Stitched in Time

by

Culture

Stories of school segregation, integration, and the legacy of the Wiley H. Bates High School are the focus of new, immersive alumni projects

Leaning over a folding table, heads close, Marva Gaither and Betty Brown Turner sifted through stacks of photos: Homecoming crowds. Majorettes in midspin. The Little Giants raising a trophy.

“Do you remember him?” Turner asked, tapping a serious-faced teen in horn-rimmed glasses. Gaither giggled, “I wish I did.”

They arranged and rearranged as if laying out their senior yearbook. But the Class of ’58 friends were instead back at the old Wiley H. Bates High School library, no shelves of books anymore, just memories they were piecing together like the quilt before them. 

Bates was the first—and once only—high school for Black students in Anne Arundel County. “Dear Bates,” as students sang in their alma mater, remained a source of pride from 1933 to 1966, when the county finished desegregating, 12 years after Brown v. Board of Education. 

Now senior housing and a cultural center, the school has long been a cornerstone of Annapolis’ Black community. Bates drew students from the Baltimore line, southern farms, and Annapolis itself, creating bonds that outlasted the classroom. In recent months, backed by $19,000 in state heritage grants, alumni have reunited to create quilts, videos, and reflections that will be published soon. 

“Rich as it is, we have a couple of generations who don’t really understand that experience,” says Leslie Mobray, 75, who attended Bates before being transferred to Annapolis High in his junior year. The retired county schools administrator is contributing an essay on the abrupt transition.

St. Louis, Baltimore, and Washington, D.C., ended segregation soon after the Supreme Court’s 1954 decision. Anne Arundel County moved so slowly, starting with lower grades, that it took the threat of losing federal funding for officials to act. Bates students gasped, and many cried, when the principal announced the Class of ‘66 would be its last. 

“Earth-shattering” is how Mobray describes the upheaval as they were scattered to unfamiliar schools. Mobray walked to his hometown’s previously all-white high school; other friends had only glimpsed their new schools from the bus. Many felt disoriented, surrounded by new teachers and classmates, some openly hostile.

“It wasn’t so much physical violence but emotional,” Mobray explains, “the slurs, the derogatory terms, the refusal to work in small groups, the refusal to sit with you in the cafeteria.”

Though barely 60 years ago, he fears those who have only known integrated schools find it hard to relate: “Some will say, ‘We don’t need to hear that.’ It’s a grave mistake. As an educator, it’s important to me that they see and hear our history.”

That history is now being stitched, square by square, in Bates purple and gold. Documentary quiltmaker Lyndra Marshall, whose work has been displayed at the State House, is guiding volunteers in designing five large panels. Young people connect with quilts’ visual storytelling, she says: “There’s a real power to seeing stuff from back in the day. They get it.” 

One quilt honors the school’s founder, Wiley H. Bates. Born enslaved, Bates became a successful grocer and alderman in Annapolis. At the time, Black children were mostly taught in crowded schoolhouses that combined all grades. Bates used $500 of his own money to buy land on Smithville Street for the high school, which opened in 1933, shortly before his death. 

Meanwhile, Annapolis filmmaker Eric Elston has recorded 18 alumni (many in their late 70s, with a few nearing 100) in a “love letter to Bates.” The interviews, which Elston says “pulled on my heartstrings,” will be featured on YouTube and the Bates Legacy Center website. Many focus on what defined Bates: a school at once shortchanged yet rich in tradition—and ambition.   

Despite underpaid teachers, broken fountains, and used books, Bates rivaled white schools in spirit, if not resources. It boasted science labs, clubs, bands, an auto shop, a 399-seat theater—and the fearless Little Giants teams. Teachers took a personal interest in their students, and the school steadily added classrooms as enrollment climbed from a few hundred to 2,000 in the 1960s. 

“We had a sense of brotherhood and sisterhood, all of us taking pride in our academics, our sports, even our debate team,” says George Trotter, Class of ’64 and also a retired county educator. “Everyone couldn’t wait for our marching band to come down West Street.”

Trotter and others also recall how Bates supported civil rights activism. Black Power leader Stokely Carmichael spoke at the school (though the principal insisted he wear a tie.) Students attended nonviolence training at churches, marched in demonstrations, and staged sit-ins at restaurants, including Antoinette’s on West Street and the local Howard Johnson’s. 

At Antoinette’s, Linda Hicks Boyd, Class of ’64, ordered a Coke but left as tensions escalated. She recalled a man walking in with a dog, followed shortly by the police. “My father warned me, ‘You better not get arrested,’” she says with a laugh.

Over the years, Bates graduates became leaders in law, medicine, education, and public service. Among them were John Chambers, Annapolis’ first Black mayor; John S. Chase, an acclaimed architect; MLB player George Spriggs, and New York Supreme Court Justice Joseph Williams. 

Some have continued their activism, like Elizamae Robinson, Class of ’48, who led Maryland’s longest rent strike. At 94, she sells Bates buttons at meetings and recently published her poetry, including a verse that asks: “Black Americans love America, but does America love us?” 

For many alumni, the emotional fight that dragged on the longest was saving their school. Bates reopened after segregation as Annapolis Junior High, after white parents voted against keeping its name. (Eventually, another middle school was named Bates.) In 1981, the district closed the original two-story building, which collapsed over a quarter-century, its windows broken and bricks crumbling. Loyal graduates rallied, their efforts finally paying off in 2006 with a $27 million transformation of the campus into apartments, ballfields, and a community center.

Elston, who filmed a documentary on a court-ordered merger of a Black Mississippi high school in 2017, has noticed a similar pattern across the country. Black school names usually disappear in desegregation, he said, and communities “lose their rituals and culture.”

Through their latest projects, Bates alumni want to celebrate their school’s history—and the connections that made it feel like family—but also ensure their stories aren’t forgotten. 

Trotter experienced this firsthand when he returned to teach art at the newly integrated school. He found new microscopes, textbooks and music booths—but also fights in the halls. Black teens no longer had teachers and staff watching over them. They missed Bates football and the cheers their parents had taught them. “Black kids felt a real sense of loss,” he says.  

Twice a month, Marshall gathers with her quilting volunteers, who reminisce as they sort through old snapshots and mementos to find the right ones. Each will be fabric-printed and sewn onto decade-themed quilts, like the ’30s “First in Our Hearts.” Though not a Bates graduate, Marshall’s ties to the school run deep, and her quilts hang on the legacy center walls. 

“All things led to Bates,” she says, “hairdressers, barbershops, music we listened to—all of it.”

Now in their early 80s, Gaither and Turner laugh like sisters over dances, the gossip column, and charging boys to do their homework on the bus. Both became teachers and stayed friends. Quilting in the former school library, they’re reminded their responsibility has shifted with time.

“I don’t have many people older than me I can still call on,” Gaither says. “We are the resources now.”