ABSTRACT
I heard about the Supreme Court’s decision in Brown v. Board of Education while listening to the car radio from the back seat of my father’s 1949 Studebaker. I had just turned eleven, and was about to finish the sixth grade at a legally segregated elementary school in Baltimore. At the time, I thought that the Court’s decision would take effect almost immediately. It was, after all, Supreme. I was unaware that the Justices would hold the Brown case over for a year so that they could consider arguments about its implementation. The Baltimore Board of School Commissioners, however, acted more quickly than the Court. Three days after the announcement of the Brown decision, Board members agreed to confer with local civil rights leaders, and two weeks later voted unanimously to desegregate the city’s schools when they reopened in September 1954. A week later, the Board members voted, again unanimously, to approve the desegregation plan that the School Superintendent had drawn up at their direction.1 My expectations about the speed of the integration process turned out to be roughly accurate. In September, I would be attending a racially integrated, citywide junior high school named, ironically, the Robert E. Lee School.
