future take we need to document all of these thins. remember, the people that were interviewed for this project were born most of them in the 1890s. we only had one chance in the 1970s to get these people people. and in oral history, you interview in the now about the then. there's no other chance to interview these people. we could interview maybe today, but we have no other chance to do that. we have to take a cue that we have do these kinds of things for the struggles still going on today and collecting that for the future.

>> i was going to speak more to the importance of archives really both photographic and paper. you know, i've always been a huge fan of libraries and archives and archivists really. but i've really come to appreciate how important it is in the last few week s when i undertook this book about pennsylvania avenue and back in the day, but beginning in 1950, and the trouble with beginning at any point is that you need context for what came before that point in time, which is already 60 some years ago. so things like these oral will histories are invaluable as well as things like the afro archive

especially considering that the white press did not cover the black community at all. which is disgraceful, but a sign of those times. but in trying to develop -- to put those times in context in the new century, there are only so many chances you have to talk to people. people get old. they suffer from dementia. they die. there are people you can't talk to anymore about what it was like in the '40s or what it was like running, you know, running a candidate against the pollak

machine in the pif'50s. i was lucky must have to hold on to my own notes from years ago talking to people. but it is astonishing to me how -- well, i'll just say -- i'm not sure i'm making my point here, but i'm trying to underscore the importance of in answering that question just to me how important it is just as a reader and trying to understand where we are now based on what we've seen in the past. >> i've been reflecting on the role of oral history. i've been talking a lot about the photographs.

but actually the kelvin jackson collection is really important for this reason. we had a peculiar race relation situation here in baltimore. the protest you could photograph, but the actual situation that was being protested was different than further south. for example, we didn't have signs that said white and black. it must have been strange to a black person who came to baltimore from some other place how they figured out what they could or could not do. because we knew because we were baltimoreans and it was a strange mixture of things not really photographicable. i mean, ford theater, blacks

couldn't sit downstairs, but at lyric, there was no discrimination in the seating, but blacks couldn't perform at the lyric. the parks, there weren't sign, but everybody knew the this was the white tennis court, this was the black tennis court. and these were enforced. people were arrested for attempting to play tennis together in the park. so there are aspects of the situation that can only be captured by interviews because it was not photographable. there was no law, for example, in 1935, unlike at the university of maryland unlike many state, there were statutes. further south that said blacks can't go to this university. it was some unwritten policy

certainly no law. and so the oral history is important to fill in what cannot be photographed. so we really need both and what we have here at the historical society is both. [ applause ] >> i always thought it was a shame not to have had a series of interviews with the people that opposed the civil rights movement. and the reason i think that would have been important is because quite frankly, i think it would have made the case of why civil rights reform should have you willy occurred. but i think we should have had a 1976 perspective of the other side.occurred. but i think we should have had a 1976 perspective of the other side. just so we had the dichotomy there. but i think it would have been really supportive of the civil rights movement to have had

that. >> i personally want to thank our panel this evening. and we are going to open up questions at this point. hopefully someone has a roving microphone. and one of the things that i want us to -- if you don't mind, tell us what you're going to take away from this this evening. in addition to your question. because we sit here, you've got all these experts and they talk for two hours and you nerve kyow what it was that they said was important. did we waste your time this evening. so i see one and we'll go one, two, three. >> is the mike on? okay. good evening, everyone. i would like to take this opportunity to introduce to everyone here the son of the man who owned the reed's drug store

and this is mr. arthur natens. would you like to say something? >> i'm not adversarial, but i certainly have been put on the spot. thank you very much. actually i heard about this meeting on radio announcement and i was concerned because my interest was what was going to happen to our old number one store at howard and lebsing ton, which i did manage in the '70s, by the way. but that was the main reason for me to come here. but in discussions, the topic came up, well, what was the feeling at that time from the family. well, i was in grade school, so i really didn't know a whole lot about what was going on. however, in conversations, and it was my grandfather who was

chairman of the board and president at the time, and the incidents that occurred at howard and lexington, the way i understand it was it wasn't really an activist movement at the time. it was some folks who were cold and wanted something to drink, so they came into the store to get those needs fulfilled. and there was some i won't say conflict, but there was some disagreement going on. and to further that, there was follow-up activity in the northwood area which was very close to the home of morgan university which naturally would have a lot of the students come there for service. and my grandfather dealt with

this problem. and it wasn't individual stores. they all had individual managers. but it was an organized corporation so they did take orders from the central headquarters. my grandfather very liberally, i guess, said even though wasn't popular at the time, but he was willing to make that step to open it up, open the fountains up. and wasn't just those two stores, it was all -- i think at the time we had 57 stores, to open it up to the service. and the employees of the stores, multi-cultural, were very supportive of that action and to the point it had ramifications

later when organizations tried to unionize reed's and at that time, i was working for the company and i was exposed to a lot of the pressures of union organization and the fact that unions could promise anything but -- stood up for management and voted against the union. part of that is because of the responsibility of management to the employees and a reciprocal employee to management. and in those days reed's was doing very well, they gave the employees increases every six months, they had a pension plan, they had a retirement package. so we could hire single parents,

pay them a wage that they could survive on, and progress to a point where they retired. now, without getting in to any other discussion further than that, the company that replaced reed's doesn't believe in all that. and i apologize for that, but i have no control over that. there was another point i wanted to make. but in general, it all boils down to what is fair and equitable and the way you treat other people. and if you treat them fairly, they'll treat you fairly back. i don't want to take up anymore time. thank you for putting me on the spot. [ applause ] >> i just want to make a comment to you on that.

i know that a large number and perhaps all desegregated, at this point i didn't even know why. i lived in the govins area. there was a reed's there. i knew nothing about the demonstration. this is like 1956, '57. i'm going to baltimore city college. what i did know -- didn't know how it had happened. was the only place in the area drug store where i could get -- where i could sit at the soda fountain was reed's. i walked out of my block and at the corner there was a drug store owned by a classmate of mine and i couldn't eat there. and then i caught the number eight street car, got off at 33rd street and there was another reed's in that area. it was also the absolute only

place at a soda fountain. you never knew that your slogan had a special meaning. we knew we could run right to reed's. it was literally true. i knew nothing about the demonstrations. didn't know how that occurred. so this is in the '56, your demonstrations were in '55, by '56, '57, i graduated in '60. so i ran right to reed's. >> i just want to say that it was in the 1960s before the reed's in northwood opened its doors right? >> not reed's .reed's in northwood opened in '55. everything in --

>> no, they didn't. and i think will ththis is the f oral history. because if you go through it, you know what the real facts are. i had to -- all of us who lived in the city and wanted to get to school, we had to catch the bus, the number 3, to ride out to morgan. and we got off the bus at northwood and walked down to the school because there was no public transportation down to the school. so for four years, you pretty much know where you can go and where you can't go and what's going on. and you have friends who live on campus and they can tell you

what's going on after school closes and where they can go and where they cannot go. i think that when i said to you -- the audience about the individual managers, i think it's maybe what happens in lots of corporations if nobody monitor, nobody really know what's going on. but we know the reed's that would not serve and there were a number of them because we rode the buses and the street cars to get to school every day. and they weren't open. many of them weren't open until the late '50s. and i guess they didn'ted need to be because many places where they were, they had so few blacks living because of segregated housing. it didn't matter. they didn't have to change anything because they didn't

have to worry about a challenge. but in places where there was the possibility tof a challenge you got stores that were open. so there's a social cultural aspect to everything that goes on. and the desegregation law came later. and at that time it was against the law to go into eating establishments if you were black. could y you could not go in to they will. if you did and the owner call, could you arrested. and students were arrested for trying to get into every place. the whole nine yards. the thing that was confusing to us was that many of the people who owned those stores especially if they were from europe, had faced similar kinds

of situations themselves in terms of being discriminated against. and they came here and instead of having a natural sympathy for what blacks were going through, they picked up what whites had put out there and they segregated, as well. and just like it took only one group of us to stop it and reverse it the other way, the same thing could have happened a long time ago in any of those situations if you had whites who were so inclined to do so. but they weren't. it didn't power them. they left that back in europe. they didn't see it as a human right.them. they left that back in europe. they didn't see it as a human right. they just saw it as a difference in the way the government made its laws and enforced them. and the laws were enfonsed.

many people got arrested trying to break down culture barrier, racial barriers. and it didn't happen without a lot of protests. there was a time at morgan when almost everybody, and those of us who were seniors were always chastiseded because we risked not being able to graduate if we got locked. but there was a time who were very few students on campus who were not involved in some kind of civil rights protest in almost every area you could think of. not just eating establishments. clothing stores, whatever. i can remember my cousin who gave back his olympic statue because he won the olympics track and he said the united states almost just about

disowned him. so he graduated in 1955 and said he didn't want it. because the country didn't care. nobody cared. and nobody stood up for him except the blackstudents. so, it was pervasive in all parts of the culture. prejudice was there and prejudice was accepted and was not fought against for a long, long time. not in baltimore. [ applause ] >> i first want to thank the maryland historical society for having this today. dr. hicks, we stand on your shoulders. i will say we are one generation away from losing this history. we are one generation away. we have no venue in the city of baltimore that houses the

information that needs to be housed somewhere. you know, there are still more stories that have not been told because our major newspapers weren't covering it. we haven't talked about the irene morgan situation who was 11 years before rosa parks. we haven't discussed that. we haven't discussed the fact that we had emma mccreary at the university of maryland. we haven't talked about the blacks down the street. louise kerr. we need a venue to house the pictures and the oral history because we know in the civil rights field that baltimore, than like any other city in america, when you look at litigation, legislation and leaders, we are second to none, but it is captured nowhere. we need a venue.

many of us contend it should be at read's. it should be at read's. we say we commend the maryland historical society for having this. we hope and pray those gathered here this evening would join us, president of the southern christian leadership conference and past naacp president. i now represent reverend sharpton. i'm saying we need to house and document these before we lose them. we are only one generation away from losing it. thank you. [ applause ] >> i think dr. cheatham knows that i want read's used for a worthwhile purpose. i don't want it to be a strip club or whatever they can stick in there to apiece the black community. i want it and the white

community wants it because they are fighting just as hard. i think we have to do a lot of footwork. we need to sit down and gather the souls who are believers when it comes to turning it into a museum. there is a cost involved. we have to get a steady stream of money. so once we get it done, we can keep it. it can remain. we know the stories. we read the "new york times" write up about the museums that are struggling. those that had to close. we know what the museum is here. i think there is a way to do anything that you make up your mind and you want to do. but we have to figure out, citizens of baltimore, not just the african-american community, because the information is important to everybody in the

city. and anybody who comes here, tourists who come to the city, we have to figure out a way to get the money flowing. every time i talked to city hall, they say we don't have any money. i always go back and say where did you get the money to build the dog park? aren't we at least as important as the dog park you built? i don't want to get too sarcastic, but it's true. that takes foot soldiers to find that money from the city, from private entities and from the state legislators who throw away money for a lot of things. all that money they put into the grand prix, if they just given us half of it, we could have done wonders. so, if you believe in that, if you want to come into the fold,

you've got to help find a way to make it financially feasible and s substanible. >> i want to make sure we recognize her. is esther here? [ applause ] >> she, of course, desegregated the university of maryland nursing school in '48. >> look, we're going to -- i don't know. >> not only the school of nursing, but the case with thurgood marshall and charles houston opened the school of medicine and dentistry and the

under graduate program in college park. [ applause ] >> two questions. this gentleman and i see a lady here in the front. >> this may be odd, but dr. scott, this question was kind of like what was the civil rights movement. you suggested that historians now go back and starting at reconstruction and afterwards looking forward. dr. gibson here suggested there was a modern civil rights movement that stretched from at least here in maryland from '35 to '68. i always have trouble because we

keep calling it civil rights movement. and it seems to be inclusive of a lot of things. it wasn't exactly civil rights. i guess civil rights was kind of a legal question of your rights under the constitution as citizens. so what would be -- what could you think of as a better terminology to take this whole period from reconstruction on that would say it? i think people get confused and disassociated with things. >> at the beginning of the course a few weeks ago, we spent 45 minutes to figure that out before we read any text or anything like that. there is a difference between what historians decided to call

the movement versus the people who participated in it. we can look at reconstruction and somebody in baltimore says it starts at it time period and ends at this time period. some folks and historians and activists have played around with the modern freedom struggle. just looking at the issue of freedom around the period of enslavement. it is a huge term that people want to put a catch-all phrase. it depends on what you are talking about. when i was asked to be on the panel, maryland and civil rights. i knew they were talking about african-american struggles within the united states. you have to have that type of label and definition to figure out the cases and figure out the location and region. then a broader question talking about african-american history and struggle for rights in

maryland, i would have gone all the way back to 1664. it just depends on the person asking the question and the people who are writing the history. there is that history and we talked about that earlier. history depends on who writes it. there is a lot of civil rights happening outside of '35 or '68 or reconstruction with the president. it depends on what you mean when you say civil rights. >> bob, i want to be clear. i gave the dates. up until 1935, percy versus ferguson defined racial relations in the country. separate, but not really equal. in 1935 with the donald gaines case was the first chink in that armor of percy versus