A 2002 editorial dismissal of African American lawyer Michael Steele, running mate to gubernatorial candidate Robert Ehrlich, as bringing “little to the team but the color of his skin”.A reliance by too many of us for too long on the word of law enforcement over that of Black residents who said they were being improperly targeted by police.The identification of Black people by race in articles into the early 1960s, until progressive readers threatened to cancel their subscriptions if the labels weren’t removed.

A failure to hire any African American journalists before the 1950s, and too few Black journalists ever since.Editorials in the early 1900s seeking to disenfranchise Black voters because, as The Sun opinion writers wrote, “the exclusion of the ignorant and thriftless negro vote will make for better political conditions” and to support racial segregation in neighborhoods to preserve what Sun writers called the “ dominant and superior” white race.Classified ads selling enslaved people or offering rewards for their return, the first of which appeared just two months after the paper’s launch in May 1837.

We found appalling coverage that clearly furthered prejudice and alienated many of our readers. As part of that process, members of The Sun’s editorial board and its Diversity Committee, made up of staff volunteers, consulted the paper’s archives and several other archives online, including and ProQuest, which we accessed through the Baltimore County Public Library. And, as a movement grew across the country, as more Black Americans died at the hands of police - Alton Sterling, Philando Castile, Breonna Taylor, Anton Black, George Floyd - so did our obligation to scrutinize The Sun’s past.Īnd so, now we turn the spotlight on ourselves and our institution, looking at our history through a modern-day lens in an attempt to better understand our communities, the effect we have had on them, and the distrust engendered by The Sun’s actions. The death of Freddie Gray while in Baltimore police custody in 2015, and the national light it shone on the persistent disparities in the city, shook us out of our complacency. We have made efforts before to bolster diversity and inclusion, but the evolution has been slow.

Governor race issues dominate ad wars