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PAGE 10—FEBRUARY, 1964—SOUTHERN SCHOOL NEWS
MARYLAND
Morgan State College President
Urges Campaign to Enroll Whites
BALTIMORE
vigorous campaign to recruit
white students at Morgan
State College was urged in Janu
ary by its president, Dr. Martin
D. Jenkins. He proposed a gradu
ate program at his college, charg
ing that the University of Mary
land discriminated against stu
dents from Maryland state col
leges in awarding its graduate
scholarships.
Dr. Jenkins raised the issue of Mor
gan’s racial status as a subject perti
nent to extensive public discussion of
plans for expanded higher education in
the Baltimore area, a discussion that
by January had assumed the propor
tions of a controversy in regard to a
University of Maryland proposal to
build a large branch campus in the
Baltimore suburbs. Dr. Jenkins, in an
interview, said he had raised the issue
because, in the midst of the discussion
of what facilities would be built where
and for whom, “We don’t want any
thought of Morgan as a Negro insti
tution.”
The proposal for a “vigorous cam
paign” was made to Morgan’s Board of
Trustees on Jan. 16 by Dr. Jenkins, who
said that the college, in northeast Bal
timore, “cannot continue indefinitely to
be a substantially segregated institu
tion.” (Elaborating on this in an in
terview, Dr. Jenkins said that while
Morgan no doubt could stay alive as a
Negro college, “the goal in American
life is to achieve integration; it is ano
malous to have the University of
Maryland and other institutions inte
grated, and Morgan segregated.”)
Cites Reorganization
Citing to his trustees the current re
organization of Maryland higher edu
cation, Jenkins said:
“Morgan should be regarded as an
institution available to all qualified stu
dents without regard to race . . . Ten
years ago we thought the matter of in
tegration would take care of itself. It
hasn’t happened. The tragic thing is
that so many white children who could
go to college settle for less because they
can’t stomach this place. I think it is an
important problem. It’s a matter of
changing our image.”
Morgan State has an enrollment of
about 2,800.
Easily accessible to a large white
population, Morgan currently has an
estimated 180 non-Negro students,
mostly from foreign countries and
Washington embassies. The number of
local white students has been put as
low as 25. Dr. Jenkins called for the
trustees’ support of a recruitment ef
fort that would entail “publicity and
probably the organization of a citizens
advisory committee.” It would require,
he said, “the concerted effort of ad
ministrative officers, faculty, alumni and
trustees.”
The trustees deferred action after
registering expressions of doubt. One
spoke against any “extra-special effort”
to obain integration, while a second
was reported as saying, “We shouldn’t
beg them [white students] to come in.”
Carl J. Murphy, the board’s chairman
and president of the Afro-American
newspapers, commented, “This is a pre
dominantly Negro institution and I
think we ought to be proud of it.”
Reaction More Positive
The reaction among local civil-rights
spokesmen was more positive. “We’re
asking to be admitted into all schools,”
the Rev. Jentry E. McDonald, execu
tive director of the Baltimore NAACP,
said. “We should encourage the white
race to come to our schools also. We
should go all out.”
“Morgan would not be begging,” said
the Rev. Marion Bascom, a leader in
the civil-rights activities of the Inter
denominational Ministers Alliance. “It
would be in the position of offering
the best of the knowledge and schol
arship we have available.”
Lloyd Taylor, a spokesman for
CORE, also said Dr. Jenkins’s program
would not be “begging.” “You have to
lean over backward sometimes,” he
said, “to get integration. . . . Integration
is good for both Negroes and whites.”
Calling integration a “two-way
street,” Mrs. Juanita Jackson Mitchell,
head of the Maryland NAACP confer
ence, commented, “It is incumbent
upon colored as well as white citizens
to bridge the racial chasm. Morgan’s
effort will help to accelerate our pro
gress.”
In the background as Dr. Jenkins
raised the racial issue was the fact that
Dr. Martin D. Jenkins
Sees an anomaly.
the Maryland General Assembly at its
1963 session approved the conversion of
the former teachers colleges into lib
eral-arts institutions, which would give
them the same educational status as
Morgan. One of them, renamed Towson
State College, lies just to the north of
Baltimore and is predominantly white.
Another and much smaller one, Coppin
State College, is in northwest Baltimore
and is predominantly Negro. In addi
tion, there are four, predominantly
white, public junior colleges in the
metropolitan Baltimore area.
With some jockeying for position al
ready evident among the former teach
ers colleges and Morgan, the University
of Maryland announced its plans to
move into the Baltimore area with a
suburban branch campus for commuting
students on graduate and undergrad
uate levels. This raised a public ques
tion as to how its plans would mesh
with those of the former teachers col
leges and Morgan. It was as a part of
the discussion of higher education plans
in the Baltimore area that Dr. Jenkins
dropped his suggestion that the plan
ning should not proceed on the assump
tion that Morgan was to be considered
as the Negro institution for the area.
The race issue was raised a second
time by Stanley Z. Mazer, an admin
istrative assistant to Mayor McKeldin
(who had been leading the fight to
have the university put its branch in a
downtown Baltimore location). In a
talk before the League of Women
Voters on Jan. 30, he said the uni
versity preferred a suburban location
to hold down Negro attendance. The
charge was denied the next day by
Dr. Albin O. Kuhn, executive vice
president of the U. of M., who said,
“Anyone who has been on the campus
can see that that is not true.”
Dr. Jenkins in January also outlined
his proposed graduate program, leading
to master’s degrees, for which he is
seeking $180,000 in the next state
budget. Several of the former teachers
colleges offer what are described as
“shoe-string” graduate courses in edu
cation, without special state appropria
tions. Jenkins is seeking state recogni-
Political Action
Mayor Theodore R. McKeldin of Bal
timore greeted the City Council, on its
return Jan. 20 from a Christmas recess,
with a personal appeal for prompt ac
tion on administration measures, giving
“topmost priority” to his civil rights
package.
While a proposed ban on racial and
religious discrimination in the sale and
rent of certain types of private housing
was the most disputed portion of the
McKeldin package, one section dealt
with all types of educational institu
tions, public and private, from nursery
schools to graduate training programs
and correspondence courses. The ordi
nance would forbid racially discrimina
tory admissions practices, but exempted
parochial schools.
The civil rights package, introduced
in October by the Republican Mayor
with the initial support of the council’s
Democratic president, Thomas D’Ale-
sandro III, had extensive hearings in
the late fall but was put aside during
the pre-Christmas season to enable the
councilmen to concentrate on the 1964
budget. The measure at that time lacked
tion and approval of seven graduate
courses at Morgan as of next Septem
ber, five of them related to teacher
education.
In the course of explaining his grad
uate program, Dr. Jenkins said that the
University of Maryland awarded the
bulk of its graduate scholarships to
non-Maryland students and “does not
recognize its role as a state institution
to upgrade the people of this state.”
“We find it very difficult to get our stu
dents to apply,” he said. “They just
don’t feel that they’re wanted there.”
Jenkins made clear that he was not
accusing the university of racial dis
crimination in selecting recipients of
graduate financial aid. He had reference
to students not only from Morgan but
all the state colleges, he said. “I don’t
propose excluding out-of-state appli
cants,” he said. “I’d just like a better
balance. This will become more impor
tant as the teachers colleges develop
into liberal arts institutions.”
Discrimination Denied
Dr. Wilson H. Elkins, president of the
U. of M., subsequently denied any dis
crimination against graduates of state
colleges in its scholarship awards. “Our
graduate program is closely associated
with the undergraduate courses,” Dr.
Elkins said, “and an important part of
our instructional staff are graduate as
sistants. We have few scholarships
which carry no teaching obligation.”
Dr. Elkins said that graduates of state
colleges should have the “benefit of
the doubt” and that in the future more
non-teaching scholarships might be
given.
Dr. Jenkins had made much the same
critical remarks about the university’s
scholarship awards late in 1961 and had
sought unsuccessfully to get an appro
priation from the 1962 General Assem
bly to finance graduate study by Mor
gan students at the university.
Dr. Elkins’s rebuttal was made at the
January meeting of the Maryland Ad-
Maryland Highlights
Recruitment of white students for
Morgan State College was urged by
its president amid a wide-ranging
public discussion of higher-education
plans in the Baltimore area.
The executive director of a new
state board of college trustees said
integration should be achieved not by
making race a “direct concern” but
by giving each college a “special
identity” that would attract students
of both races.
Mayor McKeldin has given “top
most” priority in the Baltimore City
Council to his civil-rights ordinance,
which includes a section on public
and private schools.
The school desegregation issue was
raised briefly in Maryland the sen
atorial campaign.
Plans were announced for a
school boycott to protest de facto
segregation in Cambridge.
enough councilmanic support to be
passed intact.
State Comptroller Louis L. Goldstein,
the leading Democratic contender for
a Maryland seat in the U.S. Senate, was
challenged in January by the NAACP
on the race issue. Questioning his “abil
ity to represent all the citizens of
Maryland,” Mrs. Juanita Jackson
Mitchell, as president of the Maryland
NAACP conference, asked publicly why
there was “not even token desegrega
tion” in Goldstein’s home county of
Calvert and also why the county had no
human relations commission and had
stayed out of the state public-accom
modations act.
The NAACP questions came the day
before Goldstein formally filed on Jan.
6 for the Senate seat, which is subject
to a May 19 primary. He responded in
his filing statement. Expressing a belief
that “Mrs. Mitchell is laboring under a
false assumption, believing that I rep
resented Calvert County in the Mary
land Senate in 1962.” Goldstein said
that the exemption of Calvert from the
Mayor Appeals for ‘Rights
Campus of Morgan State College
1/s enrollment remains largely Negro
visory Council for Higher Education,
of which both Dr. Jenkins and he are
members. The General Assembly, at its
last session, established the advisory
council to coordinate Maryland’s tri
partite system of higher education,
consisting of the university, the state
colleges and the community junior col
leges. The advisory council consists of
representatives of all three divisions of
higher education along with two pri
vate college representatives and some
public members.
Through January, the advisory coun
cil had avoided being drawn into the
controversy over whether the univer
sity should build in the Baltimore area,
and if so, where it should build and
what programs it should offer. On the
question raised by Morgan’s seeking
to establish graduate courses, the coun
cil reached a partial decision. Its mem
bers determined that the state colleges
should not establish doctorate pro
grams and that master’s programs
should be offered only at colleges with
“appropriate” resources. The council
did not define “appropriate,” which left
Morgan on its own to seek financial
support for its program.
Comer S. Coppie, recently appointed
executive director of the Board of
Trustees of the State Colleges, was
asked in January by the Baltimore Sun
education reporter, Gerald W. Clarke,
about the future of desegregation at the
five former teachers colleges. The three
white and two Negro schools, with one
exception, have experienced little racial
change since their white and colored
designations were dropped in 1955.
Coming out against the colleges’
keeping their enrollment data by race,
Coppie said: “Anything which implies a
direct concern with race is question
able.
“If the board of trustees is successful
in giving each college a chance to de
velop along individual lines, the inte
gration problem will solve itself.
“If Coppin has a program in urban
studies, it will attract people who are
interested, regardless of color, and the
same with the other colleges.
“If we can build a system in which
each will have a special identity, high-
school guidance counselors will send
people to the colleges on the basis of
interest, rather than race.”
“The Maryland division of the United
Negro College Fund reported that, for
the first time in more than 20 years,
’ Priority
it had met the Maryland portion of the *
campaign goal. The fund supports 32
private Negro colleges, primarily in the
South. Robert Embry, president of the
Maryland executive committee for the
fund, reported in January that Negro
residents have contributed in larger
numbers and amounts than ever before.
Community Action
Cambridge Leader
Announces Plans
To Boycott Schools
Plans for a school boycott against
de facto segregation were announced
Jan. 30 by Mrs. Gloria H. Richardson,
leader of the Negro protest group in
the racially unsettled Eastern Shore
city of Cambridge, where a token force
of the Maryland National Guard re
mained on duty through January to
prevent a rekindling of last summer’s
disorders. Mrs. Richardson said the
boycott would occur “sometime be
tween now and Feb. 25.”
Mrs. Richardson’s statement came at l
the conclusion of a meeting in Wash
ington between members of the Cam
bridge Human Relations Committee
and Sen. Daniel Brewster (D-Md.h
Following defeat of a public accom
modations measure in Cambridge last
October, Sen. Brewster had urged the
committee to make renewed efforts
to achieve peaceful settlement of racial
differences. The committee reported to
him on Jan. 30 that progress had been
made on public housing and job tram- .
ing for Negroes but that federal or
state legislation applicable to Cam
bridge was needed to obtain desegrega
tion of eating places.
Attending the meeting as a specta
tor, Mrs. Richardson left Sen. B r ® ws
a prepared statement in which ^
characterized the meeting as a y (
of time” and said that the committee
from which her four nominees resign
ed in late January, had broken do
She said her own group, the
bridge Nonviolent Action Commi
would consider renewed demons
tions within 10 days, in addition o
school boycott, (for her school g
see SSN, Nov. ’63.) She also a™”® ,
that Representative Adam a
Powell (D-N.Y.) was to ad “f , 0[1
civil-rights rally in Cambri g
Feb. 4.
Schoolmen
provisions of the state public accom
modations law was not his decision and
noted that a restaurant operated in a
building that he owns is required under
lease to be nondiscriminatory.
Goldstein pointed out that the county
has a human relations commission,
which had published its report in De
cember (SSN, January). He also noted
that six Negroes attended a predomi
nantly white school in Calvert. He re
ported that Calvert’s school superin
tendent, Maurice Dunkle, had informed
him that under county policy “all stu
dents are entitled to attend the school
of his or her choice” and that no Negro
requests had been denied since the 1954
Supreme Court decision.
Backed by Gov. Tawes and the state
Democratic organization Goldstein also
drew the support of two prominent
Negro officeholders, State Sen. Verda
Welcome and Baltimore City Council
man Henry G. Parks, and the Fourth
District Democratic Organization, which
is the principal Negro political group
in Baltimore.
Board Begins
Search for New
Superintendent
k special committee of the '
ite Board of Education w
iparations in January to . pr ,
viewing candidates to sU re (jjinf
omas G. Pullen Jr., who » „
June 1 after more than y p a ta
te superintendent of sc . c jud-
30 to 40 potential f c< f
; all 24 district school supe
ts, was being assemb e ^^y to
ued in January as a pr j
( interviews. cident 0 ^
srome Framptom, Jr., P re men 1 '
te board and head of the thre^a
• interviewing committee, f 0 uf'
it the final selection f° r ^ lii»'
ir appointive term would
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