A handful of Harford County?s former civil rights activists recalled their struggles to integrate the county Tuesday in Aberdeen, though many lamented the current lack of diversity in local politics.
As part of the county libraries? Black History Month programming, nine panelists shared their oral histories of the civil rights movement ? particularly the efforts to offer education to integrate Harford County?s school system.
“Being in uniform, I thought surely I could go around the country, and go into those diners and those movie theaters,” said Italy Overton, who joined the Navy during World War II and still found himself barred from segregated establishments.
Returning to Harford County, Overton initiated his own letter-writing campaigns to advocate for school integration and protest the lack of accreditation at the county?s all-black “consolidated” schools.
Though Harford schools “officially” began integrating in 1956 ? two years after the Supreme Court ruled against school segregation ? it took until 1966 for students at the county?s all-black schools in Bel Air and Havre de Grace to be moved to the “white” schools, said Rick Spending, who was among the first black students to graduate in an integrated class.
Russell Stansbury of Havre de Grace spoke mostly of his father, Clinton Stansbury, who helped lead the movement to establish the county?s first high school for black students in the 1930s, then began the first local civil rights protests to open the county?s libraries to blacks.
Many advocated for continuing to push for greater equality, especially in political circles.
Salina Williams, the first black woman on the Harford County Board of Education, lamented the lack of diversity in county politics. Recalling her cousin Raymond Warfield?s run for mayor of Aberdeen, she said the community should come together in support of more black candidates.
“Nowhere in our political field is there diversity in Harford County … and if we have to go back to like when I was a child, knocking on doors, maybe that?s what we should do,” she said.
