The Frederick community will  celebrate the 50th anniversary of the signing of Civil Rights Act of 1964 with a march on Frederick on September 26. The purpose is to commemorate how much the city has progressed since the legislation, and a new generation can learn from this experience. Major sponsors include Hood College and the City of Frederick. FCPS has declared that student participants are excused from school on that day if they provide a parent note indicating permission.

Carol Wuenschel, the Executive Director for Human Resources at Hood College, believes that, “…sometimes to move forward, we need to see what success has been achieved to provide motivation to keep making progress.”

Passing historical landmarks, the marchers  will start at Harry Grove Stadium at 9:30 a.m. and end at the front steps of Hood’s Alumnae Hall, with the formal program ending at 1:30 p.m. Carol Wuenschel said that, “business people, clergy, students, citizens, civil rights advocates, and people from all walks of life” are all going to participate in the march. She states the people of Frederick can benefit from this to “ …pay tribute to those brave men and women who used nonviolence to bring about long-lasting substantive change in racial relations and equal opportunity.”

The Frederick Visitor Center will host an open house from 2 to 6 p.m. where visitors will be able to see a DVD explaining the local historical struggles of that time period. Lincoln Elementary’ s Choir is performing for marchers at the school.

According to Michael Doerrer, FCPS’s Director of Communications, Community Engagement and Marketing, FCPS is contributing by allowing students to be excused from school to attend (with a note from a parent/guardian). FCPS has been advertising this event and is sponsoring a student poster contest to help promote the event and raise awareness. Frederick Community College is also supporting this event.

Frederick will be remembering the hardships endured by segregated people before 1964. Mr. Tony Miller, history teacher, describes life before 1964. “… If you owned a restaurant or a motel or some sort of business, and someone of color walked in… you just kicked them out of your establishment, not on rowdiness or health laws, but entirely on their skin color.”

This was all legal in Frederick as well as the rest of the United States. “Jim Crow laws were practiced in Frederick. So schools, housing developments, businesses and the like were all divided by race,” said Miller. Segregation laws in Maryland included banning interracial marriage.  All railroad companies and corporations had to have separate cars for white and colored people.

Maryland was once a state that enforced segregation laws. We should celebrate how far along Frederick has come since 1964, while remembering and learning from our past.