Maryland
Historic Route 40 in Maryland was the setting for some civil rights struggles of the early 1960s
Route 40 spans the nation from the waters of the Atlantic Ocean off Atlantic City, New Jersey, through parts of Maryland, to those of the Pacific off San Francisco, some 3,000-plus miles across the country’s midsection like a great macadam belt.
Its origins date to 1806, when an act of Congress signed into law by President Thomas Jefferson established what locals still call the National Road or Baltimore Pike. Its eastern leg stretched 750 miles from Baltimore, through Cumberland, to Vandalia, then the capital of Illinois, making it the country’s first interstate road.
Often compared to Rome’s ancient road Appian Way, it quickly became the major route over the Alleghenies and throbbed with traffic on horseback, stagecoaches and Conestoga wagons piled high with freight bound for eastern markets, passing dream-filled visionary pioneers heading westward.
But it was the sound of the steam whistle that sounded the death knell for the National Road. The Baltimore & Ohio Railroad built its line westward in the 1850s, and its freight and passengers quickly were diverted to trains that could travel between Baltimore and Wheeling, West Virginia, in just 16 hours, rather than days over a frequently mud-clogged road in spring and winter that often was frequented by drunken drivers and highwaymen.
As the old road fell into a weed-choked highway, a victim of the rise of railroads, it was the invention and accessibility of the automobile 50 years later that revived it.
But as a main artery of commerce, the segment of Route 40 that passes through Maryland, was also the setting for a dark and ugly past in the early 1960s.
African Americans traveling by car in the state, especially north of Baltimore, were not welcome at diners, restaurants, hotels or motels.
In those days, before Interstate 95 was completed and segregation was still the law of the land, Route 40 was the major route for diplomats and people of color traveling between New York and Washington.
Early in the spring of 1961, William Fitzjohn, charge d’affaires for Sierre Leone in Washington, en route to Pittsburgh, stopped with his driver at a Howard Johnson’s near Hagerstown for dinner and because both men were Black, they were denied service.
This American snub, and others like it, caused an international furor.
President John F. Kennedy was outraged by what had transpired and received Fitzjohn in the White House while the president of Howard Johnson’s apologized.
In June 1961, Adam Malick Sow, Chad’s ambassador to the United States was on his way to Washington to present his credentials to the president and was refused service when he stopped for a meal in Edgewood.
In September of that year, President Kennedy sent a telegram to 200 Maryland civic leaders seeking “voluntary cooperation for an immediate end to segregation in restaurants and other places of public service on U.S. Route 40 in Maryland.”
Maryland Gov. J. Millard Tawes also apologized for the incidents and supported the president’s position, while suggesting that African diplomats should select restaurants with an open-door policy.
“It is a terrible reflection on this state that this thing [rebuffs to diplomats] should be repeated time and time again after the president urged us to correct this condition,” said former Gov. Theodore Roosevelt McKeldin.
The Rev. Douglas B. Sands, a civil rights activist, who retired as pastor of White Rock Independent Methodist Episcopal Church in Sykesville, was at the time executive secretary of the state Commission on Interracial Problems and Relations.
One day he and a fellow protester, Caroline Ramsay, found themselves in the uncomfortable position of staring down the barrel of a gun held by Anthony J. “Tony” Konstant, owner of the Redwood Inn in Aberdeen, as they attempted to enter the restaurant.
“It was a very busy time along the road in those days,” Sands, 89, who retired from his church in 2019, recalled recently.
“He told us we weren’t wanted and to get out and he came to us with the gun raised,” Sands said. “And he was so infuriated because my companion Caroline was a white woman. This was unique for us because no one had done that before, and we left.”
Then the racist changed and became a supporter of desegregation.
“Tony had a change of heart later and he believed in what we were trying to do in getting a state accommodation law that would allow service to be given to everyone,” Sands said. “And I never had a reason to be fearful.”
Konstant became a leader in the effort to get restauranteurs along the highway to integrate.
“It is not an easy thing to go up to a Negro and tell him you won’t serve him,” Konstant told The Evening Sun in 1961. “It is morally wrong and Christianly wrong. There is a new Negro emerging, and we have to recognize him. … I’m not bitter about CORE’s role in the thing. Let’s face it, we never would have done it if they had not applied pressure. They were fighting for a principle.”
He had visited more than 35 restaurants and told the newspaper: “What I found was a softening attitude. But at most places the operators said integrating was the only decent, moral thing to do, and that they were willing if everyone else was.”
He added: “If I had to do it all over again I would have quietly desegregated and that would have been that. It’s the only sensible thing to do.”
For his efforts in playing a major role in integrating Route 40 and his civil rights activism, Konstant received a letter of thanks from U.S. Attorney General Robert F. Kennedy.
Freedom Riders targeted Route 40 establishments, and 47 restaurants between the Delaware Memorial Bridge and Baltimore agreed to desegregate by November 1961.
Janice E. Grant, 90, a retired Harford County public school teacher and civil rights activist, held planning meetings in the living room of her home at 430 S. Law St. in Aberdeen. “A group of Freedom Riders came down from New York and we used to hold meetings in a church on Thorn Creek, but then the Klan started burning Black churches, and I said we couldn’t meet there, so they came to my house at 11:30 the first night.”
Grant was arrested after trying to integrate a restaurant in Edgewood. She was joined in her protests by her husband, Woodrow Benjamin Grant, a former serviceman.
“We sat everywhere we could along Route 40,” she said. “Afraid? I was never afraid. I had driven alone in Mississippi when they were killing people and I had been beaten badly.”
Additional pressure was applied when James Farmer, national director of the Congress of Racial Equality, better known as CORE, told the newspaper the restaurants that were balking at serving Black citizens were facing a Dec. 15 deadline.
“If not, we shall feel free to take necessary action,” he said in a statement.
CORE had published a list of more than 30 businesses between Maryland and Delaware that continued to refuse service to African Americans.
In early December 1961, more than 500 Freedom Riders staged an anti-discrimination demonstration along the highway, with 14 protesters being arrested, including James Peck, one of the original Freedom Riders.
The activism of the Route 40 protesters finally led to the passage of the state Public Accommodation Act in 1963 — the first such law passed by a state below the Mason-Dixon Line — that went into effect that year and effectively outlawed segregation in Maryland. The act was upheld by a referendum in November 1964.
It went into effect weeks before President Lyndon B. Johnson signed into law the historic Civil Rights Act of 1964.
In 1963, Sands resigned from the commission and accepted a job as special protocol officer with the U.S. State Department under Angier Biddle Duke, and later held posts during the 1970s with the Howard County chapter of the NAACP. In the 1980s he served in the cabinet of Maryland Gov. Harry R. Hughes.
Konstant, who was 87 when he died in 2011, later became the co-owner of the landmark Williamsburg Inn in White Marsh — located where else, but along historic Route 40.
Baltimore Sun photographer Amy Davis and Sun researcher Paul McCardell contributed to this article.
BALTIMORE (WBFF) — A Baltimore nonprofit run by a Maryland lawmaker received more than $100 million in taxpayer dollars while auditors repeatedly flagged problems with its financial reporting and internal oversight, according to a Spotlight on Maryland investigation.
Del. Dana Stein, a Baltimore County Democrat, has worked as the executive director of Civic Works for roughly two decades while serving in the statehouse. Civic Works, which has received about $145 million in taxpayer funding since 2016, runs workforce, housing, environmental and community revitalization programs, primarily in the Baltimore area.
Stein earns more than $200,000 annually at Civic Works and has served in the General Assembly since 2007. He chairs the Maryland House environmental subcommittee. Civic Works receives government funding for programs involving weatherization, energy efficiency, clean-energy workforce development and environmental projects.
Stein insisted he goes through the proper process of reporting conflicts of interest to the State House and recusing himself from relevant votes. Meanwhile, critics say that State House policies are not enough to prevent Stein from taking advantage of his legislative influence over billions of taxpayer dollars, especially amid ongoing audit struggles at his organization.
A Spotlight on Maryland analysis of the nonprofit’s federal single audits—the annual audits required for organizations that spend at least $750,000 in federal funds—shows Civic Works received about $145 million in taxpayer funding between 2016 and 2025. Government funding averaged about $14.5 million per year and accounted for roughly 80% of the organization’s support during that period when stacked against private donations.
Audits show that federal funds were passed through to Civic Works by an extensive list of agencies within the Maryland and Baltimore City governments.
In 2006, the year before Stein took office, Civic Works received $1.9 million in government grants, according to IRS tax filings. By 2016, Civic Works received $8.2 million in government grants—a roughly 330% increase over a decade.
IRS tax filings from Civic Works show Stein earned about $96,000 in 2014 and approximately $231,000 in 2024—an increase of about 140%.
Maryland Del. Brian Chisholm, an Anne Arundel County Republican, questioned the ethics of Stein making more than $200,000 at a taxpayer-funded nonprofit as he works in the State House. He also questioned how Stein could manage tens of millions of taxpayer dollars while he worked full-time as a lawmaker for roughly a quarter of the year.
“I think it’s a waste of taxpayer money, in my opinion, because I don’t see the return on investment,” he told Spotlight on Maryland. “I would assume they’re political payoffs It goes back to the dawn of time when we first got into politics and power. How do you influence politics? You influence with money.”
What the audits found
The most recent single audit, covering fiscal 2025, reported a significant deficiency in financial reporting at Civic Works—a repeat finding from the previous year. Auditors said Civic Works had to correct more than $2.2 million in financial records after auditors identified errors in the organization’s financial records. Civic Works told auditors it implemented new grant-tracking and financial reporting procedures in response.
Auditors also determined the nonprofit did not qualify for the federal government’s low-risk auditee designation.
The 2024 audit identified both a significant deficiency and a material weakness, a more severe audit finding. Auditors said the organization’s initial federal expenditures schedule omitted programs, misclassified expenditures and left off about $1 million in federal spending before it was corrected. Auditors again determined Civic Works did not qualify as a low-risk auditee.
The pattern stretches back years. In 2023, auditors reported a material weakness involving lease accounting and financial reporting that resulted in a restatement of prior-year balances. In 2021, auditors reported a material weakness involving revenue recognition and accounting, resulting in another financial restatement.
In 2019, auditors identified a significant deficiency involving federal grant compliance after required documentation for an employee background check could not be produced. In 2017, auditors reported a significant deficiency after required federal grant reports were submitted without documented review.
Linda Parsons, a professor at The University of Alabama focused on nonprofit accounting, said the repeated audit findings, paired with a determination that Civic Works is not a low-risk auditee, show the organization should not continue to receive taxpayer dollars.
“I would be particularly careful with this organization if I were providing grant funding,” she told Spotlight on Maryland. “What I see is that a lawmaker with influence and power in the granting process is moving increasingly large grants to an organization with which that lawmaker is affiliated, and that there’s trouble with the reports that are overseeing the use of those grants.”
Chisholm agreed that Civic Works should not receive any more taxpayer money.
“I think they need to be looked at with a fine-tooth comb. Why are you failing so many audits, and do you actually deserve the millions of dollars?” he told Spotlight on Maryland. “The funding should dry up at some point because you can’t prove that you’re spending the public’s money in a responsible way.”
Civic Works responds
A spokeswoman for Civic Works emailed Spotlight on Maryland a statement on behalf of the organization and Stein, emphasizing that the lawmaker takes necessary steps to ensure there is not a conflict of interest between his two jobs.
“Since his election in 2006, Mr. Stein has regularly consulted with the legislature’s ethics adviser to avoid actual and potential conflicts between his legislative and non-profit roles. He has always followed the ethics adviser’s advice regarding disclosure of potential conflicts and actual recusal on votes. He has disclosed and disclaimed potential or appearances of a conflict and those forms are on the Maryland General Assembly website,” the Civic Works spokeswoman wrote.
“Mr. Stein has followed all advice from the legislature’s ethics adviser regarding recusal from matters that would create a conflict of interest between his legislative and non-profit roles. He does not interact with government officials in matters related to procurements or negotiation of contracts,” she added.
Salary spending increases 100%
IRS filings show Civic Works expanded rapidly in recent years amid audit struggles. The nonprofit reported 286 employees in 2020 and 347 employees in 2024—a roughly 21% increase—while spending on salaries increased from $5.8 million to $12 million—a roughly 100% increase. Payroll accounted for between 58% and 68% of annual spending during those years.
Stein lists his position with Civic Works on his financial disclosure statement. His disclosure also lists the state agencies from which his nonprofit receives funding.
Stein filed a Form D disclaimer of an apparent or presumed conflict of interest this year, noting that while Civic Works has a partnership with BGE, he is “able to participate in legislative action relating to the above fairly, objectively, and in the public interest.”
Since 2013, Stein has filed 25 Form E statements of recusal from voting and other legislative actions due to a reported conflict of interest arising from his employment with Civic Works. However, the last recusal he reported was in 2023, even though his organization received taxpayer dollars from the Maryland government in subsequent years.
‘Accountable to the public’
Parsons said that while Stein may be following legally required conflict-of-interest policies, he still has a concerning level of influence over the grantmaking process.
“The conflict of interest, that to me is probably the most troubling thing,” she told Spotlight on Maryland. “If you have an individual that’s in charge of a nonprofit that’s also elected to office, that’s not necessarily a problem. But when money is steered toward that organization and increasing amounts at all levels, then I would want to know who’s making sure that this is operating properly.”
A spokeswoman for Maryland Gov. Wes Moore’s office emailed a statement to Spotlight on Maryland that emphasized the federal single audits of Civic Works do not assess how state funding is spent. Maryland state agencies, she wrote, have their own individual oversight mechanisms in place.
“The Moore-Miller administration is committed to ensuring every dollar of taxpayer funding is awarded fairly, spent responsibly, and accountable to the public,” Moore’s spokeswoman wrote.
Several agencies within the Maryland government provided written statements to Spotlight on Maryland detailing various individual oversight policies for programs they fund at Civic Works. The Maryland agencies stated that no action has been taken in response to findings in Civic Works’ federal single audits.
$1 lease in Baltimore
Civic Works operates at Clifton Mansion, the former estate of philanthropist Johns Hopkins. The nonprofit has a lease agreement with Baltimore City that allows them to pay just $1 per year to use, maintain and renovate the property.
Additionally, Civic Works has received $13.5 million in taxpayer dollars through the Baltimore City government since August 2022, according to a government database. This included $4.5 million in taxpayer dollars from the Baltimore City Health Department to Civic Works from 2022 to 2024, described in the database as being for “Coronavirus.”
A spokesperson for Baltimore City Mayor Brandon Scott’s office emphasized that the city “employs best practices for grant administration, signing grant agreements that ensure transparency and accountability.”
The spokesperson noted that recent federal audits of Civic Works “identified no material weaknesses or significant deficiencies in internal controls over federal programs, finding that Civic Works complied with all requirements that could have a material effect on its major federal programs.”
The mayor’s office did not respond to additional questions on audit concerns at Civic Works regarding financial reporting and scheduled expenditures for federal awards.
Civic Works is partnered with Baltimore City Public Schools to operate the “Reach! Partnership School,” which prepares students for college and careers. The 2025 federal single audits revealed the organization received $9.7 million from Baltimore City Public Schools that year. Reach is incorporated separately but included in the audits because Civic Works manages the organization.
A spokeswoman for City Schools said they consider federal audit findings as part of their oversight of Civic Works.
“We will continue to monitor the Operator’s progress to confirm that the audit issues have been appropriately resolved,” the spokeswoman emailed Spotlight on Maryland. “City Schools will also continue to review audits and other financial documents to ensure the organization is on track and making progress consistent with its Corrective Action plan and regular contractual requirements.”
Spotlight on Maryland is a joint venture by The Baltimore Sun, FOX45 News and WJLA in Washington, D.C. Have a news tip? Call 410-467-4670 or emailSpotlightOnMaryland@sbgtv.com. Contact Patrick Hauf atpjhauf@sbgtv.comand @PatrickHauf.
Apple Towson Town Center employees received an endorsement from Maryland Governor Wes Moore in their fight against Apple over the company’s decision to close its first US unionized store. Here are the details.
Apple faces new pressure over Towson store closure
A couple of months ago, Apple announced that its Towson Town Center would close its doors for good on June 20, alongside two other stores located in commercial centers in California and Connecticut.
The Apple Towson Town Center workers have been represented by the IAM Union since 2022, after becoming the first Apple retail store in the US to unionize.
Soon after the announcement, IAM Union decried Apple’s handling of the store closure. While the company says that the union agreement only requires transfers within 50 miles of the Towson store, with severance offered otherwise, the IAM Union argues that Apple is denying them the broader relocation options available to employees at non-union stores.
Since then, in addition to the pushback from the IAM Union, Apple has also received letters from Maryland lawmakers and, just yesterday, from40 members of Congress, asking it to reconsider closing the store or to provide Towson employees with the same transfer opportunities offered to workers at non-union stores.
Today, Maryland Governor Wes Moore chimed in, manifesting his support for the Towson workers.
Although Governor Moore stopped short of accusing Apple of union-busting practices, as members of Congress did in their letter to the company, he did explicitly call on Apple to give Towson workers the same transfer rights and opportunities afforded to other employees.
Here’s Governor Moore’s statement:
“The Towson Town Center Apple Store has been a retail anchor for the region since 2022. (…) It’s provided good-paying jobs, increased economic activity, and been an important localized service hub for the region. As the first unionized Apple retail store in the country and a strong-performing location, its workers proved that economic growth and workers’ rights go hand-in-hand. Now, the rug is being pulled out from underneath them. These Marylanders deserve the same transfer rights and opportunities afforded to other Apple employees, and we stand with them.”
The IAM Union praised Governor Moore’s support and called on the company to act before the June 20 deadline.
Apple, for its part, remains silent on the issue, ever since it provided the following statement to 9to5Mac when the IAM Union filed an unfair labor practice charge with the National Labor Relations Board on April 28:
We strongly disagree with the claims made, and we will continue to abide by the agreement that was negotiated and agreed with the union. We look forward to presenting all of the facts to the NLRB.
As of right now, the Apple Towson Town Center’s page says the store will close on June 20 at 8:00 p.m.
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Republican candidate Mariela Roca is making another play for Maryland’s 6th Congressional District. On The Final 5 with Jim Lokay, she talks about her campaign ahead of the June primary, and the lessons she’s learned on the campaign trail.
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