Sept. 7, 1954
First-graders recite the Pledge of Allegiance in 1955 at Gwynns Falls Elementary School in Baltimore, Maryland. Credit: Courtesy of Maryland Center for History and Culture. Credit: Richard Stacks
In compliance with the recent Brown v. Board of Education decision, schools in Baltimore and Washington, D.C., were desegregated. Baltimore was one of the first school systems to desegregate below the Mason-Dixon line.
A month after a dozen Black students began attending what had been an all-white school, demonstrations took place, one of them turning violent when 800 whites attacked four Black students. White parents began pulling their children out of the schools, and by 1960, the district was majority Black.
The post On this day in 1954 appeared first on Mississippi Today.