A Maryland suburb known for a slaveholding past confronts its racist present

By Ovetta Wiggins September 15, 2020 at 3:37 p.m. EDT

Two years before George Floyd’s killing forced a reckoning with American racism, Jordan Keemer was in his high school government class in Pasadena, Md., acting as the judge in an exercise that resembled a mock trial.

The teen doesn’t remember the topic, or his verdict.

But stained in his mind are the stinging words he says his teacher uttered quietly as he sat, a 16-year-old Black student surrounded by mostly White classmates: “I don’t trust you n—– people.”

For decades, local historians say, Pasadena was known as a “sundown town,” a place where Black residents risked harassment or worse if they were in certain locations after nightfall. Read more HERE.