Walter Sondheim, 98, the 1954 Baltimore City School Board president who quickly moved to integrate city schools after the Brown v. the Board of Education decision, died Thursday at Mercy Medical Center following a bout with pneumonia.

A cross was burned in Sondheim?s front yard as integration progressed, but it did not dissuade the Baltimore native?s purpose then, or in his ensuing five decades of community service. Sondheim was also a former Maryland State Board of Education president and worked as a senior adviser with the Greater Baltimore Committee, a civic and business group, for the past 20 years.

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