Historic West Baltimore law office becomes legal, mental-health center
Juanita Jackson Mitchell’s old West Baltimore office is reopening as the Roar Center, with free legal help and mental-health care for survivors of crime.
1239 Druid Hill Avenue, a former West Baltimore law office once used by Juanita Jackson Mitchell, is reopening as the Roar Center, a free legal and mental-health center. Family members, neighbors and officials gathered Friday morning in Marble Hill to honor Mitchell as renovation work continued on the three-story brick building where she practiced law from 1950 until her retirement.
The center is being led by Beloved Community Services Corporation and will be fully occupied by the University of Maryland, Baltimore’s ROAR Center. The restored building will be a one-stop shop for survivors of crime, with free legal help, case management, health-care management, counseling and therapy, social work, and nurse care management. It serves people even if they never reported the crime to police, using a trauma-informed, client-driven model.
Access to both legal help and mental-health care is often limited in the neighborhood. ROAR says it has helped more than 500 people over the past four years, and about 70% of those cases involved gun violence. The redevelopment is tied to the Justice Thurgood Marshall Amenity Center at PS 103 nearby.
Juanita Jackson Mitchell was the first Black woman to practice law in Maryland, and she shared the office with her husband, Clarence Mitchell Jr., an NAACP lobbyist and major civil-rights figure. The Marble Hill stretch of Druid Hill Avenue concentrated much of Baltimore’s Black civil-rights leadership, with nearby landmarks including Bethel A.M.E. Church.
Rev. Alvin Hathaway, executive director of Beloved Community Services Corporation, called the office the “epicenter of power” in Black Baltimore during the civil-rights era.
The restoration was backed by $1.75 million in federal funding announced in April 2023 through Fiscal Year 2023 omnibus appropriations legislation. The redevelopment was completed in the third quarter of 2024, and the building later housed offices for the Lillie Carroll Jackson Museum after remaining in family ownership following Mitchell’s death in 1992.
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