When I moved my family to Baltimore in 1972 to take a job teaching at University of Maryland's Baltimore County campus (UMBC), I found that the apartment I had leased was not ready for occupancy. That led to an urgent hunt for an alternative.
My mother had come east to help with the move, and one afternoon we were driving in west Baltimore, near the HQ of the Social Security Administration, one of Baltimore's largest employers. The middle-class area we were investigating consisted mostly of single family dwellings, generally post-WWII, and seemed a likely possibility for my family. People on the streets appeared as a mix of black and white, much like the student body and faculty.
At one point I stopped at an intersection where visibility was blocked by large shrubbery. I crept out into the cross street and suddenly saw an approaching car, whereupon I accelerated to get out of the way. As luck would have it, that turned out to be a police car. The officer stopped me and among other questions asked what we were doing in the neighborhood. I told him the purpose of our tour, to which his reply was "you don't want to live around here." In my non-suthr'n way, I asked why, and the reply was that it was a transitional neighborhood that was becoming predominantly black (expressed in words of few syllables). We were sent on our way.
I learned that the police officer's evaluation of the local demographics was true, but I always felt that it was none of his business where I chose to live. On reflection over the years the experience has revealed itself as a manifestation of post-war block busting, wherein segregation was maintained by the definition of shifting sets of neighborhoods as black or white, with collusion by the realty industry and other agencies both public and private tending to maintain a dual real estate market, with attendant higher costs for all buyers, wherein the only beneficiaries were realtors (excuse me, that's Realtor®s) and unreconstructed klan types. Baltimore turned out to be the most segregated place I've ever lived.
All this makes it sadly likely that the recent events have their roots in historical precedent. Would that it were not so; Baltimore has a lot going for it, including a mayor who seems to have her act together, and it is sad that racial baggage is holding it back.