Theodore McKeldin

University of Maryland Archives

A native of Baltimore, Theodore “Ted” Roosevelt McKeldin rose from humble origins to become a two-term mayor of Baltimore (1943–1947, 1963–1967) and a two-term governor of Maryland (1951–1959). He was a Republican who was known for support of social reform and modernization projects.

McKeldin was an American success story. Born November 20, 1900, he was the tenth of 11 children born to working-class parents in South Baltimore. Family need forced him to get a job after completing the seventh grade. He earned his general equivalency degree by taking classes at night at Baltimore City College, and then he graduated with honors in 1925 from the evening law school at the University of Maryland. He also learned bookkeeping and honed his passion for speaking with a Dale Carnegie course at the YMCA. He worked as a motivational speaker before becoming the executive secretary and substitute speaker for Baltimore mayor William Broening.

As a Republican in a heavily Democratic state, McKeldin had to look for opportunities to get elected. His first bid for mayor of Baltimore failed in 1938, but the Democrats divided in 1942, allowing McKeldin the upset victory. Similarly, his first run for governor failed in 1946. Four years later, he won a landslide victory (20 of 23 counties and Baltimore City) against the incumbent, William Preston Lane Jr., by criticizing a very unpopular sales tax. McKeldin soon admitted he had made a mistake with regard to the tax, and the citizens liked how he spent the revenue. In 1954, he became the first Republican governor to ever be reelected in Maryland by embracing the Brown v. Board of Education decision and championing black civil rights. This stance contributed to his reelection as mayor of Baltimore in 1962.

His accomplishments reflected his personal constituencies of minorities and business people. McKeldin’s outgoing personality reflected his genuine like for and belief in people. For him, as one scholar put it, “religion meant love of humankind.” McKeldin frequently preached in churches and tried to practice what he preached. Always bipartisan, he appointed blacks, women, and Jews to government positions. More notably, he worked to desegregate public accommodations, state beaches, and ferries, as well as schools.

McKeldin’s modernization projects were his other lasting legacy. As mayor of Baltimore, he participated in constructing Friendship International Airport (today Baltimore/Washington International Thurgood Marshal Airport, or BWI), established Liberty Reservoir to augment Baltimore’s water supply, rebuilt schools and the famed Lexington Market, and promoted urban renewal through slum clearance and public housing projects. As governor, he created the Maryland Port Authority to expand trade and shipping, established a prison for repeat offenders in Jessup, and built miles of new highway in addition to new bridges and a tunnel under Baltimore’s harbor. Suburbia and shopping malls soon followed.

McKeldin died August 10, 1974, and was buried at Greenmount Cemetery in Baltimore. It can be said that his advocacy for social reform and economic modernization benefited the people he served and helped to define Maryland in the twentieth century.

Callcott, George H. Maryland and America, 1940–1980. Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1985.