The first week of September will mark the sixty-seventh anniversary of the end of segregation at what was then the Poolesville combined K-12 School. Montgomery County School Superintendent Forbes Norris and Poolesville Principal Robert Crawford began their tenures only a year before the 1954 landmark Supreme Court Decision, Brown v Board of Education, which declared segregated schools unconstitutional. Dr. Norris presided over the phased-in implementation of school desegregation in Montgomery County, the first county to desegregate in Maryland. The plan was implemented first in the more populace core of the county and gradually moved to the outlying farming communities.
According to a contemporaneous Washington Post article, 174,000 school children in Maryland and Virginia started the 1956 school year and only one demonstration erupted against the integration of schools. That demonstration was at Poolesville School beginning on that first day of school on September 4, 1956, the day that the gradual integration plan was implemented at Poolesville.
Fourteen former Lincoln Junior High School students were the first Black students enrolled at the Poolesville school. Those seventh, eighth and ninth grade students arrived by foot, car, and bus. For safety reasons, they were escorted into the rear entrance of the Poolesville school by 20 Montgomery County police officers, Superintendent Norris, HS Principal Crawford, and teachers. Virginia Hersperger, the elementary school principal, escorted her young elementary school students into the school past a loud angry crowd.
Poolesville made local and national headlines and came under the scrutiny of the FBI that day when 150-250 Poolesville parents and students gathered in protest outside the school attempting to influence the school board and Superintendent Norris, and to prevent the entrance of the Black students. A parent-organized boycott kept 350 of the 643 enrolled students home for most of the first week.
The protests were instigated by the Montgomery County chapter of the Maryland Petition Committee (MPC), a two-year-old vehemently anti-integration group led by Kensington resident Everett Severe. In that first day clash with school officials, Severe repeatedly spoke for the group while insisting that they were a committee without a leader.
When the morning bell rang, MoCo Police Superintendent James Mc Auliffe and 20 officers ordered the adults away from the school. The large group moved to the front of a nearby home where Severe addressed the crowd, announcing a protest meeting at Town Hall that evening.
A smaller group returned to the school to demand entry and while meeting with Superintendent Norris demanded a meeting with the School Board. They were advised to submit a written request.
The Maryland Petition Committee hosted a well-attended meeting in the Poolesville Town Hall that first night and the parents of 153 Poolesville school children organized a march on the county courthouse to try to expand the school boycott countywide. When Dr. Norris warned parents that $50 fines and 30-day jail terms could be invoked for inducing children to remain out of school, the boycott dissipated by the end of the first week. The Poolesville parents were eventually allotted an hour at the next regular School Board meeting where several students and parents spoke.
Some Poolesville parents agreed to send their children back to school until they could arrange for a private, segregated school. Several Poolesville parents hired lawyers, threatening to challenge the school fines.
On October 18th 1956 the Montgomery County Board of Education issued their decision that there would be no reconsideration of the integration of the County schools. By December, Poolesville had its own branch of the Maryland Petition Committee and hosted a two-hour speech at a Poolesville farm, by an out-of-town segregationist who had been jailed previously in Tennessee for inciting race riots.
Superintendent Edward Norris warned parents that the patience of school officials was wearing thin, and that Maryland law could be used against the parents. The law stipulated a $20 fine, a 30-day jail term, or both for disturbing public school sessions
Though the school boycott ended, the opposition to integration did not. Vitriolic letters were sent to area newspapers and flyers were distributed by the MPC. The MPC continued suing in federal court in 1954, 1957, and 1967 to invalidate the 14th Amendment to end school integration.
Dr. Norris’ contract was not renewed in 1957 due in part to the constant criticism of his efforts, particularly in the case of the Poolesville protests. Under the new Superintendent Charles Whittier, the integration process accelerated and 72% of Montgomery County schools were integrated by the end of the 1961 school year, when the remaining Black schools in the county were closed.
In 2023, Poolesville High School is ranked first in the list of Best Public High Schools and Best Magnet school in Maryland but appears 72nd on the list of 236 Maryland High Schools ranked for student diversity.