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Baltimore Polytechnic Institute
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=== Integration/desegregation === Most Baltimore City public schools since 1870 were not [[Desegregation of the Baltimore City Public School System|integrated]] until after the [[Supreme Court of the United States|Supreme Court]] decision in ''[[Brown v. Board of Education]]'' of May 1954 in the following September / Fall semester. B.P.I. since the 1920s had an unusually advanced and difficult college-level mathematics, engineering and technology oriented "A" Course, the "Advanced College Preparatory Curriculum" instituted back in the 1920s as part of then Public Schools reform and improvement program. It included calculus, analytical chemistry, electricity, mechanics and surveying; these subjects were not offered at the black high schools in the city before 1952. But a parallel "A" Course centered on the [[humanities]] / [[social studies]] / [[liberal arts]] was also longtime since the '20s offered at arch-rival City College with a similar degree of rigorous quality. But its focus was in different fields. Other "A" Courses were similarly available at the two also all-white and [[Single sex education|all-girls]] [[Eastern High School (Baltimore, Maryland)|Eastern]] and [[Western High School (Maryland)|Western High Schools]], both founded 1844.<ref>{{Cite journal|last=Templeton |first=Furman L. |title=The Admission of Negro Boys to the Baltimore Polytechnic Institute "A" Course |journal=The Journal of Negro Education |volume=23 |issue=1 |page=29 |date=Winter 1954 |doi=10.2307/2293243 |jstor=2293243}}</ref> B.P.I. was a [[History of education in the United States#Segregation and inequality|whites-only school]] but supported by municipal taxes on the general population. No black schools in the city (black students could not attend whites-only schools) offered such courses, nor did they have classrooms, labs, libraries or teachers comparable to those at B.P.I. or at the similar level of [[Baltimore City College|The Baltimore City College]]. Because of this, a group of 16 Baltimoreans African American students, with help and support from their parents, along with the Baltimore [[Urban League]], and the [[NAACP]] ([[National Association for the Advancement of Colored People]]) applied for the mathematics / engineering "A" Course at the Poly;<ref>{{cite news |last= Crockett | first=Sandra| title=Breaking The Color Barrier at Poly in 1952 |publisher=Maryland Historical Society, Baltimore, MD.}}</ref> the applications were initially denied and so the students sued in local Maryland state circuit court. The subsequent trial began on June 16, 1952. The NAACP's intentions were to end segregation at the 70-year-old public high school. In the B.P.I. case they argued that BPI's offerings of specialized engineering courses violated the "[[separate but equal]]" clause because these courses were not offered in high schools for black students. To avoid integration, an out-of-court proposal was made to the Baltimore School Board to start an equivalent "A" Course at the "colored" (for non-whites) of [[Frederick Douglass Senior High School (Baltimore, Maryland)|Frederick Douglass High School]]. This hearing on the "Douglass" plan lasted for hours, with longtime Poly Principal Dehuff and others arguing that separate but equal "A" Courses would satisfy constitutional requirements and NAACP attorney [[Thurgood Marshall]] (soon to be later famous appointed Justice on the [[United States Supreme Court|U.S. Supreme Court]] in 1967), arguing that the plan was a gamble and additional cost that the city should not take. By a vote of 5β3, the board decided that a separate "A" course would not provide the same educational opportunities for African American students, and that, starting that fall, African American students could attend Poly.<ref>{{cite web|title=Integration of Baltimore Polytechnic High School|url=http://mdcivilrights.org/Poly.html|publisher=Maryland Civil Rights.org|access-date=2007-10-11|archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20071006123303/http://www.mdcivilrights.org/Poly.html|archive-date=October 6, 2007|url-status=dead}}</ref> The vote vindicated the NAACP national strategy of raising the economic cost of 'separate but equal' schools beyond what taxpayers and their government bureaucracy were willing to pay.<ref>Olson, Sherry H. ''Baltimore: The Building of an American City'' (1997) p. 368-69. Johns Hopkins University Press, Baltimore, Maryland. {{ISBN|0-8018-5640-X}}</ref> Thirteen African American students, Leonard Cephas, Carl Clark, William Clark, Milton Cornish, Clarence Daly, Victor Dates, Alvin Giles, Bucky Hawkins, Linwood Jones, Edward Savage, Everett Sherman, Robert Young, and Silas Young, finally entered the Polytechnic Institute that fall. They were unfortunately faced daily with racial epithets, threats of violence and isolation from many of the more than 2,000 fellow students then at the school on North Avenue.<ref>{{cite news|last=Glazer|first=Aaron M.|title=Course Correction|publisher=Baltimore City Paper Online|url=http://www.citypaper.com/news/story.asp?id=3485|access-date=2007-10-11|archive-date=October 24, 2008|archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20081024080603/http://www.citypaper.com/news/story.asp?id=3485|url-status=live}}</ref> But they endured, kept their cool and composure, knowing what was at stake. The first of those students to graduate from Poly was Dr. Carl O. Clark in June 1955. Dr. Clark went on to become the first African-American to graduate from the [[University of South Carolina]] with a degree in physics in 1976.
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