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The Afro-American Newspaper

2519 N. Charles Street
Baltimore, Maryland 21218-4602

A Letter
410-554-8200 • www.afro.com
Founded by John Henry Murphy Sr., August 13, 1892
Editorial: 410-554-8294
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from the
Billing Inquiries: 410-554-8240
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Fax: 1-877-570-9297

Publisher
Chairman of the Board/Publisher - John J. Oliver Jr.
Executive Assistant - Cheryl Batts Cooper - 410-554-8222

Washington Publisher Emeritus

Frances L. Murphy II
Director of Advertising - Susan Warshaw
SWarshaw@afro.com
410-554-8289 202-332-0080, ext.111
Archivist - Marilyn M. Benaderet - 410-554-8265 Unequal access to public accommodations has been a common historical
Marketing Department theme covered by the Black Press; the AFRO has certainly written more than its
Director of Marketing and Public Relations share. From “colored only” water fountains and “back of the bus” seating to
Ammanuel Moore - 410-554-8256
Community Relations & Special Events Manager under-funded urban school districts and biased and unfair lending
Diane Hocker - 410-554-8243 practices, African-Americans have always had to fight for what should be
guaranteed rights.
National Sales
National Advertising Account Executive
Lee Randolph - 202-332-0080, ext. 101 Don’t misunderstand what I’m saying. We’re a long way from Jim Crow
laws and practices now. There have been many achievements along the way,
Production Department- 410-554-8288
but we are still far from being a truly equal society. Our most recent reminder
Editorial was, hands down, the treatment of Hurricane Katrina survivors. To think that
Sean Yoes, AFRO Staff Writer thousands of African-American citizens are still without homes and services to
Rev. Dorothy Boulware, Baltimore Editor
meet their needs shows that race and class are still uppermost in the hearts and
Zenitha Prince, D.C. Editor
minds of the powers that be in this country.
Graphic Design
Denise Dorsey In 2004, the AFRO observed the 50-year anniversary of the Brown v. Board of
Michelle Wright Education decision with a historic look at the legal fight(s) that led to the ulti-
mate victory.
Circulation/Distribution
Edgar Brookins, D.C. Manager
Sammy Graham, Baltimore Manager This compilation, a follow up to the Road to Brown, highlights the next steps
taken once the taste of victory assured there was more to come.

It is our hope that through this publication, readers will appreciate even more
the strides we’ve made, but also understand the battle is far from over.

Identification Statement
Read and learn,
Baltimore Afro-American — (USPS 040-800) is published weekly by The Afro-
American Newspapers, 2519 N. Charles Street, Baltimore, MD 21218-4602.
Subscription Rate: Baltimore - 1 Year - $27.30 (Price includes tax.) Checks for sub-
scriptions should be made payable to: The Afro-American Newspaper Company, 2519
N. Charles Street, Baltimore, MD 21218-4602. Periodicals postage paid at Baltimore,
MD. Jake Oliver,
POSTMASTER: Send addresses changes to: The Afro-American Newspaper
Company, 2519 N. Charles Street, Baltimore, MD 21218-4602. AFRO Publisher

2 2007 Signature Series II: The Battle for Equal Access

 At GMAC we make it our business to help indi-
viduals and communities build strong financial
futures. By connecting to the community, we are
able to understand product and service needs that
promote change, as well as personal advancement
and financial success.

A Letter
We’re proud to be a sponsor for the Afro-
American Newspapers’ AFRO Signature Series II.

from our
The AFRO Signature Series offers an insightful
look at the legacy of the individuals who have
exposed the drive for equality; Signature Series II

Sponsor
is a tribute to those that paved the way for a better
future. Through its discussion of early legal fights
surrounding public accommodations, the Afro-
American Newspaper demonstrates the historic
transformations that we as a country have faced
and overcome. Chronicling these events closely,
the AFRO served as a catalyst behind the develop-
ment of equality throughout this united nation.

GMAC is honored to be a part of this anthology

which continues to share our fascinating history
first hand.

Table of Contents
The forgotten freedom rider: Irene Morgan ....................................................................................5
Rosa Parks: The awakening of the sleeping giant .........................................................................8
Battle for the beaches ....................................................................................................................13
The Northwood Movement Part I ...............................................................................................16
The Northwood Movement Part II ................................................................................................20
Activists braved arrests, hecklers to integrate Gwynn Oak Park ...............................................23
The White contribution to the Movement ....................................................................................26
Students take their protest downtown .........................................................................................28

2007 Signature Series: The Battle for Equal Acess 3

 The Battle for
Equal
Introduction
Access
archives by Professor Larry Gibson, who tells the story

T
he state of Maryland played a major, yet
relentlessly at the University of Maryland School of
largely unheralded role in the 20-year legal
Law. He says younger generations don’t know the histo-
battle that led to the landmark Brown v.
ry. “I particularly wanted to emphasize some of the
Board of Education Supreme Court decision
unknown heroes, lawyers and plaintiffs who made great
desegregating America’s public schools. That legal victo-
sacrifices.”
ry would be the most significant step toward the ultimate
AFRO Staff Writer Sean Yoes calls this his most chal-
eradication of Jim Crow in the United States. However,
lenging and rewarding work yet. “It was just really
the now infamous phrase, “with all deliberate speed,”
important for me to get the stories right...and to make
uttered by Supreme Court Chief Justice Earl Warren in
sure people outside of Maryland understand the impor-
the context of the Court’s majority opinion sent a dubi-
tant role the state and this newspaper played.”
ous message to the states. That phrase consequently
The struggle marked by the pure gumption of Irene
threatened to quell the momentum sparked by the Brown
Morgan, Rosa Parks and others who refused to relin-
decision. Chief Justice Warren had effectively thrown up
quish their designated seats, continued and was ener-
a road block at the end of the road to Brown.
gized by college students who showed up at lunch coun-
The decision created the possibility in theory for equal
ters and downtown department stores; protestors of all
access to education for all, but, Warren’s caveat, “with
ages who assumed their God-given rights to public
all deliberate speed,” gave the states tremendous wiggle
accommodations and would not take “No” for an answer.
room. The states could think about, ponder and analyze
the implementation of Brown bringing the process to a
grinding halt. But, not only that, the Court’s decision had
implications for the road beyond Brown.
The Civil Rights community believed that desegrega-
tion of the schools would lead to a further opening of
American society to all of its citizens beyond the class-
room. But, with the obstruction to the implementation of
Brown in place, the broader concept of equal access for
all citizens also seemed to be in jeopardy.
Once again Maryland was thrust to the forefront of
America’s Civil Rights Movement. Signature Series II:
The Battle for Equal Access, originally published in the
AFRO in 2005, examines the early legal fights in the
area of public accommodations that took place in
Maryland post Brown and set an important precedent for
the rest of the country to follow.
The research for this piece was done in the AFRO

4 2007 Signature Series II: The Battle for Equal Access

The forgotten
dom
Freedom Rider
Rider
Free
By Sean Yoes
AFRO Staff Writer
Before Rosa Parks’ definitive act
of civil disobedience in 1955,
Irene Morgan bucked Jim Crow
and, with the help of Thurgood
Marshall, took her case to the
Supreme Court and won.
A
s a young man in Harlem of the
1940s, Stanley Kirkaldy experi-
enced the golden age of jazz
firsthand, and he has had a love affair with
the music every since.
“I heard `em all — Yardbird Parker ...
the Prez [Lester Young], Lady Day,”
remembered Kirkaldy, now 80, during a
phone conversation from his nursing home
in Hempstead, N.Y.
However, his love of jazz was overshad-
owed a few years later when he met the
love of his life, Irene Morgan, on a blind
date during a sultry summer day in New
York in 1949. They were married in
October of 1950. But six years before she
met Kirkaldy, Morgan had a date with des-
tiny.
In 1944, the 27-year-old widowed moth-
er of two boarded a Greyhound bus in
Gloucester, Va., headed north on what was
then Route 17, bound for her Baltimore
home. She took a seat next to a young
mother with an infant, about midway in the
“Colored” section, where she was forced to
sit by law. But just a few miles down the
road, Morgan and her seatmate were
ordered to get up to make room for a White
couple boarding the bus. Morgan wouldn’t
move.
“She was sitting where Negroes at that
time were supposed to sit. She paid for her
seat. She just thought that wasn’t right
[and] she refused to do it,” said Kirkaldy,
2007 Signature Series II: The Battle for Equal Access
who celebrated the couple’s 54th wedding
anniversary last October [2004.] Kirkaldy
says his wife Irene, now 87, has been feel-
ing poorly and “is in seclusion by doctor’s
orders.” Morgan didn’t feel well on that
humid July morning 60 years ago either:
She was still recovering from a miscar-
riage. Yet, she put up a prodigious
fight in defiance of Jim Crow, 11
years before Rosa Parks sparked the
Montgomery, Ala. bus boycott and
the most recent chapter of the
American Civil Rights Movement.
After Morgan refused to relin-
quish her seat, the driver directed
the bus to the town of Saluda,
stopping outside the jail, where a
sheriff’s deputy boarded the
bus with a warrant for
Morgan’s arrest: She
ripped it up and threw it
out the window. That act
of bold defiance must
have embarrassed the
deputy and forced him to
act at his own peril.
“When I refused to give
up my seat, then they said,
‘We’ll have you arrested.’
Well, I said, `That’s perfectly
all right’; but when he put his
hands on me, well, then that’s
when I kicked him,” said Morgan
during a television interview in 2001.
That deputy staggered off the bus and
another came on and attempted to put his
hands on Morgan, but she fought him also.
One account claimed the second deputy
threatened to hit Morgan with a night-
stick, to which she replied, “We’ll
whip each other.”
Continued on Page 6
5
The forgotten
Freedom Rider
Continued from page 5
Finally, the deputies managed to haul a still-fight-
ing Morgan from the bus, and they threw her in jail.
She yelled from the barred jailhouse window to
some Black boys passing by and asked them to con-
tact a local minister and have him get in contact
with her mother. It wasn’t long before her mother
arrived and posted the $500 bail, a significant
amount for the time.
Morgan was charged with resisting arrest and violating Virginia’s seg-
regation law. She pled guilty to the first charge and paid the $100 fine,

As reported in the AFRO,1945

but she refused to plead guilty to violating Virginia’s segregation law.
Famed Richmond attorney Spottswood Robinson, who was later
tapped to be one of the lawyers arguing the Brown Supreme Court case
in 1954, represented Morgan. He argued that segregation laws were
impractical because they impeded interstate commerce. The “impractical”
argument had been used in many of the cases leading up to the Brown
decision, but the Middlesex Circuit Court ruled against Morgan and she
was ordered to pay a $10 fine.
However, two NAACP lawyers, William Hastie, dean of the Howard
University Law School, and Thurgood Marshall, appealed the case on her
behalf.
Marshall was in the middle of his 20-year odyssey to desegregate pub-
lic schools. In 1935, he won the seminal Murray v. University of
Maryland school desegregation case, and 10 years later, he was the lead
attorney in the Brown decision.
In 1946, Hastie and Marshall argued Morgan’s case before the U.S.

Continued on Page 7

Below, ‘Flash’— Morgan and Marshall et al defeat Jim Crow

in Virginia. The June 8, 1946 edition of the Baltimore AFRO
reported the 6 to 1 Supreme Court decision in favor of Irene
Morgan in dramatic fashion above the newspaper’s banner.

6 2007 Signature Series II: The Battle for Equal Access

The forgotten Freedom Rider
Continued from page 6

Supreme Court. Get on the bus, sit anyplace,

“Today, we are just emerging from a war ‘Cause Irene Morgan won her case.
in which all of the people of the United Despite being immortalized in song, his-
States were united in a death struggle tory books obscured Morgan’s contribution
against the apostles of racism. How much for decades, until her birthplace of
clearer must it be today than it was in 1877, Gloucester, Va. honored her during the
that the national business of interstate com- town’s 350th anniversary in 2001. Those
merce is not to be disfigured by the disrup- events triggered an avalanche of publicity
tive local practices bred of racial notions and attention that her husband suggests led
alien to our national ideal,” argued to her deteriorating health.
Marshall. “She got tired of interviews: She had got
The court agreed with him. On June 3, tired of the run-around - here, there and
1946, they reached a 6-1 decision that everywhere. And then she really got tired,”
struck down Virginia’s statute on buses said Kirkaldy.
traveling from state to state. But after her dance with fate from 1944
“As no state law can reach beyond its to 1946, Irene Morgan did go on to lead a
own border, nor bar transportation of pas- rather extraordinary life, albeit a quiet one.
sengers across its boundaries, diverse seat- There is a litany of selfless
ing requirements for the races in interstate acts connected
journeys result...It seems clear to us that
seating arrangements for the
different races in
interstate motor
travel require a sin-
gle, uniform rule to
promote and protect
national travel.
Consequently, we hold
the Virginia statute in
controversy invalid,”
wrote the Court.
A year after the
Morgan decision, the
“original freedom riders,”
eight White and eight
Black activists from the
newly-formed Congress of
Racial Equality, began the
two-week “Journey of
Reconciliation” to test the
new law. “You Don’t Have to to Morgan that her friends and family testify
Ride Jim Crow,” was the to. For years, she invited homeless people to
soaring anthem - inspired by her house for Thanksgiving dinner. She once
Morgan’s courageous act of rescued a boy from a burning building. She
defiance - sung by the activists obtained her bachelor’s degree from St. John’s
as they traveled throughout the University at age 68 and her master’s from
South. Queen’s College at 73. But for all those
When you ride interstate, Jim decades, she never said much about that sum-
Crow is dead. mer day in 1944.
“When I met her, she didn’t talk about

As reported in the AFRO,1946

things like that,” said Stanley Kirkaldy. I don’t
even remember when she told me about it. She
just did it, and that was that.” u
2007 Signature Series II: The Battle for Equal Access 7
When Rosa Lee McCauley Parks died, Oct. 24,
2005 at the age of 92, she left for the world an
enduring legacy of tenacity, of faith in
Black people to overcome systems
of injustice and hope in the
oncoming generations to take
on the mantle and fight the
good fight.
By Sean Yoes
AFRO Staff Writer
In July 1944, Irene Morgan and
U.S. Army Pvt. Booker T. Specely
both encountered the overt racism
of Jim Crow while traveling on
buses in the South. Morgan’s ordeal
began in Gloucester, Va. and ended
two years later with a victory in the
U.S. Supreme Court, while Specely’s
protest left him sprawled on a side-
walk in Durham, N.C. with a bullet in
his head, courtesy of a White bus driv-
er.
The truth is, there were other Black
men and women who courageously
defied Jim Crow segregation laws
throughout the South before and after
Morgan and Specely.
However, Rosa Lee McCauley Parks has
endured as the symbol of the 20th century
protest movement for civil rights in
America. This year marks the 50th
anniversary of her act of defi-
ance in Montgomery, Ala. on
Dec. 1, 1955, in the face of
brutal racial intolerance.
In many ways,
Montgomery in the
1950s was the South’s
sparkling gem of Jim
Crow culture, known
8 2007 Signature Series II: The Battle for Equal Access
as one of the most notoriously segregated cities in the United States.
Despite the historic Brown v. Board of Education decision of 1954,
Montgomery schools remained segregated. The median
income of Whites was about twice that of Blacks.
County laws made it extremely difficult for Blacks
to vote and only about 2,000 of a possible
30,000 Blacks were registered in 1955. And
Blacks weren’t allowed to hold public
office. This was the context for Parks’
challenge to Montgomery’s citywide
ordinance and the status quo of sepa-
rate but equal.
City and state law mandated the
front section of a bus be reserved
for White passengers and the rear
reserved for Blacks. If a White
boarded a bus and there were no
seats available in the White sec-
tion, Blacks seated in the
“Colored” section would be
forced to give up their seat. In
Montgomery, specifically, Blacks
paid their fare at the front of the
bus, then got off and boarded at the
rear.
But 1955 wasn’t the first time
Parks had challenged
Montgomery’s system of segrega-
tion. In 1943, she had been put off
a bus for refusing to use the back
door.
Parks would later say she had, “a life
history of being rebellious against being
mistreated because of my color.” In fact,
the 42-year-old seamstress was also
the secretary of the Montgomery
branch of the NAACP in 1955.
Race relations in the city of
Montgomery and the state
of Alabama had been
coming to a boil
when Parks made
The icon.
her stand in
Rosa Parks
circa 1956.
Continued on
Page 9
Rosa Parks
Continued from page 8

December. In March of 1955, 15-year-old
Claudette Colvin, who was seven months
pregnant, was arrested for refusing to give up
her seat on a bus to a White passenger.
In August, 14-year-old Emmett Till, a
Black teen visiting from Chicago, was mur-
dered in neighboring Mississippi by White
men for allegedly whistling at a White
woman.
In October, the U.S. Supreme Court ordered
the University of Alabama to desegregate by
admitting Black applicant Autherine Lucy.
So, the volatile stage was set for Parks. On
that Thursday in December, Parks left her job
as a tailor’s assistant at the Montgomery Fair
Department Store at about 5:30 p.m. She
walked down to the Court Square bus stop and
boarded the Cleveland Avenue bus.
“I sat on the aisle seat next to a Black man.
Two Black women sat in the seat across the
aisle. The bus filled up quickly at the next two
stops. By the third stop, the White section was
filled and a White man remained standing at
the front. This meant that all four of the pas-
sengers in my row would have to move ... a
Black person could not sit in the same row as
a White person,” recounted Parks in a narra-
tive decades later.
The bus driver, James Blake, ordered the
Black passengers sitting in Parks’ row to
move to the very back of the bus and all of

Parks would later say she

had, “a life history of
being rebellious against
being mistreated because
of my color.” In fact, the
42-year-old seamstress
was also the secretary of
the Montgomery branch of
the NAACP in 1955.
them complied except for Parks.
Blake gave Parks one final chance to move
to the back of the bus before he parked the
bus at the Empire Theatre and telephoned his
supervisor. After being given the green light,
Blake called Montgomery police who arrived
moments later and arrested Parks.
She was convicted of disorderly conduct
and fined $10.
Parks never paid the fine, but the
Montgomery City Lines Bus Company and

Continued on Page 10

2007 Signature Series II: The Battle for Equal Access 9

 As reported in the AFRO,1956
Rosa Parks
Continued from page 9
the city of Montgomery, Ala. would both pay immea-
surably over the next year and beyond. And the nation
would be changed forever by the confluence of events
that followed the movement in Montgomery.
After Parks arrest, E.D. Nixon, a local leader of the
NAACP, helped organize a citywide boycott of the
Montgomery bus company. Nixon utilized the Black
clergy and Black professional organizations, and by
Dec. 5, 1955, four days after her arrest, essentially all
Black riders were refusing to ride Montgomery buses.
That evening, the Montgomery Improvement
Association (MIA) was born to coordinate protests
and negotiate with the White power structure. And
they elected the young minister of Dexter Avenue
Baptist Church, Martin Luther King Jr. as president of
the association.
As fate would have it, Parks, as secretary of the
Montgomery NAACP, informed King that he had
been elected to the executive committee of the organi-
10
zation in August of 1955. About a week later, he
delivered his first sermon at Dexter Avenue.
Now, days after Parks’ December arrest and con-
viction, he was elected to a position that would soon
elevate him from a 26-year-old unknown minister to a
national figure.
On Dec. 13, King announced that the boycott could
last for a year; but in January 1956, the city of
Montgomery rejected an MIA compromise that would
have ended the boycott. Several days later, the mayor
of Montgomery declared that there would be no more
discussions with leaders of the MIA until the boycott
ended: it would last 381 days.
Along the course, King’s home was firebombed, as
well as the homes of several other Black leaders.
Many members of the MIA lost their jobs and several
of the boycotters who carpooled were routinely
Continued on Page 11
2007 Signature Series II: The Battle for Equal Access
Rosa Parks
Continued from page 10
harassed and arrested by police
for minor traffic infractions.
King and 89 others were indict-
ed for violating a 1921 anti-boy-
cotting law, and King was later
convicted and sentenced to a $500
fine or a year’s hard labor. By this
time, the Montgomery bus boy-
cott was garnering national head-
lines and attention on a consistent
basis. Racial tensions escalated
further when Black student
Autherine Lucy attempted to inte-
grate all-White University of
Alabama and the state of Alabama
banned the operation of the
NAACP within the state.
However, the city of
Montgomery was confronted with
Mother of the Movement. President Clinton awarding Mrs. Parks the Medal of Freedom.
2007 Signature Series II: The Battle for Equal Access
its own adversity as a result of the
boycott’s impact on the city’s
economy. White businessmen
claimed they lost about a $1 mil-
lion in sales because it was incon-
venient for Blacks to get to their
stores. The Montgomery City Bus
Lines Company lost more than
half its profits, because not only
did Blacks stop riding, but a sig-
nificant number of Whites who
feared trouble also stopped riding
as well.
In addition to the economic
hardships and negative national
press suffered by Montgomery, a
Supreme Court ruling in April
1956 that struck down segregated
seating on buses in Columbia,
S.C., prompted 13 other Southern
cities to desegregate their bus
lines.
In June a three-judge U.S.
District Court panel ruled 2-1 that
segregation on Alabama’s
intrastate buses was unconstitu-
tional. Then in November, the
U.S. Supreme Court upheld the
lower court’s ruling making bus
segregation in Montgomery and
all of Alabama illegal.
On Dec. 21, 1956, a little over
a year after the boycott began,
Parks and King were among the
first passengers to ride on the
newly integrated Montgomery
buses.
“All I was doing was trying to
get home from work,” said Mrs.
Parks, years after the events of
Dec. 1, 1955. Yet, her determina-
tion to simply get home and her
unwillingness to bow to racism,
helped spark the most recent
incarnation of the Black Civil
Rights Movement in America.
Fifty years later, she remains the
last living icon of that movement.
But in addition to Montgomery,
there were many other episodes of
resistance to Jim Crow triggered
by the 1954 Brown v. Board of
Education decision. Perhaps the
first major case to test the deseg-
regation ruling beyond the bound-
aries of education originated from
two Maryland beaches. u
11
 Below: Mrs. Parks visits an
exhibit at the NationalCivil
Rights Museum in Memphis
that depicts her fateful bus
ride in Montgomery. Top
left: Speaking at a news
conference at San
Francisco State University.
Top right: Admiring a
sculpture of her that was
presented at the
Smithsonian Institution.

12 2007 Signature Series II: The Battle for Equal Access


O
n Aug. 10, 1950, James
“Biddy” Wood had his
Ford station wagon
loaded with enthusiastic kids and
apprehensive adults headed from
West Baltimore to Ft. Smallwood
Park in Baltimore County.
“It was a bright day and the
children were happy because they
were going swimming,” said
Wood, now 81, who in 1950 was a
26-year-old reporter for the
Baltimore AFRO American news-
paper.
The children, wide-eyed and
2007 Signature Series II: The Battle for Equal Access
ready for fun in the sun on
that “bright” August day,
would instead learn a hard
lesson that would serve them
well in their later lives. And
their actions would eventual-
ly help advance the Black
cause for justice and equal
access in America.
All four of them, Jimmy
(Dr. James E. Wood Jr.),
Toni (the Rev. Dr. Frances
Murphy Draper), John
(Bishop John R. Bryant) and
Vashti (Bishop Vashti
IN BLACK AND WHITE - The
plaintiffs in the beach
MacKenzie), would go on to
cases worked hard to iden-
become leaders in their community
tify the disparities between
(see “Ft. Smallwood Kids”). But in
the Black beach and the
August 1950, they were just boys
White beach. Attorney
and girls wanting to have fun,
Bowen Jackson, left, the
unaware of the peril they would
brother of Juanita Jackson
face.
Mitchell and a plaintiff in
“These were children on the
the beach cases, confers
way to the beach — we didn’t
with Dr. Roscoe Brown, the
know we were going to be stoned,”
plaintiff’s expert on beach-
recalled Wood with a laugh. More
es,and Tucker Dearing, a
than 50 years later, Wood’s gravel-
prominent civil rights attor-
ly voice seems to dismiss the dan-
ney who worked on the-
ger, but back then it was very real.
beach cases.
“The minute we got out of the
car, the insults from the hoodlums
Continued on Page 14
13
Battle for the Beaches
Continued from page 13

and they started throwing things,”
recalled Wood, who was the only
man present on the outing.
However, two very strong women
made the trip with them: Edith
Bryant, the wife of Bishop
Harrison Bryant, and the venerable
Juanita Jackson Mitchell.
“Juanita was fiery — she stood
there lecturing them (assailants). I
Beach and Sparrow’s Beach were
the most popular “Black beaches”
in the state); in fact, it wasn’t the
beginning of the battle for the
beaches.
On July 3, 1950, Robert M.
Dawson Jr., a Baltimore mailman,
his wife Catherine and their three
children, Catherine, Phyllis and
Peter, headed out to Ft.

“These were children on

the way to the beach —
we didn’t know we were
going to be stoned.”
encouraged her to get back in the Smallwood. But unlike Wood,
car,” said Wood. Jackson-Mitchell and their clan, Marion Jackson, a plaintiff in the Sandy Point case, standing
Of course, that wasn’t the end of the Dawsons actually made it into with children on the East Beach.
the fight to desegregate Ft. the water. And for about an hour,
Smallwood and other beaches in they enjoyed the summer day with authorities ordered them out of the
the state of Maryland (Carr’s impunity — until Ft. Smallwood water.
But two years later, in May
1952, the two groups filed a law-
suit in federal court (Robert M.
Dawson Jr. et al. v. Mayor and
City Council of Baltimore et al.)
“On August 10, 1950, plaintiffs ...
sought the use of these facilities
and were denied same solely
because of their race and color
while at the same time white per-
sons were permitted the use of said
facilities without question,” reads
the civil suit submitted in District
Court. Baltimore attorney Linwood
Koger Jr., a member of one of
Baltimore’s most powerful fami-
lies, represented both groups. His
father, Linwood Sr., was a promi-
nent lawyer and judge. A.B. Koger,
Freedom Fighter. Juanita Jackson Mitchell and AFRO an uncle, was also a lawyer and a
Reporter Milton“Buddy” Lonesome were both plaintiffs in the historian. Another uncle, Earl
Sandy Point case. In this photo circa 1952 they are speaking Koger, was a successful business-
with an identified man. Jackson-Mitchell, a pioneering civil man and an AFRO columnist.
rights attorney, was the NAACP’s executive secretary of the As an attorney, Koger Jr. would
Legal Redress Committee in the 1950s and coordinated all become most identified with the
the beach cases in which several of her family members were beach cases, and two months after
plaintiffs. the Dawson suit was filed, another
component of the case unfolded.
Once again the AFRO, led by
Carl Murphy, would directly
impact the road to and from the
landmark Brown decision. On the
Fourth of July, 1952, Milton
“Buddy” Lonesome, a reporter for
the AFRO, along with several
members of the dynastic Mitchell-
Jackson clan, including Lilly Mae
Jackson, headed down to newly
opened Sandy Point State Park and
Beach. Yet, there certainly was no
expectancy of a fun-filled Fourth
of July — the group made the
sojourn to the recently completed
Chesapeake Bay Bridge to escalate
the effort to desegregate
Maryland’s beaches.
When they arrived, they
encountered a South Beach for
Whites and an East Beach for
Blacks. Directed to the separate
and, what most believed, very
unequal East Beach, they com-
plied. The next month, however,
Koger represented them in a civil
Continued on Page 15

14 2007 Signature Series II: The Battle for Equal Access

Battle for the Beaches
Continued from page 14
suit against the state of Maryland
and others.
Yet, the ramifications of these
cases would eventually extend far
beyond the boundaries of “The Free
State.”
Initially, in June of 1953, another
recurring character in the Brown
saga, District Court Judge W.
Calvin Chesnut, handed down a
temporary injunction shutting down
both beaches at Sandy Point, which
he determined were not equal.
His decision prompted the state
to engage in a speedy construction
program to upgrade the East Beach
(a futile effort to capitalize on the
upcoming Fourth of July weekend).
The state completed the work at
East Beach by July 1 and asked that
the preliminary injunction be lifted.
And on July 9, Judge Chesnut ruled
that both beaches were now, in fact,
equal and struck his original injunc-
tion.
But in synergy with the Brown
case now in litigation, the legal
strategy of the Black community
had long been focused on the “sep-
arate” component of “separate, but
equal.” (In Signature Series I, the
phrase, “separate could never be
equal,” was seized upon by the
NAACP in the wake of the
Baltimore County school desegre-
gation case.)
So, the litigants pressed on for
full and equal access to all of
Sandy Point, Ft. Smallwood and all
other beaches and recreational
facilities in the state. However, with
Ft. Smallwood Kids
2007 Signature Series II: The Battle for Equal Access
Linwood Koger Jr. spent much of his legal career
as the lawyer for the agency that would become
Housing and Urban Development , headquartered
in Philadelphia. However, he was the lead attor-
ney for the Ft. Smallwood and Sandy Point cases
that went all the way to the United States
Supreme Court.
the Brown decision pending, all
segregation cases being litigated
nationwide were effectively in
limbo.
After the Brown victory in May
1954, the beach cases were “con-
solidated” by District Court Judge
Roszel Thompson, who on June 27,
1954, ruled that Brown only applied
Circuit Court of Appeals. On
March 14, 1955, the court,
Armistead M. Dobie, John J. Parker
and Morris A. Soper, ruled on
behalf of the plaintiffs.
“It is obvious that racial segrega-
tion in recreational activities can no
longer be sustained as a proper
exercise of the police power of the
state; for if that power cannot be
invoked to sustain racial segrega-
tion in the schools, where atten-
dance is compulsory and racial fric-
tion may be apprehended from the
enforced commingling of the races,
it cannot be sustained with respect
to public beach and bathhouse
facilities, the use of which is entire-
ly optional,” wrote the court.
The defendants appealed all the
way to the United States Supreme
Court, and on Nov. 5, 1955, the
Supreme Court upheld the decision
of the 4th Circuit, opening the door
for the application of Brown in all
areas of American society.
“It is the first time Brown is
applied beyond education — there
is no question about that,” said
Larry S. Gibson, professor of law at
the University of Maryland.
“Brown wiped out all legally
to education. It was a ruling that sanctioned government segregation
obviously had national implica- and the road from Brown began
tions. Now, with the Brown deci- with Dawson,” said Gibson.
sion in hand, all of the leading The road from Brown would
Black legal minds, led by Thurgood continue to meander through
Marshall, pushed for the application Maryland, generating cases with
of Brown beyond the classroom. national impact, including the sit-in
Koger and the phalanx of plain- movement that actually began in
tiffs took their case to the 4th Baltimore. u
Jimmy, Toni, John and Vashti all were rejected as children at Ft.
Smallwood in 1950 because of their color, but they all grew up to
be leaders in Baltimore and beyond. Jimmy grew up to become Dr.
James E. Wood Jr., who is currently the chief of orthopedics at
Harbor Hospital in Baltimore. Toni grew up to become the Rev.
Frances Murphy Draper, former president of the AFRO American
Newspapers and currently pastor of John Wesley A.M.E. Zion
Church in East Baltimore. John grew up to become the Rt. Rev.
John R. Bryant, former pastor of Bethel A.M.E. Church in Baltimore
and currently presiding prelate of the 5th Episcopal District of the
A.M.E. Church. And Vashti grew up to become the Rt. Rev. Vashti
Murphy McKenzie of the 18th Episcopal District, the first woman to
be elected bishop.
By Sean Yoes College] in 1952, they were already under-
AFRO Staff Writer way,” said the Rev. Douglas Sands from a
cavernous West Baltimore home. Sands, 71, a
recently retired Methodist minister, speaks

I
n many ways, the neighborhood sur-
rounding what was Morgan State with conviction as he reflects on his days as a
“captain” of protest more than 50 years ago.
College in the 1950s was a slice of the
American dream, symbolized by hit televi- Sitting with Sands is Clarence Logan, the
sion shows of the time, like Leave it to man he passed the baton of protest to after he
Beaver or Father Knows Best. left Morgan for the military in 1955. Logan
However, there was something festering still resembles a 1950s Eckstein-esque croon-
on the campus of the historically Black col- Continued on Page 18
lege that would eventually

Brothers in arms: Clarence

disrupt the idyllic neighbor-

Logan and the Rev. Douglas

hood that sur-

Sands were leaders of

rounded it.

Baltimore’s sit-in
“When I

demonstration move-
arrived there

ment of the
[Morgan

1950s and
State

‘60s.

Photo by Larry S. Gibson

16 2007 Signature Series II: The Battle for Equal Access

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for African Americans
The AFRO-American newspapers has been
there through it all, covering breaking
news from the past and setting trends
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and current news by staying
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2007 Signature Series II: The Battle for Equal Access 17
The Northwood Movement, Part I
Continued from page 16

er in image and voice, but both he and Sands were the driving forces “For me, racial slurs were common place; it wasn’t anything unusual.
behind a movement of civic and social agitation that spanned more than It [protest] was a choice to make a statement. The response [from
a decade and predates Brown in 1954, Rosa Parks in 1955 and Whites] didn’t impress me at all,” said Sands.
Greensboro in 1960. The statement made by Sands and other Morgan students was a
However, the last thing on Sands’ loosely organized ongoing protest

In 1960, five years after

mind prior to arriving at Morgan against Read’s drugstore.
from Cooksville, Md., in Howard Read’s was a precursor to Rite

M a r y l a n d ’ s b e a c h c a s e s
County was confronting racial Aid, but Read’s served food at a

established the application of the

injustice. lunch counter. In 2005, conven-

l a n d m a r k B r o w n d e c i s i o n b e y o n d
“I had never had a confronta- ience is a way of life. But 50 years
tion with White folks — we pretty ago, Read’s was like an oasis in

the boundaries of education, the

much stayed in our place,” said the desert for hungry students who

historical consensus is that the

Sands, remembering his days could take out a hot meal (there
growing up in the farm communi- weren’t fast-food establishments

s i t - i n m o v e m e n t c a m e t o l i f e i n
ty of Cooksville. Sands also or convenience stores on every

Greensboro, N.C. But, history often

remembers being spat upon by corner in the 1950s) right at the

o b s c u r e s r e a l i t y .
White kids on passing school corner of Coldspring Lane and
buses while he and his friends Loch Raven Boulevard, just min-
walked to school along the side of utes from Morgan’s campus. But
the road, and making $3 per day the operative phrase is “take out.”
for a day’s work on a farm, while his And of course, Blacks couldn’t sit
White counterparts made $7 per day for the same work. down at Read’s and enjoy a meal like Whites.
But being treated as an afterthought or an inconvenience — like the The first time Sands picketed Read’s, he was scooped up from class
vast majority of Black Americans were — maybe prepared Sands for by two other Morgan students, one from Pennsylvania, the other from
protest at Morgan. South Carolina.
Continued on Page 19

As reported in the AFRO, February 1963

18 2007 Signature Series II: The Battle for Equal Access

The Northwood Movement, Part I
Continued from page 18

There were pickets outside the
drugstore, while students inside
attempted to be served a meal at
the lunch counter. The demonstra-
tors were consistent, and so was
the response of the all-White staff
at Read’s.
“They treated us with so much
disdain that they expected that we
wouldn’t return,” said Sands.
But according to Sands, feelings
of fear and trepidation were over-
whelmed by a sense of purpose
that prevailed on Morgan’s cam-
pus.
“There was an atmosphere — it
was expected of you,” said Sands.
And according to Sands, two pro-
fessors were at the core of that
atmosphere of social agitation.
“Dr. Wallace and Dr. Gill, they
were the leaders of a very active
political science department. They
were giants of men that have not
been recognized. Their teachings
and our action showed that it was
possible to make a change in the
system,” said Sands.
protesters, led by Sands (by 1953,
they were known as the “Social
Action Committee”), continued to
picket and sit in. However, things
were beginning to heat up a few
blocks away from Read’s.
The community of Northwood
in northeast Baltimore had a
strong neighborhood association
whose covenant explicitly banned
Blacks from purchasing homes in
that neighborhood.
Northwood Shopping Center,
located at Havenwood Road, con-
tained, among other establish-
ments, a Hecht Co. department
store, the Northwood Theatre and
an Arundel’s Ice Cream Parlor;
and, as early as 1953, the students
of Morgan targeted all three.
“Going to Northwood said
something to the community, and
the community responded. They
were concerned about their shop-
ping center. They didn’t even want
you to step on their property,” said
Sands. “The people became great-
ly agitated: they threw bottles,

“You have to remember, this was a Happy ending. Morgan students Carolyn Dotson, Sandra
neighborhood affair. Morgan State Upshur and Curtis Smothers celebrate the end of the eight-
year battle to desegregate the Northwood Theatre.
College was across the street,
diagonal from the Northwood enclave,
and thousands of students were being
That year, the Northwood move- AFRO article circa 1955.
ment was widely recognized in “You have to understand the
denied privileges at Northwood. The
Baltimore. And, to a great extent, dynamics of the demonstration and

students had gotten restless.There

the torch had been passed from how it works,” said Logan. “It’s

was a climate there,” said Bascom.

“I spent part of my day every
day between classes going around
campus getting people to picket. I
don’t think most of us expected
that things were really going to
change or that later on we’d see a
national movement,” he said.
But initially, things didn’t really
change, at least not at Read’s. The
rocks, spit at us and called us
names.”
Yet, the resistance of the
Northwood neighborhood was met
with greater numbers of protesters
and better-organized demonstra-
tions.
“Things really heated up at
Northwood in 1955,” said Sands.
Sands and the Social Action
Committee to Logan and the Civic
Interest Group.
“Specifically, the Civic Interest
Group is interested in Negroes
being served at the Hecht Co.’s
Roof Top Restaurant and
Arundel’s Ice Cream Store, and
admission to the Northwood
movie theater. Tuesday night,
some 100 Negroes entered the
restaurant and sat down at tables.
Another 60 did the same thing at
the ice cream store,” read an
harassment if you want to know.
It’s nonviolent harassment — a
dogged effort coming again and
again and again, occupying your
place of business, sitting down
will wear you down. That’s nonvi-
olence.”
And from 1955 to 1963, Logan
would direct what would become a
massive sit-in demonstration
movement in Baltimore that would
rock the foundation of the city and
even garner the attention of the
nation. u

2007 Signature Series II: Equal Access for All 19

By Sean Yoes
AFRO Staff Writer

“You have to understand the dynamics of the
demonstration and how it works. It’s harassment if
you want to know. It’s nonviolent harassment — a
dogged effort coming again and again and again,
occupying your place of business, sitting down will
wear you down. That’s nonviolence.”
— Clarence Logan, former chairman of the
Maryland Civic Interest Group
“T
he old strategy would not work. In
1960, they would just sit there and then
they would get up,” said Clarence
Logan, reflecting back almost 50 years to when he
was chairman of the Civic Interest Group of
Maryland, which fought against racial injustice
throughout the state.
“We have to commit them to go the distance,
meaning they would have to go to jail,” he said,
Continued on Page 21

The General: Clarence Logan, the leader of the Maryland Civic Interest Group, and his thou-
sands of student troops never relented until victory at Northwood was theirs.
20 2007 Signature Series II: The Battle for Equal Access
The Northwood Movement, Part II
Continued from page 20
recalling a meeting he had with
leaders of Morgan State College’s
student government in 1960. The
climate of protest was clearly
changing in Baltimore and the rest
of the nation. There was more of a
sense of urgency, more of a sense
that perhaps things could really
change.
“The movement was getting a
little more militant,” said Logan.
Logan is a student of the
American civil rights movement
and an integral part of it in
Maryland. And when he speaks of
the “dynamics of the demonstra-
tion,” he speaks as both scholar
and soldier of the movement.
In 1955, Logan was stationed at
Eglin Air Force Base in Florida,
which wasn’t far from
Montgomery, Ala.,
where
Free at last! Morgan students who had been jailed for days celebrate freedom and the desegregation of the Northwood
Theatre.
2007 Signature Series II: The Battle for Equal Access
Martin Luther King Jr. first took
the national stage leading the
Montgomery Bus Boycott. He also
So many students were detained at
got wind of the Tallahassee Bus
Baltimore City Jail, that the facility
essentially ran out of room.
Boycott that was happening around
the same time. “I began to under-
stand that this is protest. This is
what should be going on — not
knowing this is what was going on
at Morgan,” said Logan.
By 1957, Logan was out of the
Air Force and taking night classes
at Morgan
State College.
And he was
wit-
nessing protest firsthand.
By 1959, he was serving in dif-
ferent capacities with CIG. That
year, the group had been instru-
mental in gaining a hard-earned
desegregation victory at Arundel’s
Ice Cream Parlor, one of the estab-
lishments at the infamous
Northwood Shopping Center.
“That was a time when the fer-
ment for desegregation was very
active,” said Dr. Marion Bascom,
pastor emeritus of Douglas
Memorial Church.
Bascom
was an
important part of Maryland’s civil
rights leadership. And he was a
member of the notorious “Goon
Squad,” a group of men that
included Vernon Dobson, Harold
Dobson, Homer Favor, Sam
Daniels and others dedicated to
Black empowerment.
“You have to remember, this
was a neighborhood affair. Morgan
State College was across the street,
diagonal from the Northwood
enclave, and thousands of students
were being denied privileges at
Northwood. The students had got-
ten restless. There was a climate
there,” said Bascom.
But the internal politics of
Continued on Page 22
21
The Northwood Movement, Part II
Continued from page 21
the civil rights movement were
becoming more complex, and
Baltimore had been thrust into the
national spotlight. In 1960, the
national chapter of the Congress
for Racial Equality (CORE) had
negotiated an armistice of sorts in
Baltimore, specifically with mer-
chants of the Route 40 corridor.
The deal said that if 39 stores
would desegregate, Morgan stu-
dents would not demonstrate. The
student leadership acquiesced to
CORE.
“All hell broke loose,” said
Logan. And perhaps rightfully so.
Of the 39 stores that originally
agreed to desegregate, about one-
third backed away from the agree-
ment. Many students, not just from
Morgan but from other colleges
and high schools in the area, were
angry and disappointed because
there was a sense that some
progress was actually being made.
Scenes at Northwood: Students from Morgan State College and Johns Hopkins University
staged anti-discrimination protests at the Northwood Theatre in 1955.
22
In fact, in 1960, CIG claimed
that they were able to successfully
desegregate 114 stores in
Baltimore City.
By the end of that year, Logan
became chairman of Maryland
CIG, and in 1961, the organization
shifted much of its energy to
demonstrations in Southern
Maryland.
“We had to overcome the fear
factor on the Eastern Shore. They
had to forget about the past and
confront these people who are
oppressing you,” said Logan,
recalling the march on Crisfield,
Md., in 1961. For more than a
year, CIG demonstrated, organiz-
ing marches in several towns on
the Eastern Shore and in Southern
Maryland.
“I got tear-gassed. I had my butt
kicked in Chestertown. I had a foot
in my a-- everywhere I went. We
were veterans. We had been in the
battle,” said Logan. “I guess I
thought I was fighting a war some-
times.”
That war mentality served
Logan and CIG for the final phase
of the Northwood movement,
which began in February 1963.
The mandate expressed in the
1960 meeting between Logan and
Morgan’s student leaders — “We
have to commit them to go the dis-
tance, meaning they would have to
go to jail” — would prove prophet-
ic.
In February 1963, a crowd of
mostly Morgan students, along
with some from other area col-
leges, moved en masse on the
Northwood Movie Theatre. But
instead of moving when ordered to
by police, they refused and were
arrested. Each day the number of
arrests grew: from 26, to 68, to
100, to 150. Most refused bail.
Some got arrested, got out of jail
AFRO Archives
2007 Signature Series II: The Battle for Equal Access
and got arrested again.
“The entire Kappa line got
arrested. So the next day, the
Alphas went and got arrested, and
then the Deltas ... and the AKAs.
We were jeopardizing the whole
college process at Morgan,” said
Logan.
Again, the national spotlight
was thrust upon Baltimore. Much
of the country watched while hun-
dreds of college kids were hauled
off and thrown into jail. And like
other Southern cities directly
impacted by the civil rights move-
ment, part of the strategy was to
“shame their oppressors” — in this
case, the White owners of the
Northwood Theatre — into deseg-
regating.
“I’m overwhelmed at the end
result of what might have been a
very embarrassing situation to
Baltimore,” said Bascom in an
AFRO article, dated March 2,
1963.
So many students were detained
at Baltimore City Jail, that the
facility essentially ran out of room.
“The tempo of arrests was
relaxed: They had no more room at
the jail,” said Logan, who insists
that about 415 students actually got
arrested during those intense days
of protest. But 343 were jailed at
the time Northwood Theatre own-
ers finally agreed to integrate.
“In just six consecutive days,
Morgan students accomplished the
victory that had alluded them in
eight years of periodic demonstra-
tions, through the use of civil dis-
obedience and their mass refusal to
accept bail,” said Logan.
“Logan, now as he was then,
has always been a civil rights
worker at his core,” said Bascom.
But just months after the great
victory at Northwood, Logan and a
phalanx of civil rights soldiers
would be focused on another major
battle: Gwynn Oak Amusement
Park. u
 wynn
GO P
Activists braved arrests, hecklers
ak ark
to integrate amusement park
For years, Gwynn Oak Park, with its rustic wooden
roller coaster, was a landmark of old Baltimore. But in
July 1963, it became a national flashpoint of the Civil
Rights Movement.

By Sean Yoes
AFRO Staff Writer

“I
magine a kid going into an amusement park. ... It was a
wonderful place for a Baltimore kid. But if you were a little
Black kid, you couldn’t experience it, and there was no rea-
son — it’s just the way it was during those times,” said Patricia Fish, a
writer from Georgetown, Del., who wrote “The Kaitlyn Mae Book
Blog,” which chronicles many of her childhood experiences growing up
in Baltimore.
It was the Baltimore of the early 1960s, when the Orioles and the
Colts were the kings of Memorial Stadium on 33rd Street.
And the great, white wooden roller coaster at Gwynn Oak Park,
which opened in 1895, loomed large among the trees that engulfed the
Gwynn Oak community of Northwest Baltimore.
“Gwynn Oak Park, once a darling of Baltimore, the town’s only city-
based amusement park ... I remember it so well, in that it was not only a
place of endless hours of my childhood delight, it was also my first
introduction to blatant bigotry,” Fish writes.
Photo by Sean Yoes
Fish, who grew up in the community of Morrell Park in Southwest Dr. Chester Wickwire was stricken with polio as a young man
Baltimore, attended St. Jerome’s Parochial School. And according to growing up in the Midwest. But the 91-year-old says the dis-
her, the parochial schools rented out Gwynn Oak Park every year for a ease emboldened him to stand up and fight for justice for
day. decades. “I was sort of living my life with abandon. I think I
“To a second-grader, a trip to Gwynn Oak Park with unlimited rides was more willing to do things I thought ought to be done,” he
Continued on Page 24 said.

2007 Signature Series II: The Battle for Equal Access 23

Gwynn Oak Park
Continued from page 23
was paradise,” writes Fish, but not
all of her classmates were able to
enjoy that day in paradise.
“”Tasha, Pierre and Jerold will
be going to the Enchanted
Forrest,’ I remember Sister Digna
telling my second-grade class ... I
wondered even then just why
Tasha, Pierre and Jerold couldn’t
go to Gwynn Oak with the rest of
the class,” writes Fish.
She got the answer so many
kids confused by the hypocrisy
and inhumanity of Jim Crow got,
and she got it from her father.
“Patricia, just as soon as you let
the Colored in Gwynn Oak, the
place will go downhill,” explained
Fish’s father.
In 196
many 3, the
who w re we
integr ere o
ation, ppose
the la and p
segre st big
gated symbo s
Baltim
Gwyn o r
n Oak e was
“My father wasn’t a
bad man. He was just repeating
what everybody else said. That
was always the defense of the peo-
ple who were opposed to integra-
tion,” said Fish.
In 1963, there were still many
who were opposed to integration,
and perhaps the last big symbol of
segregated Baltimore was Gwynn
Oak Park.
Every year on the Fourth of
July the park sponsored “All
Nations Day,” which welcomed
embassy staff from Washington,
D.C., and people dressed in ethnic
attire gathered and shared their
native foods. But African nations
and, of course, Black Americans
were not invited to participate.
24
The first protest against the All
Nations Day blackout happened in
1955. About 40 people demon-
strated with virtually no media
coverage. But the demonstrations
on All Nations Day became an
annual event, as well as protesting
segregation at Gwynn Oak, and
eventually gained support.
In 1962, the Congress On
Racial Equality (CORE) asked
embassies not to participate in the
annual celebration, and they all
agreed to withdraw. That same
year, Walter Carter, the civil rights
activist and leader of CORE’s
Baltimore chapter, was assaulted
and then arrested for trespassing
while demonstrating at Gwynn
Oak.
But by 1963,
re sti
ll
d to
erhap
l of
Park.
Carter would
become one of the integral organ-
izers of a massive demonstration
at the park, and like the demon-
strations at Northwood Shopping
Center earlier that year, Gwynn
Oak became the next big target of
the Civil Rights Movement in
Maryland.
Another major force behind the
All Nation’s Day demonstration in
July 1963 was Chester Wickwire,
at the time a lecturer of religion at
Johns Hopkins University who a really good friend of mine, I Maryland’s Civil Rights
happened to be White. worked with him closely. He was Movement by icons of that move-
“I think you’ve got to hand it to really Mr. Civil Rights,” said ment.
CORE for spearheading this, push- Wickwire, who is also acknowl-
ing it, keeping it alive. Walter was edged as an important figure in Continued on Page 25
2007 Signature Series II: The Battle for Equal Access
Gwynn Oak Park
Continued from page 24

“In all my relations with him, I have never had a color problem with electric wheelchair (he was stricken with polio as a very young man)
him,” said Dr. Marion Bascom, pastor emeritus of Douglas Memorial through the vast dining hall, the only Black faces visible are those of the
Community Church and a charter member of the notorious civil rights waitstaff.
soldiers, “The Goon Squad.” Bascom and Wickwire were both arrest- But it seems that part of
ed and jailed for demonstrating at Wickwire’s mission since he
came to this infamously seg-
regated city from Colorado
in 1953, has been to help
integrate Baltimore — and
he started with the campus
of Johns Hopkins
University.
By 1958, he began a
tutoring program in
Baltimore jails using
Hopkins students. In
1959, the program includ-
ed Baltimore City public
school children.
That same year,
Wickwire organized
Baltimore’s first inte-
grated concert at the
Fifth Regiment Armory.
He would later bring
artists like Charles
Mingus, Odetta, Duke
and Mercer Ellington,
Joan Baez and the
Mamas and the Papas
to the Johns Hopkins
campus.

As reported in the AFRO, July 1964

Continued on Page 26

Gwynn Oak
in July 1963.
“He helped organize it
[Gwynn Oak demonstration].
He helped raise money for bail.
He went to jail, cane and all.
He put his self on the line,”
added Bascom.
At age 91, Wickwire’s spirit
still becomes agitated when he
perceives injustice.
“Unfortunately, this place isn’t
very integrated,” said
Wickwire, referring to the
Baltimore County retirement
community he and his wife of
68 years reside in.
In fact, as he maneuvers his
2007 Signature Series II: Equal Access for All 25
Gwynn
Oak Park
Continued from page 25
“This city did not enjoy a lot of
cultural things, simply because of
segregation,” said Wickwire.
In the summer of 1963, Carter
and Wickwire, among other lead-
ers, were making the final prepara-
tions for the All Nations Day
demonstration just five months
after the major victory at
Northwood in February.
In addition to CORE, the
National Council of Churches, the
Northern Student Movement, the
The White contribution
to The Movement
Chester Wickwire was one of many White
Americans who fought on the frontlines with
Blacks in the battle for civil rights.
“For one time, Blacks and Whites knew they
had something at stake, and they joined hands to
do it,” said Dr. Marion Bascom.
Bascom recalled many names, including the
Rev. Henry Offer, Ann Miller, Rabbi Lieberman
and Eugene Carson Blake, who made great sacri-
fices in the struggle for justice.
Andrew Goodman were murdered by members of
the Ku Klux Klan on June 21, 1963, almost one
year after Schwerner’s first civil rights demonstra-
tion at Gwynn Oak Park.
This week, on the 41st anniversary of their mur-
ders, 80-year-old Edgar Ray Killen, a country
preacher and former leader of the Ku Klux Klan,
was convicted of manslaughter in the deaths of
Schwerner, Chaney and Goodman. u

“Regardless of
“Catholic clergy, Jewish clergy,
Episcopalian clergy, Sisters: All of

how many
them were a part of the movement,”

people were
added Dr. Bascom.
Specifically, in July of 1963,

there, or how
Michael Schwerner, one of the most

raucous they
famous martyrs of the movement,
participated in his first civil rights

were, I think
demonstration at Gwynn Oak. Both
Schwerner and his wife, Rita,

that most of us
protested at Gwynn Oak on July 7,

felt like we
and a little more than a month later,
they both marched on Washington on

were doing the

August 28. After the March on

right thing.”
Civic Interest Group, the
Interdenominational Ministerial
Alliance and Morgan State
College represented most of the
major groups who participated.
The Gwynn Oak demonstration
actually took place during two
days: July 4 and July 7.
By some estimates, as many as
800 people demonstrated against
the segregated park on July 4,
about 200 from New York alone.
Two hundred and eighty-three
people, including Bascom and
Wickwire, were arrested and
hauled away in paddy wagons,
while at least 1,000 virulent segre-
gationists jeered.
On July 7, about 300 protesters,
mostly from Baltimore, demon-
Continued on Page 27
Washington, Schwerner was hired by
CORE officials. He wrote on his
CORE application, “I have an emo-
tional need to offer my services in
the South.”
In January 1964, Schwerner,
along with his wife, left New York
City and headed to Meridian, Miss.,
where he quickly became one of the
most hated civil rights workers in the
state.
Almost immediately, he organized
a boycott of a variety store that sold
mostly to Blacks until the store hired
AP Photo/FBI
its first Black worker. He worked
The FBI on June 29, 1964, began distributing this pic-
hard to register Blacks to vote, and
ture of civil rights worker Michael H. Schwerner, who
he asked the congregation at Mount
disappeared near Philadelphia, Miss., June 21, 1964.
Zion Church in Longdale, Miss., to
Schwerner said, “Mississippi is the decisive battle-
use their church as the site for a
ground for America. Nowhere in the world is the idea
“freedom school.” He constantly
of White supremacy more firmly entrenched, or more
received hate mail and death threats,
cancerous, than in Mississippi.” He, along with James
and was harassed by local police
Chaney and Andrew Goodman, was murdered in
because of his efforts.
Mississippi by members of the Ku Klux Klan in the
Finally, Schwerner and two other
CORE workers, James Chaney and summer of 1964.

26 2007 Signature Series II: The Battle for Equal Access

Gwynn Oak Park
Continued from page 26
strated at the park, and about 100 additional
arrests were made, including Michael
Schwerner, who would be killed less than a
year later in Mississippi (see box). On the sec-
ond day of the demonstrations, an even-larger
crowd of counter-protesters gathered, creating
an extremely volatile situation.
“Regardless of how many people were there,
or how raucous they were, I think that most of
us felt like we were doing the right thing,” said
Wickwire.
The grainy black and white images of Black
2007 Signature Series II: The Battle for Equal Access
and White protesters, their limp bodies being
hauled away as hundreds of counter-protesters
heckled them, were transmitted all over the
country.
“The fact that this was going on — the All
Nations Day and the like — it was a shame on
Baltimore that we were allowing this to hap-
pen,” said Wickwire.
Finally, on Aug. 28, 1963, the same day as
the historic March on Washington, the Price
Brothers, who owned Gwynn Oak, announced
that the park would integrate.
“This was a victory, and victories are hard to
come by,” said Wickwire. “I felt lifted that this
had happened and we had played a role. I felt it
was a great opportunity for me to walk with
some wonderful people and try and help do
something,” he added.
The great white roller coaster at Gwynn Oak
Park remained for years after the park closed.
With its white paint peeling, it stood like a
wooden dinosaur, a rickety reminder of
Baltimore’s legally segregated past — a past
still fresh in the memories of many. u
27
Students take protest to heart
of racism in Baltimore
By Sean Yoes wasn’t integrated,” said Johnson, who was then
Adorned in their finest clothes and
AFRO Staff Writer Jacqueline Heborn, a 23-year-old woman mak-
accessories, they would socialize and
ing her way in the world.
eat during breaks from shopping.
Now, as she approaches her 74th birthday, she
Sitting in those elegant eateries, they

T
he “Tea Rooms” of
Baltimore’s big-four recalled
were like shiny, genteel ornaments of the indignity of working for an estab-
downtown department Jim Crow. lishment that she could not patronize.
stores through the 1950s “Well, it didn’t make you feel good. Even
“That’s where all the dressed-up
— Hoshchild Kohn, White women went: to the Teathough we worked there, we couldn’t shop there.
Hutzler’s, Hecht’s Employees couldn’t even try on clothes unless
Room,” said Jacqueline Johnson,
and Stewart’s — we snuck into the stock room,” said Johnson.
who worked for Hoshchild
were pristine “Even the employees were segregated. They
Kohn’s downtown store from
bastions of lily- 1954 to 1967. [Whites] had a great big room with reclining
White woman- chairs to eat in, and we had a little room with a
“I worked at the soda
hood. fountain. When I firstfew tables.”
started, it Of course, that wasn’t the only dehu-
manizing slap Black employees had to
endure.
When they asked management
about the possibility of changing
their uniform color from tan to
white, the response was, “Our
Black skin would show through the
uniforms too much,” remembered
Johnson. “It wasn’t an easy time.”
“Curiously, department stores
Photo by Sean Yoes had been more discriminatory in
Clarence Logan was one of the most tenacious leaders of the Civil Rights Movement in
Maryland, and he has become a keeper of the history of the Movement.
Continued on Page 29

28 2007 Signature Series II: The Battle for Equal Access

Going Downtown
Continued from Page 28
Baltimore than probably anywhere else in the
country. Beginning in the 1920s, they effectively
discouraged Negro trade by refusing Negroes
charge accounts and refusing to permit them to
try on or return articles. Certain firms, it
appears, in effect rejected Negro patronage
entirely,” wrote former Morgan State College
professor August Meier in his book of essays, A
White Scholar and the Black Community: 1945-
1965.
By the end of the 1950s, however, there were
some signs of change in the air. Between 1956
and 1959, some of the major downtown hotels,
as well as the downtown movie houses, ended
discriminatory practices. And as we reported in
earlier segments of the Signature Series, Morgan
State College students had success integrating
some businesses at the Northwood Shopping
Center, located just a few blocks from their cam-
pus.
e re
“Demonstrations at Morgan was like a rite of
e e s w h
spring; they always cropped up at the same time
l o y e
emp ey [Whit
every year,” said Clarence Logan,
t h e
who was one of the
E v e n d. T h h r e c l
e g a t e m w i t
se g r g r o o we
e a t b i , a n d
a g r ea t i n
s t o a f e w
chair oom with
l e r
litt
to 300 students descended upon the
Rooftop restaurant and the theater at the
most important sol- Northwood Shopping Center, which led to the
diers and strategists in Maryland’s
civil rights battles. For several years, he was the
leader of the Civic Interest Group, which played
a major role in many of those battles, especially
Northwood.
“Around the same time, we had student gov-
ernment elections on campus and the candidates
would always pledge that they would desegre-
gate. The students would rally around that and
they would go out and do some things and go to
Northwood. And they would stay there for two
or three months, and then, that was it until the
following year, usually,” recalled Logan.
But a sit-in demonstration by students from
North Carolina A&T in Greensboro, N.C., in
February 1960 would interrupt the regular pat-
tern of protest at Northwood.
The Greensboro demonstrations have been
2007 Signature Series II: The Battle for Equal Access
acknowledged historically as the first “sit-in”
demonstrations in the country. However, suc-
cessful sit-in campaigns were conducted by
Morgan State College students years before
Greensboro, specifically at Read’s drugstore and
lunch counter in 1955 and Arundel’s Ice Cream
Parlor in 1959.
The Greensboro demonstrations, however,
may have sparked a subtle change in tactics and
an overt change in attitude.
“After the Greensboro demonstration took
place, there was this tremendous upheaval on
Southern campuses. Everybody caught on and
we had a breakaway from the adult way of
approaching desegregation,” said Logan.
“In other words, the students were more con-
frontational. They didn’t wait. They didn’t go
with hat in hand. They said, ‘We demand this,’”
said Logan.
In March 1960, just weeks after
the Greensboro
a d
s ]
i n ing
a d a
h
e s .”
ta b l
Photo by Sean Yoes
Jacqueline Johnson once served Whites
only at segregated Hochschild Kohn.
demonstrations, 200
Now 74, she serves as a volunteer at the
foodpantry of Ames Memorial United
Methodist Church in West Baltimore.
arrest of four students charged with trespassing.
Those four arrests would set a precedent for
future charges filed to combat protests.
student leadership after the injunction was insti-
The demonstrations at Northwood in March
tuted. The Urban League at the time was an
1960 triggered complaints from management at
organization reputed to have a strong relation-
the Hecht-May Co., which cited a 49 percent
ship with Baltimore’s White business communi-
drop in business.
ty. And it was viewed as perhaps the least radical
That led to a court injunction imposed by
of the civil rights organizations.
Judge Joseph Allen that limited protests to two
But because of Templeton’s ties to the White
demonstrators at the Hecht-May department
business community, some speculate he may
store, two at the restaurant and two in the
have had inside information indicating that suc-
remaining shopping area.
cess in desegregating downtown was imminent.
“There was the question of, ‘What do we do?’
In fact, a year earlier, Martin Kohn, the presi-
This thing was a momentum killer,” said Logan.
dent of Hoshchild Kohn’s department store, met
The answer came from an interesting source.
with the Maryland Commission on Interracial
“Go downtown” was the advice Furman
Templeton, the executive director of the Continued on Page 30
Baltimore Urban League, gave to the Morgan
29
Going
Downtown
Continued from Page 29

Problems and Relations, and said, “All decent

people should be served.”
Strangled by the injunction on Northwood,
and encouraged by the advice provided by
Templeton, CIG decided to move on the down-
town department stores. First on the list was
Hoshchild Kohn.
On March 26, 1960, the plan was for dozens
of demonstrators to mingle into the downtown
crowds instead of presenting a phalanx of pick-
eters. They entered the store in groups, but
instead of being met with resistance, they were
met with menus.
“On the day they went down there, Hoshchild
Kohn anticipated them. When they walked in,
they were greeted at Hoshchild Kohn [and] they
were given menus. On the 26th of March,
Hoshchild Kohn completely desegregated,” said
Logan, who remembered how the lack of resist-
ance from the department store caught the
demonstrators totally off guard.
“It was not expected, and the students didn’t
have any money. It was sort of an embarrassing
situation, but they got together and scraped up
enough to order something,” added Logan.
While CIG made the breakthrough at
Hoshchild Kohn, Albert Hutzler, the owner of
the jewel of the downtown department stores,
Hutzler’s, was on vacation. Hutzler’s, at best,
had a dubious reputation as far as race relations
were concerned. But on April 16, upon his
return from vacation, Albert Hutzler immediate-
ly called a meeting of his store managers.
The next day he met with several leaders of
the movement, including Logan; Robert Watts,
the CIG attorney (Watts would later help found
the first major Black law firm in Baltimore and
was the first Black appointed to the Municipal
Court); and Templeton.
According to Logan, before anyone could
lobby him to integrate his store, Hutzler said, “I
made the decision that we have to change our
policy.”
“Then he picked the phone up and dialed
Hecht-May Co. to inform Hecht’s that he had
made the decision. He did the same with
Stewart’s ...’If Hutzler’s is willing to serve, we
will too.’ Hutzler’s was the flagship store,” said
Logan.
Continued on Page 31

30 2007 Signature Series II: The Battle for Equal Access

 Going
Downtown
Continued from Page 30
Essentially, one demonstration, meeting with no
resistance, led the four pillars of Baltimore’s down-
town retail business district to eradicate their Jim
Crow policies, and it created a domino effect.
Between March 1960 and March 1961, 115
restaurants desegregated, mainly due to the efforts
of CIG.
“The children changed their attitudes by their
approach. Not only did they desegregate, but
they changed the way they looked at things.
That’s what non-violence is all about. They
found that racism isn’t good business,” said
Logan. u

2007 Signature Series II: The Battle for Equal Access 31

SmartEdge by GMAC
THE BEST TIME TO BUY A VEHICLE.
Christmas time…..Your birthday…..End of the week, month or year…..When new cars come out.
These are all great answers – but, I don’t believe that any of these answers is correct.

In 2006 GMAC facilitated over 1000 financial literacy seminars throughout a number of high schools,
colleges, businesses, churches and other organizations. Regardless of where we go, the one
question that always comes up is, “When is the best time to buy a car”?

I think I will cut right to the chase and give you what I consider the right answer and the best time
to buy a car – “Before You Need It.” Sounds interesting enough – but, does this really make sense?
What about all those deals you can get at those special times – wouldn’t that be the best time to
buy? Well, please allow me to share a short story.
Don Ferguson, GMAC

I have a dear friend that is a Bishop. Since I
cannot use his name in this article, let’s just
call him Bishop. Sometime ago, I shared my
best time to buy a vehicle vision with him and
he said that really makes a lot of sense to him.
Here is how he describes it to others.
Let’s say you unexpectedly lose a loved one –
and you have to make the final arrangements.
During this time of loss, do you shop around
for an undertaker – and what about the coffin,
the burial plot and headstone? Most will simply
call someone that a friend refers and then
pay whatever price they are quoted. Suppose
the color or arrangements you want aren’t
available – do you have time to wait to get
what you want or, do you accept what they
have to offer since you need his services?
Here is what happened to me; I went to Las Vegas
for a business trip. Since I flew out early in the
day and didn’t have any functions until later
that night, I opted to be very comfortable in
flight and wore jeans. As I was getting dressed
in my suit for the evening’s event, I noticed that
I had forgotten my belt – and the belt for my
jeans did not fit. My lesson here was…..I paid
$60 for a $10 belt in the hotel gift shop. I got the
least expensive one I could find – and have
never worn it again.
So, why would buying a car – or anything else
for that matter be any different? You want to
buy when you have the power to negotiate
your purchase. So, when you need the car –
you lose the edge.
Well Don Ferguson – if my car is running just
fine, why would I want to invest in a new car?
Great question – ask yourself this…Self – Is
my car worth more in trade-in value when it
is running fine than it is when it is not running
fine? What about this one – a young couple,
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dealership to look at a new vehicle. All they
want to do is get the car and get back home –
having again lost the edge.
OK already – let’s go back to the basics. These
principals will apply to buying a car, a house
and/or any other purchases.
• Determine if your purchase is a Want or
a Need – you should always plan major
purchases like these
• Budget for your item – how much will it cost,
how much can you afford, are you paying cash,
buying or leasing. There is a great workbook on our
SmartEdge site – www.smartedgebygmac.com
that covers budgets. Take a look at page 32 in
the workbook and complete your budget. By
the way, I have designed the perfect budget –
anyone that needs this is welcome to it….but,
this is my budget and will not work for you
• Once you have established your budget and
have an idea how much your new vehicle will
cost per month, try to save that amount for at
least three months. If you can, chances are
you can handle your new payments. If not,
you will probably need to look at a different
model. Don’t forget about the cost of items like
gasoline, maintenance, insurance and other
car costs
• Now, let’s do a little research – which vehicle
do you like, what color, what options – see how
they fit into your budget
It’s time to visit your local dealership now. The
salesperson can’t sell you a car – because you
are there to buy what you want. And – since
you don’t need a new car now, you have plenty
of time to negotiate, get what you want – buy
your vehicle when the right one meets the
terms of your budget.
Bishop, I love you – but, I haven’t made those
final arrangements yet. I know I don’t have
full control of this, but, I do have insurance to
cover those costs should something happen.
About my belt….. I hate it….but, I now leave
that particular belt in my suitcase and it goes
on every trip with me.
There is a lot of information on our website,
www.smartedgebygmac.com – and we review
the four keys to vehicle financing, namely
Budgets, Credits, Options and Choices. We
have also linked our visitors to other financial
resource sites that we believe might be helpful.
Please stop by and visit us – or them – before
you make your next purchase.
Buy your next vehicle – make your next major
purchase – before you need the item. You have
the “Edge” and can negotiate a better deal
for yourself.

www.smartedgebygmac.com
© 2007 GMAC. All Rights Reserved. GMAC is a registered trademark. SmartEdge is a registered trademark of GMAC.