Baltimore Polytechnic “A” School Integration

Baltimore Polytechnic Institute’s “A Course” curriculum, a college preparatory program in engineering, was unique in the city’s public school system. Only white boys could be accepted into the program. On June 16, 1952, the Coordinated Committee on Poly Admission argued that if a proposed separate course was not equal, Black students should be admitted to Poly “A” or the course dismantled. On September 2, the Baltimore School Board voted five to three to integrate the course. Poly became the first integrated public school in Baltimore City, yet all other city schools remained segregated.

“There were a couple of weeks before that [integration] they knew about it. So they were preparing us for it, and we talked about it, and that you’d have to study hard and you’d have to, you know, do everything you could to make sure that you could do it…” — Carl O. Clark Oral History courtesy of David Taft Terry, PhD

“Those of us who voted to admit the boys, I am sure, were motivated somewhat by the fact that it was an opportunity to breach the walls of segregation, as it were, and provide an opportunity within the law to move the school system forward to some extent.” — Walter Sondheim Jr. Oral History