- Person
- Michael Schwerner
- Lived
- 1939–1964
- Field
- Civil rights
- From
- American
The story
Gwynn Oak Amusement Park, in the community of Gwynn Oak just outside northwest Baltimore, opened in 1893 and became a favourite summer outing for the region. It had three roller coasters, a carousel, a trolley and a dance hall known as the Dixie Ballroom. It also had a whites-only admissions policy, which shut Black families in Maryland out of one of the area's best-known attractions.
From 1955 Baltimore clergy, local chapters of the Congress of Racial Equality (CORE) and the NAACP picketed and demonstrated for integration at the park. The protests came and went over the years, but the campaign peaked in July 1963 with two major demonstrations. On 4 July, protesters gathered at Orchard Street United Methodist Church in West Baltimore and rode buses to the park; 283 of them, many of them clergy from across the East Coast, were arrested for trespassing. The protest stayed peaceful. On 7 July counter-protesters turned out in large numbers, one demonstrator was hurt by a thrown stone, and more than 90 more demonstrators were arrested.
Michael Schwerner, then leading Downtown CORE on Manhattan's Lower East Side, took part in the 1963 effort to desegregate the park. He was 23, and the Gwynn Oak campaign was one of the ways he turned his belief in equality into direct, nonviolent action.
The pressure worked. On 28 August 1963, the same day as the March on Washington, the park opened to all. A young Black girl, Sharon Langley, accompanied by her father Charles, became the first African American child to ride its merry-go-round. That carousel was later moved to the National Mall in Washington, D.C., where it still turns.
The experience helped push Schwerner toward full-time civil rights work. Moved also by the violence he watched that year in Birmingham, Alabama, he applied to national CORE to be posted to the South, and in January 1964 he and his wife Rita set off for Mississippi.
Gwynn Oak is remembered today as a case where steady, peaceful protest by ordinary people, Black and white, clergy and students, ended segregation in a public place. Its 50th anniversary was celebrated in 2013, and the story is retold in Amy Nathan's book Round and Round Together (2011). The site is now a public park owned by Baltimore County.
Why it matters
Schwerner's part in the Gwynn Oak protests was one of many acts of conscience by ordinary citizens that ended segregation in American public places.
About Michael Schwerner
New York social worker who organised Black voter registration in Mississippi for CORE and was murdered by the Klan with James Chaney and Andrew Goodman in 1964.
More about Michael Schwerner
- Michael Schwerner went to Mississippi for $9.80 a weekIn January 1964 Michael Schwerner became the first white civil rights worker based permanently outside Jackson, Mississippi, working for CORE in Meridian for $9.80 a week.
- Michael Schwerner opened his fraternity to a Black studentAs a student at Cornell, Michael Schwerner campaigned successfully for his fraternity to accept a Black student as a pledge, an early sign of his commitment to equality.
- Michael Schwerner's boycott won a store's first Black hireIn Meridian, Michael Schwerner organised a boycott of a variety store that sold mostly to Black customers until it hired its first African American employee.
- Michael Schwerner planned a Freedom School at Mount ZionOn Memorial Day 1964 Michael Schwerner and James Chaney asked Mount Zion church in Longdale, Mississippi, to host a Freedom School and urged its members to register to vote.
- Michael Schwerner helped win the Voting Rights ActNational outrage at the 1964 killing of Michael Schwerner and fellow activists James Chaney and Andrew Goodman helped Congress pass the Voting Rights Act of 1965.
- Michael Schwerner built a community centre in MeridianMichael and Rita Schwerner took over CORE's Meridian field office in 1964 and set up a community centre for Black residents as a base for grassroots organising.
- Michael Schwerner protected a bullied boy, Robert ReichAs a boy Michael Schwerner protected the young Robert Reich from bullies; Reich, later US Secretary of Labor, said it inspired him to protect the powerless.
- Michael Schwerner worked with youth on the Lower East SideMichael Schwerner left graduate school to work as a social worker in a Lower East Side housing project, where he was known for his special rapport with teenagers.
Sources
- Michael Schwerner Wikipedia
- Gwynn Oak Park Wikipedia
- Michael Schwerner Famous Trials, University of Missouri-Kansas City School of Law (archived)
Another act of tikkun olam. This is part of tikkun olam, the Jewish idea of repairing the world, and every one of us can add to it.