(BALTIMORE – September 8, 2026) – Having completed about a dozen full-length interviews for the Legends of Baltimore series—and given a series of television and podcast interviews—one observation I’ve made is how much pride Baltimoreans take in their high schools.
As a matter of fact, one of the first questions we ask is:
“What school did you go to?”
From that point forward, a true Baltimorean has already started calculating who you are, what side of town you come from, and who you might know.
If you’re not from here, don’t worry. It’s a Baltimore thing. I’m sure you understand.
Simply put, Baltimore people take their high schools very seriously.
Have you ever attended a Dunbar alumni bull roast or a Walbrook High School alumni cookout on the field? If so, then you already know. People show up wearing their school colors and representing their alma mater with their whole chest.
It is not a game.
Outsiders are always welcome. Just don’t get it twisted. These folks take their school pride seriously.
I was thinking about how beautiful that is. Actually, I have felt this way for a long time—the very notion that my school is better than your school.
When the conversation turns to football, City–Poly dominates—and it earned that distinction honestly.
Baltimore City College and Baltimore Polytechnic Institute first met on the football field in 1889, creating Maryland’s oldest high school football rivalry and one of the oldest public high school rivalries in the nation. By 2025, the schools were meeting for the 136th time.
For decades, City–Poly was played around Thanksgiving at Memorial Stadium, sharing Baltimore’s holiday football tradition with the Calvert Hall–Loyola Turkey Bowl. Families planned their Thanksgiving schedules around those games.
After City and Poly joined the Maryland Public Secondary Schools Athletic Association in the early 1990s, the rivalry was moved from Thanksgiving season to an earlier date. It eventually moved to M&T Bank Stadium—the home of the Baltimore Ravens—where it stayed through 2017 before moving to Hughes Stadium on the campus of Morgan State University.
There was something fitting about City–Poly being played on an NFL-caliber stage. The rivalry never needed professional football to matter.
Alumni filled the stands wearing City’s black and orange or Poly’s orange and blue, still keeping score in a competition that predates the automobile, the Baltimore Ravens, and nearly everything else Baltimoreans argue about.
That is more than 130 years of “my school is better than your school” being settled on the football field.
But when the conversation shifts to basketball—at least in certain circles—it is Dunbar and Lake Clifton that dominate.
Nobody embodied that rivalry quite like Ernie Graham.
Graham teamed with his older brother, Kevin, to win back-to-back city championships at Lake Clifton. By his own account, he spent his entire high school career wanting to beat Dunbar.
Then Baltimore City redistricted its schools.
For his senior year, Graham was zoned straight into the enemy camp.
He was not happy about it. He had built part of his identity around defeating Dunbar, and now he was expected to put on the maroon and gold.
But under a young, second-year coach named Bob Wade, Graham averaged an astonishing 27 points and 22 rebounds per game. He delivered Wade his first city championship and helped lay the foundation for Dunbar’s rise as a national basketball powerhouse.
Graham later starred at the University of Maryland, where he scored 44 points in just 25 minutes against North Carolina State on Dec. 20, 1978. That performance remains Maryland’s single-game scoring record. His No. 25 jersey is honored with a banner hanging in the rafters at Xfinity Center.
That is the thing about school pride in Baltimore: It is fierce enough that switching sides can feel like a betrayal—even when it turns out to be part of your destiny.
Now, granted, both Poly and City have their strengths.
My two years at Poly strengthened my math skills. In retrospect, however, given my liberal brain, City probably would have been a better fit.
But I landed at Dunbar—and I am so glad I did.
I could not have arrived at a better time.
Truth be told, I got the best of two worlds.
And since I am a Dunbar Poet, you already know where my allegiance rests.
All of that is to say that interviewing Baltimore’s legends is truly a labor of love. Every story brings another piece of history I didn’t know, another connection I hadn’t made, and another reason to appreciate this city.
Where do I even start?
One legend—and one school—at a time.
Stay tuned to BMORENews.com, “The News Before the News,” where we uncover the truth!
