Notes

Maryland in the Days of Jim Crow
As a kid and effectively into my higher education years, going to YMCA Camp Letts in close proximity to the Chesapeake Bay was one of my central life encounters. One of people activities was confronting Dixie design segregation.

YMCA Camp Letts sits at the stop of a peninsula jutting out into the Rhode River close to Edgewater, Maryland. On a obvious day, you can see all the way to the place the South River satisfies the Chesapeake Bay. The camp was established in 1906 and has been in its current place since 1922. Several of the counselors came from nearby Maryland colleges, specifically the College of Maryland at School Park.

Generations of DC spot kids have sailed its waters, hiked its trails, played Capture the Flag, sat about campfires, limited-sheeted one another and instructed filthy jokes following lights out. It has also served as an grownup meeting heart and out of doors education heart for faculty youngsters.

I very first attended Camp Letts in 1957 at the age of 9. Then it was racially segregated, not unheard of in the Maryland of that time. The Chesapeake Bay shorelines close to Camp Letts in which my dad and mom took me for weekend outings ended up White Only as were numerous public lodging and eating places. But the Civil Rights Motion was on the march and the walls of Jim Crow had been falling.

I experienced grown up in segregated Glenmont, Maryland and experienced been surrounded by the everyday bigotry of a border point out white doing work course neighborhood. But I experienced also been raised Unitarian by liberal mother and father. They were not paragons of racial equality, but they produced no energy to indoctrinate me with concentrated white supremacy.

My North Carolina born mother directed most of her prejudices toward "hillbillies" and men and women who reminded her of Jeeter Lester (a character in Erskine Caldwell's novel 'Tobacco Road' about impoverished southern white tenant farmers). Soon after paying her childhood in Despair-era Durham NC, the previous point she wanted to be reminded of was white poverty.

In quick, I experienced come to imagine that racial prejudice was not only rude, but downright incorrect.

In 1961, Camp Letts finally desegregated. I never know how that determination was manufactured or even why. You would have to delve deep into the archives of the Washington Metropolitan YMCA to answer that concern. So in the summer season of 1961, I met Butch, the first "Negro" I at any time got to know individually.

Now I had a likelihood to put my beliefs into motion with about twenty other teenage boys (ages thirteen-sixteen).

We were "Pioneers" (which was what the YMCA known as our Camp Letts teenager group). We lived away from the younger youngsters in tents instead of cabins, cooked our possess meals, hauled h2o and employed a trench for nature's wants.
For the 1st couple of times of his arrival, Butch seemed stiff and distant. But what ever our racial views, we were curious about him and at some point he opened up and it seemed he had grow to be "one of the men".

Butch was a tall child, about 16, and far more experienced than most of us. He was also a natural leader and I know I was not the only Pioneer who appeared up to him. It appeared like integration was functioning.
We ended up supposed to be planning for a two 7 days canoe vacation across the Chesapeake Bay to Rehoboth Beach front, Delaware. To practice our open up-h2o canoeing abilities, we ended up scheduled for an overnight canoe journey down to Annapolis-- a distance of about 25 miles roundtrip.

We packed our tents and equipment into our canoes and paddled for hours prior to we achieved the Severn River and the campground we had been keeping at. The Chesapeake Bay skies had been blue, but we had battled a stiff wind and white caps all the way there and we ended up fatigued when we arrived in close proximity to dusk.
The next working day our counselors took us on a tour of the US Naval Academy and advised us we had been cost-free to wander the streets of Annapolis in the night. Several of us created plans to see "Hercules", a "sand and sandal" movie starring muscleman Steve Reeves.

I was in the "Hercules" team alongside with Butch and about six other fellas. When jeeter juice live resin disposable arrived at the theater, the ticket seller told us there was a issue. The theater did not allow "Negroes". Butch no for a longer time experienced that confident chief-like seem on his encounter. After some hesitation, he suggested that we just go on in and he'd discover anything else to do.
I'd like to say that we told him,"What the hell are you chatting about," and that we all right away staged a sit-in at the theater. But that is not the way it went down.
We told him "Confident...okay. We will see you back again at the campsite."
The motion picture was completely forgettable. Following we paddled again to the Pioneer Village at Camp Letts, Butch was a modified individual. He withdrew from us and commenced hanging out with Marshall and the other little ones of the all Black cooking workers. At that time, the only Black folks who worked there ended up a handful of cooks and routine maintenance individuals.

The cooks lived in modest cabins appropriate powering the Eating Hall. I failed to realize it at the time, but when I feel about them now, they resembled the classic slave cabins of Maryland's plantation days.
Then Butch disappeared. The camp employees identified him on Route 214 outside the Camp Letts gate striving to hitchhike back again to DC. They returned him to the Pioneer Village after some shut doorway conferences with the Camp Director. A few days later, Butch was back on Route 214 making an attempt to thumb a experience house. The up coming thing we realized, his bunk was vacant and his things was gone.

Ken, the head counselor, referred to as a Village assembly all around the council fireplace and declared in a loud voice,"Nicely...we are minus a single nigger".
I would like to say that we all stood up and advised Ken that he should to shut his redneck cracker mouth before we shoved a log in it.
But of course no 1 did. We just sat in shocked silence. Afterwards some of us talked about how Ken's comment was actually wrong, but publicly we went on as if nothing experienced occurred.
We ended up cowards who betrayed Butch not as soon as, but 2 times.
But I have to say that Camp Letts did not give up on desegregation. By 1962, there was a modest but growing quantity of Black campers. 1 of them (whose identify I never recall), was with our teen team throughout a 7 days-lengthy exploration of Virginia's Shenandoah Countrywide Park.

On the travel back again, we stopped at an vacant roadside diner and waited for services...and waited...and waited. Lastly it dawned on our counselor what was likely on. He mentioned one thing to the waitress and informed us we ended up all going to get served or none of us would get served. We walked out with our heads held high.
We were hungry teenage boys, but we managed to preserve our self-respect this time. He located us a location up the street that was only intrigued in the coloration of our money and we ate these burgers and fries with a particular enthusiasm.

I became a Counselor-in-Education (CIT) in 1964. There ended up now Black counselors and a Black unit chief. A counselor named Chris Stone was educating us civil legal rights music. A CIT named Phil Blum was caught up in the folks tunes motion and strummed absent singing outdated folks tunes and the new protest anthems. He was joined by guitarist Geoff Bartley and vocalist Lee Robbins. Camp Letts now had its personal people and protest group. Phil finished up taking part in guitar professionally for a lot of a long time. Geoff is nevertheless a well-liked folksinger in the Boston spot.

Camp Letts was no longer a tradition of segregation and white isolation. Kids had been singing freedom tunes about the campfires together with the traditional camp favorites like "Audio Off!" and "The Ship Titanic". At evening for the duration of Vespers some of us informed tales about the courageous civil rights employees who were going through down the cops and the Klan.
My last yr at Camp Letts was in 1968 when I was a unit chief. My junior counselor that calendar year was a Black higher school college student named Ted whose mother and father had been leaders in the Civil Rights Motion. Ted had even achieved Dr. King. I was impressed. I might say about 25%-thirty% of the campers were Black. There have been a variety of Black counselors such as two in my unit.
One particular evening a bunch of us have been sitting down close to conversing about the numerous demonstrations we experienced been concerned in. It was 1968 after all and the College of Maryland was not the only school represented on the Camp Letts employees.

People told stories of sit-ins, marches, arrests, teargas and police golf equipment. Even John the ROTC cadet had taken portion in an anti-war demonstration. Then Eugene spoke up. He was a student at traditionally Black North Carolina A&T in Greensboro, NC. He instructed us that when Martin Luther King was assassinated in April, that the cops experienced come into the campus capturing. It was blessed no 1 was killed. He mentioned this with a tranquil matter-of-factness that was chilling.
If you have been a white scholar in 1968, you may possibly get smacked upside the head. If you had been a Black college student in 1968, you could simply finish up dead. The times were modifying, but they ended up even now changing in different ways depending on what coloration you ended up.

When I entered the College of Maryland in 1965, YMCA Camp Letts had presently launched me to the racial alterations that had been sweeping across America...and I was not the only Terp who had put in summers there.
UM was only barely desegregated in 1965. But there was currently a modest SDS chapter and a truthful housing group. Campus Main and the Black Pupil Union had been soon to be born.
I wanted to be part of the combat and I realized that the campfires of Camp Letts experienced assisted light the way.
Bob "Bobbo" Simpson is a net production geek based out of Oak Park, Illinois. He is also 1 half of the labor cartoon staff Carol Simpson. He usually blogs and responses on labor issues.
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