Page 10 - Baltimore_Sun_Editorial

And in 1989, after the personal journals of H.L. Mencken were released, revealing deep-seated
racism and antisemitism, Sun writers undertook great efforts to make excuses for the revered
writer, even though Mencken had been dead for nearly 34 years. “The fact that the sage of
Baltimore had unkind things to say on a broad range of topics can hardly come as a surprise to
those familiar with his sharp and biting work,” wrote one columnist. “They make him a more
complex figure, more difficult to decipher.”

The Sun would
continue to sponsor
a writing contest
named after
Mencken, despite
protest from some
award recipients.
And more than a
decade later, it
would install a
Mencken quote on
its lobby wall on
North Calvert
Street, showing, in
the most generous
interpretation, a
lack of self- An H.L. Mencken quote was installed on the lobby wall of The Baltimore Sun's
awareness and former building on North Calvert Street. (Tricia Bishop/Baltimore Sun staff)
sensitivity.

Black Lives Matter

Shortly after the diary release, in 1991, the vicious beating of Rodney King by Los Angeles
police officers was recorded on video and broadcast across the country, and white Americans
could no longer deny that Black people were being mistreated by law enforcement. Yet, The Sun
would continue to take the word of local law enforcement over Baltimore residents in its
reporting for decades to come, largely without question. It did this even as the city adopted a
“zero tolerance” style of policing in the late ‘90s that the U.S. Department of Justice would later
find “led to repeated violations of the constitutional and statutory rights” of community
members.

Though people like state Sen. Jill P. Carter, who’s long been in the Baltimore political scene, had
for years been raising alarms over police brutality and the need for reform, it wasn’t until 2014
that The Sun took an in-depth look at why it was that the city was paying out millions of dollars
to settle dozens of lawsuits by Black residents who said police beat them up. That investigation
won multiple awards for the paper, as good journalism has a way of doing, and was a prescient
walk-up to the story that would dominate the paper the next year: Freddie Gray’s death.

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