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Old Wallville School dedicated
Restoration is oldest standing black school in Calvert
Wednesday, Oct. 28, 2009
 Click here to enlarge this photo Staff photos by BOB RENNEISEN
The restored Old Wallville School as pictured on a handout available for visitors. The building is located on the grounds of Calvert Elementary School on Dares Beach Road in Prince Frederick.
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A substantial crowd braved the rain Oct. 17 to fill the gymnasium at Calvert Elementary School in Prince Frederick for the formal dedication of the newly-restored Old Wallville School, believed to be the oldest standing one-room school for African-American children in Calvert County.
"The school was built in the early 1880s (with some evidence suggesting an early date of 1869) and remained in use until 1934," according to a handout available for visitors. "Rescued from imminent demise, the Old Wallville School was relocated to Calvert County public schools property and reconstructed.
"Wherever possible, salvageable portions of the original wood-frame 18x18-foot structure were retained. Interior furnishings reflect its appearance in the 1930s. The facility ... offered education for grades 1 through 7 in the Wallville community."
Harry Wedewer of Huntingtown, who chaired the nonprofit citizens group Friends of the Old Wallville School, which coordinated the restoration, welcomed the audience and recognized numerous individuals for their contributions of funds, labor and historical advice.
After the ceremony, when asked what the Old Wallville School restoration project really means, Wedewer said, "You know, I really think it means sort of coming full circle. By that I mean that this is a county whose demographic has changed considerably over the past 10 or 20 years to a great majority white, and I think there is a fear that some of the older history is being lost ... Today provides a reminder of the past that really can educate all of our children ... It's not going to fix everything, but it's another step in the right direction."
For one member of the audience, the old school brought back some specific personal memories.
"My mother and I used to take a lot of trips and we went by the old school a couple of times," said Mervin Parker of Island Creek. "She would say, ‘I used to sit in that particular chair.'"
Parker's mother, Annie Gross, who died in 2001 at the age of 84, attended the Old Wallville School in the 1930s, he said.
In a quote taken from Richlyn F. Goddard's "Persistence, Perseverance and Progress: History of African American schools in Calvert County, Maryland, 1865-1965," published by Calvert County in 1995, retired schoolteacher Elizabeth Gross recalled that the building known as the Old Wallville School was the original school for African-American children in the Wallville area along Mackall and J. Lloyd Bowen roads. She noted that the school is "as old as Methuselah — but it's still there."
The last principal of the school was Regina Brown, who served from 1931 to 1934. She described the school in a 1975 bicentennial publication of the Calvert County Retired Teachers Association.
"This was a segregated school of 35 black pupils in grades 1 through 7. I was principal, teacher, secretary, custodian and trouble-shooter," she wrote. "The room was about 15 by 15 feet with space for only a dozen double desks for pupils. The smaller children sat three in a desk. On days of good attendance the overflow sat on the floor in the aisle and used flat-topped logs for desktops. Our supplies consisted of textbooks, a register, one box of white chalk, a water pail and dipper, and one corn broom. The customary airtight stove was the only source of heat."
Regina Brown died in 2007 at the age of 97.
Most people in the United States today are familiar with the landmark Supreme Court case "Brown v. Board of Education" which declared racial segregation of schools to be unconstitutional. The winning case was argued before the court by then NAACP Special Counsel Thurgood Marshall. Marshall later was appointed to the Supreme Court, the first African-American jurist to sit on the bench of the nation's highest judicial body. However, except for many here in Calvert County, most aren't aware that this landmark case was the second "Brown v. Board of Education" case handled by Marshall.
Nearly two decades earlier, while fairly new as special counsel for the NAACP, he came to the aid of Regina Brown's sister, Harriet Elizabeth "Libby" Brown, who died earlier this year at age 101. She also was a prominent educator in Calvert County, and, in 1937, she brought suit against the board of education, demanding that African-American teachers in the county's then-segregated schools be compensated at the same rate as white teachers.
Her suit was handled by Marshall and was settled with the board of education, putting the county at the leading edge of ending racially-biased compensation for educators. A copy of one of Marshall's letters to Libby Brown is posted on the display boards outside the newly-renovated Wallville School.
At the dedication, a second cousin of the Brown sisters, Madison Brown Jr. of North Carolina, recalled that they always wanted to know how he was doing in school and he paid tribute to them during his formal remarks at the ceremony.
"They understood that children want to know that someone cares about them, really cares about them," Brown recalled. "It's OK to say, ‘Who's your girlfriend,' or, ‘who's your boyfriend;' that's OK, but it's not really what's important in life. They knew that because they showed that kind of interest [in our grades] it would motivate us —because who would want to go back to them and say you got a bad grade?"
The freshly restored Old Wallville School is on the grounds of Calvert Elementary School at 1540 Dares Beach Road in Prince Frederick.
