge: For a good decade-plus, Little Italy’s traditional red sauce dining culture has faced growing competition from trendier eateries that are part of an increasingly diffuse and diverse restaurant scene, which has garnered national renown. The development of Harbor East has been something of a mixed blessing. Its hotels, condominiums, and high—rise office complexes bring new customers, but it’s also become a commercial and restaurant destination in its own right.

Meanwhile, recent controversies around squeegee kids on President Street and the tearing down of the Christopher Columbus statue at the Inner Harbor have generated unwanted publicity. Nonetheless, all of those things combined pale in comparison to the current peril that the ongoing coronavirus pandemic presents. It has forced not only the cancellation of nearly every neighborhood event, but Lew Gambino’s, formely Ciao Bello, which had been around for decades and recently rebranded with the help of former Raven Ray Lewis, was forced to close permanently. The wine and light fare-serving Osteria da Amadeo said at one point that it was closing permanently, and then recanted. Many, like Joe Benny's, which has opened a carry-out “meatball window” have had to severely curtail operating hours.

“IN SOME SENSE, LITTLE ITALY, WAS [ALREADY] FACING AN IDENTITY CRISIS, BUT THE PANDEMIC MAKES IT AN EXISTENTIAL CRISIS. . .THIS IS OUR GREAT DEPRESSION.”

Present day, Cafe Gia Ristorante on High Street, which added an outdoor dining space this year. Photography by Gregory McKay

It has also had a devastating impact on the remaining eateries. Aldo’s and Germano’s have closed temporarily almost since the start of the pandemic, but do plan to return. Others, such as Isabella’s, Vaccaro's Italian Pastry Shop, Casa di Pasta, and the newer Little Italy additions—Angeli’s Pizzeria and Ovenbird Bakery, which opened during the pandemic—transitioned more easily to a carryout-oriented operation. Amicci’s, already a less formal dining experience than some of the older establishments, blends its limited indoor capacity with outdoor seating and a carryout menu, but revenue there remains way down.

Sabatino’s added sidewalk tables as well and also created a delivery program, “Sab’s in the Suburbs,” that targets different county areas—Parkville, Towson, Ellicott City, etc.— on different days of the month. The mammoth restaurant, which for decades was open until 4 a.m. while catering to the late-night bar crowd and hospitality industry staffs, seats more than 400 people. But it has struggled to fill a quarter of its tables, which would be allowable by law, in large part because of health fears by its generally older clientele. “We are one of the restaurants that still has a regular customer base that comes once or twice a month and has been coming for decades, mostly folks that live in the county,” says Vince Culotta, co-owner of Sabatino’s, which was founded in 1955 by his uncle, Joseph Canzani, and Sabatino Luperini, both Italian immigrants. “But once people establish new habits, it’s hard to bring them back. That’s why we are going to them.”

Gia’s constructed a cozy sidewalk table dining area to help limit coronavirus exposure for its guests. But the general fear is what happens as temperatures plummet and the coronavirus’ second wave spike continues this winter.

“We are at an inflection point in Little Italy,” says Sergio Vitale, who opened the acclaimed Aldo’s Ristorante Italiano in 1998. “In some sense, Little Italy, irrespective of the pandemic, was facing an identity crisis, but the pandemic makes it an existential crisis. Our business is down 85 percent. This is our Great Depression.

“The apprehension, the mood,” Vitale adds, “hasn’t been matched since the Great Fire in Baltimore, when everyone in Little Italy banded together and prayed that the fire would stop.”

LITTLE ITALY MAP

AS LITTLE ITALY ENCLAVES IN CITIES AROUND THE COUNTRY, INCLUDING THE MOTHER OF ALL LITTLE ITALIES IN NEW YORK’S LOWER MANHATTAN, HAVE SHRUNK OR WITHERED COMPLETELY, BALTIMORE’S LITTLE ITALY REMAINS ROUGHLY THE SAME SIZE AS THE EARLY 1900S.

Map by Curt Iseli

Map Legend

ALDO’S RISTORANTE ITALIANO
ANGELI’S PIZZERIA
AMICCI’S OF LITTLE ITALY
BOCCE COURTS
CAFÉ GIA RISTORANTE
CHIAPPARELLI’S
DALESIO’S OF LITTLE ITALY
D’ALESANDRO HOUSE / YOSSITA’S COFFEE
GERMANO’S PIATTINI
ISABELLA’S BRICK OVEN PIZZA
JOE BENNY’S
LA SCALA RISTORANTE ITALIANO
LA TAVOLA
OSTERIA DA AMEDEO
OVENBIRD BAKERY
PANDOLA LEARNING CENTER
SABATINO’S
ORDER SONS AND DAUGHTERS OF ITALY LODGE
ST. LEO THE GREAT ROMAN CATHOLIC CHURCH
VACCARO’S ITALIAN PASTRY SHOP

Italian immigrants first began coming to Baltimore in significant numbers shortly after the Civil War. Between around 1880 and 1924, more than four million Italians immigrated to the United States, half of them between 1900 and 1910 alone—the majority fleeing grinding rural poverty, epidemics, earthquakes, and tensions between the new government and workers in Southern Italy and Sicily. Today, Americans of Italian ancestry are the nation’s sixth-largest ethnic group, behind German, Black, Irish, Mexican, and English Americans. For the most part, like Mario Scilipoti, Italians entered the country in New York City, initially at Castle Garden, America’s first immigration center, which opened in 1855, and then at Ellis Island, which received roughly 12 million immigrants between 1892 and 1924. Baltimore’s Locust Point immigration pier, built in 1867 by the B&O Railroad and the North German Lloyd Shipping Company, received more than 1.2 million immigrants between 1868 and 1914, making the city the third-largest port of entry in the U.S. at the time (after New York and Boston). But most of those immigrants, the minority of whom actually remained in Baltimore, came from Germany, and then from Eastern Europe. That group included many Russian Jews, who first settled in and around Little Italy and Jonestown, and Polish Catholics, who worked in and filled the rowhouses of Fells Point and Canton—Sen. Barbara Mikulski’s corner bakery-owning grandparents among them. (One more recent shock to Little Italy families of a certain period was the permanent closing this summer of the all-girls, 173-year-old Institute of Notre Dame high school in East Baltimore, which incredibly produced both Mikulski, the longest-serving woman senator in U.S. history, and Nancy Pelosi, the first woman to serve as Speaker of the House.)

Nancy Pelosi with her father, Mayor Thomas D’Alesandro Jr., and mother, Anunciata “Nancy” D’Alesandro.

Many of the first wave of Italian immigrants who came to reside in Baltimore are said to have gotten here by chance, planning to pass through Baltimore on their way from New York to the burgeoning Midwest. But disembarking at the President Street train station across from what would become Little Italy (and near, coincidentally, the site of some of the first bloodshed of the American war), they found available boarding houses and a familiar, if still budding, Italian culture and associated cooking, and decided Baltimore looked pretty welcoming. Either way, most did not stray far. These immigrants were mostly peasants who took backbreaking work digging ditches and building rail lines, which is not say the era should be romanticized. Partly how the new immigrants got by—and got exploited—was through a complex turn-of-the-century contract labor network known as the “padrone system” (padrone means “boss” in Italian), which helped American rail, mining, and agricultural businesses meet their needs for cheap workers. The Italian middlemen in these networks, the “padroni,” typically took high fees from workers in exchange for jobs, and some served as landlords as well. Child labor among immigrants was common, too, with even small children working in factories and on farms. The first World War, which interrupted the flow of immigrants, finally contributed to the end of the padrone system.

“[Italian immigrants] were lured initially to America with one incentive: they were told that this magnificent country would offer a better way of life for the family,” wrote Suzanna Rosa Molino, the founder of the Promotion Center for Little Italy, Baltimore, in her book, Baltimore’s Little Italy. “Men usually arrived first. They sweated and labored and pinched pennies, and with limited capacity to speak English, they accepted any job, no matter the stench, danger, or task.” Many came intending to send for their families after they had gained a foothold in Baltimore. For others, coming to the U.S. was not necessarily a permanent decision. Many expected to return to Italy after a few years of work and saving. “[My grandfather] was very excited because he heard so much about America,” Little Italy native Ida Cipolloni Esposito told the Baltimore Neighborhood Heritage Project in a 1979 oral history. “But he decided just to come over so that he could add an addition of one room to his home in Abruzzi. And he stayed here for about three years and went back. Then he decided, ‘Italy is not for me anymore. I’m going back to America.’ It was easier living, he said. He brought his son with him.”

By the early 1900s, craftsmen—carpenters, bricklayers, and stonemasons—arrived from Sicily and the Italian “boot” regions of Abruzzo, Campania, and Calabria. These laborers and artisans sought out the nearest Roman Catholic church. At that time, it was St. Vincent de Paul on North Front Street, which by 1874 had begun hosting Mass in Italian in its basement. St. Leo’s Church, just blocks away, was established in 1881, specifically for the influx of Italians. But at first it also served the Irish Catholics in a neighborhood that was then a quintessential melting pot of German, Irish, Jewish, Lithuanian, and Czech immigrants. By the 1920s, the Italians had displaced every other group as they moved from the neighborhood’s tiny rowhouses to bigger digs. In fact, Lombard Street, one of city’s older downtown streets and once known as the center of immigrant Jewish life—home of famed Corned Beef Row and 106-year-old Attman’s Deli—takes its name from the small Italian town of Guardia Lombardi outside Naples.

Present day Little Italy, site of Rocco’s Cappriccio on Fawn Street, which closed permanently in 2013 along with some other prominent area restaurants. Photography by Gregory McKay

The story of “modern” Little Italy begins in the post-World War II boom. (One of the more remarkable World War II stories related to Little Italy is the number of Italian POWs, estimated at more than two dozen, who were allowed local visitors while held captive at Fort Meade and then stayed in Baltimore and married Italian-American women.) In those days, Little Italy seemingly had at least two of everything—butcher shops, bakeries, hairdressers, barbers, luncheonettes, pharmacies, corner stores, tailors—plus the school, church, Della Noce funeral home, a repair garage, and all the family-owned restaurants.

As had been the case since the days of the organ grinders of Little Italy’s Slemmers Alley, daily life took place in the streets. Arabbers came through with horse-drawn wagons selling fruits and vegetables, and street life was particularly vital on the corners in front of Luge’s Confectionary, now the site of Sabatino’s, and Mugavero’s Confectionary, now the site of the Ovenbird Bakery. Mugavero’s was owned by one Marion “Mugs” Mugavero, a World War II veteran and larger-than-life figure to neighborhood boys in the 1950s and 1960s. Mugs was known for his meatball sandwiches, the phone booth in his store, from which he did his bookmaking (one of many in the neighborhood, by all accounts), and for a tough exterior that belied a gentle heart. He was a man who somehow managed to run a popular corner store, an illegal gambling operation, and keep an eye on local teenagers making sure no one got into “real” trouble. “How do you explain the street corners in Little Italy had requirements?” says Ray Alcaraz, trying to convey the spirit of neighborhood in the mid-20th century. “You had to meet those requirements to hang on a particular corner or earn your way. How do you explain bookmakers and numbers runners? What can be said about living in a multiple generational house or a tenement? Or having an ‘aunt’ on every block? How about the looks you get when you tell [people] how you shoveled horse manure into buckets after the arabbers [had] passed through so your grandfather could use it to fertilize his fig trees and grapevine?”

Baltimore never had the Italian crime mobs of New York or Philadelphia. But if there’s any doubt about the scale of the throwback gambling operations in Little Italy, consider the story behind Sabatino’s famed Bookmaker Salad. “Our maître de Al Isella invented it and named it after his friends, who were regular lunch customers, but had been coming in less frequently because they were getting older and didn’t want a big meal anymore,” says Vince Culotta. “Al went into the kitchen and put seasoned shrimp, salami, provolone cheese, a hardboiled egg, and some olives, red onions, and tomatoes on one of the house salads and named it The Bookmaker’s. He told my uncle, ‘They’ll love that.’” Isella spoke from experience. He once estimated he’d been arrested for gambling more than 50 times, which did not prevent him from serving as a 26th Ward precinct captain. It was like that. If you wanted a job, the guys from the neighborhood recall, you went and saw Anunciata “Nancy” D’Alesandro—not Nancy Pelosi, but her mother, the wife of the mayor. She’d ask if you were registered to vote, and once confirmed, assist you in finding work. (“I think about if she were born today, what she would’ve accomplished,” Nancy Pelosi told Maryland Public Television in 2013.)

“We didn’t have organized crime, we had ‘disorganized crime,’” jokes Ed Mattson, a former Baltimore city cop of Italian descent. He’s describing this on a warm fall day alongside the Little Italy ROMEO crew—Retired Old Men Eating Out—as they reminisce over pasta, eggplant, and Chianti at DiPasquale’s in Highlandtown. That area just north of Eastern Avenue and around Our Lady of Pompei, founded in 1923, is another, later Italian enclave. ROMEO regular Bill Bertazon, who grew up in Little Italy and is also a former city police officer, is there, too. He worked as a teenager at Mugavero’s Confectionary, as did fellow ROMEO Richard Di Seta. “A true education,” Bertazon recalls with a laugh. Inevitably, their conversation turns to what it was like growing up—running errands for bookies, collecting pennies for an afternoon playing the arcades on The Block, learning to smoke cigarettes, laying bricks in the summer between school for someone’s father’s contracting company, and playing baseball on the diamond squeezed in-between the city morgue, pumping station, and rail tracks down at the end of President Street. Baseball talk also leads to memories of Cosimo “Toodie” Geppi and his legendary fastball. “Toodie was twice as big as the rest of us and threw twice as hard as anyone,” says Di Seta of the beloved deceased older brother of this magazine’s publisher. “It was brutal to try to hit him, and he was wild, too. He had you shaking in your shoes.”

“INEVITABLY, THEIR CONVERSATION TURNS TO WHAT IT WAS LIKE GROWING UP. . . PLAYING BASEBALL ON THE DIAMOND SQUEEZED INBETWEEN THE CITY MORGUE, PUMPING STATION, AND RAIL TRACKS. . .”

The first Little Italy Little League included Cubs, Yankees, Cardinals, and White Sox teams, 1957.

It’s undeniable that people like to reminisce about the “good old days” of Little Italy. Scott Panian, who opened Amicci’s in 1991, notes how much has changed in just the past five years. As he stares out his front window, he can’t help but see that Ciao Bella’s, Rocco’s, Caesar’s Den, and Da Mimmo have all closed around him. “When I came down here, there were 22 restaurants, and High Street was gridlocked every night.” The demographic base of his restaurant has also changed. For 25 years, he says, his typical customers were 40-year-old couples who had moved to the county and stuck with them. That changed in the aftermath of the Baltimore Uprising, he says, and in the long run, may be a blessing in disguise. His client base and staff have gotten more diverse, better reflecting the city today, and perhaps indicating a way forward for the restaurants and neighborhood in post-pandemic Baltimore—whenever that is.

“We had to pivot to get those 20 to 40-year-olds who are picking up chicken parms on the way home from work,” Panian says. “Little Italy was very provincial. Our clientele has gotten way more diverse since 2015, and our staff has gotten way more diverse, too. We’ve redecorated and tried to make it more of a Baltimore city neighborhood restaurant as opposed to old-school Italian. During the pandemic, I’m staring at my bar not being open, and I’m like, ‘We have to paint this place.’ Instead of rehanging the old Italian movie posters, I put out a call on social media for local art, and we’ve been overwhelmed with the response. Since March, my dining room has been filled with local art.”

In an effort with similar echoes, Cyd Wolf of Germano’s says she and her husband are moving forward with plans for an art gallery in Slemmers Alley. They also plan to remake the restaurant, adding an Italian market. “There needs to be more retail businesses,” Wolf says. “We need other types of businesses that will bring people into the neighborhood.”

Panian stresses Little Italy restaurants have to look inward and embrace the diversity of the city. “The people [who live and work] within 20 blocks of me are going to build my business back up. You’re doing yourself a disservice when you live in a city that’s 65 percent minority and not reaching out to those customers. If you look around this neighborhood now, there’s less Italian ladies with housecoats and there’s more 30-year-old couples. I’ve got to get those people in here. I’m not getting those people back from Timonium.”

Little Italy native Rosalia Scalia, author of the forthcoming short story collection Stumbling Toward Grace, believes the sentiment about restaurants needing to appeal to a broader cross section of the city applies to the rest of the neighborhood as well. At the Rev. Oreste Pandola Adult Learning Center, in the former St. Leo’s School, that’s already happening, with culinary and language classes that bring folks in from other neighborhoods. The cozy Little India restaurant remains open, and a Black-owned sports bar and restaurant, featuring an international menu, is planned for the old Vellegia’s site.

After the Columbus statue was toppled, Scalia penned an op-ed to The Sun, stating her opinion that he was not the best representative of Italian Americans. Instead, she suggested Italian Americans could honor Mother Cabrini, the Italian-born founder of Missionaries of the Sacred Heart of Jesus and the first U.S. citizen to be canonized for her decades of service to Italian immigrants. Contrary perhaps to common stereotypes, she says she received more notes in support of her position from the neighborhood than against.

Bill Martin, a past president of the Associated Italian Charities of Maryland, says the statue is being remade, but will be placed elsewhere. He also said he’d like the Columbus memorial replaced by a statue of an immigrant Italian family, an idea that no doubt would resonate in many parts of Southeast Baltimore, which continues to see its Mexican and Central American immigrant population grow and open new businesses.

“It’s harder to attract some of the younger people, whose sensibility about Columbus, and the Catholic Church, is different today,” says Scalia, adding quickly that she loves “Father Bernie” and invited him over to bless her rowhouse after her recent renovations.

In other ways, she continues, the beauty and simplicity of living in Little Italy, as walkable a neighborhood as there is in the city, remains as compelling as ever.

“I moved out of my parents’ house when I was 19 because I thought it was too confining. Everyone knew each other’s business,” she says. “I got married, moved to Owings Mills, and got pregnant. When I knew my marriage wasn’t going to work out, I moved back, because I knew I would need support, and it was here waiting for me. That was 41 years ago. I haven't left since.”

Scalia’s mother, Philomena, 92, and her mother’s sister, Eleanor, 88, still live here, too. Next door to each other, of course.

LITTLE ITALY TIMELINE

ITALIAN IMMIGRANTS BEGAN COMING TO BALTIMORE IN SIGNIFICANT NUMBERS AFTER THE CIVIL WAR. MOST ARRIVED BY TRAIN FROM NEW YORK, DISEMBARKING AT THE PRESIDENT STREET STATION ACROSS FROM WHAT WOULD BECOME LITTLE ITALY, STAYING AT NEARBY BOARDINGHOUSES WHILE THEY SOUGHT WORK. BETWEEN 1880 AND 1924, MORE THAN FOUR MILLION ITALIANS IMMIGRATED TO THE U.S.—THE MAJORITY FLEEING RURAL POVERTY, EPIDEMICS, EARTHQUAKES, AND TENSIONS BETWEEN THE NEW GOVERNMENT AND WORKERS IN SOUTHERN ITALY AND SICILY.

Source: Baltimore’s Little Italy: Heritage and History of the Neighborhood by Suzanna Rosa Molino

Dancing in Little Italy after the reelection of Mayor Thomas D’Alesandro Jr.; Mayor Thomas “Young Tommy” D’Alesandro III (center) with former mayors (left to right) Philip Goodman, Theodore McKeldin, Thomas D’Alesandro Jr., and Harold Grady.

1850: President Street train station completed

1860-1875: Giacomo “Jack” Pessagno and Mary Cherigo open boardinghouses near the President Street train station

1881: First Mass celebrated at St. Leo the Great Roman Catholic Church

1882: St. Leo’s School opens with three lay teachers; School Sisters of Notre Dame assume charge the following year

1904: Great Baltimore Fire, Feb. 7-8; Little Italy spared

1904: First St. Anthony Festival, June 13

1913: St. Leo’s Italian Orphan Asylum opens its doors

1926: Vincent Palmisano elected to the U.S. House of Representatives

1928: St. Gabriel Society founded

1938: Thomas D’Alesandro Jr. elected to the U.S. House of Representatives

1945: Chiapparelli’s Italian Restaurant opens

1947: Mugavero’s Confectionary opens

1947-1959: Thomas D’Alesandro Jr. serves as the 39th Mayor of Baltimore

1949: St. Leo’s sanctuary refurbished with marble altar quarried from Italy

1955: Sabatino’s Italian Restaurant opens

1956: Vaccaro’s Italian Pastry Shop opens

1957: Little Italy Little League founded

1967-1971: Thomas D’Alesandro III serves as the 43th Mayor of Baltimore

1972: Order Sons of Italy Lodge founded

1979: President Jimmy Carter visits Little Italy, D’Alesandro household, St. Leo’s, lunches at Chiapparelli’s

1984: President Ronald Reagan dedicates Christopher Columbus statue at the Inner Harbor’s Columbus Piazza

1987: Nancy D’Alesandro Pelosi elected to the U.S. House of Representatives from San Francisco

1993: Bocce ball courts installed at City-owned D’Alesandro Park

1996: Reverend Oreste Pandola Learning Center founded

1999-2017: Little Italy Open Air Film Fest runs

2007: Nancy D’Alesandro Pelosi becomes first woman elected Speaker of the U.S. House of Representatives

2015: St. Leo’s original 132-year-old organ refurbished

2015: Madonnari Arts Festival founded

Source

Maryland Politicans React to Trump Impeachment

Evan Greenberg — Thu, 19 Dec 2019 18:25:00 +0000

In one of the more poignant moments of the final day of the House of Representatives’ impeachment proceedings against President Donald Trump, Baltimore was front and center.

After the House successfully passed both articles of impeachment—citing abuse of power and obstruction of justice—Baltimore native Speaker of the House Nancy Pelosi paid tribute to her colleague and friend, the late Congressman Elijah E. Cummings, who served as the House Oversight Committee chair and presided over Maryland’s 7th District until his passing in September.

“There’s one person who isn’t with us in this room, but I know was present all day for the deliberations,” Pelosi said at a press conference following the eight-hour hearing and subsequent vote Wednesday. “He said, ‘When we’re dancing with the angels the question will be, what did you do to make sure we kept our democracy intact?’ We did all we could, Elijah. We passed the two articles of impeachment—the president is impeached.”

Speaker Pelosi, invoking the late Elijah Cummings: "We did all we could, Elijah. We passed the two articles of impeachment. The president is impeached." Via ABC pic.twitter.com/YaReEwNObc
— Kyle Griffin (@kylegriffin1) December 19, 2019

The swell of Democratic support for impeachment has grown louder as the process and hearings, in which 17 witnesses testified, has gone on. On Wednesday, an overwhelming majority of Democratic House members voted to impeach Donald J. Trump after evidence and testimony was presented that indicated the president had pressured Ukraine to assist him by declaring they were investigating potential 2020 rival Joe Biden, and the president’s refusal to provide documents following Congressional subpoenas.

Maryland House members were among those who voted along party lines, issuing strong statements in favor of the House’s decision to impeach.

“President Trump took direct aim at the heart of our democracy,” reads a statement from John Sarbanes of Maryland’s 3rd District. “I believe that Americans should decide our elections, not a foreign country. As long as the President continues to invite foreign inference into our democracy, the integrity of the 2020 election remains at risk. We had no choice but to impeach.”

The Republican Party has been united in its staunch opposition to impeachment, put forth by the House’s Democratic majority after a whistleblower. The whistleblower, understood to be an intelligence officer, came forward with allegations Trump was withholding a White House meeting and Congressional military aide to Ukraine, which has been at war with Russia, in exchange for the announcement of a corruption inquiry into Biden—whose son had been on the board of a controversial Ukrainian company. Not a single House Republican voted in favor of either article.

“The articles of impeachment passed on a purely partisan vote by the Democrats prove what a partisan stunt this impeachment sham really is,” said Rep. Andy Harris of Maryland’s 1st Congressional District, in a statement.

Harris also invoked a previous instance in which Eric Holder, the Attorney General under the Obama Administration, refused to answer House subpoenas—stating that they infringed on executive privilege.

Baltimore native Dutch Ruppersberger of Maryland’s 2nd District also released a statement, reiterating the need to consider the facts of the case and service the Constitution.

“President Trump has no one to blame but himself,” Ruppersberger’s statement reads. “He violated his oath of office. This is why I support both articles of impeachment. The facts clearly warrant this action to protect the Constitution of the United States.”

The attention now turns to the Senate, which will hold a trial of the president. Only if the president is found guilty of one or more of the articles of impeachment can he be removed from office. There is currently a delay in the transmission of the impeachment documents, however, as Democrats attempt to negotiate the guidelines for the trial.

Pelosi suggested Wednesday night that the House might not hand over the articles of impeachment before it is promised a fair trial. Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell has suggested that his position on the matter is no different than the White House’s in a trial where Senate jurors are required to be impartial.

“As we go forward, it’s up to the American people to demand a fair trial,” reads a statement from U.S. Senator Chris Van Hollen, who previously represented Maryland’s 8th congressional district. “Republican Leader Mitch McConnell has publicly expressed his plan to work in lockstep with the President during the trial and has rejected reasonable requests to allow key fact witnesses to testify. I hope my other Republican colleagues will agree that we have a duty to get all the facts and do justice.”

Locally, a number of Baltimoreans have voiced their support for impeachment. A “Nobody Is Above the Law” rally was held at McKeldin Square in the Inner Harbor a few days ago, one of hundreds held nationwide. Participants were visible to commuters on their way home from work, spirited and making their presence known.

And when the news came down, Steny Hoyer, the House Majority Leader representing Maryland’s 5th Congressional Disctrict, offered a solemn closing argument.

“All of us feel a sense of loyalty to party,” Hoyer said. “It’s what makes our two-party system function. It’s what helps hold presidents and majorities accountable. But party loyalty must have its limits.”

Source

Scenes from Congressman Cummings’ Funeral at New Psalmist Baptist Church

Lauren Cohen — Fri, 25 Oct 2019 14:52:00 +0000

Before sunrise on Friday, thousands of mourners, some of whom woke up as early as 4 a.m., boarded shuttle buses heading to New Psalmist Baptist Church to attend the funeral of Congressman Elijah Cummings—the passionate Baltimore leader and civil rights advocate who passed away due to ongoing health challenges last week at the age of 68.

“I made it!” one woman said as she climbed the stairs of a bus leaving from one of the surrounding lots in Lochearn. “I always voted for him. This morning I said, ‘I’m not going to miss this.’ This is history.”

As the bus pulled up to the front of the church—where Cummings regularly attended services—just before dawn, a guard of honor marched by thousands of people who had already formed a line that snaked around the entrance and adjacent parking lots.

“I actually did a dry run yesterday to make sure I knew where the church was,” said Cheryl McLeod of Howard County, who was in line just after 7 a.m. “I also went down to the Capitol yesterday and saw him. That’s how much I really honor his trailblazing and fortitude.”

The funeral at New Psalmist followed a memorial at Morgan State University, where Cummings sat on the board of directors, and a public viewing at the U.S. Capitol, where the Congressman became the first African American elected official to lie in state earlier this week. It brought together community members who supported Cummings’ many initiatives in Baltimore and beyond—including affordable health care, equal education opportunities, and social justice issues—as well as friends and colleagues who had personal connections to him.

“I always enjoyed making him sweet potato pies,” said a woman who asked to be identified as Mrs. Copeland, who met Cummings years ago through New Psalmist. “I would take them to his office downtown. He helped me, as a single parent, get my son through college. We just love him, everybody that knew him loves him.”

Phyllis Ayres, Cummings’ neighbor of 20 years and a retired administrative assistant at Maryvale High School, remembers introducing him at the school’s graduation in 2010.

“I’m very fond of him,” she said. “Every time I called him to be a guest speaker, he was always on board. He was a man with great character—that’s why I’m here.”

Friday’s service was also attended by a number of political dignitaries, including former presidents Barack Obama and Bill Clinton, former First Lady and Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton, Baltimore native and Speaker of the House Nancy Pelosi, Gov. Larry Hogan, former Vice President Joe Biden, U.S. Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, and U.S. Sens. Ben Cardin, Elizabeth Warren, Kamala Harris, and Amy Klobuchar.

In addition to many of these politicians, Cummings’ daughters, Adia and Jennifer, and his wife, Maya Rockeymoore Cummings—as chairman of the Maryland Democratic Party, she is expected to be among those who will run for her late husband’s seat—delivered remarks inside the church.

“I have come here today to say two simple words: thank you,” Rockeymoore Cummings said. “Thanks to everyone in the 7th Congressional District. He loved Baltimore City. Baltimore, thank you for everything you did to make him who he was, and for allowing him to rise to greatness.”

Rockeymoore Cummings went on to address President Trump’s attacks on Cummings and the city of Baltimore during the final months of his life.

“While he carried himself with grace and dignity in all public forums, it hurt him,” she said. “One thing you do not know about Congressman Cummings is that he was a man of soul and spirit. He was very empathetic. It was one of the sources of his ability to be a public servant and a man of the people. . . He would have told me, ‘Maya, I don’t want a service at the U.S. Capitol,’ but I felt very strongly that they were trying to tear him down. And we needed to make sure that he went out with the respect and dignity that he deserved.”

Obama followed by saying, “Elijah’s life validates the things we tell ourselves about what’s possible in this country. Not what’s guaranteed, but possible. The possibility that our destinies are not preordained, but rather through our works and dedication.”

Also in attendance was U.S. Congressman and civil rights leader John Lewis, who described Cummings’ passing last week as “a tremendous blow to the struggle to build a fair and just society in America.”

“They all appreciate [Cummings] as much as we do, that’s why they’re here,” said Arnold Landon, sporting an “Obama for President” hat while waiting in line to enter the 4,000-seat church, which was at full capacity by 9:30 a.m. Landon recalled fighting for civil rights in Baltimore alongside Cummings decades ago, mentioning sit-ins they both attended on Lexington Street downtown. “If it wasn’t for Cummings, Obama wouldn’t be able to become president. It started with equal accommodations and equal rights. Politics and civil rights—they go together.”

Not far behind Landon stood Lydia Alexander alongside her 10-year-old daughter, Shylah.

“He’s done so much for the community,” said Shylah, a fifth grader at Margaret Brent Elementary/Middle. “I really thought I should be here. I will always remember that godsend.”

Source

Former Baltimore Mayor Thomas D’Alesandro III, Brother of Nancy Pelosi, Dies at 90

Ron Cassie — Mon, 21 Oct 2019 11:21:00 +0000

Former Baltimore Mayor Thomas D’Alesandro III, brother of Speaker of the House Nancy Pelosi, died at his home in North Baltimore Sunday. He was 90. The cause of death was complications from a stroke.

D’Alesandro III, affectionately known as “Young Tommy,” led City Hall from 1967-1971 and then surprised many by choosing not to run for reelection. His tenure coincided with a tumultuous period in the country that included the 1968 riots in Baltimore—which was already facing the effects of de-industrialization and suburban flight following the assassination of Rev. Martin Luther King Jr.

Considered a progressive on the civil rights issues of the day, he was the son of Thomas D’Alesandro Jr., the longtime mayor and congressman known as “Big Tommy” or “Tommy the Elder.” When he was president of the City Council, D’Alesandro III met with King in Baltimore, where the pair discussed civil rights legislation before the council at the time.

“Tommy dedicated his life to our city,” his sister, Speaker of the House Nancy Pelosi, said in a statement. “A champion of civil rights, he worked tirelessly for all who called Baltimore home. Tommy was a leader of dignity, compassion and extraordinary courage, whose presence radiated hope upon our city during times of struggle and conflict.

“My husband Paul and our entire family are devastated by the loss of our patriarch, my beloved brother,” Pelosi continued, describing her oldest brother as “the finest public servant I have ever known.”

Current Baltimore Mayor Bernard C. “Jack” Young said D’Alesandro III will be remembered for his commitment to Baltimore and the “important strides” he made while in office, including “creating summer recreation programs for youth, removing racial barriers in employment and education, and laying the groundwork for what would become the world-famous Inner Harbor.”

Current City Council President Brandon Scott said that, as mayor, D’Alesandro III “understood the need to bridge communities and worked to eliminate racial barriers in City Hall.”

“There was absolutely no communication between the races, none whatsoever,” D’Alesandro III told NPR in 2008, describing the time he took office. “It was a segregated city. It was a Southern city.”

After graduating from then Loyola College in Baltimore, D’Alesandro III studied law at the University of Maryland School of Law in the city. He also served in the U.S. Army for four years before running for office. He was elected to the City Council in 1962, and the president of the Baltimore City Council in 1963. When he ran for mayor in 1967, he bested fellow attorney and eventual Orioles owner Peter Angelos in the Democratic primary.

D’Alesandro III appointed George Russell as his city solicitor, and Russell became the first black member of the Board of Estimates. He named Roland Patterson the first black superintendent of the city school system and appointed Baltimore’s first African-American, Rev. Marion Bascomb, to the city’s Board of Fire Commissioners.

“I know he was disappointed by the effect of the riots on what we were trying to do,” Joseph Lee Smith, a black member of D’Alesandro III’s staff, told The Baltimore Sun in 1998. “But I never noticed him being despondent. In the three and a half years that followed, I thought he was very determined and effective in getting the poverty programs in place.”

D’Alesandro III was preceded in office by Republican Theodore McKeldin, considered a liberal, and succeeded in office by William Donald Schaefer.

“We were trying to do it all—improve schools, housing, community development, policing,” Kalman R. “Buzzy” Hettleman, an assistant to D’Alesandro III, told Baltimore magazine last year. “Drugs weren’t a big issue, but policing was. [Donald] Pomerleau was the commissioner, and he was a controversial figure. Gruff. The mayor was under great pressure to appoint an African-American police commissioner [which didn’t happen until 1984 with Bishop Robinson].”

Robert Embry, president of the Abell Foundation, had been appointed by D’Alesandro III to head the then-new Department of Housing when the ’68 riots broke out. “So-called ‘blockbusting’ was in full swing in the Northwood and Edmondson Village neighborhoods, and that was a big issue [at the time],” Embry told Baltimore in a 2018 story on the 50th commemoration of the 1968 events.

D’Alesandro inspired many newcomers to city politics, City Councilman Bill Henry noted in Facebook post, including Henry’s father, a then-26-year-old activist whom the mayor named his youth coordinator and placed on his senior staff. “Looking back on the mayors of my lifetime, ‘Young Tommy’ stands out as having recognized the importance of all young people, especially in terms of their ability to move society forward when properly motivated,” Henry said.

His decision not to seek reelection, D’Alesandro III maintained, was not based on his experience dealing with the riots that broke out four months after his inauguration. Rather, he said it was largely an economic decision—he couldn’t afford to raise his five children while taking home $695 every two weeks.

He also admitted, however, that he did not love the job and public life the way his father did. He spent the rest of his career as a private practice attorney while remaining an informal political advisor to several local officials, including former Mayor Martin O’Malley.

His father, Thomas D’Alesandro Jr., served in Congress from 1939 to 1947, and then as mayor of Baltimore from 1947 to 1959. His mother, Anunciata “Nancy,” née Lombardi, D’Alesandro was an effective political organizer and helped him become Baltimore’s first Catholic mayor.

Recently, a D’Alesandro family portrait—painted when D’Alesandro III and Pelosi were still children and their father was assuming office in City Hall—has been restored and hung in Germano’s Piattini, the popular Little Italy restaurant across the street from their family’s rowhouse.

Last week, Baltimore also lost Congressman Elijah Cummings, a close colleague of Nancy Pelosi, who passed away at age 68.

When D’Alesandro III married Margaret “Margie” Piracci on June 8, 1952, some 5,000 people turned out to witness the occasion at the Baltimore Basilica. The fire department had to turn even more people way and two women reportedly fainted.

According to reporting from The Sun, the pope sent his blessings, President Harry Truman sent a silver tray as a wedding present, D’Alesandro III’s father, then mayor, served as best man, and his youngest sibling Nancy, later Nancy Pelosi, was a bridesmaid. It’s been said that it was as close to royal wedding as Baltimore has experienced.

“His life and leadership were a tribute to the Catholic values with which we were raised: faith, family, patriotism,” said Pelosi, who grew up with her brother and family in Baltimore’s Little Italy. “He profoundly believed, as did our parents, that public service was a noble calling and that we all had a responsibility to help others.”

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U.S. Rep. Elijah Cummings, Passionate Advocate for Civil Rights and Baltimore, Dies at 68

Ron Cassie — Thu, 17 Oct 2019 11:28:00 +0000

U.S. Rep. Elijah Cummings, chairman of the House Oversight Committee and a powerful advocate for civil rights and Baltimore, died early Thursday at 68. According to his office, the 12-term Maryland congressman passed away at Gilchrist Hospice Care, a Johns Hopkins affiliate, due to complications concerning longstanding health challenges. Cummings had not gone back to work this week as Congress returned to Capitol Hill.

Over the past year, since the Democrats retook the House of Representatives following the 2018 midterm elections, Cummings had served a key and high-profile role as the myriad of Congressional investigations into President Donald Trump and his administration have unfolded.

Speaker of the House Nancy Pelosi, also a Baltimore native, said of Cummings’ unexpected death that “the people of Baltimore, the U.S. Congress, and America have lost a voice of unsurpassed moral clarity and truth.” She described herself as “personally devastated.”

“In the House, Elijah was our North Star,” Pelosi said. “He was a leader of towering character and integrity, whose stirring voice and steadfast values pushed the Congress and country to rise always to a higher purpose.”

“He worked until his last breath because he believed our democracy was the highest and best expression of our collective humanity and that our nation’s diversity was our promise, not our problem,” said Maya Rockeymore Cummings, the congressman’s wife and chair of the Maryland Democratic Party, in a statement.

Cummings, whose district includes parts of Baltimore City, as well as Baltimore and Howard counties, had—along with the city itself—become a target for President Trump’s vitriol earlier this summer. Cummings addressed Trump directly, describing his work ethic and mission as an elected official.

“Mr. President, I go home to my district daily,” Cummings wrote. “Each morning, I wake up, and I go and fight for my neighbors. It is my constitutional duty to conduct oversight of the executive branch. But, it is my moral duty to fight for my constituents.”

My heart is heavy with a flood of tears waking up to the news my friend @RepCummings has died! Rest in peace my friend. May God be with your wife, your family, friends & the City of Baltimore who mourns your loss. May the Nation & the world remember your heat & your fight.
— AprilDRyan (@AprilDRyan) October 17, 2019

In 2015, after the uprising and riot in Baltimore following the death of Freddie Gray while in police custody, Cummings was in the streets day and night, playing a key role in diffusing tensions between protestors and police during the week of subsequent curfews.

“With the passing of U.S. Rep. Elijah Cummings, the city of Baltimore, our country, and people throughout the world have lost a powerful voice and one of the strongest and most gifted crusaders for social justice,” Baltimore Mayor Bernard C. “Jack” Young said in a statement Thursday morning. “Rep. Cummings, the son of sharecroppers whose ancestors were slaves, wasn’t afraid to use his considerable intellect, booming voice, and poetic oratory to speak out against brutal dictators bent on oppression, unscrupulous business executives who took advantage of unsuspecting customers, or even a U.S. President. He was, put simply, a man of God who never forgot his duty to fight for the rights and dignity of the marginalized and often forgotten.”

Cummings first rose to national prominence five years ago, after Rep. Darrell Issa, then the Republican chairman of the House Oversight Committee, cut off Cummings’ microphone during a key hearing. As Baltimoreans already knew and the country soon learned, Cummings remained a man who wore his heart on his sleeve.

“It’s not just my voice that was being shut down,” Cummings said at the time, maintaining his composure while passionately trying to make his case. “Remember what I said: ‘I represent, we represent, over 700,000 people.’ What about our voice? ‘Shut it down [Issa said].’ That’s not the Democratic way.”

Raised with six brothers and sisters in South Baltimore’s historically black Sharp-Leadenhall neighborhood, Cummings attended a segregated elementary school and was among the first children to integrate the Riverside Park swimming pool in the summer of 1962. The son of former South Carolina sharecroppers, Cummings was elected to the Maryland House of Delegates in 1982—still on the heels of the civil rights movement and several years before Kurt Schmoke was became the first elected black mayor of Baltimore.

“Of the many things I learned from my father—and neither he nor my mother completed elementary school because they went to work in the fields—was to treat everyone with equal respect and not to speak or act out of anger,” Cummings told us in a 2014 Baltimore profile. “Because when you do, the person only hears your tone, they don’t get the message.

“And,” Cummings added, tapping a finger to the table for emphasis, “you’ll lose sight of the bigger picture. You’ll get so caught up in who you are fighting, you’ll forget what you are fighting for—and it’s the ‘what’ that is important.”

University of Maryland Carey School of Law professor Larry Gibson, Schmoke’s former campaign manager, noted in the same story that Cummings’ rise in congressional stature followed in the footsteps of a number of local African-American leaders who made significant contributions to the city, state, and country. “… look at who held that congressional seat before him—Parren Mitchell and Kweisi Mfume. All became powerhouses in Congress.”

Governor Larry Hogan described Cummings as “a fierce advocate for civil rights and for Maryland for more than three decades.”

“Congressman Cummings leaves behind an incredible legacy of fighting for Baltimore City and working to improve people’s lives,” Hogan said in a statement. “He was a passionate and dedicated public servant whose countless contributions made our state and our country better.”

My statement on the passing of Congressman Elijah Cummings: pic.twitter.com/uSAmKQkH7W
— Governor Larry Hogan (@GovLarryHogan) October 17, 2019

Cummings was born on January 18, 1951 and was a distinguished student at City College High School, where he graduated in 1969. At Howard University, he majored in political science, served as class president, and became a member of the Phi Beta Kappa Society.

He graduated from the University of Maryland School of Law in 1976 and practiced law before succeeding Lena Lee in the state House of Delegates. He often said her encouragement and support was crucial in launching his political career. In the General Assembly, where he served for 14 years, Cummings became the first African American in Maryland history to be named Speaker Pro Tem.

Among other efforts, up until the time of his death, Cummings also served on the U.S. Naval Academy Board of Visitors, the Morgan State University Board of Regents, the University of Maryland School of Law Board of Advisors, and the SEED School of Maryland Board of Directors.

To fill the Cummings’ seat, by law, Hogan will soon call a special primary election and a special general election will be held to fill the vacancy, according to reporting from The Baltimore Sun. Hogan’s spokesman, Mike Ricci, said Thursday morning that it wasn’t clear yet when the special election would take place.

Michelle and I are heartbroken over the passing of our friend, Elijah Cummings. May his example inspire more Americans to pick up the baton and carry it forward in a manner worthy of his service. pic.twitter.com/lM2rES3PNV
— Barack Obama (@BarackObama) October 17, 2019

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Hogan Says He Supports Trump Impeachment Inquiry

Ron Cassie — Fri, 11 Oct 2019 15:45:00 +0000

Maryland Gov. Larry Hogan says he supports the impeachment inquiry of President Donald Trump in the wake of a whistleblower’s report of alleged widespread abuse of power by the president and his administration.

President Trump and others in his circle and administration—including the president’s personal attorney, Rudolf Giuliani, and U.S. Attorney General William Barr—have been implicated in an alleged scheme to pressure the Ukrainian government into investigating Trump’s potential Democratic rival in the 2020 election, former Vice President Joe Biden, and his son Hunter Biden, in exchange for the release of U.S. military aid.

“I think we do need an inquiry because we have to get to the bottom of it,” Hogan told PBS’ Firing Line host Margaret Hoover in a segment that will air Friday night at 8:30 p.m. “I’m not ready to say I support impeachment and the removal of the president, but I do think we should have an impeachment inquiry.”

At the same time, Hogan expressed some apprehension that the impeachment inquiry led by the Democratic-led House of Representatives would be “a fair, objective one.” But he added, “I don’t see any other way to get the facts.”

Hogan joined two other other Republican governors in blue states, Vermont Gov. Phil Scott and Massachusetts Gov. Charlie Baker, in their backing of impeachment inquiry proceedings.

Hogan, who did not support Trump for president in 2016—he says he wrote in his since-deceased father, former Maryland U.S. Rep. Lawrence Hogan Sr., on the ballot—added he would not support Trump again in 2020. However, he added, he could not possibly support a Democratic nominee either.

“We’re 14 months from the election, I’m not sure who the nominee is going to be, who the president is going to be,” Hogan added with a nervous laugh as Hoover pressed him. “We’re just going to have to wait and see.”

When Speaker of the House and Baltimore native Nancy Pelosi announced the start of the impeachment inquiry on September 24, Maryland’s congressional contingent, which had been withholding calls for the start of a formal impeachment investigation, unanimously came out in favor of the inquiry.

To date, all but a handful of the 235 Democratic members of the House of Representatives have expressed support for the impeachment inquiry. But not a single member of 197-member GOP caucus has publicly backed the inquiry. Former GOP-turned-independent congressman Justin Amash has pledged his support for the inquiry.

If the House impeaches Trump, Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell has said the GOP-controlled Senate will hold a trial. In order for Trump to be removed from office, at least 20 of the 53 Republican senators would have to vote in favor of impeachment.

On Friday on Capitol Hill, former Ukrainian Ambassador Marie Yovanovitch testified before the House Intelligence Committee after receiving a subpoena. The White House had attempted to block her appearance and in her opening remarks, Yovanovitch said her sudden departure in May was the result of pressure from Trump and others “with clearly questionable motives” on the State Department to remove her.

Governor Hogan, profiled by Baltimore a year ago, is familiar with the process of impeachment proceedings and has often noted that his father was the first Republican member of the Judiciary Committee to call for the impeachment of former President Richard Nixon in 1974.

Hogan considered a primary challenge to Trump earlier this year and travelled to the early primary states of Iowa and New Hampshire. He eventually decided against running in June, citing his commitment to governing the state on the heels of winning reelection and his new role as chairman of the National Governors Association.

That said, as Hogan, 63, himself highlighted in a Washington Post story this summer: “At some point, there’s no longer going to be a Donald Trump Party.” Whether Trump survives the latest controversy surrounding him and his administration, Hogan most likely has his eyes on a 2024 bid for the GOP nomination and will be keeping his options open should an opportunity arise sooner.

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Pelosi Announces House Will Begin Trump Impeachment Inquiry

Ron Cassie — Tue, 24 Sep 2019 19:45:00 +0000

Speaker Nancy Pelosi announced Tuesday afternoon that the House of Representatives will begin a formal impeachment inquiry of President Donald Trump. Pelosi’s action—long awaited by many Democratic activists after findings in the Mueller Report—comes in response to startling new allegations that the president recently sought to enlist Ukraine in his personal electoral cause. Namely, undermining current frontrunner for the Democratic presidential nomination in 2020—former Vice President Joe Biden.

Pelosi, the daughter of former Baltimore mayor Thomas D’Alessandro Jr., announced the start of an impeachment inquiry on Capitol Hill following a closed-door meeting with her Democratic caucus.

“The actions taken to date by the president have seriously violated the Constitution,” she said. President Trump, she said, “must be held accountable—no one is above the law.”

Impeachment has occurred twice in U.S. history, with charges brought against Presidents Andrew Johnson and Bill Clinton. Neither president was removed or left office. Rather than face a House of Representatives vote on impeachment over the Watergate scandal, President Richard Nixon resigned in 1974.

Even if the House—where the Democrats hold a majority—votes to impeach Trump after their inquiry, forcing a president from the White House requires a conviction in the Senate. In that chamber, where Republicans hold a majority, elected GOP officials have remained in lockstep behind Trump during each controversy of his presidency.

Trump’s alleged efforts to pressure Ukraine into investigating Biden, his potential rival, and his son, Hunter Biden, who served on board of the country’s largest private gas company, were brought forth by a U.S. intelligence whistleblower. Earlier Tuesday, Trump acknowledged he withheld $391 million in military support for Ukraine in the run-up to his July 25 phone call with Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky.

The president and his personal lawyer, former New York Mayor and former GOP presidential candidate Rudy Giuliani, have suggested Biden tried to protect the Ukrainian company, and thereby his son, from a corruption investigation. Neither Trump, Giuliani, nor anyone else to date, has provided evidence of illegal activity by either Biden.

Fact checking and investigations by multiple U.S. news outlets have repudiated Trump’s and Giuliani’s allegations that the former vice president attempted to protect his son by advocating for the removal of the former top Ukrainian prosecutor. The current prosecutor general of Ukraine, Yuri Luiseno, has looked into the matter and cleared the Bidens.

Leading up to Tuesday’s announcement by Pelosi, Maryland’s congressional delegation, who had been hesitant to speak out in favor of an impeachment inquiry previously, offered their strong backing for formal hearings.

“We can now see with our own eyes that the President is jeopardizing our national security,” Rep. Elijah Cummings said in a statement, referring to Trump allegedly holding back military aid to an ally in exchange for damning information on an American political candidate. “He admitted to personally withholding military security that Congress appropriated to help Ukraine counter Russian aggression. He admitted to personally urging a foreign actor to dig up dirt on his political rival. And he personally attacked a whistleblower whose protected information is being withheld from Congress in violation of the law.”

When the history books are written about this tumultuous era, I want them to show that I was among those in the House of Representatives who stood up to lawlessness and tyranny.

Read my statement supporting impeachment: https://t.co/xppt73HN6k
— Elijah E. Cummings (@RepCummings) September 24, 2019

In a move described as unprecedented, the Trump Administration’s acting director of national intelligence, Joseph Maguire, has refused to share the whistleblower complaint with congressional intelligence committees, even after receiving a subpoena.

Trump tweeted on Tuesday that he would release the transcript of his phone call with the Ukrainian president, referring to the conversation as “totally appropriate.” The release of the whistleblower complaint, which is required to be turned over to Congress, remains another story, however. Intelligence Community Inspector General Michael Atkinson determined that whistleblower’s allegations involving the president and his contact with Ukraine—of which the July 25 phone call with the Ukrainian president is just a part, according to reporting from The Wall Street Journal, New York Times, and The Washington Post—were deemed credible and of “urgent concern.”

The Mueller Report, of course, found multiple contacts between Trump campaign officials and Russian representatives during the 2016 election season.

Fellow Maryland Democratic Rep. C.A. “Dutch” Ruppersberger emphasized his national security concerns regarding the president’s contacts with Ukraine: “As a former prosecutor, I have resisted calls to begin formal impeachment proceedings against the President until we had clear, indisputable evidence that transcends politics,” Ruppersberger said in a statement. “Jeopardizing our national security is where I draw the line. Withholding duly appropriated money meant to aid a country that could be overtaken by Russia is reckless and dangerous. This is yet another example of the President doing Putin’s bidding.”

“President Trump’s actions are a threat to our democracy,” Maryland Democratic Senator Chris Van Hollen said in a press release. “His continued disregard for our Constitution and the democratic norms that guide our nation have caused irreparable harm to our country, our standing in the world, and to the Office of the Presidency. As the White House continues to prevent the House of Representatives from exercising their Constitutionally-mandated oversight role, it has become clear that the tools provided by an impeachment inquiry must be employed.”

Maryland Democratic Congressman John Sarbanes said Trump’s alleged conduct, “constitute[s] a direct attack on our democracy and signify an unprecedented new level of corruption and lawlessness in the White House.”

“President Trump’s attempt to pressure a foreign government to interfere in the 2020 election is a blatant abuse of power,” Sarbanes said.

By coincidence, former Vice President Joe Biden was scheduled for a private fundraising event at Citron, a Pikesville restaurant and event space, Tuesday evening, according to reporting by The Baltimore Sun. However, Biden and his team were forced to head back to home to Wilmington, Delaware, after realizing the former vice president would not make it in time because of traffic caused by an overturned a tractor-trailer on I-95.

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Why Did Senator Kamala Harris Choose Baltimore for Campaign Headquarters?

Ron Cassie — Mon, 21 Jan 2019 16:27:00 +0000

California Democratic Sen. Kamala Harris, the first African-American to announce as a 2020 candidate for president, did so symbolically today on Martin Luther King, Jr. Day. And, her team confirmed to Baltimore magazine, the Harris campaign will be headquartered in Baltimore.

Why Harris believes she is the best person to serve as the next president of the United States is important—as is her record and her vision for the future. Those issues will certainly be addressed in the coming months, but Harris’ announcement also begs another, immediate question: Why Baltimore?

Earlier this month, the San Francisco Chronicle reported that Harris had been looking to line up an East Coast location for her headquarters so that she would be near the major cable news outlets all of which operate on Eastern Time. Harris already has a strong presence on the West Coast so placing her campaign headquarters in Baltimore—square in the densely populated Mid-Atlantic region—quickly helps introduce her to a new set of voters as well.

“My initial reaction is that this is a really great move for a few different reasons,” said Mileah Kromer, associate professor of political science at Goucher College and the director of the Sarah T. Hughes Field Politics Center. “Baltimore is majority African-American city at a time when the backbone and lifeblood of the Democratic Party is African-American women, like those who turn out to vote here. It’s a setting that can play an outsize role in generating resistance to the Trump Administration. And, maybe foremost, it’s a city where the intersection of justice and race matters when she’s touting her record as a prosecutor and on criminal justice issues.”

Kromer adds that Harris’ record as California’s top prosecutor and that state’s attorney general could potentially generate some controversy in Baltimore’s activist community. But addressing those issues head on in a city like Baltimore sends the message that she’s a serious candidate.

The Harris campaign would not comment on when her Baltimore office will open or where it will be located, but did say a second campaign office will open in her hometown of Oakland, where a kick-off rally is scheduled for January 27. Harris’ logo—with its red and yellow colors and theme, “Kamala Harris For the People”—is a nod to another pioneering president bid: Shirley Chisholm’s 1972 campaign.

Will thread info on Harris' announcement here, including staff hires and background info. Obviously it's heavy on symbolism: not only MLK Day announcement, but comes 47 years to the day as Shirley Chisholm's 1972 campaign kickoff. Even Harris' logo was meant as a nod to Chisholm pic.twitter.com/fhV5ha8I4B
— Steadman™ (@AsteadWesley) January 21, 2019

The 54-year-old Harris was by no means a stranger to the East Coast before her election to the Senate in 2016, however. She earned her B.A. From Howard University in Washington, D.C. in 1986. Harris has made a name for herself in the Senate from her seat on the high-profile Judiciary Committee, using her position to seize a Democratic leadership role on national issues from Supreme Court nominations to the Trump Administration’s child separation policy at the southern border. Her sister, Maya, former executive director of the ACLU of Northern California and Hillary Clinton campaign policy advisor, will serve as the campaign chair.

Harris previously made an appearance in Baltimore as one of the headliners of the NAACP’s national convention in 2017. She also joined Ben Jealous at one of his campaign rallies in Prince George’s County over the past summer. In the lead-up to election season, Harris has recently published her memoir, The Truths We Hold: An American Journey. A Facebook page, Kamala for Maryland, seeking campaign volunteers, launched in December.

Harris is not the first—nor certainly the last—Democrat who will make a bid for the nation’s highest office. Former Maryland Congressman and Montgomery County business John Delaney has been off and running since 2017. Sen. Elizabeth Warren of Massachusetts announced her candidacy at the end of December and Sen. Kirsten Gillibrand of New York announced last week. U.S. Rep Tulsi Gabbard of Hawaii has also launched her campaign—bringing, with Harris’ entry, the number of women already vying to become the 46th president to four. Former Vice President Joe Biden, U.S. Senators Cory Booker of New Jersey, and Bernie Sanders of Vermont, among a host of others, are considered likely to join the fray.

Diane Fink, executive director of Emerge Maryland, a nonprofit that identifies and trains Democratic women seeking political office, was thrilled to see both that Harris was throwing her hat into the ring—and that she planned to open her campaign headquarters in Baltimore.

“The more women running for public office, for any public office, the better,” Fink says. “When one or two women are running among 10 men, their voices get lost and they’re subject to more unfair sexist attacks.”

Fink noted that just the presence of Hillary Clinton in the 2016 race created a huge uptick in the number of women running for office. She believes Harris’ campaign, being based in Baltimore, could have a similar impact citywide and statewide.

“It’s inspiring and demystifying when you see someone else up close run—especially if they are approachable, it takes some of the fear and apprehension of running away,” Fink says. “Maryland already has a strong history of women running for high office—Senator Barbara Mikulski and Speaker [Nancy] Pelosi. I think we’ll see many more women stepping up.”

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The Gavel Goes Back to Nancy D’Alesandro Pelosi of Little Italy

Ron Cassie — Fri, 04 Jan 2019 08:00:00 +0000

“I take some, for lack of a better term, some bad-ass glee in just saying, ‘Women, you know how to get it done. Know your power.’”
—Nancy Pelosi to CNN’s Dana Bash.

The first Native-American women and the first Muslim women were sworn into Congress yesterday. So was the youngest woman ever sworn into Congress. All were part of a record-breaking, 100-plus women taking office Thursday afternoon, none, however, more significant than a 78-year-old mother of five and grandmother of nine from Baltimore’s Little Italy—the daughter of former three-term Mayor Thomas D’Alesandro Jr.—Nancy D’Alesandro Pelosi.

Pelosi, who became the first female Speaker of the House in 2007, is the first in six decades to regain the position.

With so many new Democratic U.S. representatives winning elections and flipping control of the House from the GOP, there had been talk among several Dems of finding someone other than Pelosi to assume the mantel of Speaker of the House. It did not last long. Two weeks after 16 Democrats released a letter opposing Pelosi as the next Speaker in mid-November, the mini-rebellion was over.

“Let me be clear, House Democrats are down with NDP—Nancy D’Alesandro Pelosi, the once and future Speaker of the United States House of Representatives,” said House Democratic Caucus Chairman and New York Rep. Hakeem Jeffries during the first session of the new Congress, in the first nod to a Naughty by Nature song—“Down with OPP”—in a nominating speech for House speaker.

Among those giving a shoutout, literally, to Pelosi’s hometown roots was Maryland Rep. Dutch Ruppersberger, who yelled, “Born and raised in Baltimore, Nancy D’Alesandro Pelosi!” as the vote giving her back the gavel was announced on the floor of the Capitol.

“Like me, Nancy Pelosi is homegrown Baltimore and she’s never forgotten it—partly because I won’t let her,” Ruppersberger said later.

Pelosi helped Ruppersberger get a seat on the powerful House Appropriations Committee. In October, Pelosi and Ruppersberger visited Towson University, speaking to 200 students about voter engagement and the upcoming midterms. Ruppersberger noted that Pelosi, who has represented California for the past three decades, still had an affinity for Berger cookies, crab cakes, and Old Bay. (Her husband, businessman Paul Pelosi, whom she wed in 1963, is a San Francisco native.)

You can take the girl out of Baltimore ... https://t.co/DYGeBUuuFS
— Dutch Ruppersberger (@Call_Me_Dutch) January 3, 2019

Fellow Maryland Rep. John Sarbanes also strongly supported Pelosi’s reelection as Speaker, pointing to her experience and skill as the Democrats’ top legislator in the House even before President Trump’s recent government shutdown over border wall funding.

“At this critical moment for our democracy, we need our best generals on the field,” Sarbanes said in November. “Nancy Pelosi is exactly the right person to hold the Trump Administration accountable over the next two years and to guide Democrats as we present a positive, meaningful legislative agenda for the country. She will be an outstanding Speaker.”

Not only did Pelosi’s father serve as Baltimore mayor (he also represented the state in Congress), but her brother Thomas D’Alesandro III served a term as mayor as well.

In a recent visit to Little Italy, she told CNN’s Dana Bash, however, that she learned as much about politics from her mother, Annunciata M. “Nancy” D’Alesandro (née Lombardi), who was born in Campobasso, Italy, a southern region that was home to many of Baltimore’s Italian immigrants. Her mother, Pelosi says, pulled together Little Italy’s women into her father’s grassroots campaign.

“He leapfrogged over the Irish [to become the city’s first Catholic mayor], that was a big deal,” she told Bash. “It took political organizing.”

Pelosi graduated from the Institute of Notre Dame in East Baltimore in 1958—just four years after the other most significant congresswoman in U.S. history—former Maryland Senator Barbara Mikulski, the longest-serving female member of the U.S. Congress ever. She earned a degree in political science from Trinity College in Washington, D.C.

After moving to San Francisco with her husband and young family, Pelosi worked her way up in Democratic Party politics, winning election in 1976 as a Democratic National Committee member from the state before her successful bid for Congress a decade later. Still, she’s never been far from her native Baltimore, especially once she began working in D.C.

In January of 2007, just three days after her first groundbreaking ascension to Speaker of the House, she returned to Little Italy for the ceremonial renaming of the street outside her childhood home to Via Nancy D’Alesandro Pelosi.

When she spoke to the crowd, she highlighted her Italian immigrant ancestors, who came to this country poor, hardworking, and devout, and her own upbringing in the rowhouse at 245 Albemarle Street, according to The Washington Post reporting of the event.

“I wanted to come back here and say thank you to all of you,” Pelosi said. “Every step that I took to the speakership began in this neighborhood.”

More recently, when Pelosi returned to Baltimore in October for her interview with Bash at Sabatino’s—she was rewarded with another surprise. A family portrait with her parents and five older brothers in their rowhouse living room—painted when she was 7 years old and her father was assuming office in City Hall—had just been restored and hung in Germano Piattini, the popular Little Italy restaurant across the street.

The painting had been rediscovered six months before by one of Pelosi’s cousins when the property was being renovated and he turned it over to husband and wife restaurant owners Germano Fabiani and Cyd Wolf. They gave it to local artist and muralist Michael Kirby, who restored the badly damaged canvas.

“When she walked in and saw the painting, she got emotional about it,” Wolf said. “She remembered sitting for it, her mother going upstairs and getting out her white dress. It was the focal point of their living room, she said. You can tell by where she sat, between her parents, and by what she’s wearing—among all those boys, she was the light of the family.”

“I’ve become a big fan over the years,” Wolf added. “I’ve watched her on television and in public and I admire the way she conducts herself. She’s gritty and smart, and she has common sense. She is someone who thinks of what her actions are going to mean to her grandchildren 50 years down the road.”

As she did when she first became Speaker in 2007, Pelosi invited the children on the House floor, including some of her own grandchildren, to stand with her as she received the gavel.

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