Afro-American Newspapers

Black History
Signature
eries
S
Celebration of the The Road to
African-American Lawyer Brown v. Board of Education

Collector’s Edition
 Your History • Your Community • Your News

The Afro-American Newspaper

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(410) 554-8200 • www.afro.com

Founded by John Henry Murphy Sr., August 13, 1892

Editorial: (410) 554-8278

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A letter
Chairman of the Board/Publisher -
John J. Oliver Jr.
Executive Assistant
Mothyna James

Washington Publisher Emeritus and Editorial Page

Editor Frances L. Murphy II
from the
Director of Sales -Rhodney Lloyd
Director of Business and Finance - John Leister

Traffic Department (Dispatch)

Dispatch Supervisor - Melody Payton (410) 554-8226
Publisher
Baltimore/Washington - Keri-Ann Henry (410) 554-8235 Friends,
National Sales
Rhodney Lloyd - (410) 554-8225 The AFRO has been publishing the news for and about the African-American
Greg Mosso - (410) 554-8231 community for 112 years. Perhaps no other period during that time reflects the battles
Church Advertising Coordinator - Melody Payton -(410) 554-8226
African Americans have had to endure as the 20-year period immediately preceding the
Marketing Department historic 1954 Brown v. Board of Education decision.
Manager of Community Relations /Public Relations -
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AFRO Charities/Special Projects - Diane Hocker (410) 554-8243
Over the past several months, the AFRO has been privileged to run an important
Marketing Communications Analyst - Tsanonda Edwards series of articles relating to a series of cases that laid the groundwork for success in
Archives Brown. The name of this series is the AFRO Signature Series – the Road to Brown v.
Christina Cruse Board of Education.
Editorial
AFRO Staff Writer - Sean Yoes Most of the cases in this series involved Thurgood Marshall and his mentor, Charles
Contributing Writers - Larry Gibson
- Christopher Jack Hill Hamilton Houston, the chief architect of the Brown decision. Enclosed in this special
Copy Editor - Gren Whitman publication are exerpts of the Afro-American newspapers’ coverage that disclose this little
Graphic Design known part of our history.
Jessica Gorham
Circulation This series gives a sobering picture of the intensity of the battles we had to initiate
Fax: (410) 554-8152 during the period from 1933 until 1954 to win the rights many of us today take for
Customer Service Manager - Grace Singletary
granted.

Identification Statement We at the AFRO hope you will enjoy the Signature Series as much as the many
AFRO readers who have been educated by it over the past several months.

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2 The Road to Brown

Letters
from our
Sponsors
At General Motors and GMAC we make it our business to reach
out to the communities where we do business. We’re proud to serve
as a sponsor for the Afro-American Newspapers’ AFRO Signature
Series — The Road to Brown v. Board of Education.

As we continue to celebrate the 50-year Anniversary of the

landmark court victory, it’s important that we understand the path
that was traveled to get to that mountaintop. What better vehicle
to tell that story than the Afro-American newspaper. Not only did the
Roderick D. Gillum James E. Farmer
AFRO cover the events closely, but as you read this publication you’ll
Vice President GMAC Vice President
find it also served as a catalyst and soundboard for the strategy
Corporate Responsibility Communications and Public Affairs
behind that historic May 14, 1954 triumph.
and Diversity
General Motors and GMAC are honored to serve as sponsors
in the Afro-American newspapers’ effort to share fascinating
first-hand history.

Connecting to the Community is more than just a tagline for Comcast.

It’s our mandate.
As the leading cable company in the country, we connect people to what’s
important in their lives each and every day. Our employees play an integral part
not only at work but in our neighborhoods as mentors, coaches and community
volunteers.
We’re pleased to sponsor the Afro-American newspapers’ AFRO Signature Series.
For several months this series has educated and entertained AFRO readers with
historic content, which highlighted the framework for the strategy used in winning
the important Brown v. Board of Education courtroom battle.
As this series is presented in one complete anthology, we at Comcast are
extremely proud to assist in providing you with content that should never be
Michael Parker
forgotten — our history.
VP & GM Baltimore City Comcast

The Road to Brown 3

 Table of contents
‘The nigger has applied for admission’......................................................................................6
‘What about the Negroes’..........................................................................................................9
Segregate or integrate, but educate at all costs ........................................................................12
‘Equal work warranted equal pay’ ..........................................................................................15
The battle for the links: ‘Nine holes could never be equal to eighteen’ ..................................19
Making Enoch Pratt the free library for everyone ..................................................................24
Fighting for freedom on the courts ........................................................................................27
Ending exile education in Maryland ......................................................................................30
University of Maryland, breaking a legacy of intolerance ......................................................33
On the brink of Brown............................................................................................................36
Brown 1954: How the AFRO saw it ........................................................................................39
Professor Larry Gibson: Notes on Brown................................................................................42
Our contributors ....................................................................................................................43

As reported in the
AFRO circa 1938

As reported in
the 1948 AFRO

4 The Road to Brown

An
enduring problem,
an enduring
I
n 1896, the United
States Supreme Court
case Plessy v. Ferguson
established “separate but
equal” as the law of the land
pertaining to the legal equali-
ty of Blacks and Whites.
However, for Black
Americans, separate was
almost never equal in any
arena, law, housing, employ-
ment or education.
In January 1933, the bur-
geoning Baltimore branch of
the NAACP and the
Baltimore Afro-American
implemented a plan that was
months in the making to
directly attack the fallacy of
separate but equal. The point
of attack was education and
the battleground was the state
of Maryland.
On Jan. 21, 1933, the
AFRO published a story with
a banner headline: “Two
Apply at MD. U.” The sup-
posed two applicants were
The Road to Brown
partnership
Clarence Mitchell Jr., who swift and unambiguous. Maryland, to Dr. Roger
would become the legendary “The “nigger” [Harold Howell, dean of the
civil rights activist and Arthur Seaborne] has applied University of Maryland
Washington lobbyist, and for admission,” read the first School of Law.
another young man named line of a letter dated July 13, This was the opening salvo
Harold Seaborne. They were 1933, from W.M. Hillegeist, on the “Road to Brown.”
both members of the City- registrar for the University of
Wide Young People’s Forum,
a group of young Black
activists that sparked the ren- Afro-American Newspapers
aissance of the Baltimore
branch of the NAACP.
Black History
But the truth was, neither
had applied to the University
ignature
S eries
of Maryland in January 1933.
The story was a “shot across
the bow,” perhaps to rally
support from the larger Black
S
community and elicit a
response from the University Celebration of the The Road to
of Maryland.
African-American Lawyer Brown v. Board of Education
It worked!
The leadership at the
University of Maryland stum-
bled on the story in March
1933. However, when the
application was officially filed,
the response of the school was
5
‘The nigger…
has applied for admission.’ W.M. Hillegeist
Registrar

By Sean Yoes
Special to the AFRO
THE FIRST APPLICANT
IN THE SHADOWS
OF HISTORY
On a brisk, sparkling November
morning, 92-year-old Harold Arthur
Seaborne sits in his small Roland Park
apartment, reflecting on his life.
His apartment tells part of the story.
His shelves are filled with books, at
least two Bibles, many novels, several
volumes of history and two Oxford dic-
tionaries, the accumulated arsenal of a
man who spent 40 years as an educator
in Baltimore City.
The dozen or so trophies for Bridge
(the card game) that collect dust on
Seaborne’s shelves reveal a chapter.
“That was back in my youth,” he
says. “I stopped abruptly and for some
reason, I never got back to it. Most of
the people I played with are no longer
around.”
There is a Robert Goulet CD that
appears to be in heavy rotation musical-
ly. Seaborne describes an attractive
young woman in a framed photograph
as “an old friend.”
But there is nothing - at least not in
sight - that suggests this small, soft-
spoken man helped spark perhaps the
most important chapter in 20th century
African-American history.
There is nothing in Seaborne’s choking the life out of many of the University in Pennsylvania with two
appearance or conversation that seems country’s citizens and the impact on the legends, Clarence Mitchell Jr., the great
to warrant the presence of Larry S. Colored community was perhaps even power broker for the NAACP, and
Gibson, professor of law at the more devastating. Thurgood Marshall, the NAACP’s chief
University of Maryland, who is prod- But maybe those hard, desperate legal counsel, who much later was
ding the elder man’s memory with pho- times served as the perfect catalyst for named to the Supreme Court. In 1932,
tos and anecdotes, many of which begin a partnership between two pillars of the Marshall was a junior at Lincoln when
with the phrase, “Do you remember Black community, the National Seaborne and Mitchell graduated.
when...?” Association for the Advancement of That next year, the decision was
Prof. Gibson has a digital camera set Colored People and the Baltimore Afro- made during a meeting in January 1933
up in a corner of Seaborne’s living American, a partnership forged to chal- by the Baltimore branch of the NAACP
room, hoping to capture a magical lenge the system as it had never been for Seaborne and Mitchell to apply to
moment from this man who seems so challenged before. the all-White University of Maryland.
unassuming, perhaps even oblivious, to The AFRO reported the story the week
events 70 years ago. THE FIRST STEPS of January 21, 1933:
In 1933, Harold Seaborne applied Harold Seaborne attended Lincoln “First steps of the local NAACP in
for admission to the University of
Maryland School of Law, the first
African American in the 20th century to
do so.
It was at the height of the Great A
Depression and the way he tells the
story today, 22-year-old Seaborne was
simply trying to make a better life for
himself.
“There wasn’t really any work.
Grown men were organizing gangs to
march to Washington. Plants were
being closed all over the place,”
remembers Seaborne.
But at age 92, Seaborne’s memories
of the young, robust man that he was
must have faded, because history tells a
slightly different story.
It is clear that the Depression was

Storm clouds on the horizon. In 1933, Dr. Raymond A. Pearson,

president of the University of Maryland, Dr. Roger Howell, the dean of
the Law School, and W.M. Hillegeist, the school’s registrar, wrote a
series of internal memos. A First came the warning of trouble on the
horizon. B Then came
the bold proclamation, B
“The “nigger” (Harold
Arthur Seaborne) has
applied for admission.”
(Note: Bernard Ades was
a well-known communist
lawyer with a penchant
for railing against racism,
demonsrations, etc.)

6 The Road to Brown

its newly organized program to test the
legality of the laws that prohibit
Colored students from attending the
University of Maryland were taken this
week when Clarence Mitchell, 712
Carrollton Ave., filed application for
admission.
“Mr. Mitchell, who is a graduate of
Lincoln University, where he majored
in sociology, seeks to continue his
course and obtain a master’s degree in
the graduate school of the institution.
“Harold A. Seaborne, 1127
Carrollton Ave., also a graduate of
In essence, the University of Maryland
would rather pay for Black students to go
out of state to school instead of admitting
those students onto its campus.
Lincoln, sought admission to the law
department of the same institution,”
reported the AFRO.
“Now, whether Clarence, in fact did
apply, I don’t know. I have no evidence
that he in fact did apply. But, we know
that Seaborne did,” says Prof. Gibson.
However, Seaborne didn’t actually
file his application to the law school
until the summer of 1933. The AFRO
story in January seems to have been a
preliminary shot across the bow, a tac-
tic to test the waters of intolerance. And
it worked.
In March 1933, W.M. Hillegeist, the
University of Maryland’s registrar, fired
off a terse letter to the school’s presi-
dent, Dr. Raymond A. Pearson.
“There are enclosed two clippings
The Road to Brown
from the Afro-American, a Baltimore
newspaper published by Colored peo-
ple. Seaborne has not filed his applica-
tion, although he has been mailed a
blank.”
But, by July 1933, Seaborne had,
indeed, applied to Maryland’s law
school, the gauntlet had officially been
thrown down, and it was on.
“The “nigger” [Harold Seaborne]
has applied for admission,” lamented
Hillegeist in a letter to Dr. Roger
Howell, dean of Maryland’s law school,
dated July 13, 1933.
So, of course, Seaborne was denied
admission to the university, but he was-
n’t the only one. Over the next two
years, there were several others, among
them J. Arnett Frisby, William Proctor
and Benjamin Price, all Black men, all
denied admission to Maryland’s law
school, based strictly on their race.
But, in 1935, it was Donald Gaines
Murray’s turn at bat. Like Seaborne,
Murray was a man small in stature;
however, his academic credentials were
prodigious.
“He had credentials that absolutely
no one could refute. They were impec-
cable,” says Prof. Gibson.
Yet, like Seaborne and all the others, Above the text of “Mitchell and Seaborn file applications”
Murray, a graduate of Amherst College,
as printed in the Jan. 21, 1935, issue of the AFRO.
Continued on page 8
7
Continued from page 7
was rejected. And also like the others,
he was sent a letter explaining why he
could not be admitted into Maryland’s
hallowed halls.
“I am in receipt of your application
for admission to the school of law. The
University of Maryland does not admit
Negro students and your application is
accordingly rejected. I direct your
attention, however, to Art. 77, Sec. 214
A, Code of Public General Laws of
Maryland (Acts 1933, Chapter 234)...”
This law basically said that Blacks
could not attend the University of
Maryland, but because of the Plessey v.
Ferguson (1896) doctrine of “separate,
but equal,” the state had to provide an
alternative for African Americans who
wanted to pursue higher education, and
was obligated to provide scholarships
for Black students to attend school out
of state. In essence, the University of
Maryland would rather pay for Black
students to go out of state to school
instead of admitting those students onto
its campus.
But Murray, who lived in the 1500
8 The Road to Brown
As reported in the AFRO 1935 block of McCulloh Street, said he sim-
ply wanted to practice law in Baltimore
and for that reason, he wanted to study
at a state university. This time, the
NAACP was ready to fight for
Murray’s right to do just that. This was
going to be the first big “test case.”
And one of the men that would lead
that fight was young Thurgood
Marshall, who had been an underclass-
man behind Seaborne and Mitchell at
Lincoln University.
Marshall and attorney, Dr. Charles
H. Houston, executed a flawless game
plan and won the decision in just three
days.
So perhaps Harold Arthur Seaborne
was simply a man of circumstances. He
never became a lawyer, and he was
never lauded as a leader of the civil
rights movement, as were Clarence
Murray Wins Suit against U. of Md. Mitchell Jr. and Thurgood Marshall.
Perhaps his contribution has been
Court rules that he must not be barred because he is colored. Photo
shows NAACP attorneys with client shortly after the decision was ren- obscured by the shadows of history.
Nevertheless, he laid the first bricks in
dered in Baltimore, Tuesday. Left to right: Thurgood Marshall, Donald
the road that led to Brown v. Board of
Murray and Dr. Charles Houston, chief counsel for the NAACP, who Education. And that makes him more
declared that the university had violated the U.S. Constitution by bar- than just a footnote to history.
ring Murray, who is a graduate of Amherst College.
‘What about
the Negroes?’
The Murray win engineered by the NAACP’s legal team of Charles Houston, senior legal counsel, and young Thurgood
Marshall represented the first school desegregation victory in U.S. history. Yet it was a somewhat tenuous victory because
Houston and Marshall had to battle through a vigorous appeal by the University of Maryland. At the same time, the duo
was crafting a strategy to navigate the complex labyrinth that would lead to the Brown decision almost 20 years later.

By Sean Yoes Larry S. Gibson, professor of law at the He said that hostility would be lessened and that stu-
Special to the AFRO University of Maryland. dents would recognize, when Mr. Murray did not sit
But there were many in 1935 who antici- next to them, that he was not trying to push himself on
In September 1935, Donald pated trouble when Murray entered the uni- them,” reported the AFRO in 1935.
Gaines Murray entered the versity, including the law school’s dean, Aside from the above indignity at the onset of his
University of Maryland School of Roger Howell. career at the University of Maryland, Murray reported
Law by order of Baltimore City “The dean suggested that in order to pre- no real trouble during his time at the university, and
Judge Eugene O’Dunne. vent Mr. Murray’s entrance from seeming graduated essentially without incident.
The judge’s instructions were forced, it might be a good idea to have him But Murray’s victory, and Black America’s victory,
specific and unwavering. Murray refrain from sitting next to White students. was the result of a plan that was years in the making.
had to be admitted “for the aca-
demic year beginning September BLUEPRINT
25, 1935 ... and permitted to pur-
sue his studies as a regular first-
year student of the school of law
A FOR VICTORY
The foundation of the
NAACP’s strategy was perhaps
of the University of Maryland the man himself, Donald Gaines
pending an appeal,” wrote Judge Murray. Beyond the fact he
graduated with great distinction
from prestigious Amherst
College, Murray was viewed as
A. Henry Clifton “Curley” Byrd, the University of Maryland’s acting president, coming from the “right” family.
was a staunch segregationist determined to keep ‘their’ law school all White.
Murray was born May 24, 1913,
Note the word Negro scrawled in the upper left hand corner of Byrd’s letter to in Philadelphia. His mother
W.M. Hillegeist and the hand-written message at the bottom of the letter. Cecelia died when he was 2, and
B. W.M. Hillegeist, the University of Maryland’s registrar affectionately known as his father, George Murray,
“Hille” to his superiors, was perhaps the ultimate “yes man.” But, when it came to moved Donald and his sister,
admitting Blacks to Maryland, his answer was “no.” Note the panicked tone of his Marjorie, to Baltimore, where
letter to Byrd just one week before the arrival of Donald Gaines Murray. they lived with Donald’s pater-
C. Unconquered. Donald Gaines Murray, who was the first Black to enter the nal grandfather, Abraham
University of Maryland in the 20th century, would later fight on behalf of other Gaines, a bishop in the African
African Americans to gain admittance to the university in the 1950s. Top: Murray Methodist Episcopal church.
is in the second row on the far right with his University of Maryland law school Young Murray was also the sec-
classmates. ond generation in his family to
D. The order from Baltimore City Court Judge Eugene O’Dunne was handed be college educated, a rarity in
down just three days after the NAACP’s lawsuit was filed on behalf of Murray. the Black community in the
1930s. Like Jackie Robinson,
E. Allegedly Byrd was planning to say that Murray flunked out of Maryland’s law who would burst on the scene
school in 1936, but the AFRO beat Curley to the punch.
about a decade later, Murray was
considered to have the right tem-
O’Dunne in a court order. perament to endure what could
And with that mandate, Murray v. Pearson - have been a very volatile situa-
Raymond A. Pearson was president of the university - tion.
became the first successful school desegregation case So Murray was the champion
in the nation. hand picked by the NAACP, but
“Brown [Brown v. Board of Education] begins the organization was actually
here. It is the first school victory in the nation. This is ready to do battle before 1935.
‘ground zero,’ and ya’ll [the AFRO] started it,” says Scheduling conflicts had forced
Continued on page 10

The Road to Brown 9

 B

E
D
C

Continued from page 9

the group to delay the lawsuit

against the University of
Maryland.
Charles Hamilton Houston,
the NAACP’s senior legal coun-
sel, was entrenched in other liti-
gation that did not allow him to
give full attention to the desegre-
gation case. The youngest mem-
ber of the legal team, Thurgood Marshall was equal treatment and would not fulfill the doctrine
busy establishing his burgeoning law career. of “separate, but equal,” established by Plessey v.
William I. Gosnell was the third NAACP attor- Ferguson in 1896.
ney. Their argument was airtight.
However, once all three attorneys did come “They thought they would win, but they did
together in 1935, the case they presented was not expect to win so easily at the state level,”
crystal clear. They argued that legal training was said Professor Gibson. It took only three days
different from any other professional discipline from the filing of the lawsuit to the decision.
simply because the laws in each state are differ- Another integral part of the NAACP strategy
ent, and that sending somebody to an out-of-state was finding the judge who heard the case.
law school could therefore not be considered Eugene O’Dunne, proved to be fair, maybe even

10 The Road to Brown

sympathetic to their cause. But the fact
that O’Dunne was the presiding judge
was not simply the luck of the draw.
The NAACP is thought to have timed
the lawsuit to coincide with O’Dunne’s
turn in the rotation of judges at the
Equity Court of Baltimore City because
he was known as one of the few judges
during that time to treat Blacks fairly.
In 1934, the National Bar
Association - an organization of Black
attorneys - held a meeting in Baltimore,
and O’Dunne invited them into his
chambers at the Baltimore City court-
house, an extraordinary gesture for that
time. Furthermore, while still a lawyer,
O’Dunne had stopped the vigilante
lynching of a Black man whose last
name was Fountain, a client of his.
Despite the NAACP’s unequivocal
win, however, the University of
Maryland’s leadership still conspired to
keep the Black presence out of their
institution.
‘WHAT ABOUT
THE NEGROES?’
Between June and September 1935,
Raymond A. Pearson, University of
Maryland president, was replaced by
Henry Clifton “Curly” Byrd, known as
a staunch segregationist.
(Byrd ran for governor of Maryland
in 1954 on a segregationist platform,
but was defeated by Theodore R.
McKeldin. That election is generally
acknowledged as the emergence of
Black voting power statewide.).
In spite of O’Dunne’s ruling, Byrd
gave W.M. Hillegeist, the school’s reg-
istrar, explicit instructions not to admit
any Blacks. “Hille,” wrote Byrd on
July 15, 1935, “don’t register any
Negro students until I talk with you ... I
will drop by to see you sometime when I
am in Baltimore.”
Then Hillegeist delivered his jittery
response Sept. 18, 1935, one week
before Murray’s admission.
The Road to Brown
“What about the Negroes? Unless
the Court of Appeals intervenes, we will
have to accept Donald Gaines Murray.
You know what Judge O’Dunne would
do to me, one of the defendants, if I
‘thumb my nose’ at the writ of man-
damus granted to Murray.”
However, the machinations of Byrd
and Hillegeist could not stop the
inevitable. Murray was admitted Sept.
25th, and the University of Maryland
lost its appeal in 1936. The second
Black student, Calvin Douglass, entered
the university in 1937.
Still, Byrd brazenly attempted to
steer Black students to other schools
outside Maryland, citing the availability
of scholarship money provided by the
state specifically for Black students.
And he even asked Herbert R.
O’Connor, Maryland’s attorney general,
if he could remove Murray and
Douglass retroactively once funds were
available for Blacks. O’Connor said no.
Even though the University of
Maryland’s doors had been officially
Tried hustle
on applicant
He charged that when Dr.
Pearson told Mr. Murray that he
would be given a scholarship if he
attended Howard University and
on the witness stand admitted that
no such scholarship would have
been given, the president was
admitting that he was giving the
applicant a “hustle.”
At the time, Mr. Murray was
promised a scholarship by the
state, Dr. Houston pointed out the
act of 1935, providing scholar-
ships, had not been established.
He asserted that Mr. Murray
would face great expense if made
to attend a school outside of the
state.
pried open for Blacks, the school con-
tinued to drag its feet on admitting
them. In 1939, the third law student,
William H. Murphy Sr. entered. In
1946, more Blacks entered after World
War II and, in 1950, a group of Black
students sued for admission to
Maryland’s schools of nursing, den-
tistry, pharmacy, undergraduate English,
medicine and graduate social work.
The lead counsel arguing on their
behalf was Donald Gaines Murray.
Reasons for
granting writ
For the following four reasons,
he held the writ should be granted:
1. Students seeking higher edu-
cation are not compelled to take
one of the scholarships provided
by the act of 1935, if they desire to
secure an education at the expense
of the state.
2. The act of 1933 was a trap,
because it did not actually provide
funds for a scholarship, although
ostensibly, it did.
3. The act of 1935 does not pro-
vide for anything other than
tuition.
4. The legislature has never, by
statute, signified that it is public
policy to deny colored persons the
right to attend the University of
Maryland.
Following this, Judge O’Dunne
granted the writ which, under the
state of appeals the case, and
becomes effective when the
University of Maryland opens in
September.
As reported in the AFRO
O’Dunne
twits state
counsel
When he stated that he thought
the scholarship aid provided by the
State adequate for the present
needs, Judge O’Dunne asked a
question that threw the courtroom
into laughter.
The question was whether Mr.
Howell would say that colored
people should not be given sepa-
rate care in states where Jim Crow
railway transportation is upheld,
because only a few of them travel.
“How would you let them ride,
in an ox cart?” Judge O’Dunne
asked.
“Well,” replied Mr. Howell, “if
the ox cart were about as good as
the cars, I think that I would.”
Mr. Howell stated that the
scholarship, supposedly provided
in 1933, would be a great help to
Mr. Murray in another school. As
he admitted that they have never
been definitely established, Judge
O’Dunne said, “Well, you can’t
pay the landlady on that.”
Dr. Houston closed the argu-
ments in the case.
He declared that a constitutional
question was at stake, and pointed
out that when national and state
laws are in conflict, the national
laws must prevail.
Dr. Houston stated that in the
Plessey v. Ferguson case, previous-
ly cited, facilities were provided
for both races, but in Maryland, no
such facilities are available.
11
Segregate or
integrate,
but educate at all costs
With the Murray appeal still pending, Marshall and Houston were engaged in two very important Maryland battles
simultaneously, the equal pay for Colored teachers case that was burgeoning in Anne Arundel County in 1936 and the
Baltimore County school desegregation case in 1935. There were about 40 enclaves in Baltimore County with Black
residents in 1935, yet there was no high school for Black children in the county. Ultimately, the NAACP and Marshall
lost the case; however, they salvaged a very significant victory from the defeat.

By Sean Yoes Cowdensville, near Arbutus, she couldn’t just hop on upon passing the seventh grade and they attended the
AFRO Staff Writer the bus to the nearest high school like her White coun- school closest to their home.
terparts. There were 11 high schools in Baltimore So the NAACP developed a strategy to take the next
After the monumental, yet shockingly unambiguous County, but all of them were all White. There was no big step toward equality in education. The plan was for
Murray victory the NAACP, led by Charles Houston high school for Black children in Baltimore County. Lucille Scott and another seventh grader, Margaret
and Thurgood Marshall, surveyed America’s vast, “We had to walk about four miles from our little vil- Williams (who would become the actual plaintiff in the
racist labyrinth of inferior education for its Black citi- lage, from Cowdensville to Arbutus, to catch the street- case), who also lived in Cowdensville, to attempt to
zens. But, now the battle had become decidedly more car to Baltimore,” said Scott-Jones. enter the nearest school, all-White Catonsville High
complex. There was another hurdle, as well. School. Williams is still
“We had to take a very rigid test to alive, but age and ill-
“Without education, there is no hope for our go to the city school. If we passed, ness have clouded her
people and without hope, our future is lost.” our parents didn’t have to pay,” mind. However,
– Charles Hamilton Houston she remembered. White children Scott-Jones’ recall of
Special Counsel, NAACP simply were pro- her first day of high
moted to high school is clear.
“OPEN UP A HIGH SCHOOL FOR ME” school “The White chil-
“I had just come out of the seventh grade and it dren were yelling
was time for us to go to high school,”
recalled 81-year old Lucille Scott-
Jones from her home in
Edmondson Village in southwest
Baltimore.
However, as Scott-Jones
reflects back to 1935,
when she was
Lucille Scott, a
13-year-old
Colored girl
from the small
Black
enclave of

Fighting for education. Many Whites feared the NAACP’s only desire was to integrate the schools. The reality was they simply wanted Black
children to receive the education they were entitled to. From left are attorneys Leon Ransom and Thurgood Marshall and standing from left are
Mildred Williams (Margaret Williams’ mother), Lucille Scott and Margaret Williams (with hand on hip).

12 The Road to Brown

at us. But we felt very proud. We had this nice-looking
lawyer taking us to school.” The memory causes her to
giggle like a 13-year-old schoolgirl again. That lawyer
was Thurgood Marshall, the young, rising legal star
who represented the NAACP and Margaret Williams in
the effort to integrate Catonsville High School.
“He felt very protective of us. He had each of us by
the hand and we walked into the principal’s office,” she
stated. Marshall did not actually enter the school with
Williams and Scott, yet for the next year, he fought
mightily on behalf of the girls and all Black children.
“By filing the two suits at once, it will be perfectly
clear that our main effort is to get adequate high
school facilities for Negro children and that we are in
substance leaving it up to the county whether it will
admit Negro children to the White school or provide
separate, but equal high school facilities for the Negro
child,” he wrote.
This distinction would prove to be pivotal in the
case. Furthermore, the notion of separate, but equal, the
debate over segregation or integration, was a burgeon-
ing firestorm in Black America and Houston became
one of the most prominent voices in the dialogue.
“The association [NAACP] does not intend to
endorse the principle of segregation, but to fight segre-
gation by making it so expensive to the state that there
will be a disposition on the part of the taxpayer to do
away with it,” stated Houston in a 1934 memorandum.
Continued on page 14

“MORE POWER TO YOU, SIR!” Unlocking the labyrinth. The 40 or so Black

September 12, 1935. communities scattered throughout Baltimore
At about 2:30 that Thursday County represented an intricate maze, cre-
afternoon in Baltimore, Marshall ating a real challenge for Black high
sent off a telegram to Charles school age children (grades 8 and
Hamilton Houston, the above) to somehow get to Baltimore
NAACP’s chief legal counsel City to go to school. Some had to
in New York. It read: travel as far as 24 miles to a city
“PUPILS APPLIED high school and many, unfortu-
WHITE HIGH SCHOOL nately, never received a high
BALTIMORE COUNTY school education at all.
THIS MORNING. THUR-
GOOD.”
That same day, Marshall
drafted a formal letter to
Houston briefing him in detail Thurgood Marshall
on the above matter:
“As to the case itself, two chil-
dren applied to the White high school Charles Houston
this morning. Their names, Margaret
Williams and Lucille Scott. The children were refused
admission on the grounds that the regulations of
Baltimore County prevented Negroes and Whites from
attending the same school.”
Just days before Williams and Scott were refused
admission to Catonsville High School, Marshall had
escorted Donald Gaines Murray to register him for
classes at the University of Maryland Law School.
This was the hand Black Americans were dealt in
1935. This was the minefield that had to be negotiated
by the NAACP and its top generals on the front,
Houston and Marshall. The organization was emerging
from Murray v. Raymond A. Pearson, president of the
University of Maryland, et al., the first school desegre-
gation victory in the United States, yet Black children
in Baltimore County still had to travel up to 24 miles to
attend high school in Baltimore City.
So, the NAACP had to strike a precarious balance
between power and patience. They could not lose the
momentum created by the Murray victory, but they
couldn’t push White people too far, too fast.
“The University of Maryland case is a wedge, but
such a little wedge. And if we do not remain on the
alert and push the struggle farther with all our might,
even this little hole will close upon us ... and we must
convince the White people at all times that we are
fighting a defensive fight,” wrote Houston in The Crisis
magazine, circa 1935.

September 14, 1935.

Regarding Marshall’s Sept. 12 letter, Houston
responded brilliantly, laying down a loose legal blue-
print for the Baltimore County high school case.
“Since there were two pupils who applied to the
White high school,” wrote Houston, “I suggest two
suits: 1-mandamus to have the first child admitted into
the White high school; 2-simultaneous suit for man-
damus by second child to force the county to afford her
high school facilities.”
Then Houston explained his reasoning behind the
strategy.

The Road to Brown 13

Continued from page 13
September 16, 1935.
In general, Marshall agreed with
Houston’s assessment of the high school
case; however, there were additional fac-
tors to be weighed. “I do not believe
these suits can be filed at present
because I have made application to the
state superintendent, and he has not as
yet refused the application. Then, under
our law, matters concerning education
are referred first to the county board of
education,” informed Marshall. “A court
of appeals case of Maryland involving
the establishment of a White high school
was lost because of failure to refer the
matter to the county board. This will
take time,” he wrote.
October 8, 1935
Marshall was putting the pieces of the
case together and his work included
extensive travel around the state. He
reported his efforts and observations to
Walter White, secretary of the NAACP.
“On this afternoon, I appeared before
the board of education with a petition
signed by residents and taxpayers of the
County requesting the county to estab-
lish a Negro high school. They refused to
receive the petition, refused to hear me
and told me they were doing as much as
they intended to do, and that we were
going to set the Negro race back many
years. I am now on the second step in
that case which is to appeal to the State
Board of Education. Upon their refusal,
suit will be immediately filed,” stated
Marshall.
However, Marshall’s letter failed to
fully convey the level of resistance he
was met with at the county board of edu-
cation. The heated exchanged was
reported by the AFRO October 19, 1935.
“Mr. Warfield declared that he was a
friend to Mr. Marshall’s race and assert-
ed that the Colored people of Baltimore
County are getting all they need in the
way of education.”
When Marshall responded affirma-
tively to Warfield’s question whether he
expected the board to take any action,
Warfield exclaimed, “Well, we are not.”
Warfield went on to warn Marshall
that the NAACP program calling “for a
high school in Baltimore County and
equality of education facilities is going
to do more harm than good. It will set
your people back further than they are.”
When Marshall reminded Warfield that
even in Mississippi there were educa-
tional opportunities for Blacks, Warfield
replied, tellingly: “Well, there are a lot
more of them down there than up here
and we believe that we are being fair
with your people.”
This was the kind of intolerance that
forced Marshall and Houston to post-
pone filing the Baltimore County high
school case and kept their intentions to
file out of the “White papers” until after
14
a decision in the Murray appeal was ren-
dered. They feared if Whites believed
the NAACP was seeking integration of
the schools, the public backlash would
adversely affect the decision in the
Murray appeal, and it seems their anxi-
ety was warranted.
January 22, 1936.
“As to the University of Maryland
case, the Baltimore News, a Hearst
paper, has so couched the article on the
University of Maryland case and the
Baltimore County case as to give the
belief that our main object is to seek
admission into the White school. This
was for the purpose of stirring up oppo-
sition,” Marshall observed in a letter to
Houston.
But Marshall attempted to remedy the
situation by lobbying Louis Azrael, a
White columnist with the Baltimore
News-Post. On March 3, 1936, Azrael
wrote:
“There’s likely to be considerable
commotion soon about admission of
Colored children to White high schools.
The Colored people don’t really want to
start any movement toward that end. But
they do want, according to some of their
leaders, to see that the county affords
Colored children the advantages which
the law demands and which in other
counties are given.”
THE HARD HOMEWORK
It is clear Marshall prepared prodi-
giously for the Baltimore County high
school case.
“I am, at present, trying by all meth-
ods above board and below board to get
a list of the students attending the
schools in Baltimore City and shall
either visit them myself or have them vis-
ited, and also have them make out ques-
tionnaires,” Marshall wrote to Houston
on Jan. 22, 1936.
Indeed, Marshall had traveled hun-
dreds of miles around the state to inter-
view families, gather information and, in
some cases, to measure how many miles
Black children had to travel to get to
school.
“We live 20 miles from the city, 12
miles from Towson, the nearest car line,
and three and a half miles from the
trains,” read one testimony in an inves-
tigative report filed March 2, 1936, by
Marshall and his team.
Furthermore, the report graphically
identified the huge disparities in educat-
ing Black children and White children in
Baltimore County.
“Last year, $336,594.88 was spent
for current expenses for the support of
these high schools. Not one cent of this
was shared by Negro pupils. $25,937.43
was spent to transport White children to
and from the high schools located in
Baltimore County. On the other hand,
the chosen few Negroes who are given
opportunities for high school education
The genius of Houston and Marshall
Week after week, month after month, for a year or so, Marshall and Houston
constantly communicated, primarily by letter, methodically plotting and planning
for the high school case and the equal pay for Black teachers suit that was rumbling
in Anne Arundel County, as well as the appeal on the part of the University of
Maryland in the Murray case.
“This is the genius of Houston and Marshall. A long-distance phone call was
expensive. It was cheaper to send letters and that’s why they did it. But, we are
blessed, because from these letters, we have their thinking,” said Larry S. Gibson,
professor of law at the University of Maryland.
“His [Marshall’s] preparation and trial work in this case was a thing of beauty.
Whatever the ultimate success in it may be, to him belongs the major portion of the
credit,” wrote Leon Ransom, NAACP legal counsel in a confidential report dated
Sept. 20, 1936.
Prof. Gibson is emphatic about the fact that Houston and Marshall were consum-
mate workmen. In fact Gibson suggests that Houston, who died at age 55, “appears
to have just worked himself to death.”
“What you see are lawyers willing to do the hard homework. Marshall spent
many days and hours fine tuning the evidence and the documents in this case and in
most of his cases. What you see is careful preparation, the painstaking preparation.
They didn’t rush in and they were always thinking ahead,” said Gibson.
are required to go outside the county to “Judge Duncan very narrowly defined
Baltimore City to get it and up to 1936 the issue. `Did she pass the exam to go
received not a single cent toward pay- to high school? I don’t need to consider
ment of their transportation.” anything else.’ This was Judge Duncan’s
At this point, Marshall was ready to primary focus,” explained Gibson.
proceed. The Murray victory had been So, ultimately, Marshall lost the case.
secured two months earlier, in mid- However in the appeal ruling on May
January 1936, and finally, on March 14, 26, 1937, rendered by Chief Judge C.J.
1936, Marshall filed on behalf of Bond, an important victory sparkled
Margaret Williams in the Baltimore within a dubious admission by the
County Circuit Court in Towson. Court.
However, only one suit was filed, a “The allowance of separate treatment
writ of mandamus that required the at all involves allowance of some inci-
county to admit Williams to the nearest dental differences and some inequalities
high school. There was no second suit in meeting practical problems present-
filed to open up a high school in ed,” cited Bond.
Baltimore County specifically for Blacks The NAACP immediately seized
as had been discussed early on by upon the sliver of daylight Judge Bond
Marshall and Houston. provided.
“It was a combination of factors. “Here, for the first time, a court has
They had limited financial resources, admitted that certain inequalities are
everything was delayed waiting for the inevitable in a separate school system,”
Murray decision and he [Marshall] did- read an NAACP press release on May
n’t think he had a suitable plaintiff for 28, 1937. In other words, separate could
the second lawsuit. So, he decided to never be equal.
gamble with one lawsuit,” said Prof. Two years later, in 1939, the
Larry S. Gibson, of the University of Baltimore County School Board voted to
Maryland Law School. establish high schools for Black children
Then in mid-September 1936, in Towson, Catonsville and Sparrows
Marshall appeared before Judge Frank I. Point, but, it was too late for Lucille
Duncan prepared to make his case abun- Scott and Margaret Williams.
dantly clear: Williams graduated from St. Frances
1. There were obvious differences in Academy in 1939 and Scott graduated
educational facilities for Blacks and from Douglass High School in 1941. For
Whites, most glaring being the absence the last 40 years, Scott-Jones has lived
of a high school for Black children. in her Edmondson Village home, just
2. The examination given to Black miles from the Cowdensville community
students for high school entrance was she grew up in as a little girl. Her
grossly unfair and it was created daughter, Cynthia Williams, is vice prin-
expressly to keep Blacks from receiving cipal of James Mosher Elementary
tuition payments from the state for high School in Baltimore City.
school education. “It makes me feel wonderful to learn
However, as some would suggest, she didn’t have to go through what I
Judge Duncan shifted the playing field went through. I’m very proud of her,”
on Marshall. said Scott-Jones.
The Road to Brown
‘Equal work
warranted
equal pay’
After the loss in the Baltimore County case, there was pressure on the NAACP to recapture the momentum and hope cre-
ated by the landmark Murray win. The opportunity arrived in Anne Arundel County, where Black teachers earned slightly
more than half their White counterparts’ salaries for the same work. The victory helped propel the NAACP into becoming a
truly national organization, with a presence not just in big cities, but with branches emerging in small towns and sparsely
populated counties.
By Sean Yoes
AFRO Staff Writer
“Grateful memory of their former teacher and
friend and of the unselfish life he lived, and the
noble work he wrought; that they, their children,
and their children’s children might be blessed.”
The Souls of Black Folk
W.E.B. DuBois
There was a time in this country, not so long ago, when
teachers were perhaps the most respected of the burgeon-
ing Black professional class, a time that Philip and Rachel
Brown, now in their 90s, remember well.
“Daddy, come on this way and sit down,” Ms. Brown
says sweetly to her husband of 71 years as they prepare to
tell their story to Larry S. Gibson, professor of law at the
University of Maryland.
Nestled near the Black enclave of Highland Beach in
Annapolis, the Browns’ home is a monument to their mar-
riage and that bygone era when teachers were revered.
There are myriad photos, the product of 71 years
together, with one perhaps a bit more joyous than the oth-
ers.
It is from June 1947, and the Browns, who had
received their teaching certificates years earlier, are strid-
ing purposefully, beaming, in cap and gown, a young mar-
ried couple newly graduated from Morgan State College.
They are stunning in their confidence, prepared to take on
the world. But, more importantly, they were totally com-
mitted to educating Black children and, between the two
of them, this is what they did for more than 80 years.
Indeed, Philip and Rachel Brown are living testaments
to a time when Black teachers were held in high esteem in
the Black community.
But, of course, in the White America of the 1930s
when they started teaching, they were simply second-class
The Road to Brown
citizens earning half the pay their White counterparts HUGHES – THE UNSUNG HERO
received for the same work.
“They were not willing to see Colored teachers were
worth as much as White teachers. White people just didn’t
care. They wanted to give us the minimum they could get
away with,” said Mr. Brown.
In 1928, the year Mr. Brown earned his elementary
teacher’s certificate from Bowie Normal School (now
Bowie State University), Colored elementary school
teachers earned on average $602 per year. In contrast,
White elementary school teachers on average earned
$1,155.
“Equal work warranted equal pay,” said Mr. Brown,
still emphatic after all these decades. But, during the
Depression, no one, Black or White, was eager to jeopard-
ize their job, and many Black teachers thought they would
be doing just that were they to visibly object to the obvi-
ous disparity in their pay structure. Furthermore, most of
them understood they could be putting their very lives on
the line by challenging the system of White supremacy.
But, in February 1936, there was a young teacher who
was ready to put it all on the line.
“Howard Pindell was the first one to really call to our W.A.C. Hughes was the NAACP’s lead
attention the real difference between the salaries of the counsel in Maryland after Thurgood
races. He organized the Colored Teachers Association of Marshall went to New York until the
Anne Arundel County,” said Brown, who became the new 1950s. He did all of the “heavy lifting,”
organization’s treasurer. in the teachers pay cases in
Maryland, although Marshall and
“I DIDN’T HAVE ANYTHING Charles Houston orchestrated the
TO LOSE” major moves from New York. Hughes
Howard Pindell’s luxury apartment in a high-rise looks also served as the attorney for the
down on icy Logan’s Circle in Philadelphia as he sits NAACP’s City-Wide Young People’s
comfortably in his home, protected from the January cold. Forum.
At 95, he reflects back on a life well lived, a 50-year mar- “The revitalization of the NAACP with
riage, a daughter - Howardina Pindell, an internationally Lillie Jackson as its chair really fol-
known artist - a beautiful home in Philadelphia and an lowed the success of the City-Wide
apartment in Paris. But, it was a much different story in Young People’s Forum,” said Larry S.
Gibson.
Continued on page 16
15
Continued from page 15 home and his age [at the time Butler engaged in attempting to secure high “Enclosed please find a copy of a let-
was in his 50s]. Such a decision would school education for Black students in ter written by a prospective plaintiff for
1936. be unwise,” wrote Pindell in his brief the Baltimore County high school case. the teachers’ salary case in Maryland.
autobiography, A Maryland Saga.
“I had a couple of suits of clothes, I Still, Pindell did not fully escape their Charlie and I have both talked to him,”
had a car and I had youth,” said Pindell.Pindell welcomed the fight. On sever- radar. wrote Marshall to Walter White, secre-
al occasions, he wrote
Pindell was also the vice president of tary of the NAACP, on Jan. 27, 1936.
the Maryland State Colored Teachers Thurgood Marshall and Charles In February 1936, Pindell was essen-
Association and served on its strategyHamilton Houston, the famed tially in place as the plaintiff. Then, an
committee. The group lobbied the stateNAACP attorneys, seeking their implausible twist of fate, or more likely
board of education help, but they were both fully an insidious plot, unfolded.
and the Maryland leg- “I had this letter from the superin-
islature as well as the tendent of schools in Frederick offering
governor for pay me a job. After consulting Thurgood, I
equity, to no avail. wrote him [the superintendent] accepting
“There were times
when we would meet
with Gov. Nice in his
office, proposing a
bill to put before the
legislature.
Mysteriously, it would
be lost before any
action was taken. The
committee was at its
‘wits’ end’. In desper-
ation, it decided to
take the matter to
court. Enolia
Pettigen [later Enolia
MacMillan], head of ONE OF THE MARTYRS. Frank B.
the Maryland State Butler was a principal for 20 years in
Colored Teachers Anne Arundel County, but he was also
Association, asked me the treasurer of the Maryland State
to be the plaintiff. Mr. “THE GOAT.” Howard Pindell strongly Colored Teachers’ Association.
Frank Butler, princi- Although he remained in the back-
suspected he would be fired for his ground in the equal salaries confronta-
pal, the Bates H.S., activism in regards to equal pay for
said he was willing to Black teachers and he often referred to tion with the county board, in 1942 he
do it. I advised him was demoted from principal to a sci-
himself as “the goat.” He would later ence teacher. It was the ultimate slap
not to because he had move on to a very successful career in
a wife, was buying his the legal system in Philadelphia. in the face to a man who had served as SUCCESSFUL PLANTIFF
an administrator with such dignity. WALTER MILLS, who would
“Him being the elder person-they eventually become the plaintiff in the
thought he was the instigator of the successful NAACP suit to win equity
whole thing,” said Philip Brown. in pay for Black teachers in 1939

the job as principal of

Lincoln High School,”
said Pindell. Marshall
actually encouraged
Pindell to take the
position, saying it may
be a “kick upstairs,”
and assured Pindell
that another plaintiff
would be found.
Walter Mills, a princi-
pal/teacher at the
Rosenwald School in
Parole, Md., was the
man chosen to replace
Pindell.

REGROUPING
FOR THE
Uneven pay scales. In 1939, Philip Brown had LAWSUIT
12 years’ experience as teacher, taught fifth “He was a jolly
and sixth grades and earned $941 a year. person, very consci-
That same year, Elisabeth Gunderloy, who entious, very meticu-
lous as far as his
was White had 11 years experience, also teaching was con-
taught fifth and sixth grades and was paid cerned,” said Philip
$1,300 a year.
16 The Road to Brown
Brown, of Mills.
Mills and Brown had graduated from
Bowie Normal School in 1929, and
Mills actually lived in Frank Butler’s
house, along with Pindell, for a time.
Butler was the principal of Bates High
School, the Colored high school in Anne
Arundel County, and treasurer of the
Maryland State Colored Teachers
Association. After Pindell took the job
as principal in Frederick, Mills became
president of the Anne Arundel County
Colored Teachers Association.
“He volunteered to be the person to
represent the teachers and he encouraged
the teachers that we were entitled to
equal pay for equal work,” said Brown.
So, in 1939, the NAACP went for-
ward in the fight for pay equity for
Black teachers in Anne Arundel County
with Mills as their man. W.A.C. Hughes,

Above and below, Philip Brown with his students at the Stanton
Elementary School in Anne Arundel County circa 1930s.

the NAACP’s chief counsel in Calvin Chesnut, in federal court, handed

Maryland, was in charge on the ground,
with Marshall and Houston clearly call-
ing the shots from New York.
Initially, however, there was a signifi-
cant glitch in the association’s strategy.
Hughes originally filed the case
against the State Board of Education.
W. Calvin Chesnut, the U.S. district
judge who presided over the case of
Mills v. State Board of Education, dis-
missed the case essentially pointing out
they had filed against the wrong entity.
Hughes quickly re-filed the complaint
against the Anne Arundel County Board
of Education.
In November 1939, Judge Chesnut
TRIUMPHANT. Philip and Rachel Brown met while teaching at the handed down his unambiguous ruling in
same school in 1930, were married in 1932 and 72 years later they are favor of Mills and the NAACP.
still going strong...together. This AFRO photo was taken at their gradu- “In signing the injunction, Judge W.
ation from Morgan State College in 1947.
The Road to Brown
down an opinion which stated that the
question of whether there has been
unlawful discrimination in determining
the salaries of White and Colored teach-
ers... must be answered in the affirma-
tive. The plaintiff is therefore entitled to
an injunction against the continuance of
this unlawful discrimination,” reported
the AFRO on Nov. 11, 1939.
In the 1920s, Rachel Hall, who would
become Rachel Brown, the wife of
Philip Brown, had to travel from her
parents’ home in Glen Burnie to
Baltimore City to attend Douglass High
School. The only Black high school in
Anne Arundel County was Bates High
Continued on page 18
17
Continued from page 17
School in Annapolis, where her husband
one day would become vice-principal.
She experienced first-hand the
inequality of education as a Black child.
Later, as a woman, she watched her hus-
band receive half the pay for the same
work that he performed as his White
counterparts.
But, when she reflects back almost
70 years, she says she knew they would
win. “I was confident and I knew it
would happen some day,” Ms. Brown
said.

“THEY SET
HIM UP”
Initially, Frederick looked
like the right move for Pindell.
“Mr. Pruitt was the superin-
tendent and I must say to you,
he was as nice to me as anybody
possibly could be. He gave me
all the latitude I needed to cor-
rect the disciplinary problems
in the school ... a very successful
two years,” remembered
Pindell.
However, when Pindell took
the job as principal in
Frederick, he lost his tenure as
a teacher, putting him in a pre-
carious position professionally.
“After those two years, he
called me to his office and said,
‘you’ve done a wonderful job,
but I’ve got to ask for your res-
ignation.’ I cannot tell you
why,” said Pindell.
In 1938, the school board got
rid of Pindell one year before he
had reached tenure as a princi-
pal. To this day, he believes was
a “Mr. Huffington,” supervisor
of Colored schools in Maryland,
ordered Pindell’s dismissal. But,
the truth is, Pindell was aware
he would probably lose his job.
In fact, he referred to himself in
a letter to Charles Hamilton
Houston as a “goat,” perhaps a THE LEADERSHIP OF MARSHALL.
sacrificial one. Although Thurgood Marshall was in
Yet, Pindell was later success- New York, he was clearly the head
ful in several fields. After mov- coach calling the plays and Hughes
ing to Philadelphia, he was an
was the quarterback executing them.
executive in the Philadelphia
court system, earned two mas-
ters’ from Temple University
and was a professor at Temple
as well as at Spring Garden
College.

18 The Road to Brown

The
Battle
for the
Links ‘Nine holes could never
be equal to eighteen’
While the NAACP was fighting for equality in education for students and teachers in Maryland, Black golfers in
Baltimore were in the middle of a 17-year struggle for equal access to the game they loved. But the battle for the links in
Baltimore was thrust into the national spotlight when world heavyweight champion Joe Louis was relegated to a round of
golf at the shabby, nine-hole, sand greens, Colored course at Carroll Park in 1938.

By Sean Yoes
AFRO Staff Writer

It’s June 22, 1938, and Black people

from the Gilmore Projects in Baltimore
to 125th Street in Harlem are huddled
in hot houses on this first day of sum-
mer, ears glued to radios, all for good
reason.
Joe Louis, “The Brown Bomber,” is
butchering Max Schmeling without
mercy, exacting sweet, sweet revenge
upon the man who handed Louis the
first loss of his legendary career.
From the first punches of the first
round, two thunderous left hooks,
everyone - including Schmeling - knew
the German was doomed. Then, sud-
denly, like a bolt out of the blue in the
form of a Louis wrecking-ball right,
down went Schmeling!
A collective roar of Black euphoria
erupts from Atlanta to Altoona as men,
women and children rush from their
homes into the streets, dancing, scream-
ing and banging on pots and pans.
Every time Joe Louis won a fight, it
was like the Black Fourth of July, but
this time, it was that much sweeter
because Schmeling - perhaps unfairly -
was characterized as a Nazi. He became
a prized trophy of Adolph Hitler’s
model of Aryan racial supremacy,
demolished by a Black man as the
Photo courtesy of University of Md. Law School
world watched, teetering on the brink
PIONEERS. Members of the Monumental Golf Club in 1939 at the Atlantic Pine Golf Club. Attorney Dallas
of war.
Nicholas is seated at center between the two women wearing hats. Other members included Howard Murphy,
Continued on page 20 fourth from left in back row, and D. Arnett Murphy, standing second from right.

The Road to Brown 19

Continued from page 19 heard that Joe Louis was coming to Elder, and even when the venerable
town, he wanted to play golf with him. Charlie Sifford was still a teenage cad-
And now Joe Louis didn’t belong to Pippen had probably never been to die in North Carolina, Blacks in
just Black people anymore, he belonged Carroll Park, but when he did, he Baltimore were serious about golf.
to America. Perhaps for the first time in thought it was terrible that the world Before 1934, Black golfers couldn’t
this country, Blacks and Whites univer- champion had to play under those con- play on the city’s golf courses, period.
sally embraced a Black hero, Joe Louis, ditions,” stated Victorine Adams, one of Then in the summer of 1934, the board
the heavyweight champion of the world, Black Baltimore’s “grand ladies” and of park commissioners granted Blacks
the strongest man on the planet, a Black the wife of the legendary “Little Willie” unrestricted use of the city’s worst
man. Adams. course, Carroll Park.
Right around the time of Louis’ “He told Willie he should do some- However, Whites protested the
redemption rematch victory over thing about it,” she said. admission of Blacks at Carroll Park so
Schmeling, the champ traveled to vigorously the board rescinded its reso-
Baltimore on several occasions and “A MILITANT ATTITUDE” lution just two weeks after it passed.
each time, he held court with the peo- Baltimore City owned and operated “The board did not anticipate these
ple, high and low, like a gracious head four golf courses. Three of them had 18 protests. Suspension of the board’s
of state. holes and grass greens: Forest Park, order is for the purpose of granting a
During one visit, Mayor Thomas Clifton Park and Mount Pleasant. One, hearing both to those who may favor
D’Alesandro even presented him with a Carroll Park, had nine holes and sand and to those who may oppose the carry-
key to the City of Baltimore. greens. ing out of the board’s action. Under
Yet, despite (or perhaps because of) Guess which one Blacks were rele- these circumstances, it is hoped that you
the demands of being heavyweight gated to. will not continue to have a militant atti-
champion of the world, Louis loved to From 1934 to 1951, Black golfers tude on the subject,” wrote G.L.
hit the links and play a round of golf, were embroiled in a protracted battle Nichols, general superintendent of
and when he was in Baltimore, he want- with the Baltimore City Department of parks, on Aug. 29, 1934, to Dallas
ed to do just that. Public Parks and Squares (now the Nicholas, attorney for the Monumental
But, unfortunately, Louis, who had Department of Recreation and Parks) to Golf Club.
the keys to the city, couldn’t get the simply play the game they loved and to Yet, the board made an accommoda-
keys to the clubhouse. enjoy the same quality facilities as tion. On Labor Day weekend, Sept. 1
“I know that Roger Pippen, who White golfers. and 2, Blacks did play at Carroll Park,
wrote for the News American, when he Because, before Tiger Woods or Lee under police guard. Then, play was sus-
pended for Black golfers
until a resolution by the
board later that month
gave Blacks restricted
use of Carroll Park.
By 1936, Blacks were
given unrestricted and
exclusive use of Carroll
Park’s shabby golf
course, with its nine
holes and sand greens.
But it was just a matter
of time before Black
golfers, growing in num-
bers and in their determi-
nation to compete on a
decent course, would
push for improvements at
Carroll Park and access
to other courses.
“Willie [Adams] and
‘Big Bill’ Dixon and I
think Arnett Murphy
started working on a law
suit. He [Adams] was
quite interested in chang-
ing, because he knew the
Carroll Park course was
insufficient. They put up
their own money and
went as far as they could
DIVIDED. April 19, 1943, an agreement was reached for renovations at Carroll go in Maryland,” said
Park, as well as a playing schedule for Black golfers at other city courses while Victorine Adams.
the renovations were being completed. Note the language of the agreement, The man charged with
“cessation of hostilities,” and the fact that it is signed by representatives from the the lead legally was
Colored Golfers of Baltimore City and the White Golfers of Baltimore City. Before Dallas Nicholas, attorney
Carroll Park was opened to Blacks in 1934, Whites fought hard to keep them out. for the Monumental Golf
Rev. Ellis Frye of the Sexton Methodist Episcopal Church in South Baltimore Club.
stated, “I can assure you that the Colored people of South Baltimore are not “He clearly was the
interested in playing golf. To turn that course over to them would mean that a principal spokesperson as
number of them would start buying property there…and we don’t want that.” well as the principal
lawyer for Black golfers
20
DALLAS NICHOLAS was actu-
ally born in Richmond, Va., and his
father, Luther Nicholas, brought the
family to Philadelphia when Nicholas
was a boy. He grew up in
Philadelphia and graduated from the
University of Pennsylvania. Nicholas
then graduated from Howard
University Law School and almost
immediately came to Baltimore,
where he took and passed the bar
exam.
“He had a very large and active
business law practice in Baltimore,”
said Larry S. Gibson, professor of law
at the University of Maryland.
throughout most of the 17-year contro-
versy,” said Larry S. Gibson, professor
of law at the University of Maryland.
Nicholas’ strategy could be charac-
terized as a study in patience and
dogged persistence.
Time after time, Nicholas lobbied the
White power structure face-to-face and
by letter, from Howard W. Jackson, the
mayor of Baltimore, to the members of
the board of park commissioners.
The Richmond, Va., native wielded
his words like choice weapons as evi-
denced by this letter to the board after
the Colored invasion of Carroll Park on
Labor Day weekend in 1934:
“Scores and scores of Negro golfers
used this course on Sept. 1 and 2, con-
ducting themselves in an orderly and
credible manner. We are advised that in
excess of $20 was collected in fees on
these two days, twice as much as had
been heretofore collected in a week and,
with all of us being eager to again
begin playing, you can readily see that,
even from the financial angle, it is a
more profitable proposition.
“We submit that we have been more
than fair-minded and patient in sus-
pending our play until your meeting. We
submit further that the mayor, your
board and Mr. Nichols all agree that we
should play golf so, will you fair-mind-
ed gentlemen oblige us by advising your
superintendents that your order of Aug.
14, 1934, is to be carried out forth-
with?”
By 1940 the Black golfers had won
at least one concession. That year, the
city actually built a clubhouse at Carroll
Park.
But, in 1942, encouraged by the con-
cept of “Double V” or “Double Victory”
(victory for America in Europe in World
War II and victory for Blacks over
racism in America), Black golfers
pressed for more. In a series of letters
from Nicholas in April and May of
1942 to the board of park commission-
ers, the attorney outlined a list of
demands for improvements at Carroll
Park and access to the city’s other golf
courses.
Accordingly, in May of 1942, the
The Road to Brown
board relented and gave Blacks use of
all four city golf courses, only to once
again pull back their promise two
months later and send Blacks back to
Carroll Park.

SHOWDOWN AT MOUNT
PLEASANT AND
DISTRICT COURT
Shortly after the board rescinded its
resolution, a contingent of Black golfers
- including Marie Murphy, Arnett
Murphy, Art Carter, William B. Dixon,
Jeff Pickett, William “Little Willie”
Adams and Dallas Nicholas - descended
upon all-White Mount Pleasant golf
course. They were rebuffed by a man
described by the AFRO in June 1942 as
“solemn-faced William H. Tudor,” and
he told the golfers, “I can’t sell Colored
players tickets to play here. I have my
orders.”
Black golfers had their orders, also.
Now it was time to take this battle that
had already meandered for eight years
to court.
Arnett Murphy (head of advertising
at the AFRO) was the plaintiff in state

As reported in the AFRO 1942

Photo courtesy Askew W. Gatewood, Jr.
GOOD FELLAS. This extraordinary meeting took place at Little Willie’s
Inn circa 1938. Among those pictured are Joe Louis (standing third
from left ), “Little Willie” Adams (just over Louis’ left shoulder), D. Arnett
Murphy (with glasses, partially obscured), Linwood Koger (seated far
left) and Askew Gatewood, Sr. (seated far right).

the small number of players might, for of the board.

instance, be found upon inquiry to be
adequate for them,” the Court of
Appeals ruled in 1943.
Undeterred, Nicholas and the Black
golfers kept agitating. After the Court of
Appeals’ decision, they struck an agree-
ment that would upgrade the golf facili-
ties at Carroll Park, and while the
improvements were being made, Black
golfers would have temporary unre-
stricted access to the other city courses.
By 1945, after renovations were
completed, Black golfers were herded
back to Carroll Park. Two years later, in
“I HAVE MY ORDERS.” In June 1942, William H. Tudor was the man on 1947, Charles Law, a prominent Black
the hot seat when several Black golfers (L-R, Marie Murphy, D. Arnett mortician and avid golfer, sued for a
Murphy, Art Carver and Willie Dixon) led by attorney Dallas Nicholas ban of segregation on the links.
sparked a confrontation at all-White Mount Pleasant Golf Course. Days His legal counsel included two more
later, the Black golfers would sue to desegregate all City golf courses. familiar faces, Charles Houston, the
The AFRO covered the golf course controversy from the beginning in famed former special counsel to the
1934 to the end in 1951. NAACP, and W.A.C. Hughes, the
NAACP’s lead counsel in Maryland and
nine-hole course could not be equal to the lead attorney for the Colored teach-
court, Dallas Nicholas was the lawyer an 18-hole course. So, once again, ers’ pay victory in Anne Arundel
and there was a familiar face presiding O’Dunne awarded Blacks a victory County in 1939.
over the case. Eugene O’Dunne, the when he ordered the parks board to per- In 1948, once again Carroll Park was
judge who in 1935 ordered the mit Black golfers to play at all city ruled not equal to other City courses.
University of Maryland Law School to courses without restriction. This time the ruling was made by Judge
admit Donald Gaines Murray, ruled on Yet, once again, Nicholas and the Calvin Chesnut (who presided over the
the first round of the golf case. other golfers were slapped down, this Colored teachers’ pay victory). He
O’Dunne ordered the jury to simply time at the appellate level, when ordered the board to give Black golfers
consider if the Carroll Park golf course O’Dunne’s decision was reversed. some access to other courses, but he left
was equal with the other city courses. It “Segregation is within the power and the specifics of the remedy in the hands
was clear in the eyes of the jury that a discretion of the board. Nine holes for
What they decided was Blacks could
play at Mount Pleasant on Tuesdays,
Clifton Park on Wednesdays, Forest
Park on Thursdays and Carroll Park on
Mondays, Thursdays, Saturdays and
Sundays.
Finally, in 1951 Nicholas, the Black
golfers and Black Baltimore got the big
win they all sought for so long when the
board voted to allow all golfers unre-
stricted access to all courses.
“We couldn’t conceive too well of a
change, because the change was so
slow. But we didn’t give up because we
had some strong people back then,” said
Ms. Adams.
Little Willie Adams’ memories of
that epic fight and his own mythic life
have begun to melt away with the onset
of age and illness. But Victorine
Adams’ memories of Colored Baltimore
still sparkle in her voice. Memories of
blossoming Black power, the great Joe
Louis and her beloved husband when
they first met and fell in love. Then, on
warm summer days discovered their
love of golf.
“I still love the game and I still love
to watch it. I won one little trophy
about three inches high, and I love it to
death. I just enjoyed being out in the air
and mingling with people,” said Ms.
Adams.

The Road to Brown 21

22 The Road to Brown
 A community’s dreams come true when we dream together.
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The Road to Brown 23

Making
Enoch Pratt the free library for everyone
Like the golf course case, the Enoch Pratt Free Library case could be characterized as a “detour on the road to Brown.”
In 1928, the Pratt created a training class for librarians. But Blacks were banned from this class in direct contradiction to
the mandate of the library’s founder, Enoch Pratt, that the library should be available to all, “without distinction of race or
color,” as he had written in 1884. The real significance of the case (that resulted in a victory in 1945) was that it attacked
the nuances of “separate but equal,” preventing governments from “exiting” the road to Brown by shifting its responsibili-
ties to individuals or private corporations.
By Sean Yoes Blacks from the program. Enoch Pratt Free Library, the trustees being advised
AFRO Staff Writer The exclusion of Blacks from the training program that there are Colored persons now available with ade-
didn’t go unnoticed. On April 18, 1933, the NAACP’s quate training for the library employment have given
In October 1884, Enoch Pratt, a philanthropist from City Wide Young People’s Forum, a group of young the librarian authority to employ such personnel where
Boston, wrote a letter formally transferring the man- Black political activists, whose membership at one vacancies occur in a branch or branches with an
agement of the Enoch Pratt Free Library to his “adopt- time included Juanita Jackson, Clarence Mitchell Jr. established record for preponderant Colored use,”
ed” city of Baltimore. and young Thurgood Marshall, delivered a petition wrote Thomas Cullen, president, board of library
In that letter Pratt made some specific statements with 5,000 signatures to Baltimore Mayor Howard trustees.
about the library’s use. Jackson and the Board of Estimates. They hoped to Then, on April 23, 1943, almost 10 years to the day
“These, I think, are all accessible to the people stop the city from funding the Pratt because the institu- that the Young People’s Forum delivered their petition
who, I hope, will avail of the advantages it is my wish tion practiced racial discrimination in admission to the to City Hall, Louise Kerr a 27-year-old Baltimore City
to offer them, they being for schoolteacher and daugh-
all, rich and poor, without dis- ter of Dr. T. Henderson
tinction of race or color, who, Kerr, a prominent Black
when properly accredited, can The winning of the library case proves again the pharmacist, applied for
take out the books, if they will admission to the training
handle them carefully and effectiveness of the courts as a weapon in the fight for program. In accordance
return them,” wrote Pratt. with their policy banning
Pratt’s vision of his library,constitutional rights. It also places a blazing question mark Blacks, the Pratt trustees
“being for all, rich and poor, rejected her application.
without distinction of race or behind the tenets of our so-called democracy, where the Again, Cullen, the
color,” seems to have been
fulfilled 120 years later with
Colored man must fight for those opportunities that are president of the Pratt
trustees, wrote a letter in
Dr. Carla Hayden, a Black
woman, serving as the Pratt’s
justly his as an American citizen. response to Kerr’s desire
to be admitted to the
executive director. training program and
“It’s very important we again the board’s intoler-
take part in the information age, not just be the recipi- training program. ance of the situation seemed evident.
ents of information, but in the dissemination and cre- In May 1933, Mayor Jackson wrote W.A.C. “At the present time, there are no openings or
ation of that information. It’s important to have people Hughes, attorney for the City Wide Young People’s vacancies among those positions filled by, or available
of color involved in that,” said Dr. Hayden. Forum, “I have taken a position in favor of Negroes for, members of the Colored race. Under these circum-
Under Dr. Hayden’s leadership, people of color are taking the library training course. I shall immediately stances, and since no opening as librarian on the staff
integral and abundant in the operation of the Pratt, one take up the matter again with the Pratt library authori- of the Pratt library is, in the immediate future, avail-
of the nation’s most important libraries. ties.” able, the admission of Miss Kerr to the library training
There was a time, however, when the leadership of However, the Pratt trustees didn’t budge from their course, and her work in that course, could result only
the Enoch Pratt Free Library resisted mightily the par- position and funding for the library from the city con- in an unhappy and unprofitable waste of her time,”
ticipation of Blacks in the library’s operation. tinued. wrote Cullen on July 7, 1943.
In September 1942, the NAACP announced it The letter was addressed to W.A.C. Hughes, the
“UNNECESSARY AND IMPRACTICABLE...” would seek legal action to end the racially biased NAACP’s lead counsel in Maryland. On Oct. 5, 1943,
In 1928, the Enoch Pratt Free Library established a admission policy of the Pratt’s training program. The Hughes, along with the venerable Charles Houston
training class for librarians. In direct contrast to the library trustees responded to this with a resolution: (who with Thurgood Marshall orchestrated the land-
founder’s spirit of inclusion in the establishment of the “Resolved, that is it unnecessary and impracticable to mark Murray victory in 1935, among others), filed on
library, however, the Pratt’s board of trustees banned admit Colored persons to the training class of the behalf of the Kerrs against the Library Corporation, its

24 The Road to Brown

nine trustees individually, the head
librarian, the mayor and the City
Council of Baltimore.
Specifically, Houston and Hughes
sought an injunction and damages for
Louise Kerr against the library perform-
ing as a government entity, claiming she
was excluded from the training program
because of her race and denied equal
protection guaranteed by the 14th
Amendment.
District Court Judge W. Calvin
Chesnut, who begrudgingly handed
Blacks victories in the equal pay for
Colored teachers’ case in Anne Arundel
County in 1939 as well as the golf case
in Baltimore City in 1948 presided over
the Kerr library case.
But, this time Blacks were defeated
in Chesnut’s courtroom. On March 7,
1944, Judge Chesnut dismissed Kerr’s
case, citing that her being denied admis-
sion to the training program was not a
state action, but that of a private corpo-
ration.
However, Hughes and Houston filed
their appeal of the Chesnut ruling and
on April 17, 1945, Judge Morris Soper
and two other judges on the Fourth
Circuit Court of Appeals reversed
Chesnut’s decision.
Judge Soper decided that the library
Oct. 1945
As reported in the AFRO
The Road to Brown
was a public agency and was subject to man must fight for those opportunities gram. The Pratt shut down the librarian
the parameters of the Constitution, that are justly his as an American citi- training class, alleging a lack of funds.
including the 14th Amendment. zen,” stated Louise Kerr in the AFRO “The disputed Enoch Pratt Library
He specifically cited that the Pratt shortly after the win. training class, which for the past 15
received a total of $858,346.90 from the However, neither Kerr nor any other
city in 1944 and that library employees Black applicant entered the training pro- Continued on page 26
were paid using a municipal employees’
pay scale and were included in the
municipal employees’ retirement system,
supporting his argument that the library
was a public agency.
Judge Soper also alluded to the
vision of Enoch Pratt when he founded
the library, “for all, rich and poor, with-
out distinction of race or color,” wrote
Pratt in 1884.
In Judge Soper’s opinion, Louise
Kerr was excluded from the training
program because of her race, citing the
rejection of more than 200 other Black
applicants, and this discrimination based
on race was not in the spirit of Enoch
Pratt’s vision.
The Pratt Library appealed Judge
Soper’s reversal and sought relief from
the U.S. Supreme Court. But in October
1945, the Supreme Court refused to hear
the library case, upholding the decision
of the Fourth District Court and giving
the Kerrs and the NAACP the victory.
“The winning of the library case
proves again the effectiveness of the VICTORIOUS. After the win in October 1945 the “jubilant”
courts as a weapon in the fight for con-
stitutional rights. It also places a blazing
party, (from left to right) Dr. T. Henderson Kerr and wife,
question mark behind the tenets of our Charles Houston, Louise Kerr and W.A.C. Hughes stand
so-called democracy, where the Colored outside of the Enoch Pratt Free Library on Cathedral Street.
A BIG WIN. The AFRO provided wall-to-wall
coverage of the Kerr/NAACP victory over the
Pratt Library in October 1945. The AFRO even
included a photo of the solemn, all-White, all-
male Supreme Court.
25
Continued from page 25
years has been conducted to train librarians, will not open in September due
to the lack of funds,” reported the AFRO in 1945.
So, the battle was won in the courts, but in the chess game of reality, the
pragmatic move of “lack of funds” permitted the racism of the Baltimore
establishment culture to once again prevail in denying Kerr and hundreds of
others the opportunity they sought.

DETOUR ON THE ROAD TO BROWN

Like the 17-year battle to desegregate Baltimore City’s golf courses
described earlier in this series, the Kerr library case could be character-
ized as not being part of the “main road to Brown,” but perhaps more
like a “detour.”
“What it [the library case] did was block an escape route from
Brown,” said Larry S. Gibson, professor of law at the University of
Maryland.
“It prevented state and local governments from transferring govern-
ment functions to private corporations [e.g., the Pratt Library] as a
means of avoiding constitutional obligations of government. That’s big,
and the case is cited all over the country for this.”
Charles Houston clearly saw the importance of the library case as
well. After the Kerr victory, Houston spoke on the significance of the
case in the AFRO on Oct. 13, 1945.
“I think it [the Kerr case] is an extension of the University of
Maryland [Donald Murray] case on equality of educational opportuni-
ties. The Murray case establishes that the state must offer equal educa- INTOLERANCE. Thomas
tional opportunities to all persons regardless of race, creed or color. The Cullen and his Board of
Kerr case shows that the state cannot dodge this responsibility by setting
Pratt Library Trustees
up a private corporation to offer education through public facilities and
never budged on their
with public money for benefits restricted to Whites only,” said Houston.
position of no Blacks in
the Training Program.
When they finally lost the
court battle they shut
down the Training
Program citing, “lack of
funds,” rather than admit-
ting Blacks. Note the lan-
guage of the resolution
dismissing even the pos-
sibility of a “Colored per-
son” working at the
“White library.”

OLD BOY NETWORK. In

1933 Baltimore Mayor
Howard Jackson told
W.A.C. Hughes he wanted
to see Blacks in the Pratt
Training Program and that
he would speak to the
Trustees concerning the LEADERSHIP. Dr. Carla Hayden,
the Pratt’s second African-
matter. Ten years later, American executive director and
“cunning” Cullen laid the fourth African-American
down the law to the Mayor president of the American Library
and then with mock humil- Association, is perhaps the
embodiment of Enoch Pratt’s
ity thanked him for all the founding vision of an all-inclusive
money the City, “accorded institution.
the Enoch Pratt Free
Library.”

26 The Road to Brown

Fighting for
Freedom
on the Courts
Voluntary integration — not allowed
A few years after the Pratt Library case and during the protracted
golf course conflict, an unprecedented demonstration on the clay tennis
courts of historic Druid Hill Park took place. Blacks and Whites
protested together the policy of segregation of the city’s recreational
facilities. (Tennis players, golfers and basketball players would all
come together later in a lawsuit to desegregate Baltimore’s courts and
courses.) The 1948 demonstration was the first time in Maryland that
Blacks and Whites argued that Jim Crow laws hurt both groups.

By Sean Yoes is no law providing for segregation on the tennis

AFRO Staff Writer
Many of Baltimore’s Black and White amateur ath-
letes battled to play together back in the 1940’s in a city
and a country that was determined to legally keep them
separate.
It was early in the morning on July 11, 1948, and 18-
year-old Mitzi Freishtat, a young, White tennis enthusi-
ast was wired.
“I was very nervous. I got the permit in the morning
around 8 or 9 a.m. and I was like a jumping jack, run-
ning all over the place,” she said almost 56 years later,
excitement still in her voice.
“But once we got to the park, I lost my nervousness.
It was a mission I knew what I was doing and we knew
we were right,” she recalled with conviction.
The events that continue to stir emotion in the heart
of the woman who is now Mitzi Swan surround the
fabled clay courts that existed for decades near
Auchentoroly Terrace at venerable Druid Hill Park.
Legend has it that the late, great Arthur Ashe once
played there as a teen amateur, but on that July 11, the
courts were not the site of an athletic competition, but a
political protest.
“The Young Progressives of Maryland are planning
a tennis outing at Druid Hill Park on Sunday, July 11.
As you probably know, membership in the Young
Progressives is open to all regardless of race, color or
creed. We have been advised by legal opinion that there
courts.
Our members are desirous of playing tennis on
the basis of ability and not on the basis of color.
It is in the best tradition of Maryland fair play
that athletics be based solely upon the consid-
eration of sportsmanship and ability,” wrote
Stan Askin, director of the Young
Progressives of Maryland on July 3, 1948, to
Harold Callowhill, superintendent of the
Bureau of Recreation and Parks.
Five days later, Askin received the
response he was looking for.
“I regret that I cannot comply with your
request because the Board of Recreation and
Parks rules that there shall be segregation. Until
such time as that rule is rescinded, I shall have to
abide by it,” wrote Charles Hook, superintendent of
parks.
So, the stage was set for the confrontation that
the Young Progressives - the younger component
of the Progressive Party, a far-left political organi-
zation with alleged communist ties - were looking
for.
“We told everyone what we were doing, the
police, the newspapers... It was a planned demon-
stration,” said Swan. In fact, the Young
Progressives sent out a flyer containing what some
would call inflammatory language. James Crockett
“KILL JIM CROW!” “DEMAND YOUR
Continued on page 28

The Road to Brown 27

Continued from page 27
RIGHTS!” “Organize to smash discrimination in recre-
ational facilities,” read the flyer’s top three lines.
The organization’s efforts worked. Hundreds came
out to the clay courts at Druid Hill Park on that
sparkling summer Sunday. Anticipation was heavy in
the air, like the humidity.
Around two o’clock in the afternoon, Mitzi Freishat,
Mary Coffee, Jeanette Fino and Gloria Stewart lined up
on one court. Others lined up on another court. But
before a ball could hit the clay, Baltimore park police -
who were staggered along a hillside, waiting - swooped
in and broke up the demonstration.
“We all got arrested and the whole crowd erupted.
They were singing ‘America, My Country ‘Tis of
28
Thee’ and the Negro National Anthem. It was very stir-
ring,” said Swan.
In all, 22 people, Black and White, were arrested
and charged with rioting, conspiracy to riot or disturb-
ing the public peace. Seven demonstrators were con-
victed of those charges. However, their actions were
more far reaching than a simple act of civil disobedi-
ence.
“This case demonstrated that Jim Crow laws
restricted the freedom of all citizens, Black and White,”
said Larry S. Gibson, professor of law at the University
of Maryland.
“It was the first case in Maryland when Blacks and
Whites together initiated a lawsuit alleging that both
groups’ rights were being violated by Jim Crow laws,”
said Gibson.
Indeed, other groups joined the Young Progressives
to challenge the rule of law, which was segregation on
Baltimore’s recreational courts and courses.
“WE HAD A VERY GOOD TEAM.”
In 1948, James Crockett was a 23-year-old co-man-
ager and co-owner — along with Phillip Boyer — of
“The Easterwood Professionals,” an interracial basket-
ball team in Baltimore. Having a team with Blacks and
Whites in the 1940s presented significant challenges.
“We could only play on courts that would allow
interracial sports, like Catholic schools and syna-
gogues,” recalled Crockett, who for decades has been a
successful Baltimore businessman.
However, the department of recreation operated the
vast majority of basketball courts in Baltimore City,
thus restricting the team’s venues at home, although the
team competed in Annapolis, Washington and
Pennsylvania.
Nevertheless, in 1948, Boyer and Crockett helped
spark Boyer v. Garrett, which sought to desegregate
recreational facilities in Baltimore, along with two
golfers, one Black and one White (described earlier in
the “Battle for the Links,” segment of the Signature
Series), as well as the Young Progressives.
The first stage of the case began September of that
year, with the attorneys for the plaintiffs perhaps fore-
shadowing today’s modern legal “dream teams.”
They were I. Duke Avnet a leading civil rights attor-
ney who defended Baltimore labor unions, Edgar Paul
Boyko, William H. Murphy Sr. one of the first Black
students to enter the University of Maryland Law
School, Robert P. Watts one of the first Black Circuit
Court Judges, Milton B. Allen the first Black elected
state’s attorney for Baltimore City and Dallas F.
Nicholas, who represented the Monumental Golf Club
MENCKEN’S LAST STAND
In what was said to be his last column,
which appeared in the Baltimore Evening Sun
November 9, 1948 H.L. Mencken, one of the
most controversial newspapermen of the 20th
century, took on the tennis court controversy.
Yet, Mencken’s position (many character-
ized him as racist, anti-Semitic, etc.) shocked
some.
“That’s why I was so surprised when
Mencken’s article came out. He was such a
cynical person,” said Mitzi Swan.
Mencken began his column by describing
the events of July 11, 1948 when Blacks and
Whites were arrested for attempting to play an
interracial tennis match. Later in his column
Mencken attacked the Baltimore City Park
Board for upholding the ban on interracial
play, “Certainly it is astounding to find so
much of the Georgia Cracker surviving in the
Maryland Free State, and under official aus-
pices,” he wrote. Furthermore, he argued
both Black and White taxpayers support the
public parks.
He concluded the matter emphatically when
he wrote, “The Park Board rule is irrational
and nefarious. It should be got rid of forth-
with.”
The Road to Brown
in its 17-year battle with Baltimore City (also described As reported in the 1948 AFRO
in the Battle for the Links).
For Boyer v. Garrett, once again there was a familiar
presence presiding. Judge W. Calvin Chesnut was the
district court judge who ruled on the teachers’ pay case
in 1938, as well as delivering a decision in the lengthy
golf course case.
In Boyer v. Garrett, Judge Chesnut seemed to con-
centrate on Plessy v. Ferguson, the constitutional law of
the land that had established “separate, but equal” in
1898.
Accordingly, he cited that Maryland law at the time
recognized segregation as permissible.
Ironically, perhaps, Judge Chesnut cited Murray v.
University of Maryland in 1935: “Equality of treatment
does not require that privileges be provided members of
the two races in the same place. The state may choose
the method by which equality is maintained.”
In January 1950, Judge Chesnut ruled in favor of the
Department of Recreation and Parks and in August of
that year, the plaintiffs lost on appeal.
“If the players had sued then, the court would have
rendered a different decision,” said James Crockett,
reflecting back over 50 years.
The Easterwood Professionals disbanded the same
year they lost the appeal. In 1948, the Young
Progressives “sort of fell apart after the 1948 election,”
said Mitzi Swan.
Yet Swan, who served for many years as executive
director of the Maryland Conference of Social Concern,
seems to have maintained her sense of agitation over
social injustice after all these decades.
“We knew we did a significant thing. I still have the
same spirit as before, I just don’t have the body, but I
don’t let that kind of stuff get me down.”

As reported in
the 1948 AFRO

FIGHT THE POWER. Young Progressives flyer

announcing the tennis court demonstration.

The Road to Brown 29

E
nding
xile
ducation
in Maryland
Although the road to Brown had detoured slightly with the golf, tennis
and library cases, education was still the NAACP’s primary focus in its
fight for desegregation. After the initial Murray victory in 1935 that
integrated the University of Maryland, only a handful of Blacks trickled
through the school’s doors, until 1950. That was the year the NAACP
successfully sued Maryland’s flagship university, forcing it to admit
several Black students into the schools of nursing, pharmacy, engineering
and medicine.

By Sean Yoes knew I was going to be all right. We became

AFRO Staff Writer
Sparkling sunshine filters through the office
window of Larry Gibson, professor of law at the
University of Maryland, on the second day of
spring. Yet on this day, the sun is deceptive
because it feels more like the second day of win-
ter.
Nevertheless, Ester McCready has made the
trip from New York to Baltimore on this blustery
day to be inducted into the Maryland Women’s
Hall of Fame.
But first she reminisces in Prof. Gibson’s office
and he is mesmerized by her total recall of people
and events from over 50 years ago, when
McCready became the first African-American
woman to enroll in the University of Maryland’s
school of nursing.
Her crystal clear recollection of first and last
names, conversations and dates is stunning, but
there is something else, her hands.
Ester McCready is 73 years old, but her hands
tell a different story, no blotches, no wrinkles, just
smooth, supple skin, perhaps similar to the hands
of the young woman who entered the University
of Maryland in 1950.
“On my first day, I was standing by the eleva-
tor and this R.N. said, ‘If you don’t pray to God,
you won’t get out of here, because nobody here is
supporting you.’ I looked her right in the eye and
I said, ‘If God intends for me to get out of here,
nobody can stop me,’” recalled McCready.
“She said to me later that when I said that, she
friends.” McCready said, with a laugh.
However, there wasn’t much to laugh about in
1949 when McCready was refused admission to
Maryland’s School of Nursing.
“The General Assembly of Maryland (Laws of
1949, Chapter 282), in its session last winter,
authorized the State of Maryland to enter into a
compact with certain other states relating to the
development and maintenance of regional educa-
tional services and schools in the professional,
technological, scientific, literary and other fields.
This compact applies to both white and Negro stu-
dents. The State of Maryland has already sent to
the University of Georgia, under this compact
arrangement, ten white students to study veteri-
nary medicine. Arrangements have been made
Houston’s last stand.
Charles Hamilton Houston was “one of the greatest
whereby the Meharry Medical College at constitutional lawyers in America,” according to the
Nashville, Tennessee, has become a compact insti- AFRO in April 1950. Indeed, Houston was one of the
tution to which the signatory states will send stu- most important - if not well-known - figures of the 20th
dents for Medical, Dental and Nursing education. century civil rights movement in the U.S. But, not just
Therefore, in accordance with the State policy because of what he accomplished in the courtroom helping
established by the Legislature, you will be author- to lay down the foundation for the landmark Brown deci-
ized to study Nursing at the Meharry Medical sion in 1954, but outside the courtroom, where he was an
College,” wrote Edgar F. Long, director of admis- advocate and an intellectual articulating the argument for
sions for the University of Maryland on August equality.
13, 1949. As he lay on his sickbed in the Bethesda Naval
The “compact” that Long alluded to in his let- Hospital in 1950, Ester McCready and Donald Murray
ter to McCready was “The Regional Compact,” an were the first to bring Houston the news of the appeals
agreement that the State of Maryland entered into victory. Houston allegedly said to McCready, “You’re the
with 13 other southern states in 1949. The last of the Mohicans,” perhaps a reference to his last case,
Regional Compact was created allegedly to pro- his last victory. He died of a heart attack about two weeks
vide education in the technological, scientific and later.
literary fields for all people of the member states

30 The Road to Brown

 As reported in the 1950 AFRO
“regardless of race.” Yet, many found the motives of
the compact dubious at best.
“The McCready case exposed and began to unravel
the conspiracy that the governors of the 14 states had
engaged in to limit the professional school options of
its Black citizens. The only people required to go out
of state when their state had a program were Blacks,”
said Gibson.
“Blacks were forced to go to the Regional Compact
school that would accept them, i.e. the Black school.
This was the grand scheme of all of those states to
meet their obligations of separate, but equal.”
The reality for Ester McCready was that she lived
on Dallas Street in Baltimore City and had no desire
to travel to Tennessee to go to nursing school when
there was a quality institution in her home state.
So the stage was set.
Even before the University of Maryland had made
the Meharry offer to McCready the decision was made
to file law suits to desegregate the school of nursing
as well as six other professional schools at the univer-
sity, the schools of pharmacy, dentistry, engineering,
The Road to Brown
home economics, medicine and sociology.
Once again the NAACP came forward to represent
the plaintiffs, led by Charles Houston, the associa-
tion’s venerable special counsel, and an ironic figure
in the University of Maryland equation, Donald
Murray.
Murray, who at the time of the McCready trial was
an attorney practicing in Baltimore and legal counsel
with the NAACP, had been the first Black to enter the
University of Maryland’s law school in 1935. It was
the first school desegregation victory for Black
America.
The McCready lawsuit, a petition for a writ of
mandamus, was filed on July 27, 1949, in the District
Court of Baltimore City. Chief Judge W. Conwell
Smith presided over the case. Essentially, Houston
argued that McCready’s qualifications were equiva-
lent, if not superior, to the White students admitted to
the school. Houston argued the only reason she was
not admitted was because of her color.
However, Judge Smith sided with the University of
Maryland. He decided that there was nothing dubious
about the Regional Compact and indeed it was made
in good faith. Smith wrote, “that the State in offering
the training at Meharry has discharged its obligation
in this single case and that the training offered is sub-
stantially equal, if not superior, to the training at the
University of Maryland School of Nursing, and for
that reason, the petition for the writ of mandamus
should be denied.”
Houston and Murray filed notice of appeal for the
McCready case on Oct. 21, 1949, and the formal
appeal was filed on Jan. 16, 1950. However, the team
representing McCready was forced to make a change
because Charles Houston had taken ill shortly after
Judge Conwell’s decision.
So, now Donald Murray was teamed once again
with the man who had escorted him through the doors
of the University of Maryland law school in 1935,
Thurgood Marshall.
In the McCready appeal they cited the Murray case,
arguing that the decision that allowed him to enter the
University of Maryland law school should be applica-
Continued on page 32
31
Continued from page 31
ble to all public education.
Marshall argued that White students were being
given the full protection of the State of Maryland in
their educational endeavors, while Ester McCready
was being exiled from the state to seek her education.
The Court of Appeals agreed with Marshall and
Murray on April 15, 1950. Judge Charles Markell, a
University of Maryland law school graduate, wrote:
“Manifestly, the obligation of the State to give the
protection of equal laws can be performed only where
its laws operate, that is within its own jurisdiction. It
is there that the equality of legal right must be main-
tained.”
In other words, Maryland couldn’t ship Ester
McCready off to another state and dump its responsi-
bility for educating her on that state.
As reported in the 1950 AFRO
As reported in the 1950 AFRO
32
“The McCready decision was the first
case that extended the Murray decision
beyond a law school. For Maryland, it
ushered in the next phase in opening up
the university’s professional and gradu-
ate schools,” said Professor Gibson.
The McCready victory was clearly
another important step for the NAACP
and Black America towards the seminal
Brown decision.
Yet, at the core of the victory was an
18-year-old girl, Ester McCready, whose
personal power and moral conviction
were the glue holding the case together.
Her character seems that much more
profound over 50 years later as she
reflects on those solitary years at the
University of Maryland’s School of
Nursing.
But, there was at least one time
when she didn’t feel quite so
alone. The return.
“When I came, the only Donald Gaines Murray, the man in the middle in this photo,
positions Negroes had were as was the man on the hot seat in 1935 when he became the first
dietary aides in the cafeteria, Black to be admitted to the University of Maryland law school in
housekeeping, orderlies or the 20th century. As an attorney, he utilized his legal education to
nurses aides, that’s all. When I help usher Ester McCready through the door that he opened 15
walked into the cafeteria, years earlier. Standing with Murray are the desegregation plaintiffs
those people were beaming. from left to right are Ester McCready, nursing; Richard Tyson,
They were all huddled togeth- pharmacy; Hiram Whittle, engineering; Donald Stewart, medicine.
er like `hi,’ they were so
happy, they were so tickled,”
said McCready. As reported in the 1950 AFRO
After she graduated from the University of
Maryland in 1953, McCready actually dabbled
in music and teaching, but she never stopped
being a nurse. In fact, as she brought forward
the chapters of her life in front of Larry
Gibson’s camcorder, it was unclear if she had
actually retired from nursing, and perhaps that
explains her youthful hands. She never stopped
using them to help healing others.
The Road to Brown
 University of Maryland
Breaking
a legacy of
Intolerance
The University of Maryland’s longtime president Henry “Curly” Byrd suffered one defeat after another at the hands of
the NAACP in his battle to keep Blacks out of the University of Maryland. For 15 years after the Murray case, Byrd fought
mightily to keep the College Park campus all White. But when Parren Mitchell entered the university’s graduate school of
sociology in 1950, Byrd’s last bastion of Whiteness at the University of Maryland was wiped out.
KEEPING BYRD CAGED. Some would say Thurgood
Marshall waged a somewhat personal battle to subdue the segre-
gationist machinations of Curly Byrd, the president of the
University of Maryland. On the same day he wrote Byrd, he
fired off another letter to Harry Nice, the governor of Maryland,
warning him that the NAACP was prepared to fight. Note the
last line of Marshall’s letter to Nice on page 35.
The Road to Brown
By Sean Yoes
Baltimore AFRO Staff
“Hille: Don’t register
any Negro students until
I talk with you. CB”
(Henry C.“Curly” Byrd)
This was the post-script of a letter dated July
15, 1935, to W.M. Hillegeist, registrar of the
University of Maryland, from Henry Clifton
“Curly” Byrd, then acting president of the univer-
sity (reported in the Signature Series May 29,
2003-Dec. 5, 2003). Byrd had recently taken the
helm of the university and this was perhaps his
first covert mandate: “Don’t register any Negro
students until I talk with you.”
Byrd’s order to Hillegeist was in direct defiance
of the court order of Judge Eugene O’Dunne to
admit Donald Murray, the first Black to enter the
school, the first school desegregation victory for
Black America in the fall of 1935.
It may have been Byrd’s first edict, but history
indicates that keeping Blacks out of the University
of Maryland was a crusade he conducted for more
than 20 years.
Byrd’s primary opponent in the battle to keep
Blacks out of College Park was arguably
Thurgood Marshall who, at the start of his leg-
endary legal career, represented Murray in his vic-
tory to enter the University of Maryland in 1935.
Yet even after Murray’s victory at the trial level
and his subsequent appellate victory, Marshall sent
a letter to Byrd with an enduring message for the
University’s president: “I’m watching you.”
“A few days ago, I sent you a copy of a letter to
Senator Melvin on his proposed bill to create
scholarships for Negroes.
We have received several reports that you are
the sponsor of this bill as well as the general idea,
and I might say it is a very logical conclusion. The
entire bill is centered around the attempt of the
Board of Regents of the University of Maryland to
deprive Negroes of their constitutional right to
attend this school. Not so long ago, it was neces-
sary for the Negro citizens of the State of
Maryland to expend large sums of money in carry-
ing a case through to the Court of Appeals in
order to have the said Board of Regents follow the
constitution and the laws of the State of Maryland
which they, as State officers, were bound to follow.
Now it seems that the same Board of Regents
through you as its representative is attempting to
circumvent this decision,” wrote Marshall in a let-
ter to Byrd on March 19, 1937. It seemed Marshall
had Byrd’s “number” early on.
“To say that Curly Byrd was a dyed-in-the-
wool segregationist would be an understatement,”
said Larry S. Gibson, professor of law at the
University of Maryland. “No other university in
the nation had to be sued so many times in order
to force it to integrate. Even after winning in
court, Curly Byrd made it necessary to fight hard
to secure that the Court’s order was enforced,”
explained Gibson.
COLLEGE PARK-THE FINAL FRONTIER
Byrd’s detractors maintain that his legacy is
linked to the segregationist imagery of Alabama
Governor George Wallace standing in front of the
door of an Alabama schoolhouse in an attempt to
Continued on page 34
33
Continued from page 33
stop Black children from entering
Alabama public schools on June 11,
1963.
Just as Wallace was defeated in 1963,
Byrd had suffered several defeats in
court at the hands of the NAACP’s lead
counsel of Marshall and Charles
Houston. Still, he fought tenaciously to
maintain the University of Maryland’s
last bastion of total Whiteness, the
College Park campus.
From 1935 to 1950, Black students
trickled into the school seemingly every
other year or so, yet none had entered
the doors of College Park until Parren
Mitchell sued to enter Maryland’s
School of Sociology on Aug. 15, 1950.
Mitchell, who in 1970 became the
first Black congressman from Maryland,
has been slowed in recent years by a
series of strokes, but his mind is still
sharp and he clearly remembers Curly
Byrd.
“I had no direct contact with him, but
all that I heard was that he was a terrible
person, a bigot of the first order, no sym-
pathy no kindness in his heart,” said
Mitchell.
Although Mitchell did not deal direct- BREAKING DOWN THE DOORS. Thurgood Marshall, at left, and Donald Murray, second from right, fought in the courts
ly with Byrd, he did have a meeting with to help open the doors of the University of Maryland to Blacks. Marshall and Murray stand with several of the University of
Dr. Ronald Bramford, acting dean of Maryland plaintiffs, including Ester McCready, nursing; Linwood Koger; Donald Stewart, medicine; Hiram Whittle, engineer-
Maryland’s graduate school, before the ing; Richard Tyson, pharmacy; Earl Koger; and on the far right is Mitchell, sociology.
legal hearings began. Dr. Bramford
advised Mitchell that the master’s course
Stewart: in sociology would be offered to him,
but not on the College Park campus. He
would have had to pursue his Master’s
‘I expected to be accepted.’ in Baltimore on a part-time basis.
In fact, Dr. Bramford admitted this
fact to NAACP attorneys during a depo-
“Since high school, my goal was to be a dentist. The people who seemed to be the sition about a week prior to the Mitchell
movers and shakers were the dentists,” said Dr. Donald Stewart, M.D., in a conversa- hearing for writ of mandamus that would
tion with Larry S. Gibson, professor of law at the University of Maryland. open the doors of College Park to him.
As he moved from high school to Morgan College in October 1950, Stewart made “The policy now at the University of
a discovery. “I was fascinated by the human body,” he said, which sparked his inter- Maryland is to keep colored students off
est in medicine. Yet, he went forward with his original plans and applied to the the campus at College Park by admitting
University of Maryland School of Dentistry and, like every other Black who had them to courses in the university’s
applied to that school, he received his letter of rejection. Baltimore schools... Dr. Ronald
“I went to the NAACP,” said Dr. Stewart, going directly to Thurgood Marshall to Bramford, acting dean of the graduate
take legal action. “I went to him with the rejection and Marshall said ‘apply to the school, stated that Dr. H.C. Byrd, uni-
medical school,’” explained Dr. Stewart. versity president, gave the instructions to
The University of Maryland sent Stewart a letter that essentially said, “If you drop approve Mr. Mitchell’s application for
your legal actions against the dental school, we’ll accept you in medical school.” the Baltimore school rather than College
Because the medical school was in Baltimore City, perhaps this suggestion was Park. Dr. Byrd, according to the dean,
another attempt by Curly Byrd to preserve the Whiteness of the College Park cam- commented at the time that it was ‘inad-
pus. visable’ for Mr. Mitchell to come to
“After an inordinate wait, I got accepted,” said Dr. Stewart. But when he entered College Park,” wrote the AFRO on Sept.
medical school, he discovered his was not the only face of color in his class. 23, 1950.
“I had all these problems getting in, then, on the first day, much to my surprise, I Mitchell was represented by
notice there’s another African American. [The other African American was Roderick Marshall, somewhat in an advisory posi-
Charles who went on to become a psychiatrist.] They gave me this hard way to get in tion, Donald Murray, the first Black
and on the first day, there were two of us,” said Dr Stewart. Maryland graduate who would later
Much like Ester McCready, who integrated the University of Maryland’s School become legal counsel for the NAACP,
of Nursing in 1951, Dr. Stewart - after decades of practicing medicine in Baltimore - and by Robert Carter another superstar
maintains a dignity and grace that may have rebuked any overt racism during his attorney of his day who actually made
time at the state’s flagship institution of higher education. the final argument in the landmark 1954
“I know some people don’t want to hear this. They want to hear that I went Dr. Donald Stewart, first Brown case. Carter did most of the
through the brimstone and hell experience. But I really did not have a lot of problems Black medical student at the “heavy lifting” in the Mitchell case.
to my satisfaction,” said Dr. Stewart. University of Maryland. Baltimore City Court Judge John
Tucker presided over the hearing and

34 The Road to Brown

 As reported in the 1950 AFRO
initially, that was not good news to the
Mitchell camp.
“He didn’t have a good reputation,” said
Mitchell. In fact, Mitchell had conceded
defeat before the decision was rendered.
He said to Carter, “Judge Tucker is not
our friend, so don’t expect any victory
from him.”
However, Judge Tucker’s opinion was
clear, swift and stunning to many.
“The unequal opportunities available to
the petitioner in this case are more pro-
nounced than those of McLaurin, the stu-
dent who was involved in the aforesaid
Supreme Court case. There, although he
was required to sit in a specified row of
seats in the classroom, he could hear all
that was said by the instructor and other
students. Although he was assigned to a
particular table in the library, he had
access to all books and other contents of
the library that were available to other stu-
dent... These differences in treatment were
nonetheless sufficient to create a denial to
McLaurin of his constitutional right of
equal protection under the laws... Under
the facts in the present case, there is much
greater reason for the impairment of the
petitioner’s ability to study, to engage in
discussions and exchange of views with
other students, and, in general, to learn his
profession than there was for the impair-
ment of McLaurin’s ability to do those
things,” wrote Judge Tucker.
What the judge was saying in essence
was although McLaurin was segregated
from his classmates he at least was permit-
ted to attend classes on the University of
Oklahoma campus. In contrast, Mitchell
was not being allowed to even come to
College Park. Thus, he wouldn’t have had
access to the same education as his White
counterparts.
“It was just like a thunderbolt, his
[Tucker’s] decision,” remembered
Mitchell.
Mitchell also remembered those days of
profound isolation on the College Park
campus of 1950 after his victory allowed
him to enter the school.
“From the entrance of the campus to the
back of the cafeteria it was a long walk.
The cafeteria was a huge place and every
table I passed just went quiet. It was just
very lonely,” said the former congressman.
Despite his solitary experience, howev-
er, Mitchell graduated from the University
of Maryland with his master’s in sociology,
a straight-A average and induction into the
Phi Kappa Phi Society, the school’s highest
honor society. The rest of his career in pub-
lic service is the substance legends are
made of.
As for Curly Byrd, he left the University
of Maryland shortly after Mitchell graduat-
ed and in 1954 ran for governor of
Maryland. The University of Maryland’s
own biographical information about Byrd
suggests he ran on a segregationist plat-
form. He lost.

The Road to Brown 35

On the
brink of
As the road to Brown was coming to an end in 1954, Maryland continued to play a significant role in the battle for school desegre-
gation. In 1952, the integration of Baltimore’s Polytechnic High School’s prestigious “A Course” was the first desegregation victory on the
high school level in the United States. Desegregation decisions in the Western High School and Mergenthaler Vocational Technical High
School cases were on hold as the nation waited for the Supreme Court’s decision in the landmark Brown case.
By Sean Yoes
AFRO Staff Writer
The battle to integrate three
Baltimore high schools took place in
the shadow of the landmark Brown
decision in 1954.
“The Association does not intend
to endorse the principle of segre-
gation; but to fight segregation
by making it so expensive to the
State that there will be a disposi-
tion on the part of the taxpayer
to do away with it.”
— Charles Houston, the NAACP’s
special counsel in a 1934 memorandum.
This strategy was still at the core of
the NAACP’s struggle for equality in
education for Blacks in 1954, 20 years
after Houston wrote about it and four
years after his death in 1950.
Led by Houston and Thurgood
Marshall, the NAACP kept pointing out
the inequality of the nation’s educational
system from the college to the elemen-
tary school level, reducing the law of the
land of separate, but equal to a fallacy.
“Houston believed that the way to
destroy separate was to make it impracti-
cable, make it too expensive and too
troublesome,” says Larry S. Gibson, pro-
fessor of law at the University of
Maryland.
This is where Black America stood at
the threshold of the seminal 1954 Brown
v. Board of Education of Topeka, Kan.,
decision.
For 20 years after the Murray win
36
Brown
over the University of Maryland in 1935,
the first school desegregation victory in
the country, the NAACP chipped away at
separate, but equal. Many of those prece-
dent-setting cases took place in
Maryland, and established the foundation
for the Brown decision.
From 1952 to 1954, while the nation’s
focus shifted to Brown, Maryland still
played an important supporting role in
the final stage of smashing separate, but
equal.
OPENING UP THE “A” COURSE
In 1952, the prestigious A Course at
Polytechnic Institute High School was
the college preparatory gem of the
Baltimore City Public School System. It
included courses that would enable male
high school graduates to enter college
with sophomore status. However, it was
only available to Whites.
Thus, Poly was the perfect target for
the NAACP’s onslaught against segregat-
ed schools. There was clearly nothing
equal to the A Course for Black students,
and this was the dilemma facing the
Baltimore City school board.
The Baltimore branch of the NAACP
assembled 16 elite Black students to
apply for the ninth grade A Course. Once
the Black students applied, city school
superintendent Dr. William H. Lemmel
decided that 10 of them were definitely
qualified and three were probably quali-
fied to enter the A Course. The other
three had already completed the ninth
and 10th grades in junior high school, so
Dr. Lemmel said they probably wouldn’t
benefit from repeating course work just
to qualify for the A Course.
Nevertheless, the school board faced
this question: Would it be possible to cre-
ate an A Course for Black students at
Douglass High School equal to the Poly
A Course?
On Sept. 2, 1952 the city school board
held a special meeting to resolve the mat-
ter. The meeting lasted about four hours
and individuals for and against creating
an A Course at Douglass spoke.
Speaking first, Dr. Lemmel asserted
that the school board could provide the
same curriculum and instruction compa-
rable to the Poly A Course at Douglass.
He conceded, however, that Douglass
was overcrowded. Earlier in the summer
Dr. Lemmel, in a letter, had admitted it
would be very difficult, if not impossible,
to reproduce the specialized equipment
that was such an integral part of Poly’s A
Course at Douglass.
The last speaker in the meeting was
Thurgood Marshall, NAACP counsel,
who was one of the main litigants in the
landmark Brown case. With Charles
Houston as his mentor, Marshall was one
of the architects of the legal strategy that
provided the foundation for the pending
Brown decision.
As a native Baltimorean and as a
graduate of Douglass High School,
Marshall may have felt he had a personal
stake in the case for him to appear at a
school board meeting at the time of the
most important case (Brown) of his
career. He argued that the board simply
had to provide the Black applicants equal
educational opportunities.
He also said the Douglass option was
a “gamble” ... and “a gamble is not what
I consider equality.”
At the end of the meeting, a majority
of the school board - five members -
voted that Douglass could not provide an
equal educational opportunity for the A
Course applicants, so they would be
admitted specifically to Poly’s A Course
curriculum (full integration of Poly came
after the Brown decision). Although the
integration of the Poly A Course did not
come as the result of litigation, it was
significant because it was the first school
desegregation victory in the United States
below the Mason-Dixon line at the high
school level.
It was a different situation for
Baltimore’s Western High School.
Twenty-four Black girls who were “qual-
ified” to enter Western - as determined by
Dr. John Fischer, superintendent of
Baltimore City schools - were denied
admission to the elite school in 1953. The
board’s action - rather, inaction - in the
case of the Western applicants sparked
legal action by the NAACP, but the legal
outcome of the Western case stayed in
limbo until after the Brown decision in
1954.
Western, an all-girl school known as
Poly’s “sister school,” like Poly was a
prestigious all-White high school. Also
like Poly, the main reason Western was
so coveted was its college preparatory
curriculum, which afforded college cred-
its for Western’s graduates, and, again
like in the Poly case, there was no Black
school with a comparable curriculum.
This was important to many Black fami-
lies, who had aspirations for their daugh-
ters to attend college.
One of those families was the family
of W.A.C. Hughes, the NAACP’s lead
counsel in Maryland. His daughter,
Alfreda Hughes, was among the first
Black students admitted to the school in
The Road to Brown
the fall of 1954, after the Brown deci- For obvious reasons, Carl Murphy, ing to “consider” the boys’ applications; the four original applicants were elimi-
sion. publisher of the Afro-American newspa- they were rejected yet again. nated. This forced the NAACP to scram-
“My father was elated, and my moth- pers, had high stakes in Mervo becoming Now the same question was asked that ble for two new applicants, who turned
er. That’s when he made the move to take integrated. There was a significant lack had been asked for Poly and Western: out to be ninth grader Carl Smith, son of
me up to Western. They were all elated. of Black printers and the AFRO papers Can the city provide an educational facil- the AFRO’s personnel manager, Edward
It was a victory won,” remembers had a great demand for newly trained ity equal to Mervo, specifically its print Smith, and James Grove, a 10th grader at
Alfreda Hughes, who says her father took Black printers. training program, for Black students? Dunbar.
her to the school himself to enroll her. Four 10th graders from Dunbar High Despite the machinations of the school The attorneys for the applicants -
But her memories of that first day of School were selected to apply for admis- board (they even nominated Carl Murphy Thurgood Marshall, Jack Greenberg,
school are not good ones. sion to Mervo. They applied on Feb. 3, to sit on a committee charged with the Juanita Mitchell and Donald Murray -
“What I remember was the English 1953, and were rejected outright by the development of Carver to make it equal filed a petition for a writ of mandamus
teacher and French teacher. They didn’t school’s principal. That same day, Lillie to Mervo), the answer was an unequivo- on June 5, 1953.
like us very much. They didn’t like the Mae Jackson, president of the Baltimore cal “no” in the eyes of the NAACP. However, like the Western case, the
fact that we were there,” says Hughes. “I branch of the NAACP, wrote a letter to However, the school board tossed yet proceedings were in legal limbo pending
gave her [English teacher] a smile and John Fischer, then the city’s deputy another curve ball; the four young appli- the outcome of the Brown case in 1954.
she gave me a glare. We were seated near school superintendent, asking that the cants were given an aptitude test to see if Two weeks after the Brown decision, all
the back and I remember her saying, `I 10th graders be admitted to Mervo. Two they were eligible to attend Mervo and, the public schools in Baltimore City were
don’t see why people don’t stay where days later, the school board held a meet- based on the results of the test, three of desegregated.
they belong.’ They didn’t want us to go
to college, evidently.” As reported in the 1953 AFRO
Although her memories of Western are
at best mixed, Hughes fully understands
the importance of the presence of her
Black classmates in 1954 and the work
her father did in the Western case and
many of the cases leading up to the
Brown decision.
“Juanita Mitchell said, `your daddy
was the brains behind our cases. We
never made a move without calling
him,’” recalls Hughes. Mitchell, a politi-
cal activist going back to the early days
of the City-Wide Young People’s Forum,
did the bulk of the work in the Western
case, along with Hughes.
Besides the outstanding high school
education she received at Western, one of
the positive experiences Hughes recalls
didn’t manifest until after she graduated.
“I think I came out of it not fearing
White people. I think it cured me of my
fear of White people. I found out that
people were just people,” said Hughes.
But, 50 years later, she’s still some-
what undecided whether the experience
was worth it. “As far as history is con-
cerned or doing something for the future,
as far as the change for America was See continuation
concerned, it was important. We did that,
but it was a sacrifice. As far as our social on page 38
concerns, sometimes I wish I had stayed
at Douglass,” said Hughes.

OPENING UP ‘MERVO’
In the case of Mergenthaler Vocational
Technical High School (“Mervo”), this
was a school that provided a highly spe-
cialized curriculum only available at that
school, a school only open to Whites
prior to the Brown decision.
But, unlike Poly and Western, Mervo
wasn’t a school with a college preparato-
ry curriculum and was not known for
nurturing the city’s academic elite.
Mervo was a “trade school” that fea-
tured a state-of-the-art printing press.
There was a school for Blacks - Carver
Vocational Technical School - that
offered vocational training similar to
Mervo, but had no print training. Mervo
was touted as having the most advanced
printing program in the country.

The Road to Brown 37

School rejects 4 pupils
This page continues AFRO Archive story from page 37
turned from a 780 mile trip in an effort to
recruit printers, said that the AFRO “has
been short-handed in printers for the last
10 years,” while not one colored printer has
been trained locally.
“I don’t see how we can postpone one
day the admission of colored students to
the Mergenthaler printing course,” he said.
Mr. Thomsen originally advised the
board that on the basis of consultation by
school officials and printing authorities, an
equal course could be provided in a colored
school in six months, including the hiring
of colored or white teachers and the buying
of equipment or moving some from
Mergenthaler.
Because of this, Mr. Thomsen said, the
board was obligated under the City Charter
to maintain separate schools.
Mr. Mitchell however, did not agree.
“This decision today is neither legally
correct or morally justifiable, “ he said.
Mr. Thomsen recommended that a
committee make a study of the printing
course at Mergenthaler and of the possibili-
ty of instituting a similar course at a col-
ored school. The three men he suggested
for the committee were:
Carl Murphy, president of the AFRO-
American Newspapers; Hugo Delscheimer
of the Waverly Press, and William
Schneidereith of the Fidelity Trust
Company.
Applying for admittance to the white
school were James Mosby, 15, 1728 E.
Lanvale St.; David Kaintuck, 15, 1027
Rutland Ave.; Robert Scales, 15, 3029
Walbrook Ave.; and Howard Boone, 18,
1202 Short Ct.
Dunbar High Pupils
The 15-year-old boys are all graduates
of the Dunbar Junior High School, while
Boone is a graduate of the Dunbar Senior
High School seeking a special linotype
course.
They were accompanied to the school,
Greenmount Ave. And Eager Street by
Bowen Jackson, NAACP coordinator, and
Jessie Scales, father of one of the youths.
Upon arrival at the office of the princi-
pal, John G. Edelmann, Mr. Jackson
informed the school head that the four
youths were applying for entrance to
Mergenthaler.

As reported in the 1953 AFRO

Interested Spectators: Nancy Grinage, 14, a 9A student at Dunbar High
School, and her 11-year-old sister Kay, 7-B student at Dunbar, were two
of the interested spectators at the School Board hearing Tuesday. They
are the daughters of Mr. and Mrs. O. G. Grinage.

Mr. Edelmann was also told that the
applicants were all qualified as to the age
and educational requirements.
‘A WHITE SCHOOL!’
The school principal was then quoted as
saying: “Well, Mr. Jackson, as you know
this is a white school and we d not accept
colored entrants.”
He refused to state whether such a poli-
cy was a result of a School Board directive,
however.
Mr. Edelmann concluded the interview
with the reminder that his instructions
were not to accept colored applicants.
When news of the rejection became
known there were rumblings that Mrs.
Ethel J. Hucles, counselor at Dunbar,
faced disciplinary action because she
released names of the qualified pupils to
the NAACP.
SCOFFS AT RUMOR
Houston Jackson, assistant superintend-
ent of schools scoffed at such a possibility.
“As far as I’m concerned there will be no
action against Mrs. Hucles and, if neces-
sary, I will defend her.”
Although the integration of the Poly “A” course did not come as the When asked about the rejection of the
result of litigation, it was significant because it was the first school youths seeking entrance to Mergenthaler,
desegregation victory in the United States below the Mason-Dixon line Mr. Jackson said: “I’ve previously stated
at the high school level. that if Mergenthaler opens up before
Carver and there are courses offered not
available in the public schools, the matter
should be taken before the School Board.
“I did learn that the NAACP had con-
tacted various principals and requested
them to send children to Mergenthaler for
registration.
“That wasn’t proper because no princi-
pal has a right to send pupils to the special
schools such as Mergenthaler.
BLAMES CITY CODE
“The real trouble lies with the City
Code which clearly states that separate
schools must be maintained. The School
Board cannot allow integrated schools
unless the Code is changed.
“The City Solicitor, Mr. Biddison, how-
ever, has determined that the schools must
be equal. Therefore the colored pupils were
admitted to Poly,” Mr. Jackson concluded.
The NAACP has deferred further action
on the Mergenthaler school situation until
a response is received from the letter dis-
patched to Mr. Fischer. Qualified appli-
cants for training at the Towson State
Teachers’ College and pupils desiring train-
ing in printing at the Mergenthaler School
should contact the local NAACP office,
402 Dolphin St.

38 The Road to Brown

Brown 1954:
How the AFRO saw it
The vast majority of Blacks received the Brown decision with elation. Whites in general
received it with trepidation. This is how the AFRO covered the historic event.

Court Rules Segregation Illegal

More of this AFRO Archives on page 40

The Road to Brown 39

AFRO Archive:
Brown decision as
originally reported
Mix Schools continued from page 39

The Decision

40 The Road to Brown

 Baltimore and Washington AFRO May 18, 1954

The Road to Brown 41

 Some would argue that in many ways, the 1954 Brown v. Board of Education of Topeka, Kansas, decision created more
questions than answers in Black America’s quest for equality in education, as well as equal access to all of America.
It may have taken 20 years of hard, methodical legal work to get to the 1954 decision, but 50 years later, all the impli-
cations of Brown are still being sorted out. However, in order to fully understand Brown, it is imperative to know the
whole story. That has been the objective of the Signature Series, to reveal the important but mostly untold story of the 20
years of cases in the State of Maryland that helped to lay the foundation for Brown.
Larry S. Gibson, professor of law at the University of Maryland, whose decades of research made the Signature Series
possible, explained the sum of the matter.

Prof. Larry Gibson:

Notes on Brown
By Sean Yoes
AFRO Staff Writer
cessful case [Murray]. Maryland
provided the lead attorney
organization, not just in major
cities, but in counties and smaller
that they were almost opposites.
Houston was formal, refined and
[Thurgood Marshall]. Maryland subdivisions all over the country,” sophisticated and Marshall was
The thesis of the AFRO’s provided a laboratory in which the said Gibson. boisterous and happy-go-lucky.
Signature Series is that the Brown lead attorney and other attorneys Although the Baltimore County What they had in common was that
decision didn’t happen in a vacuum; learned and trained. And Maryland school desegregation case was tech- they both were willing to work very
Brown was really a process that provided an environment in which nically a loss, there was a phrase hard,” said Gibson.
took 20 years to unfold. some ideas were tried out and suc- gleaned from the appellate decision The 1954 Brown decision that
Larry S. Gibson, professor of law ceeded at the trial level or at the in 1937 and seized upon by the Houston and Marshall worked so
at the University of Maryland, state level. They were precedents to NAACP, “separate can never be hard for – as well as its ongoing
whose 20-plus years of research a certain extent and they had to be equal.” aftermath – will be debated far after
helped make the encouraging to the civil rights com- “Here for the first time a court this 50th anniversary passes.
Signature Series possible, “To understand
spoke candidly about the So, no longer following Plessy, is there a notion that there is Brown, one must under-
“Road to Brown.” stand Plessy v.
“The road to Brown one mankind, there are groups of mankind specified by race Ferguson. The evil of
did several things. One, it Plessy v. Ferguson is
trained a cadre of and government can require them to be treated differently. that it denied the essen-
lawyers. The civil rights tial oneness of humani-
lawyers were developed If you by law separate and segregate, the minority will be ty. The Plessy decision
and became very good said that government
lawyers. The road to inevitably be discriminated against in what it receives, and could classify its citi-
Brown also produced, on zens by race and then
an incremental basis, will receive less. What Brown did was invalidate that notion. treat them differently
building blocks, cases and separately just on
that were building blocks to the munity. They built momentum,” has admitted that certain inequali- the grounds of race.
final decision, and you see them said Gibson. ties are inevitable in a separate “So, no longer following Plessy,
cited in the Brown opinion,” said He pointed to the two cases that school system. It is significant and is there a notion that there is one
Gibson. came right after the seminal Murray valuable to have a court recognize mankind, there are groups of
Several of those important victory that he argues should not be and state that the mere existence of mankind specified by race and gov-
“building-block cases,” including overlooked as far as their impor- a separate system in itself imports ernment can require them to be
the Murray win over the University tance, the Baltimore County school inequality,” said a NAACP press treated differently. If you by law
of Maryland in 1935, the first desegregation case in 1936 and the release in 1937. Marshall and separate and segregate, the minority
school desegregation victory in the teachers’ pay equalization cases Charles Houston were the men pri- will inevitably be discriminated
country, happened in Maryland. from 1936 to 1939. marily responsible for dismantling against in what it receives, and will
But Maryland’s impact on the “The teachers pay cases in the notion of separate, but equal. receive less. What Brown did was
road to Brown was felt beyond Maryland and these other states pro- “Charles Houston and Thurgood invalidate that notion. What Brown
courtroom decisions. vided the framework in which the Marshall some would call the odd did was begin to unravel the Plessy
“Maryland provided the first suc- NAACP became a truly national couple. Their demeanor was such v. Ferguson doctrine,” said Gibson.

42 The Road to Brown


Larry
Gibson
Christopher Jack Hill
Special to the Afro
Larry Gibson is an eloquent story-
teller, no doubt about that.
As a veteran professor, stories are
what he tells almost every day to teach
election law, civil procedure and race
law at the University of Maryland Law
School.
The third Black law professor at the
university, he has been educating
lawyers for more than 30 years, and has
a strong belief in the empowerment of
education.
The stories behind attorneys are the
apparent motivation behind his compi-
lation, “Maryland First Black Lawyers:
1877- 1977,” a multi-panel exhibit that
celebrates the first 100-years of Black
lawyers in Maryland.
“For most of my life, I have been
educating attorneys, and I want people
Our contributors
to know about the major contributions
Black lawyers have made on the nation,
and I want to educate the younger gen-
erations about that historical role.”
But the stories he’s been weaving,
along with Sean Yoes, the stories of
mammoth proportions in the Signature
Series, recount landmark accomplish-
ments streaming from the heart of the
civil rights movement.
Gibson and Yoes published the
Signature Series in 10 parts over the
course of six months.
“I just thought enough time had
passed that the younger generation did-
n’t know the history. It’s important to
recognize people who made valuable
contributions,” Gibson said.
“I particularly wanted to emphasize
some of the unknown heroes, lawyers
and plaintiffs who made great sacri-
fices.”
He also wanted to show “the central
role the AFRO played in the struggle
for justice through the years.”
And that’s where the professor
began his research in 1981, looking
through the Afro-American newspapers’
archives.
Forever the student, Gibson holds
degrees from Howard University in
Washington and Columbia University
in New York.
A political strategist largely respon-
sible for the election of Kurt Schmoke,
Baltimore’s first African-American
mayor, Professor Gibson also served as
state chairman for the 1992
Clinton/Gore presidential campaign.
Gibson, who has spent much of his
career engaged in civil rights cases, He has a deep love for education and
leading campaigns and taking on high- teaching the younger generation about
profile clients, such as members of the the struggle for equality.
Black Panther Party, recalls days of “I try to speak directly to the hearts
leading school protests and taking cases of my students and to me, education
to challenge housing discrimination. has been most effective,” said Gibson.

Sean
Yoes Christopher Jack Hill
Special to the AFRO

For years, AFRO staff writer

Sean Yoes worked in different areas
of media in Los Angeles, Detroit
and Baltimore. He was a television
news producer and writer, a radio
producer and radio talk-show host,
as well as a documentary filmmaker.
But perhaps his most enduring pas-
sion in media has been his work
with the Baltimore Afro-American
newspaper.
His love for journalism was
sparked at Walbrook High School in
the early ‘80s, working on the
school’s newspaper, The
Communicator.
“They gave me the opportunity to
say what I wanted to say, pretty
much without being censored. We
had one of the best journalism pro-
grams in the city, we had the first
advanced-placement English class in
the city. Walbrook really gave me
my foundation as a writer,” said
Yoes.
That foundation helped him get
his first glimpse into the writing
profession when he traveled to Los
Angeles in 1988 and wrote a script
for the NBC sitcom, “A Diff’rent
World,” which garnered serious
attention from the show’s executive
producer, Thad Mumford.
However, almost a year later, and
on the strength of that script, Yoes,
at 23, was given his first profession-
al shot as a writer by the late Bob
Matthews, the AFRO’s editor at the
time.
Between his first stint with the
AFRO in 1989 and his current time
with the paper, Yoes won a National
Newspaper Publisher’s Association
award for his reporting on the plight
of the Black farmer in America in
2000, as well as a Maryland-
Delaware-D.C. Press Association
award in 2004 for his reporting on
Essie Mae Washington, the Black
daughter of the late Sen. Strom
Thurmond.
But, he says, the AFRO’s
Signature Series has been his most
challenging and rewarding work yet.
“It was just really important for
me to get the stories right. First of
all, many of the plaintiffs in the dif-
ferent cases are still alive. They
lived the experience and I needed to
respect that fully. Then, you know, a
lot of people outside of Maryland
don’t know what an important role
this state, this newspaper played in
making Brown possible. I didn’t
know, so I got an education.”
That education came as a result
of Larry Gibson’s 20-plus years of
research on Black lawyers.
“This is a guy who has dedicated
a lot of his life, a lot of his time to
these stories and it is clear he has a
lot of reverence for these men and
women who put their lives on the
line. Initially, we were kind of
thrown together, but the working
relationship clicked straight away
and it’s evolved into a friendship,”
said Yoes.
Gibson and Yoes will work on the
next phase of the Signature Series in
the fall of 2004.

The Road to Brown 43

 Thurgood Marshall

Thurgood Marshall may become U.S. judge, Oct. 1, 1949

44 The Road to Brown
 AFRO photo by Layne
Prince Hall Shriners made their annual donation of over $3,000 to the
NAACP Legal Defense and Aid Fund. From left are: the Rev. David Licor-
ish, assis­tant pastor of Abyssinian Baptist Church; Leon Berry, Imperial
Deputy of New York State; Charles Dargan, Imperial Oriental Guide;
Thurgood Mar­shall who received the donation; Clifford J. Storey, Illus-
trious Potentate of Medina Temple No. 19; L. Joseph Overton, Imperial
Deputy-at-Large, and Baxter F. Jackson, public relations director of the
Grand Lodge.
While chief attorney for the NAACP, Thurgood Marshall received a $936 check from
Dela Given of the New York chapter of the National Association of Business and Pro-
fessional Women’s Club Inc. as their contribution and support of the NAACP Legal
Defense and Educational Fund. Chapter Chairman Eva Flanders and other members
look on.

At dedication of Howard University’s new School of Law building, Thur-

good Marshall, (left) director-counsel of the NAACP’s Legal Defense and
Educational Fund, chats with Dean George M. Johnson of the law school.
Mr. Marshall, a graduate of Howard’s law school, was the dedication
speaker.

October 25, 1953, Thurgood and lawyers

Thurgood Marshall, NAACP attorney, standing, who argued the Sipuel

Between sessions, Dr. J. F. Drake, president, Alabama A&M College (left); Dr. W. S. Davis,
president, Tennessee State University; Thurgood Marshall, NAACP legal counselor and
Dr. Benjamin B. Mays, president, Morehouse College, chat.
case before the Supreme Court last week, checks last-minute details
with Frank Reeves, left and Spottswood Robinson 3rd, prior to making
argument. Marshall, who also sponsored Reeves’ admission to the
Supreme Court on Thursday, asked for the end of separate education
and the admission of Ada L. Sipuel to the Oklahoma University Law
School now.

The Road to Brown 45

 Thurgood Marshall was sworn in today as judge of the U.S. Court of Appeals,
2nd Circuit. Photo shows Mr. Marshall seated in the judge’s chair with his sons,
John 3, (left), and Thurgood Jr., 5. His wife, Cecilia completes the picture.

1962 Judge Thurgood Marshall Mr. and Mrs. Thurgood Marshall

46 The Road to Brown

 Thurgood Marshall, Marsh 3, 1951

Chief NAACP counsel, Baltimore-born Thurgood Marshall, accepts the

2-foot high achievement trophy presented when he spoke at the Bal-
timore NAACP membership meeting at Douglas Memorial Church. The
award was presented by Lillie M. Jackson, local branch president since
1935, when Marshall was the agency’s legal advisor.

Col. Darwin D. Martin and Thurgood Marshall in Tokyo en route to Korea.

WASHINGTON - Supreme Court Justice Thurgood Marshall temporarily blocked

the scheduled execution of Fla. John Spenkelink. Thurgood Marshall 1946

The Road to Brown 47

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