AVAILABLE JUNE 17, 2006

Introduction by James W. Loewen
author of Lies My Teacher Told Me and Sundown Towns

Many Americans do not realize that formal racial segregation afflicted half of all states in America in the early 1950s. In addition to the eleven former Confederate states, many places in the North, including Delaware, West Virginia, the southern third of Ohio, Indiana, and Illinois, Kentucky, Missouri, much of Kansas, Oklahoma, Arizona, and some communities in California kept African Americans out of "white" schools, swimming pools, theaters, parks, and other spaces used by the public. As this book reminds us, so did all of Maryland. Indeed, not until the fall of 1967 did St. Mary's County, Maryland, comply with the 1954 decision by the United States Supreme Court in Brown v. Board of Education that outlawed racially segregated public schools.

This book shines the light of memory onto the separate and unequal schooling provided in Maryland before 1967. Until now, we had no volume that tells this story in southern Maryland, and from the viewpoint of the segregated minority at that. Doing so is crucial to our understanding. I know, because for the last six years I have been studying "sundown towns" - all-white towns that for decades were all-white on purpose. Very little has been written down about these practices. To "document" them, oral history is crucial. Yet as the years go by, those who know the incidents and practices that kept a town all white - or kept a school system segregated - are lost to us, their voices stilled by death.

Not now. Not for St. Mary's County. Not with this volume.

Some written observances of the fiftieth anniversary of Brown in 2004, even some by historians who should have known better, indulged in what might be termed "nostalgia for segregation." Things were better then, these pundits opined. The entire (black) community was invested in each child, and children behaved. Teachers were dedicated. The schools worked.

These citizens of St. Mary's County know better. First, they point out that "separate" did not mean "equal." "Whites would have a nice school, and we'd have a terrible old school - an old shanty school," recalled Pearl Thompson Furey. In parts of the county, there was no school after eighth grade. Not until 1952, when Brown v. Board was already being litigated, did black students across the county have access to twelfth grade. Everywhere, white children rode buses to school; black children had to walk.

Pearl Thompson Furey

Then there was the stigma. Separate schools can never be made equal, because the racial separation itself - established and enforced by the dominant race - expresses white supremacy. Lettie Dent, Superintendent of Schools for St. Mary's County, voiced that stigma by introducing her black teachers as "Aunt ___" or "Uncle ___." The teachers were not her relatives, of course. Rather, "Aunt" and "Uncle" were the terms whites used to refer to older and more senior African Americans in the segregation era.

Leroy Thompson Reprinted by permission of The Enterprise

"Mr.," "Mrs.," "Ma'am," or "Sir" would not have been appropriate, because such nomenclature implies blacks were fully human. (Relics of this system include Uncle Ben's Rice and Aunt Jemima's Pancake Syrup today.) Leroy Thompson tells of the small victory won by Mrs. Aggie Mack, the sole teacher at White Marsh Elementary School, who interrupted Dent as she was introducing her as "Aunt Aggie": "Don't you do it," said Mack. "If you can't call me Mrs. Mack, don't you call me nothing!" According to Thompson, from then on, Dent used the appropriate courtesy terms.

Fred Talbert

But the stigma would not die so easily. Even after St. Mary's recognized the necessity of having an African American on its school board, he could not eat with the white members at meetings. Fred Talbert recalls how "Somebody got him some crackers and sardines and cheese, and he sat out on the sidewalk and ate it." Sitting at table of course implies basic social equality - exactly what segregation was constructed to deny.

The people interviewed here remember other problems of the segregation era, including a high dropout rate and a sense among the students that the white schools were more advanced, leading to problems after desegregation in 1967. Stuart Newkirk complained that he had "never heard about black history" during his eight years in black public schools. Many parents, determined that their children should not be handicapped by inadequate educations, coped by enrolling them in private Catholic schools.

During segregation, all was not bleak, however. The nostalgia narrative does contain a kernel of truth. Schools formed communities that held special days honoring athletic and academic accomplishment. Children invented ways to have fun, even in small muddy playgrounds that did not equal the athletic fields at white high schools. Our eyewitnesses also tell of heroic teachers even in this unequal setting. Parents and teachers knew each other, and parents reinforced the messages about the importance of education and proper deportment given by their children's teachers.

Some members of the "pioneer" generation - the first black children to attend interracial schools - noted that desegregation meant lighter discipline, both from white teachers and from their own parents, now disconnected from their children's schools. Desegregation also allowed racist white teachers to voice their racism - sometimes directly, using racial slurs, and sometimes more subtly, expecting less from black students and never suggesting they might be college material. But another strength of these interviews is their honesty. The pioneers are quick to credit some white teachers and administrators as fair and supportive.

Conversely, Theodore Newkirk observes that some African Americans were satisfied with the status quo - or at least they preferred what they knew to volunteering for something different. After 1967, however, as Newkirk further points out, the black community hardly lay down and took whatever came its way. Its NAACP chapter conducted interviews that made clear the lack of welcome sensed by most members of the pioneer generation in the first years after school desegregation and protested this finding to the county authorities.

Theodore Newkirk Reprinted by permission of The Enterprise

Another strength of the book is the focus in its late pages on the pioneer generation. Elizabeth Barber Walker tells how she went on to desegregate St. Mary's Junior College despite some opposition. Beverly Watts Dyson told of harassment from some white students against the first African Americans who ventured into "white" schools during the "freedom of choice" era before 1967. "We stuck it out," she recalled. "We had each other."

The unflinching honesty of these respondents continues right through to their analysis of the present. After desegregation, as Janice Talbert Walthour observed, "African American children took a backseat." Leadership qualities were not developed in the larger interracial settings. "In integrated schools, we still have a lot of work to do to encourage participation and self-motivation." Hopefully the history recorded here will help the black community in St. Mary's County rededicate itself to its relentless pursuit of education.

Banneker School Students at Recess
Courtesy of Sylvia Brown

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