Desegregation

TOWSON -- The Baltimore County school board has adopted a voluntary desegregation plan as a prerequisite to applying for a $10 million federal grant that would be used for four of next year's new magnet school programs.The resolution adopted at Tuesday night's board meeting concedes that the county has schools with minority enrollments exceeding 50 percent of the student body and that magnet schools have been effective in reducing such isolation voluntarily. The three-year grant would be used for programs at the Halstead Academy, now Hillendale Elementary; Loch Raven and Deer Park middle schools; and Southwest Academy at Johnnycake Middle School.

Anthony K. Konstant, a civil rights advocate and restaurateur who led the way in desegregating restaurants on U.S. 40 in northeast Maryland and later owned the landmark Williamsburg Inn in White Marsh for many years, died Friday of heart failure at Oak Crest Village in Parkville. The former White Marsh resident was 87. The son of Greek immigrant restaurateurs, Mr. Konstant was born in Grand Rapids, Mich., and moved in the 1930s with his parents to Hollins Street in Southwest Baltimore, and then to Bel Air. He was a 1941 graduate of Bel Air High School and enlisted in the Navy during World War II, where he was a gunner's mate and participated in the invasion of the Philippines and Okinawa and in the occupation of Japan.

Federal civil rights officials inspected several Baltimore-area colleges last week, the first clear indication in two years that the U.S. Education Department's Office for Civil Rights might be approaching a decision on whether Maryland has satisfied its obligations under a five-year desegregation plan that ended in 2005. Maryland is one of only seven states that have not yet fulfilled federal goals of eliminating the vestiges of separate public college systems for black and white students.

The new union contract Baltimore City teachers are voting on Wednesday and Thursday has the potential to radically change the nature of public education not only for city schoolchildren but for students in school districts across the state. It would immediately thrust Baltimore into the forefront of school reform efforts nationally and provide a model for others to emulate that represents a bold departure from the past. A success of that magnitude here would force neighboring jurisdictions to adopt similar changes or risk a brain drain of talented teachers, who would flock to Baltimore for higher salaries and the chance to really make a difference in young people's lives.

WASHINGTON -- State universities that once were segregated by race -- like Maryland's -- could wind up with a broader duty to wipe out lingering effects of their past bias, if hints emerging at a Supreme Court hearing yesterday are translated into a decision.Three justices whose votes may control the outcome of a historic test case on college desegregation asked questions that implied strong skepticism of the idea that the Constitution would be satisfied if colleges simply embraced race neutrality as a policy and stopped with that.

Anthony K. Konstant, a civil rights advocate and restaurateur who led the way in desegregating restaurants on U.S. 40 in northeast Maryland and later owned the landmark Williamsburg Inn in White Marsh for many years, died Friday of heart failure at Oak Crest Village in Parkville. The former White Marsh resident was 87. The son of Greek immigrant restaurateurs, Mr. Konstant was born in Grand Rapids, Mich., and moved in the 1930s with his parents to Hollins Street in Southwest Baltimore, and then to Bel Air. He was a 1941 graduate of Bel Air High School and enlisted in the Navy during World War II, where he was a gunner's mate and participated in the invasion of the Philippines and Okinawa and in the occupation of Japan.

In 1990, Columbia resident M. Hillery Scavo wrote a thesis about Leola May Moore Dorsey for her B. A. degree in Women's Studies in at UMBC. Dorsey, 83, a devout Christian and civil rights activist, was born in Guilford and continues to live there. This is an excerpt from the unpublished thesis. In May of 1947, Leola Dorsey became president of the newly formed (Howard County) chapter of the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People. The NAACP was organized in New York City in 1909, and the first attempt to form a chapter in Howard County in 1944 failed ... [according to "History of Blacks in Howard County, Maryland," by Cornelison, A. H., Craft, S. E., and Price, L., published in 1986 by the NAACP]

Desegregation On March 12, 1963 - nearly nine years after the U.S. Supreme Court's landmark school desegregation ruling in Brown v. Board of Education - the Howard County school board unanimously approved this regulation: "That the twelfth grade of the Public Schools of Howard County be desegregated with the opening of the 1963 fall school term." [Source: Board of Education proceedings, as quoted in History of Blacks in Howard County, by Alice Cornelison, Silas E. Craft Sr. and Lillie Price.

WASHINGTON -- Four decades after ordering an end to racial segregation of public schools, the Supreme Court reached one of the last unsettled issues yesterday. It took up the question of whether students must actually do better in school before desegregation can be considered successful.The answer will affect school desegregation in Prince George's County, and in scores of cities and counties across the nation.At a hearing yesterday on a Kansas City, Mo., case, Justice Stephen G. Breyer suggested that courts perhaps should be free to ask if students can read as a test of "whether desegregation works."

American public schools are becoming increasingly separate and unequal, and last week's Supreme Court decision invalidating desegregation plans in Seattle and Louisville, Ky., will hasten this process. Three-quarters of African-American and Latino schoolchildren attend predominantly minority schools, and white children are even more likely to attend racially isolated schools. School districts across the country have adopted plans to decrease segregation, and many of these plans are now vulnerable to legal challenge.

Louise Pearl "Cavi" Cavagnaro, a former World War II Army nurse and longtime Johns Hopkins Hospital administrator who helped end racial segregation at the East Baltimore hospital, died Thursday from complications of dementia at Roland Park Place. She was 90. Miss Cavagnaro, the daughter of Italian immigrant parents, was born and raised in Portland, Ore., where she graduated in 1937 from Franklin High School. After earning her nursing degree from Oregon Health Services University — now part of the University of Oregon — she enlisted in the Army in 1943.

Philip L. Brown Sr., an educator and civil rights pioneer whose efforts in Anne Arundel County helped lay the groundwork for the desegregation of the nation's public schools, died Friday at his home in Annapolis, according to family members. He was 100. Mr. Brown, who worked as a teacher and administrator in the county schools for more than 40 years, was part of a lawsuit pushing for equal pay for African-American teachers in Anne Arundel. Thurgood Marshall, then an attorney for the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People, represented the black teachers and won the case in federal court in Baltimore in 1940.

Federal civil rights officials inspected several Baltimore-area colleges last week, the first clear indication in two years that the U.S. Education Department's Office for Civil Rights might be approaching a decision on whether Maryland has satisfied its obligations under a five-year desegregation plan that ended in 2005. Maryland is one of only seven states that have not yet fulfilled federal goals of eliminating the vestiges of separate public college systems for black and white students.

Robert C. Rice, the superintendent of the Anne Arundel County schools in the mid-1980s who also served in District of Columbia and state of Maryland posts, died of lung transplant complications Saturday at University of Maryland Medical Center. The Arnold resident was 69. Dr. Rice received media attention in 1984 - including an appearance on Good Morning America - when he defended the need for a three-year-old child with herpes to attend a preschool program. Born in Nevenville, Iowa, he earned his bachelor's and master's degrees at the University of Northern Iowa and a doctorate in education at Iowa State University.

American public schools are becoming increasingly separate and unequal, and last week's Supreme Court decision invalidating desegregation plans in Seattle and Louisville, Ky., will hasten this process. Three-quarters of African-American and Latino schoolchildren attend predominantly minority schools, and white children are even more likely to attend racially isolated schools. School districts across the country have adopted plans to decrease segregation, and many of these plans are now vulnerable to legal challenge.

The vote that would change the course of education in Baltimore - and bring about a profound shift in society - took only 45 seconds and involved little discussion, as Walter Sondheim Jr. remembered it. In 1954, Baltimore's school district was the first south of the Mason-Dixon line to integrate its schools, and the decision came with far fewer protests and less violence than it did in many places. Over a half-century, Mr. Sondheim would serve on various civic boards and become an influential force in the redevelopment of downtown Baltimore.

FRIDAY'S 37th anniversary of the Supreme Court's histori Brown decision, which declared racial segregation unconstitutional in the public schools, will be observed with very scant attention, hoopla or ceremonial proclamations and speeches.As it does in 1991, the Brown decision in 1954 caused national ambivalence and apprehension. In fact, the decision reflected a kind of unsettling duality insofar as black and white citizens were concerned.Blacks greeted the ruling, by and large, with jubilation and euphoria; whites, especially in the South, greeted it with brooding unease and incredulity.

Arguing that Maryland has failed to desegregate its colleges and universities, an advocacy group with ties to Morgan State University filed a lawsuit yesterday demanding the dismantling of several new academic programs at traditionally white campuses, including a joint MBA program at Towson University and the University of Baltimore. The Coalition for Equity and Excellence in Maryland Higher Education is requesting a court order that will mandate parity in "all facets of ... operations and programs" between the state's four historically black campuses and their traditionally white counterparts.