“James Wise Jr., a 40-year-old African-American man who lived in North Baltimore, was hanging out on the east side…A white sedan pulled into the block, and an African-American man got out of the car, shot Wise, and ran…Wise was on probation at the time of his death. This is the second murder in the East Baltimore Midway neighborhood this month.”

The above is an excerpt from a Baltimore weekly called “The City Paper.” The editors call the section featuring the details of Wise’s death “Murder Ink.” It’s basically a weekly listing of all the homicides that occur in Baltimore. Read some more samples of the “Murder Ink” column about Baltimore’s murders during the 14-day period from Sept. 13 through Sept. 26 and see if you discern a pattern.

“Wednesday, Sept. 15, 5:29 p.m. Michael Crawford, a 26-year-old African-American man, was putting window tint on his wife’s car…in West Baltimore’s Sandtown-Winchester neighborhood, when a man approached him, shot him several times and fled…”

“Thursday, Sept. 16, 2:14 a.m. Officers received a call for a discharged firearm in…West Baltimore. When they arrived they found a 20-year-old African-American man, Marcus Brown, lying on the street bleeding from gunshot wounds. Brown had left the Mobil Mart…when two African-American men, one carrying a handgun, jumped out of the bushes and told Brown not to run…”

“Saturday, Sept. 18, 2:30 a.m. Police found a 28-year-old African-American man Nathaniel Jackson Sr. lying on the ground in…East Baltimore suffering from a gunshot wound to the head…”

“Tuesday, Sept. 21, 3:40 p.m. Jeanol Froneberger, a 22-year-old African-American man was…with his sister when a man ran up to him, shot him several times, and ran away…”

And on the column went. Fourteen days. Eleven people murdered. All of them black. Ten of them black men between the ages of 15 and 39. One of them a mere toddler, a 2-year-old black girl.

Hers might have been the most heart-wrenching account, were it not for this one:

“Monday, Sept. 13, 10:06 p.m. Christopher Richardson, a 15-year-old African-American youth, was in the 2800 block of West North Avenue near Coppin State University when someone tried to rob him. Richardson fought his assailant and was shot repeatedly in the head. Richardson died the next day at University of Maryland Hospital. Police arrested Kevin Scott, an African-American male from the Walbrook neighborhood, for the crime. Scott is 14 years old.”

One black boy dead at 15. Another, 14, will go to prison, do some adult time and will not hit the streets again in years, if ever. I read these accounts in “The City Paper” and my sense of terror grew with each account.

“Who would raise a black boy in this city?” I asked myself. Then I thought of my three grandsons — ages 12, six and 11 months — and wanted to call their parents and implore them to get my progeny out of here. Go to Montana. Wyoming. Canada. Anywhere but this city whose past motto has been “The City That Reads” and whose current motto is “Believe” but whose citizens know the one thing we can definitely “believe” in is this:

If you’re black, male and between the ages of 13 and 40, don’t let the sun set on your butt in Baltimore. You might not want the sun rising on it — or even shining on it — either.

Some Southern towns — back in the hang ‘em high days of Jim Crow, lynching and the Ku Klux Klan — posted similar signs as a warning to black folks that they had best steer clear or be the guest of honor at a necktie party. That was white folks doing it to us. Then, white racists were the menace and the enemy.

But who’s killing black men today? Despite what black America’s “blame whitey first” contingent would have you believe, it’s not white racists. It’s not even the police, the near hysterical reaction to the death of Nathaniel Jones during a struggle with police in Cincinnati last year notwithstanding.

It’s us. And it’s us killing us so frequently that all too many of us are no longer terrified at the horror story unfolding before us in news features like “Murder Ink.”