so i'm going to ask if he could describe the politics of the city of baltimore going to civil rights era and sort of what relationship that it had to the movement itself. >> i was going to leave -- i never thought about it in those terms. although i've seen it defined in any number of ways, in owe 55, owe 58, and so forth. i guess i go back in my mind to at least reconstruction from a political standpoint and in baltimore is 1890 when the first blacks and councilman was elected, harry cummings, the first of six republican councilman who sat through 1931.

harry cummings, it shows there are some black elected official in maryland that distinction belongs in aannapolis and any way, i that being said, i wanted to, i'm not really a historian or a speaker which is why i make my living writing, i guess. but i guess i wanted to speak a little bit about the jackson collection and as it relates to politics. because i first became -- i was a reporter for the sun and i first became aware as a jackson collection maybe 20 years ago,

probably at least 20 years ago when i discovered when i was on a geneological bender here, i discovered that they had a transcript of an interview of a gentleman by the name of william lloyd adams. also known as little willy adams. that name may ring a bell with some of you. he just passed away last year at 97. he was -- it's funny how that will change things, change people's recollection of things. he was a multi, multimillionaire. he was a developer, real estate, magnet, if you will. and a political power from probably the -- i would say the

'40 right on through the '80s, the mid-'80s. i've always been fascinated by him i first heard about him, actually, when i was in high school, like 40 years ago. so when this was a gold mine that i discovered in this transcript of this interview and he touches on many of the campaigns that he had an involvement with. he doesn't talk about all of his relationships. there are many. he clearly understood the importance of politics. doing business and making advances for the -- i would not call him a civil rights icon by

any means. he's recently sort of been elevated a bit. he was a shutdown businessman, a very gentle man. he started literally in the cotton fields of north carolina and came to baltimore when he was 15. he started in east baltimore and met a couple of people and became involved in the numbers business and he came very, very successful -- more than a number's runner, eventually because of the seller who proceeded him who they had wanted for the democratic party. tom smith was often times the -- a little bit ofç dismeaning his

people, the black community of baltimore. i guess i want to sort of -- with that in mind, i'm not sure what my time looks like. i wanted to jump ahead to -- from the time of tom smith to mr. adams in 1950 and at this point he has been -- he's raised a lot of money for a lot of democratic candidates and he has partnered in the name of loyal randolph in baltimore, kind of his front man and democratic leader, sort of took the mantel

from from tom smith. and randolph became very friendly and a member of the legislature for a brief period and in 1946 talked her into performing what became something known as the colored women's democratic forum and she had a spinoff later which i'm sure we'll get to. that group was critical in registering black voters in baltimore in the fourth district which is the harry cummings district which was the greatest number of voters and became

instrumental in breaking the lot on -- of the white political -- democratic political machine run by a name that some of you might recognize, jack pollack. and that was done in 1954 when harry coal ran as a state senator and harry coal ran as a republican and beat him and he was back and bank rolled and also helped by the ladies that had been pulled together. to me, this is the turning point so far as black politics went because to that point, blacks who had been nominally sort of

dealt crumbs from the table, if you will, and at this point they forced the democrats to take them seriously and take them as -- you just change the -- i was going to change the deflection but change the landscape of politics in the city thereafter and he reacted immediately the next year running as black candidate for the fourth district and four years later knocking off harry coal from the state senate with a black candidate of his own. any way, i bit off a little more than i could chew here but --

>> okay. so, real quick, my fellow panelists, folks in the back want to see your lovely faces so when you do speak, if you could stand, if that's okay so it sounds like from your description, then, that as african-americans began to gain more inclusion in the political world between folks be like harry coal, willy adams, there is this movement that is beginning to take place in the mid-50s as well that is known a student nonviolence protest and we have one of the participants,

one of the pioneers and innovative of the student protest movement with us and i'm going to ask dr. hicks if she could sort of talk about her participation in the 1955 and the significance, what is that for you? >> i'm not sure if it makes any difference but it was a fas fascinating time and morgan college was a private religious

school, a methodist church school so professors that were free to do something a little differently than they could a state-funded school and many of them were ministers. they were very much interested in seeing that we made our way to a different life in even before black college students and we were taught early that the only way is to go out and fight for it and we've heard that message, those of us that live in baltimore, a lot of

students there from other places and pretty much on campus we had no organization and students decided to get into a community battle and they came in long before but by the time i got there, i didn't know about it because my parents were involved

in the naacp and lots of protests and lots of voter registrations and as far as that particular day, i think what has happened was a variety of wham has happened and i'm going to do what i have to do. and fewer rights and as we were

cold and wanted something hot to drink and you think you can become quite successful and we waited and they invited us and there was a big bonfire and we were afraid that we were going

to wind up on pine street two blocks away, the worst area of the city and that they would be called down if we did not move. and he would have preferred to be playing so there were some adults around if we got in trouble and so it was like, okay, now we know we can do this. you always say if you find the enemy, what will be my next move that will surprise them so we will sit in. we won't have to be on the side of the picket lines. we can ignore that.

we can charge into a place and let them deal with people coming in who say we want to be served. of course, it wasn't illegal. we didn't know if we would eventually be locked up. if we could put out a school. we didn't know what the consequences were going to be. actually, there were no consequences that were bad. there were good consequences in the sense that we found a new way to fight them and we kept going so that as late as the '60s, it took us that long to break the bobd of segregation in baltimore and it was the '60s before we totally desegregated. what they did was open that one store. they did not -- they were individually managed. so they opened that one store. they did not open them all. so then we had to go back and the protests had to go to

northwood and to the reed's drug tore there and at the same time we had felt for a long time that we could not be treated that way. we were going to college. some of those people who were trying to keep us from keeping silent, be they weren't even -- you know, they couldn't even get into college. like how dare they think that they are better than we are? and so you have that kind of resolve, i'm just as good, if not better, and i'm going to go ahead and we did. and we came out and we got on the bus and came to school. as the protests continued, we went back in april to make sure that they really did keep it open and the owner, i imagine, or probably the manager, kept

calling when they were going to call the president. so the students say they keep bothering us and they have the famous saying that we laugh at and still laugh at and say, if you don't want my students, you say there are no cows, pigs, whatever, no nigros allowed and then they won't come in. he said, i can't put that and they will at least keep that store opened. so lots of us clustered there to go to school. now, we had seen that same kind of behavior on pennsylvania avenue. you know, we're going to do it

and it's up to you to figure out what to do once we do it. we had seen it when the -- they had the big battle about the binders because they met us, registered the voters, count the votes but wouldn't let us carry the binders down to city hall and my mother and father and my oldest sister worked the polls and they said they changed the numbers after they got them down there. so they decided they were going to give up the binders. they were going to take them by taxi by themselves and stand there and watch them get locked away until the vote was sufficiently counted. so i had seen that kind of activity and so was i the leader? i was the first one in the door. but i don't feel it was

leadership. i said, let's go in there any way and sit down. nobody said no. they just nd went. and three of us are still alive. really four. there was one interestingly, one african who was on that line. and he's now a big deal in the u.n. i keep in touch with him and try to get him to come to baltimore, but he won't come. but he said every time we said we can get locked up, he said locked up, i could have been deported. so we took it lightly. we had no idea the rippling effect. then we had to go through and fight about being the first. i'm still fighting about their article recently not mentioning us.

fighting with the "the new york times" about their article recently not mentioning us. but that's partly our fault because as a school, as a city, we should have made more of it than we did. i don't think african-americans at least at that time thought that you had to go the publicity route to the wider public in order to acknowledge the victory we had won. we had a mixed group, we had jews and gentiles and african americans and a well-known person, radio person, was on those lines with us. and we're still friends as a result of that. lots of students. people didn't want to cross that

picket line. they wanted to nag and cross a bunch of african-americans, it was just people that did not believe the store should be segregated and they said they would rather close than let us in. so we said we'll keep going and they'll have to choose between those two, and they did close down. which is one of the successes we felt in terms of what college students and young adults can do to make a difference in the whole battle for civil rights [ applause ] >> thank you so much. and we all owe you a debt of gratitude for your actions that day. and i was telling dr. hicks

earlier that i owe her a great deal because i used her dissertation in my graduate work. . so on a personal level, thank you. and so as dr. hicks is a part of that first group igniting the flame of student protests, i'm going to turn to professor larry gibson and ask him to sort of talk about the protest movement. and dr. hicks referenced how much credit greensboro gets for the first sit-in in 1960, but i know for a fact that professor

gibson has come quite a few times to document the protests at morgan. so if you would. >> thank you. it's really a pleasure to be here on the occasion of the public opening of the henderson photographs. this group of photographs is an absolute national treasure. before you leave, go to the second floor, i guess they can, and see just the handful of photographs that are on exhibit there. but this is a group of 6,000 images. this museum and society needs additional resources to be able to process them and they should be processed because they chronicle and document the civil rights movement. first i'm very clear in my mind as to what i call the modern civil rights movement. when it begins, when it stops. and you're right, 1935 is the first major success, but i'll

move back two more years, 1933 to 1964. let me tell you what i mean by that. that is the period where the initiative started to be taken on behalf of blacks and civil rights that are not reactive, but pro active. up until then, most of what was done by the naacp and urban league and others were reacting to things that were happening to black folks. efforts to deprive them to the right to vote. something happened in 1933 to lead to a change. it was the last lynching that occurred in maryland in 1933.

this was a man who was lynched on the eastern shore and for some reason, it set a spark loose that said to many people in maryland, black and white, we're going to have to change things in this country. and that began the activities that ultimately led to that 1935 membership drive that grew the baltimore branch of the naacp from 2000 people -- from 200 people to 2,000. and what preceded that was the very first successful proactive case that desegregated the maryland school of law. paul henderson photographed all of that. one of his most poignant photographs is in 1933 following

the lynching of george armwood. what the demonstrators did is they put nooses around their necks as a part of the demonstration. and you've probably seen this in photographs. what was horrendous about the george armwood lynching is people believe he was returned to the shore to be lynched. he had been brought to baltimore for safe keeping, but a judge ordered him on come back supposedly for an arraignment. the afro knew -- everybody knew what was going on. the afro crew left. there was no bridge at that time and they can't want to risk going by way of the ferryboat. so by the time they got this, george armwood had been lynched and the afro put on the front of the paper his body.

that began a lot of things happening in baltimore city among whites, belong blacks, leading to this massive membership drive. just another comment about photography. in 1935, many of you have seen a photograph of young thurgood marshall, his first civil rights case, he's standing there looking like he's in court and his mentor, charles hamilton houston, is at the table as well as the plaintiff, donald gains marry. and in 90% of the books i've seen, this is described as a court scene. that's what it looks like. in fact that was a staged picture in the offices of the afro. they went up to the afro after

they had gotten the court decision and staged this photograph. activities in a lot of places started to happen, but very aggressively so in the late 30s following the first successful desegregation case. then came the second world war. things shifted to other matters. the whole nation is at war. most of the activity of the civil rights organizations had to do with fair treatment of soldiers and employment in the war. so it's after the war that the domestic civil rights movement really gets going again and again, it's paul henderson and the afro that are documenting this. for example, on the cover of your program is a photograph taken in 1948.