As it entered the 1960s, Howard County shared a look with rural counties of today-- one large town (in this case, Ellicott City), several smaller towns (among them, Elkridge, Daniels, Savage, Scaggsville, Simpsonville, West Friendship, Lisbon, and Poplar Springs), an agricultural economy, and a vastly white, middle class and up, Christian culture. The county seat, Ellicott City, contained most of the county's cultural and economic outlets. Howard County at the time boasted all of two high schools that were part of the Howard County Public School System: Glenelg High School and Howard High School. The 60s would see the building of Atholton and Mount Hebron High Schools.
In my own family, our reputation of being "city people" continued, as my grandfather died in 1956, leaving our household comprised of my grandmother, great grandmother, and father, who was a teenager at the time. Raised by a single parent was a rarity in the early 60s, and doubly so in Howard County. And my grandmother and great grandmother felt like strangers in the land they bought. Not interested in marrying again, my grandmother sought male companionship for my father among the ranks of the local chapter of the Order of the DeMolay, otherwise known as the junior ranks of the Masons. In that organization my father found friends and began to acclimate to the Howard County community. After all, after not being a)local, b)a farm family, c) raised by two parents, e)community connected, f) rich, or g) the right type of Protestant, he had finally checked a box.
By all accounts, my father's high school experience could best be summed as a more rural, certainly much less neon, version of the movie "American Graffiti". My father attended high school at the same time as some very well known Howard Countians (if the names Kasemeyer, Robey, and DuVall ring a bell, among others) and for my father high school was a time for football, wreaking havoc at the Elkridge Drive-In, fast cars, cheap liquor, girls (my mother among them), and some school thrown in.
Howard County was also, at the time, very, very white. Each town in the county had their own "colored" community within. In Elkridge, there were two concentrations of such people. One was in the little development of Harwood Park, near the railroad tracks that carried freight from the Port of Baltimore up and down the East Coast and about the country (and still does). The second was around the location where the current Elkridge Elementary School and Elkridge Landing Middle School currently stand. Both areas were notable in that the houses were notably more run down, appeared more crowded, with more junk and overall detritus associated with poverty, then the homes around them. These were rural slums.
Meanwhile, elsewhere in Howard County, other things were happening. The Howard County Public School System was desegregated in a process that took eleven years. The county's NAACP was emerging. And local African American activists of the time found champions in their white counterparts, not the least of them being future State Senator Bob Kittleman.
As of 1962, all Howard County only had one place to vote. A second was added in 1962. State Senator Jim Clark proposed a five-member County Council and County Executive structure in 1965, and Howard County approved charter government in 1968, with the five Councilmembers being selected from the county at large.
And also in 1962, land acquisition began on the property that would eventually become Columbia, MD, a process that would move forward for about another 18 months, and when which took an additional two years for the zoning to be approved. So much has already been written about the forming and founding of Columbia. Given the shorter form of these posts, I don't think I could give this process justice.
But what I will expound upon a bit are my own beliefs on how the formation of Columbia shook the foundations of Howard County.
As I mentioned previously, Howard County was a place where about twenty families were in charge of a lot of the commercial, community, civic, and religious structure. And it was incredibly, incredibly white. And, honestly, stubborn. A school system that takes eleven years to desegregate, even in the 1960s, doesn't exactly strike the observer as a liberal-minded bastion.
What Rouse and his colleagues proved was that someone could come in and quite literally, take over. Not that it didn't have a price, in terms of the zoning approval and changes to the plan for Columbia that had to be made in order to approve the zoning. Yet, looking into the background (and I encourage everyone who is finding these blog posts interesting to go back and learn about the founding of Columbia), I find it ironic and also fitting that the founding of Columbia also founded the love-hate relationship that Howard County enjoys, to this day, with that brand of entrepreneur called "The Developer".
And so the newcomers were coming to Howard County at the end of the 1960s. And they came. In droves. By the thousands. And they did not look like Howard County. They were younger. More female. And many families of color (mostly black families) and families of interracial marriages. There many new things coming to Howard County.
And Howard County, in several ways, accepted. On the balance of things, who can imagine what would have become of the place had development proceeded pell-mell throughout Howard County? It could have been a nightmare.
But in some other ways, Howard County acted very much how peoples and people do when they are confronted by something they don't fully understand. They react in fear and lash out.
In Part 3, the dance of Howard County moves from the barn to the disco!
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