Great Mills HS pioneers recall slow integration

Film explores desegregation here

Wednesday, June 24, 2009

St. Mary's College of Maryland professor Merideth Taylor created a documentary to give voice to some that experienced the desegregation of the schools in the late 1950s through the early 1970s. Some of those who witnessed the integration of the school first hand spoke during a panel discussion after a premiere showing of "With All Deliberate Speed: One High School's Story" last week at Great Mills High School.

Before desegregation, George Washington Carver served African-Americans and Great Mills was for whites. Once school systems were required to desegregate after the 1954 Supreme Court ruling Brown v. Board of Education and a ruling a year later that demanded schools desegregate "with all deliberate speed," St. Mary's began to make plans that met with resistance from some in the county.

It was not until Joan and Conrad Groves' parents filed suit in 1958 that the first black students actually entered the white public schools.

Joan Groves Briscoe said Thursday evening at the panel discussion that she had received a phone call earlier that day from a former classmate who apologized for the way Briscoe and her brother were treated that year. It was not so much what the classmate did, but what she did not do, including welcoming the black students.

"She never once took the time to ask me if I wanted to be a cheerleader, if I wanted to participate in activities," Briscoe said.

Albie Norris, another former classmate of Briscoe, attended the documentary premier and spoke about his time growing up, including playing integrated sports outside of school well before schools were integrated.

He said he was "curious" at the start of the 1958 school year when he heard black students would be at Great Mills High, "But it didn't bother me whatsoever."

Still, he took the reunion moment to speak to Briscoe.

"I want to say something I didn't say 50 years ago. Joan, welcome to Great Mills High School," Norris said.

While the 1958-1959 school year came and went without any serious violence, desegregation in St. Mary's County stalled for the next few years. By the mid-1960s the "deliberate speed" finally caught up in St. Mary's and larger numbers of black students enrolled in Great Mills.

Stuart Newkirk said that while his time at the school was hard and filled him with hatred, now that he can look back on it, "I think it better prepared me for the real world."

"I learned the pain of Stuart [Newkirk], something I was unaware of," Jane Sypher said, even though her family was friends with the Newkirk family. Sypher said that people should be aware of "the injustice that was done and also the strides that have been made."

"We all kind of went through the same thing, but we all walked away with different feelings" from the desegregation of the school, said Stuart Newkirk.

Taylor agreed, saying, "Partly, [the contrasting perspective] is because of the nature of oral histories and memory. People remember things differently because of the values they place on those memories. For some it was a positive time, and they were not always aware how different it was for others who had a more negative experience."

Alonzo Gaskin and others on the panel encouraged people of all ages to watch the film "to see it and understand what it really is." Gaskin praised some of the school's former administrators and teachers, including Mike Moses, a principal at the school during the 1960s, for helping to keep the peace between blacks and whites.

"In many instances we have accepted the status quo … and we have not taken our own initiative to go forward," Gaskin said.

Dolores Fleming, a former St. Mary's public school educator, said that something happens in the latter grades of elementary school that creates an education gap between many black students and their white peers.

"We desegregated St. Mary's County public schools, we have not integrated" the schools, Fleming said.

Superintendent Michael Martirano said that students at Great Mills say "the strength of this school is based on diversity." He said the documentary will become part of St. Mary's public schools' curriculum to be viewed by students.

Later during the discussion, after Martirano left, Janice Walthour, a former educator, said that the documentary along with other African-American history materials and programs need to be actually shown to and used by students, not just placed in the curriculum.

"You can lead a horse to water, but can you make him drink?" Walthour said.

The documentary is based on 18 oral histories drawn from more than 30 interviews with former teachers, administrators and students collected by Taylor with the assistance of students and teachers at Great Mills.

"We found that many students at Great Mills are unaware that their schools were ever segregated," Taylor said. "And it may surprise even older folks to learn or remember how segregated the county once was."

To mark the 50th anniversary of the landmark Brown v. Board of Education Supreme Court ruling, in the spring of 2004 Great Mills students who had helped with these interviews presented an original theatrical work based on the oral histories.

The documentary, which will be available at public libraries, grew from there. 

"In the due process of time, some of them have caught on what it really was all about," Briscoe said, relieved that the story has been documented for future generations.

jyeatman@somdnews.com