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the bill was withdrawn by its spon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
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