‘Seen & Heard: Maryland’s Civil Rights Era in Photographs and Oral Histories’

Baltimore— The Maryland Historical Society (MdHS) explored the Paul Henderson Photograph Collection (ca. 1930-1960) and the McKeldin-Jackson Oral History Project (1969-1977) in a Black History Month event on February 23, 2012 in Baltimore City with a panel discussion and accompanying exhibition.

The panelists discussed their personal affiliations and experiences during the civil rights struggle in Maryland in relation to the collections.

Dr. Helena Hicks, one of only three surviving members of the widely publicized sit-in at Read’s Drugstore in Baltimore, revealed the impromptu nature of the 1955 protest.

The panel discussion focused on civil rights protests in Baltimore from the 1930s through the 1950s. This was long before most of America was aware of the civil rights movement, which received national attention in the 1960s.

Present in the audience was Esther McCready, who was the first African American to be admitted to the University of Maryland School of Nursing in 1950. Her case was taken to the Court of Appeals and argued successfully by Thurgood Marshall and Donald Murray.  Marshall would later become the first black Supreme Court Justice.

One of the panelists, Larry Gibson, called McCready to the podium and told her story. McCready added, “On my first day in Nursing School, I was standing by the elevator and this R.N. said, ‘If you don’t pray to God, you won’t get out of here, because nobody here is supporting you.’ I looked her right in the eye and I said, ‘If God intends for me to get out of here, nobody can stop me,’ She said to me later that when I said that, she knew I was going to be all right. We became friends.