Gloria Richardson Community Garden

The Gloria Richardson Solidary Garden cooperative (GRSGC) is a Black working-class initiative to respond to the massive food insecurity and lack of sovereignty of the Black community in Baltimore City. It is a grassroot effort to address communities trapped in “food desserts” by providing affordable and
renewable access to fresh food grown in or near the residence of Black, Brown, and working-class
people’s homes.

This initiative will contribute to the greater need of establishing food sovereignty in the Black
community and overturning the historic crisis created as a result of stealing the labor of African people
brought to the Americas as farmers, laborers and skilled workers.

This solidarity garden project will be a network of Black and working class families participating in
cooperative economic relationships that bypass capitalist modes of production and encourage food and knowledge exchange that serves the needs of people over the interests of profits.

This initiative is named in honor of Gloria Richardson Dandridge (May 6, 1922 – July 15, 2021) who was a civil rights activist best known as the leader of the Cambridge Movement, a civil rights struggle in the early 1960s in Cambridge, Maryland, on the Eastern Shore. Recognized as a major figure in the Civil Rights Movement, she was one of the signatories to “The Treaty of Cambridge”, signed in July 1963 with Attorney General Robert F. Kennedy, and state and local officials. It was an effort at reconciliation and commitment to change after a riot the month before.

While a strong advocate for civil rights, she believed in self-defense and did not support non-violent struggle. She was one of only to Black women allowed at the podium during the 1963 March on Washington but her speech was cut short as she was a known supporter of Malcolm X and March organizers feared what message should would put out if given an opportunity to speak.