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 weeks 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

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 '50s. i was lucky must have to hold on to my own notes from years ago talking to people. talking to people like harry cole, mr. adams. 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 photographable. 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 actually 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 never know 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 lexington, 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

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 read'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 read'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 read 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 read's in that area. it was also the absolute only place at a soda fountain. i ran cross-country at city college, so we would roam all over northeast baltimore. you never knew that your slogan had a special meaning. read'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 city college in '60. so i ran right to reed's. >> i just want to say that it was in the 1960s before the read's in northwood opened its

doors right? read's in northwood opened in '55. everything in -- >> no, they didn't. and i think this is the value of 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 monitors, nobody really know what's going on. but we know the read'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't 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 of 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. you could not go in to there. if you did and the owner called, you could be arrested. and you were. 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 bother 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 enforced. 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 chastised 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 black students. so it was pervasive in all parts of the culture. prejudice was there, and prejudice was accepted and it was not fought against for a long, long time, not in baltimore. [ applause ] >> i want to thank the maryland historical society for having this. dr. hicks, we stand on your

shoulders. i would say we are one generation away from losing this history. generation away from losing this history. we're 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 who was 11 years before rosa parks. we haven't discussed that. we haven't discussed the fact that we had esta mccready who integrated the nursing at university of maryland because it isn't housed anywhere. we haven't talked about four blocks down the street, louise kurr, integrated supervision at the library. we need a venue to house the pictures, the oral history, because we know, in the civil rights field, that baltimore,

unlike 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. but we're saying that we commend the maryland historical society forring this this but we would hope and pray those gathered here those evening would join us, president of the southern christian leadership conference, past naacp president, i represent reverend sharpton, three civil rights organizations. we're saying we need to house and document these before we lose them. and we only are one generation away from losing it. thank you. >> i think he knows i agree with him. i want -- i want read's used for

a worthwhile purpose. i don't want it be a strip club or just whatever they can stick in there to appease the black community, and the white community because there are whites fighting just as hard, definitely for preservation, it's mainly white. but i think we have to do a lot of footwork. sitting down, gathering the souls who are like levers when it comes to turning into a museum because there is a cost involved. we've got to get a steady stream of money, so once we get it done we can keep it. it can remain. and we know the stories, we read "the new york times" writeup about the museums that are struggle, those that have had to close. we know what the museum is here. i think there's a way to do

anything that you make up your mine 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 coming to the city, we have to figure out a way to get the money flowing. every time i talked to city hall they said, we don't have any money. i always go back to them, i said where did you get the money to build a dog park? aren't we at least as important as the dog park you found money to build? people said you're not getting anywhere because you're too sarcastic. but it's true. i said where did you find money for that? that takes foot soldiers to find than money from the city, from private entities, from the state legislators who throw away money for a lot of things. all that money they put into the

grand prix if they had just given us half of it, we could have done more. 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 to substa substantial. >> i was notified that miss esther mccready is here. [ applause ] >> she, of course, desegregated the university of maryland nursing school in '46? >> '48. >> look, look, look. well i don't know.

>> the case with thurgood marshall and charles houston opened the school of medicine pharmacy, dentistry and the undergraduate program in college park. [ applause ] >> this gentleman, and i've seen a lady here in the front. >> this may be -- dr. scott, this question, you know, first question was kind of like, what is the civil rights movement in and you suggested historians go back and starting after -- at reconstruction or after it's looking forward. dr. gibson here suggested there

was kind of a modern civil rights movement that's stretched from 35 -- at least here in maryland '35 to '68. i always have trouble, you know, because we keep calling it civil rights movement and it seems to be inclusive of a lot of different things that one could say wasn't quite specifically civil rights in the sense of i guess civil rights was kind of a legal question of what your rights under the constitution were as citizens. so what would be what could you in of as a better terminology to take this whole period from reconstruct on that would kind of -- i think people get confused and disassociate things. >> in the beginning of our

course a couple of weeks ago we spent 45 minutes trying to discuss what the definition of civil rights was versus human rights before we read any text or anything like that. so, there's a difference between what historians call it versus the people who have participated in the movement decide to call it, which is i can say we can look at reconstruction and someone in the movement in baltimore says it starts this this time and ends in another time period. some folks have been -- again, they're historians but also activists --s playing around the terminology of modern freedom struggle, the modern part being mid 19th to the 21st century and anything before that, look at issue of freedom around the period of enslavement but looking at women's rights. right, it's a huge term everyone wants to put a catch-all phrase an all of these different issues. it depends on what you're talking. when i was asked to be on this panel and they said, maryland and civil rights i knew they were talking about african-american struggles of civil rights within the united

states and so then you have to have that type of label and definition to figure out what cases are you talking about? what's your region? what happens your location? and they asked me a broader question, say talking about african-american history and the struggle for rights in maryland i would gone back to 1664. depends on the person asking the question and the people writing the history. always a thing that history and that we talked about earlier, history depends on those who write it. if they're not written in that terminology in your label, there's a lot of civil rights happening outside of '35 to '68 or reconstruction to the president, depends what you're looking for when you think of the term civil rights. >> bob, i want to be real clear, i gave the dates. i don't know if i clearly explained the dates. up until 1935, plessy versus r ferguson defined racial relations in the country, separate but really not equal.

in 1935, with the donald gaines mary case is the first chink in that army of plessy versus f ferguson the first time any court in the country said, no, this separation, segregation, is inappropriate. and so that's -- that's the beginning of the unraveling of plessy versus ferguson, continuing up until 1954 where we have the ending of legal, government-enforced segregation, that's an important part and '64 the federal civil rights act which covered a lot of things. that's why i say '35 to '64. but i want to talk about -- i have to take this opportunit