THEODORE NEWKIRK

CIVIL RIGHTS ACTIVIST IN ST. MARY'S COUNTY, MARYLAND

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Former NAACP President Recalls Fight
to Integrate County Schools

Theodore Newkirk was born in Wilmington North Carolina and moved to St. Mary's County in 1954 to work at the navy base. Having young children at the time, Newkirk was concerned that the segregated public education system was not providing the county's youth with the educational experience needed to prosper in a multicultural society. Also in that year, the Supreme Court in Brown vs Board of Education mandated that public schools be integrated. St. Mary's County Board of Education chose to move slowly on the Court's mandate and set up the Citizens Advisory Committee on Integration. Newkirk served on that committee and had the opportunity to negotiate change . . .

In the 1950s, Mr. Larcy R. Henderson was the president of the local branch of the NAACP. The NAACP and our two attorneys from Baltimore met with the Board of Education, to determine why nothing was being done to integrate the local schools.

Some of the things that we heard from the Board of Education at that meeting were disappointing. The chairman of the Board, May Russell who was the president of St. Mary's College, could not understand why Blacks were trying to integrate the schools because they were paying such little county taxes. Her statement was that Carver School we had the cutest little toilets of anybody in the county.

What she was referring to was the former enlisted men's dormitory over in Carver Heights. Sometime after the war, the Navy turned the club over to St. Mary's County Public Schools. When the Navy constructed the building, which was a recreation facility for black enlisted personnel, they had installed small toilets for the younger children. Okay? That was an excuse that Mrs. Russell had given to us at that time as to why we should not integrate the schools. Because of the toilets!

Our attorneys weren't accepting of this reasoning. It was something that we never thought we would hear at that level. And I was really surprised professionals would suggest that was the reason for not wanting to integrate the schools.

Some progress was made in 1958 after the NAACP won a decision from the U. S. Fourth Circuit Court of Appeals which upheld a lower court order in Groves vs St. Mary's County. On September 5 after more than 600 White students had entered Great Mills High School's auditorium and Principal Jane Mattingly had reminded them that "Negroes" would be among them, Joan and Conrad Groves arrived alone on a full-size school bus and entered the school shortly before 9 AM . . .

The first Black students to enter Great Mills High School were Joan and Conrad Groves, brother and sister. That was in 1958. At that time, we only had two students to integrate the public school system in all of St. Mary's County.

For Joan and Conrad, what it was like was being on a foreign soil where someone else is speaking one language and they were speaking another. And even if they communicated, it wasn't a friendly welcome atmosphere at all. It was a scorn, a resentful attitude as if you had taken something from me. It was disgusting how they were treated here. It was disgusting.

Let's not think for one moment that the Board of Education wanted to integrate the schools. After the Groves children forced the integration of Great Mills per se, we had to go back to our attorneys. They made preparations to take this county to court again.

In the early '60s, the Board of Education decided that we would integrate the schools but it was a volunteer situation. I withdrew my children from Carver School because I wanted them to have an integrated education. It wasn't that the teachers were inferior, but I wanted them to know what Black and White was all about - an integrated education. I entered them in Lexington Park Elementary School. However, the Board of Education did not integrate the transportation and the school system at the same time. Transportation was still a segregated system. Really, the overall school system was still a segregated system.

And let's not forget now, we had a problem getting Black folks to attend this so-called volunteer integrated system. Blacks were not climbing the fence to integrate, by no means. If you want to say Whites wanted to go to Carver and Blacks wanted to come to Great Mills, forget it. (chuckles) It wasn't like that. No one was climbing the fence to go one way or the other. People were completely satisfied, status quo. That's what we lived with in St. Mary's County for some time well into the '60s.

When the county desegregated in 1967, they employed Dr. Robert King as superintendent. That was an improvement. He had the ingenuity and the intelligence to maneuver the Board of Education as well as the community, and most specifically, the Black community. I would give him credit for giving us a way out.

At that time, I was president of the local NAACP and I wasn't exactly, what you could say, an easy guy to get along with. (chuckles) I was mean. And I was dissatisfied with what we were confronted with in St. Mary's County, a civilized county, civilized people, intelligent people. But when time came for integration, we acted something terrible.

In 1971 at Great Mills, we had what you call a confrontation, some people even called it a race riot. I never considered it that. It was just frustration on the sides of Whites as well as Blacks. My educational chairman was Mr. Melvin Holland. We wanted to find out more about the attitudes. I had instructed Melvin to interview Black students and their parents during and after that confrontation. We asked, "How did the teachers treat you? What were their attitudes as far as you were concerned?" And better than 90% said that they felt that they were not wanted at school at all. And this really pointed out to me - have we really improved anything? Why were these kids so frustrated? Or so anti-this or anti-that? And most of our problem was at Great Mills High School where staff did not know how to conduct themselves as educators.

We went on for at least six months doing these interviews. And we went from home to home. People were talking on their own behind closed doors. But when we compiled all this information we could only conclude that it was still a segregated system even though the federal government is saying it is not. We weren't doing any real integrating. The stigma was there. The conduct of the people that were running the schools was unchanged. They hadn't done anything to their heads at all. They were just as prejudice as before so-called integration. The surveys were quite useful in our endeavor to keep the NAACP alive and for not making hasty decisions. We tried to get rid of the chip on the shoulder. You don't have anything to fight one another physically.

At the time of integration, 1967, there was concern that the African American teachers would be out of work. And even though we were head over heels in a racist situation, the White establishment had the good sense to remove those better African-American teachers and put them in former White schools. They did a very good job of that. I don't think any Black teachers lost their jobs but they did not have that freedom that they so desired when they were teaching only Black children. Most of the Black teachers that had a good record as a teacher were transferred to the White classrooms. This I know. I was president of the NAACP at that time.

I worked throughout Maryland during that time and one thing that I was told at the NAACP convention: St. Mary's County Board of Education and NAACP were able to at least talk to one another. Most of the other counties didn't even talk with the NAACP. St. Mary's County never once closed the door. The door was always open. We didn't agree, but we managed to accomplish something. We did communicate throughout the situation.

At the time, I don't think my children cared one way or the other - integrated or segregated school. Virginia and I always tried to instill in them to never judge an individual because of his or her color. Be a decent human being.

©   2003   Unified Committee for Afro-American Contributions of St. Mary's County Incorporated