About Southern school news. (Nashville, Tenn.) 1954-1965 | View Entire Issue (March 3, 1955)
PAGE 10—March 3, 1955—SOUTHERN SCHOOL NEWS Maryland BALTIMORE, Md. HE Maryland General Assembly neared the mid-point in its 90- day session without segregation, in public schools or elsewhere, having entered into its discussions. The subject was waiting in the wings, so to speak, but as one legislative leader explained privately, “Nobody around here wants to touch it with an eleven-foot pole.” The Maryland Petition Committee, an early affiliate of Bryant Bowles’ National Association for the Ad vancement of White People, late in January circulated two proposed measures in the legislative chambers, one calling for a system of segre gated private schools and the other amending the compulsory school at tendance law to say that white chil dren shall not be required to attend classes with colored children or colored teachers. Late in February, the committee was still searching for a senator or delegate willing to in troduce these measures. Another proposal that was thought for a while to be a possible trigger for the segregation issue was one calling for the election of school board members in Garrett County. School board members in all Mary land counties save one (Montgom ery) are appointed by the governor. Since Maryland’s present governor, Theodore R. McKeldin, is generally recognized as looking with favor on integration, and since Maryland’s school policy, as expressed in its Su preme Court brief and elsewhere, is one of leaving desegregation matters as much in the hands of local school boards as possible, it was thought likely that an attempt would be made in the General Assembly to take school boards out of the gov ernor’s hands and place them in the control of local voters. Garrett County itself is the one county in Maryland with no Negro school children. When a bill was in troduced to have elected school board members in Garrett, it was regarded by some as a “sleeper”— a bill which representatives of other counties would expand in scope and significance as the session progressed. But so much Garrett County opposi tion developed for reasons quite apart from the segregation issue that the bill was withdrawn by its spon sor after one hearing. TAX RELIEF PROPOSED A third proposal considered to have school segregation implications took the form of a bill to relieve taxpayers who send their children to private schools of whatever share of their local taxes now goes toward the support of public schools. Since the Maryland Petition Committee has been urging just such a tax re duction for persons unwilling to send their children to integrated schools, it was thought that the bill had circumventionist overtones. This particular bill, however, was one introduced “by request,” and when the Maryland reporter for Southern School News searched out the person doing the requesting, it turned out to be a lone individual who said he was not connected with the Maryland Petition Committee or like organization and did not have segregation in mind. He said he only wanted to stop what he called “dou ble taxation” in education. He added that he did not expect the bill to pass, and this outlook is shared by the senator who introduced it for him and who made it plain that he wasn’t going to support it. So much for the anti-integration possibilities at the General Assemb ly. On the other side of the issue, the pro-integration side, an all-en compassing measure was dropped in the hopper by the three Negro leg islators from Baltimore. Their bill states that all persons “shall be en titled to full and equal accommoda tions, advantages, facilities and privileges of any places of public accommodation, resort or amuse ment, subject only to the conditions and limitations established by law and applicable alike to all persons.” MONTGOMERY COUNTY In the counties of Maryland, where, unlike in Baltimore city, the schools remain on a segregated basis under a ruling of the attorney gen eral’s office that state segregation laws still prevail, a livelier interest in future policies can be noted. The greatest amount of activity has been taking place in Montgomery County, which lies just north of Washington and which has been the scene in the past decade of prodigious suburban (mostly white) growth. Of the 47,000 county school pupils only about six per cent are Negroes. Both the Washington Star and Washington Post & Times Herald reported early in February that the majority of the 19-member advisory committee appointed by the county school board to study the integration question had reached an agreement that racial segregation should be eliminated at the same time in all schools, with no period of gradual change. The Washington newspapers said that the committee had pre pared a tentative report recommend ing that children of both races be admitted to the schools nearest their homes and that final action on the report would be taken at the next committee meeting late in February. The chairman of the county study group is John R. Reeves, of Bethesda, formerly Maryland’s secretary of state. Asked to verify the Washing ton stories, Mr. Reeves said that he did not know how the reported com mittee stand had leaked out and explained that any further news properly should come from the county school board, to which the study group was going to make its report. Mr. Reeves said he was going to try to wind up the committee’s work in February if he could bring “the extremists on both sides” into agreement on what to recommend, and added that the school board should have the report the follow ing day. The following day (Feb. 18) the president of the county school board, William G. McGraw, said that no report had been received and that he had been told the study group had argued far into the previous night and finally had decided that any formal action must await an other committee meeting. So a re port on the results must await another issue of Southern School News. PTA ASKS INTEGRATION On Feb. 19 the executive commit tee of the Montgomery County Council of Parent-Teacher Associa tions urged the integration of all public schools in the county, effec tive next fall. Four recommendations were made: (1) that the county board of education announce “comprehen sive, firm plans for integrating the school system of Montgomery County;” (2) that the present policy of fixed school districts be continued, without regard to race, and that the present policy on transfers from one school to another be continued; (3) that all qualified teaching, adminis trative and other school personnel be retained under an integrated sys tem of hiring and assignment, and (4) that a program of education for integration be established for school personnel, children and parents. The executive committee pre sented its recommendations for the consideration of the full county council, after which they were to be come a “basis for discussion in local units.” One local unit, however, had acted prior to the executive commit tee’s recommendations. The Rock ville Council of PTA’s, representing a large segment of suburban Mont gomery County, passed a resolution by a 74 to 14 vote calling for school integration. Also in Rockville, a campaign to end racial discrimina tion in restaurants was announced by the Montgomery County Civic Unity Committee, an interracial group that was successful last fall in persuading an outdoor theatre in Rockville to admit all patrons on a nonsegregated basis. The Montgomery County Farm Bureau, meanwhile, recorded itself in favor of a gradual 12 year pro gram of desegregation in the schools, saying that whereas integration would have little effect in suburban sections, it would hit rural areas with “full force, bringing with it un avoidable academic, social and health problems.” PRINCE GEORGE’S COUNTY In Prince George’s County, next door to Montgomery and likewise a booming suburb of Washington, the county school board has named a 21-member citizens committee to gather data on which the school board can base its plans for school integration. In announcing forma tion of the study group, the school board emphasized that it was not delegating its responsibility for mak ing the final decision as to how de segregation would be carried out. This county has about 50,000 school children, 13 per cent of whom are Negroes. Off to the west of Maryland, the Frederick County school board has received a resolution urging it to appoint an advisory council of white and Negro citizens to help plan for school integration there. The resolu tion came in February from the Frederick County Council of PTAs and said that a harmonious transi tion to integrated schools could best be accomplished after preliminary study, with full and frank discus sion of the problems involved in such a transition. The resolution, in effect, put the Frederick County PTAs on record as favoring integration, a position previously taken by their parent group, the Maryland Congress of PTAs. At last report (1953) Fred erick County had 11,533 school chil dren, of whom 1,075, or 9.3 per cent were Negro. SCHOOL BOARD LAUDED In Baltimore, the second annual certificate of organizational achieve ment of the Council of Social Agen cies was awarded to the board of school commissioners, “in recogni tion of its prompt and positive ac tion in accepting and making effec tive in the city’s public schools the principle of racial nonsegregation enunciated by the U. S. Supreme Court.” The presentation was made to Walter Sondheim Jr., president WALTER SONDHEIM, JR. President, Baltimore Board Of School Commissioners of the school board, who accepted it in the name of the school system. While the certificate and accom panying $250 went to the school board, the citation also acknowl edged the “fine cooperation that the Department of Education received from the Baltimore City Police De partment in implementing this policy,” an obvious reference to the firm police action which put an early stop to the school disturbances of last fall. The Council of Social Agencies is the clearing house and research center for all the public and private charitable agencies in Baltimore. The Baltimore Afro-American Honor Roll for 1954 included nine individuals and two groups. Two of the individuals were school people: Dr. John H. Fischer, superintendent of schools, and John H. Schwatka, the principal of Southern High School, who made a dramatic appeal on television that helped to end the boycott and disturbances at his school in October. Others named were Oliver C. Winston, director of the Housing Authority, for helping to bring an end to segregation in Two Views of Miss Storm in Action Talking to Parents at School 74 New York Times Photos With the Children in the Classroom public housing; Abraham Krieger, for his leadership in the elimination of racial barriers at Sinai Hospital, and the Committee on Racial Equali ty, for its efforts to open downtown eating places to Negroes. In the schools themselves, in Bal timore, segregation-integration was no longer a public issue. At South ern high school, considered one of the touchiest places where racial matters are concerned, the number of Negro students increased at the start of the new semester in Feb ruary, which Principal John H. Schwatka took to be an indication that the tensions and fears of early fall had died out. At the peak of the fall enrollment, Southern had 1,788 students, 39 of them Negroes. To ward the end of the semester, it had 1,695 students, 31 of them Negroes. And at the start of the February term it had 1,820 students, 64 of them Negroes (39 girls, 25 boys.) OLIVER CROMWELL STORY One of the schools in Baltimore about which little has been heard or written, because nothing untoward has taken place there, is the Oliver Cromwell elementary school, which has much the highest percentage of Negroes of all the formerly all- white schools in Baltimore. Last fall, when desegregation went into effect, the school had 382 white children, 321 Negroes. As the neighborhood continued its slow change, the school by October 31 had 367 whites, 362 Negroes. On February 1 the balance had shifted to 398 Negroes, 332 whites. But with all this change in the very first year of integration in Baltimore, there has been no hint of trouble at School 74. In an effort to determine why School 74, with its large Negro en rollment, had adjusted so smoothly to integration when other Baltimore schools with only a handful of colored students had experienced some early, but brief, trouble, the Maryland reporter for Southern School News spent parts of two days at the school and in its im mediate neighborhood. His observa tions are recorded here not as those of a trained sociologist, psychologist or other professional researcher but as those of a newspaperman only. The Oliver Cromwell school is located in north central Baltimore, which is an area that has yielded through the years to commercial in terests along many of its main streets and thus has declined in residential desirability. The school itself is an old one and up to 20 and even 15 years ago served a stable white com munity composed largely of families of German and Irish stock. Much of the community life centered in St Anne’s Catholic Church. The school then had a small enrollment of children whose parents and in some cases grandparents had been taught in the same classrooms. Their homes were, in the main, the large, solidly built three-story row houses of old Baltimore. HOUSING PATTERN Short of making a real community study of the neighborhood, this much in general can be said: As the older members of those original white families died off, and as their children moved to smaller homes in the suburbs, the big, old row houses came on the market. Negroes bought many of them, starting off slowly before World War II but moving * rather rapidly after the war. At the same time, others of the old houses were converted in part or entirely to apartments and rented room 5 ' attracting (this only in general) 3 less substantial group of white faint" lies, many of them parents with Southern backgrounds and sensibih" ties who had been drawn to indus- trial jobs in Baltimore. Still other houses in the neighbor - hood remain in the hands of the families that have occupied them f° r several generations, partly because it is home to them and partly he - cause the market is slow in sudj properties. Thus, the neighborhood consists now of some fairly sU ^' stantial Negro home owners ( af°, with some poor ones), of some white i home owners who for one reason another have not yet moved out, a® 1 of some less deeply rooted whi tenants and roomers. In only a ^ e " blocks are there mixed resident^ white and Negro. The neighborhood on the whole is divided into whi and colored sections, the latter he ing the larger, and as one m oV vj about the neighborhood there is 11 much evidence of intermingh 11 *’ even among the children at pltf' At School 74, then, the eleme 11 ^ of potential trouble are presen Continued On Next Page
