When George L. Russell Jr. left us the other day, I had one immediate thought: he not only arrived in this world too soon but, at 96, he also departed too soon.
To the end of his life, he remained a man of remarkable personal history, legal brilliance, leadership and dignity, and a desire to help heal a city along its ever-festering racial divide.
We could use such a man today.
But Russell, for all his skills, arrived too soon to change the course of Baltimore history. When he ran for mayor, he was up against a political earth force known as William Donald Schaefer, who was running for that job for the first of his four terms.
And if that wasn’t enough (and it was) Russell ran in a 1970 post-riot atmosphere that was an unfortunate mix of fear and cowardice.
He was a 1946 graduate from West Baltimore’s Frederick Douglass High School, graduated with a degree in economics from the University of Pennsylvania and got his law degree from the University of Maryland.
By the time he ran for mayor, he had a remarkable track record. He was a hugely respected attorney, the city’s first Black city solicitor, first Black judge on the old Supreme Bench, and he was a man who presented his credentials to be mayor with a series of remarkably detailed position papers. He came prepared. And every time he gave a campaign speech, he was thoughtful and precise and polished.
On the other hand, he was Black.
And in a city still living in the shadows of the 1968 riots after Dr. Martin Luther King’s assassination, this made an enormous difference as people – and newspapers – chose up sides along racial lines.
For all of Russell’s intelligence and poise, he ran in the Democratic primary against Schaefer, who was awkward in public, a shy, clunky speaker, just beginning to get over his nervousness in public. But he was a hard-working drudge who knew every street and alley and pothole in town, and labored into each evening on the minutiae that bored everybody else to tears.
Also, Schaefer was white.
The city had never had a Black mayor, nor even a serious contender for the job. That’s just how the balance of power played out in most of 20th century America.
As it turned out, Schaefer became a remarkable mayor (and later governor and state comptroller). But it takes nothing away from him, or from Russell, to wonder what kind of mayor Russell might have been.
The race was pretty close, especially considering some of Russell’s potential vote was snatched away when Clarence Mitchell III, who was then the youngest state legislator in Maryland history, jumped into the mayoral Democratic primary race.
But there was another important factor, told before but worth telling again.
Remember, this was 1970, a time when daily newspapers still had enormous political muscle, and their editorial endorsements could swing elections.
At The News American, which then had Baltimore’s largest newspaper circulation, those of us who’d covered the campaign were called into the office of executive editor Tom White to discuss endorsements.
“The most impressive guy out there,” I said, “is George Russell.”
The paper’s highly respected veteran columnist, Lou Azrael, agreed.
“Russell’s a brilliant guy,” Azrael said.
“I know,” said editor White. “But if we endorse him, we’ll lose 5,000 subscribers.”
He meant white subscribers. Such was the tenor of the times, and the fearfulness of some newspapers. And the paper’s endorsement went to Schaefer.
Schaefer went on to have a great political career. George Russell went on to a distinguished legal career that included much civic leadership. He helped establish the Reginald F. Lewis African American Museum History and Culture, and Harbor Bank, one of the nation’s largest minority-owned banks. He was role model and tutor to several generations of young African American attorneys.
But if not for bad timing, he might also have been Baltimore’s first Black mayor half a century ago.
A former Baltimore Sun columnist and WJZ-TV commentator, Michael Olesker is the author of six books, including “Journeys to the Heart of Baltimore” (Johns Hopkins University Press) and “Michael Olesker’s Baltimore: If You Live Here, You’re Home” (Johns Hopkins University).
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