Isaac Evans greets neighbors with the warmth of someone who has been doing it for half a century.
“God is great.”
It is his way — every conversation begins with a nod to the Almighty.
Each morning he steps out from his Southwest Baltimore rowhouse and takes the same brisk five-block walk to Hollins Market. Entering from the east, he makes his way to the other end for his daily iced tea and social stroll. Everything in this moment moves like clockwork and everyone in the market knows him, though almost never by the same name. Each nickname carries a piece of his story, a chapter from varying times of his life.
Isaac, Ike, Unc, Coach, Coot, Coop, Mo, Tay, and Shorty. The nicknames are stacked and well-worn. Evans says each one carries its own weight, set of duties, expectations, and a circle of people who call him by it. After 40 years in South Baltimore and an additional 30 in Southwest, the nicknames have become less a way to acknowledge him and more a recognition of the regard he’s earned over the years.
He spends just enough time at the market to feel seen and embedded in his community. On his walk back, he passes his rowhouse without slowing. A few steps east, three corner lots sit in quiet neglect. Each yard is egregiously taken over by rust and weeds but the lot on the southwest corner of Mt. Clare and West Lombard Street is different. To Evans, it isn’t forgotten ground; it is a piece of his childhood, lodged deep in his heart.
Two handmade structures of wood and chicken wire stand on the lot, the larger one to the left draped in a patchwork of blue, black, and purple tarps. The white padlocked door reads “Private Property” and a purple Ravens flag flaps above, reading, fittingly, “Flock Together.” From the outside, you have no idea what the structure may be holding, protecting, or hiding from the world.
The smaller enclosure, all chicken wire, makes its contents clear: pigeons. Thirty-two of them, beady-eyed, perch at the edges of Evans’s coops, scanning the sky.
Evans, also known as Coach Coop, has been raising pigeons on and off since he was 11 years old. Suddenly, the “Flock Together” flag takes on a deeper meaning — one rooted in Baltimore’s culture and history beyond the football team.
Raising pigeons is a Baltimore tradition, and Evans is far from the only keeper. “Everyone in Baltimore used to raise pigeons,” he said. The hobby traces back to 19th century Europe, arriving in the U.S. in the 1870s as a pastime for white Americans. It gained widespread popularity following World War I, when carrier pigeons were highly regarded as heroes on the battlefields, according to a 1930 Baltimore Sun story. The practice soon took root among Black Baltimoreans, and the birds became a prominent fixture of the city’s skyline.
Older generations remember Baltimore’s pigeon trade bustling during the ‘50s and the ‘60s. Pigeons have lived alongside humans for hundreds of years as a food source, tools, and friends. In Baltimore, the hobby took special hold among young Black boys, drawn in by their friends or inspired by fathers and uncles who kept birds of their own. Much of that early spark traces back to Mr. Joe, a man they remember as a key figure in introducing the pastime to the city’s youth.
Michael Long, once a full-time pigeon man, still remembers Mr. Joe’s quiet wisdom. “If he really liked you, he’d tell you, ‘No, son, that cage ain’t for you,’” guiding kids toward more successful birds. Mr. Joe raised homing pigeons, the racing ones. A former military man, he was a steady post in the community, teaching city kids about breeds and bird care. His shop at Fleet and South Ann Street sold pigeons, feed, and medicine.
Janice “Cookie” Long, a 72-year-old woman from Sandtown-Winchester, remembers her brothers’ first pigeons not as pets, but as dinner for the family. Growing up near Lexington Market, her family picked out the plumpest birds the way others bought chickens or other cuts of meat. At home, she and her brothers would prepare them for cooking, but soon enough curiosity took over for her brothers. The scrawnier, unwanted pigeons, not ideal for eating, became their first flock.
For some kids, raising pigeons was more than a hobby — it also put money into their pockets.
“We started making the birds pay for everything,” Michael Long, Janice’s son, said. As a boy on Harlem Avenue, he turned the top floor of a vacant rowhouse into a sprawling coop built from fish crates and two-by-fours. For three years, he kept it secretly filled with hundreds of pigeons. Training the pigeons was serious for him. He would release them at dawn, when hawks were hunting, to sharpen their speed and survival skills.
Among pigeon keepers, stealing birds is an “intentional unintentional” part of life; something they just charge to the game. If you let your flock out at the wrong time, another keeper’s birds might lure yours away. Larger flocks can absorb smaller ones, especially when young pigeons are still unsure of where they belong.
Like so much of life in Baltimore, pigeon keeping was segregated and shaped by race. Theft and competition ran deep. As a white man who wanted to inspire, foster, and protect young Black boys’ love for pigeons, Mr. Joe was rare.
“If you respond back, you got problems,” Evans said, remembering the days white boys chased him and taunted him for keeping pigeons. “They were better at it than us,” he says — not from a lack of skill, but because Evans and his friends didn’t have the money for prize birds and competitions. For Black kids, it was always an uphill flight.
Evans often felt like a poster boy of the narrative. His life didn’t take a straightforward journey to where he is now.
Before 14, Evans says he was “the devil,” running with troublemakers and picking up bad habits. Periodically, through the little money he made from shining shoes and the even smaller amount of money he made from completing his chores, he saved up to buy his pigeons. Sometimes just cents, sometimes enough for a $5 bird. He would house his pigeons in his friends’ coops, a few here, a few there, scattered around the neighborhood. But over time, the birds blended into his friends’ flocks, becoming theirs as much as his.
Pigeons changed everything for Evans. His grandmother cleaned Mr. Joe’s house every Saturday, and on Evans’ 13th birthday, she took him with her, a not unusual occurrence. There, waiting for him, was a coop of pigeons — he recalls counting them aloud until he numbered thirteen.
He assumed her invitation to Mr. Joe’s was a convoluted way of putting some money in his pocket, but the coop he walked in to find was a clear sign that his grandmother saw how much his time with pigeons meant to him. As the eldest of six, Evans had few personal joys in his life other than his birds. This moment solidified their place in his life.
He had wanted his own coop, but despite his grandmother always making sure he and his siblings had everything they needed, he never expected her to spend money supporting a hobby. While it wasn’t ideal, he had been content with living vicariously through his friends. He saw an opportunity to finally compete and be more rooted in the world of raising pigeons.
And when pigeons slipped from Evans’s life, trouble always seemed to slip back in. In his early adult life, Coop became more enamored with being in the streets with his friends, and raising pigeons took a backseat.
At 20, he was sitting in a jail cell, newly a father, trying to figure out what kind of man he wanted to be. He had already experienced deep shifts in his life, converting to Islam and later returning to Christianity. But it was the discipline he learned from raising pigeons and the structure of organized sports that gave him the tools to change course.
After eight hours in jail, Evans dedicated his life to mentorship. Sports came first, through baseball. He started coaching boys and girls, ages five and up, at Greater Model Recreation Center for James McHenry School. By 1979, baseball was a staple in his calendar, with games at Carroll Park, Lakeland, and Cherry Hill.
He had the same dedication for molding the talent of the young athletes that he had for raising pigeons. During practices, he reinforced the importance of consistency in training and instilled the responsibility he learned from caring for pigeons in the children, ensuring that they remained persistent and always showed up.
Coaching became a year-round calling. Fall meant football, winter was for basketball, and the summer months kept him loyal to baseball. Evans coached every season for “at least 40 years without fail,” said Paul Franklin, a current basketball coach at Bentalou Recreation Center.
Franklin first knew Coop as the rival of his own coach when growing up. They represented different recs in the Baltimore Neighborhood Basketball League, where local recreation centers competed through the cold months. But with time, he began to see the depth of Evans’ dedication.
“He’s probably saved more lives than most people,” Franklin said. “Because he’s always been able to relate to young people, and he tries to make sure they have something positive to do. He gets nothing out of it but he gives everything to those kids.”
The commitment showed in ways big and small. Franklin remembers that for games held at the Bentalou Rec, Evans and his kids would walk from their gym a mile away. Hot, cold, sleet, or snow, he showed up, ensuring that the kids walked through neighborhoods with respect. “Coop’s kids” became a marker of respect. When the city began proposing closing some rec centers, Coop did not fold. He moved practices outside, setting up drills in open fields and basketball courts whenever the weather allowed. In the warmer months, he kept his players sharp with programs like Project Survival, a basketball league started at Bentalou Recreational Center in 1970. He took on this responsibility while still maintaining his commitment to raising pigeons.
Close to 70 years old now, Evans is as dedicated to his birds as he has ever been.
He’s at his coop every morning by 7 a.m. to check on his beloved pigeons, although the number of times he visits in a day varies by the season.
Today, he is a part of multiple local and national clubs faithful to the art of pigeon raising. The clubs are casual, and members typically trade tips for raising different kinds of pigeons, participate in mock competitions, and exchange coop supplies.
Despite the Baltimore pastime not being as prominent among little Black boys as it was when he was growing up, Coop says it brings him joy to know that there are still a few special Baltimore kids committed to the craft. Although he is not involved directly in mentoring those interested in pigeons, Evans jumps at the opportunity to offer some advice and show his birds to curious kids in the neighborhood. He finds even more joy in walking around and seeing new budding coops.
He’s less worried about carrying on the local tradition and more focused on the community it builds among those who treasure their time with pigeons.
“I just love raising birds,” Evans said.
Correction: An earlier version of this article misstated Coach Coop’s time in jail and Mike Long’s relationship to Janice Long. It has been updated to reflect that Coop was in jail for eight hours and that Mike is Janice’s son.