The cliche says you can?t go home again.
But sometimes you must.
A hundred Frederick Douglass Alumni Association members rallied at the embattled West Baltimore school Friday for Alumni Day, offering challenges to students, teachers and adminstrators while pledging support for their “second home” as Ruth Platt, class of 1939, called the historic institution. Pratt is a former city teacher with a doctorate in education from the University of Maryland.
Douglass already had fought off a takeover attempt led by state schools superintendent Nancy S. Grasmick and Gov. Robert Ehrlich and a proposal by Lt. Gov. Michael S. Steele to place school control into the hands of Coppin State University, when their principal Isabelle Grant departed two weeks ago.
In the fall, the football team forfeiteda 9-1 record, their third winning season since 1989, and a trip to the playoffs after it was determined one player was academically ineligible.
The Alumni Association, however, led by vice-president Eleanor Everett, class of 1953, and former president Barbara Leak, class of 1941, and others, refused to simply watch their beloved school suffer.
Leak, in fact, recently won recognition of the original Douglass school building on Calhoun St. by the National Trust for Historic Preservation. The school is also highlighted this weekend in a Parade magazine story about little-known places that shaped our nation?s culture.
Thurgood Marshall, class of 1925, and the first African-American U.S. Supreme Court Justice attended Douglass ? named after the former Maryland slave who became a distinguished abolishionist, writer, and diplomat. Former U.S. Congressman Parren Mitchell and performer Cabell “Cab” Calloway III also graduated from Douglass.
“Thurgood went here because it was only place that he could go,” his cousin Charlotte Marshall-Perry said. “But he loved it.”
Leak submitted the school?s former building into the Parade contest because she doesn?t want the school, “to fade away and lose its heritage.”
“And I did it to inspire the current generation,” said Leak. “This school has produced great leaders. The school used to be the pride of the community and it can be again, but it takes everyone?s involvement.”
The Alumni Association gave $21,000 dollars worth of scholarships to a dozen students at the event in the school?s auditorium. Guest honorees included Troy Burton, class of 1985 and executive director of the Eubie Blake Cultural Center on Howard St., and fashion producer Travis Winkey, class of 1966.
Performances by the student cast of Dream Girls, who has their last show Saturday night, and the Douglass jazz ensemble connected with the older audience.
