“Western High May Become Coeducational Negro School,” the 1954 Baltimore Sun Headline read. Hand-wringing about school desegregation was splashed throughout the pages of the Sun that year. The issue that brought Western High to the front line of the fight was its status as an all-girls school. If the quality of education was unique in white single-sex institutions, then “separate but equal” was subject to question. The NAACP was challenging Baltimore Polytechnic Institute’s unique engineering program on similar grounds.
Enrollment had been dropping at Western, as its surrounding West Baltimore neighborhood became populated with black families whose daughters were barred from the school. Elizabeth T. Meijer of the Baltimore Urban League suggested the obvious solution – integrate the school. She wrote to the Sun that Baltimore was in a position to “not only show the U.S.A. but the whole world… that we not only preach but practice democracy.” Making Western High School an integrated girls’ school was not apparently seriously considered by the school board. There was talk of closing the school altogether.
The Soul Food Cook Book, 1971, Western High School
Ultimately it was decided that the school would relocate to the old City College location at Howard and Centre Streets. Frederick Douglass High School moved into Western’s old location at Gwynns Falls Road.
Thankfully, not everyone was satisfied with this outcome. In June 1953, Eugene D. Byrd wrote a passionate letter to the Sun chastising the school board for hiding behind “ancient views… of persons who cannot understand that God is Love and all mankind is the same in His sight.”
A few years later, a 1956 Sun report declared that the public had accepted the integration of schools, despite a flurry of agitator picketing and student absenteeism in September. By the 1960s, Western High School yearbooks exhibited an integrated student population, united by a common penchant for bouffant hair shellacked meticulously skyward.
Western High School remains a girls’ school to this day; the oldest public all-girls school in the United States (Eastern having gone coed in the early 80s.)
1970 Western High School yearbook, “Westward Ho!”
In 1971, Mrs. Sarah Cooper’s senior English class found out that the teacher was unfamiliar with soul food. The girls began to bring in dishes for Mrs. Cooper to enjoy. Eventually, the students even commandeered the home economics room, inviting the principal and vice principal to dine. “You couldn’t miss what was going on in that room,” said Cooper, “The whole school smelled of soul food.”
With the help of guidance counselor Maisie Rea, the social exchange became a project – the “Soul Food Cookbook.” Rea later explained to Baltimore Sun reporter Jane Howard: “There is no mild tasting soul food. It is more in the way food is seasoned that distinguishes it… we can fix the same dish but mine wouldn’t taste like yours.” Rea’s recipe for kidney stew is included in the book. “People of today rarely have time for the long, slow processes that were responsible for the tasty stews… of earlier days,” she wrote. “Members of my family, however, have held on to some of our traditional recipes.”
The Soul Food Cook Book, 1971, Western High School
The book contains recipes for cracklin’ cornbread, hog maws and chit’lins, black-eyed peas, and coconut pie, along with less famous dishes like peach upside-down cake and “caramel eggnog.”
This potato salad recipe was contributed to the book by Thomasina Falcon. Unfortunately, I couldn’t find much about her although I believe she was originally from Anson County North Carolina. She passed away in 1986.
In addition to the recipes, the “Soul Food Cookbook” is peppered with poetry and personal stories about family and food. Mrs. Beulah Taylor wrote that her recipe for cabbage with fatback drippings had been “handed down from generation to generation… as many times as [the] recipe has been handed down, it still tastes good every time.”
Recipe:
- 12 medium white potatoes, diced
- 2 diced onions
- 1.5 stalks diced celery
- 2 carrots, shredded
- 6 diced pickles
- 1.5 Tablespoons mustard
- 2.5 Teaspoons celery seed
- 4 Tablespoons mayonnaise
- 2 Tablespoons salt
- 1 Teaspoon pepper
- 2 Teaspoons sugar
- 1 Teaspoons vinegar
- 2 Teaspoons pickle juice
- 1 green pepper
“Bring potatoes to boil about 20 minutes until soft, but not too soft. Place potatoes in drainer and then put in refrigerator, after all the water is drained out. While potatoes are cooking, cut up onions, celery, carrots, pickles, and green pepper. Let potatoes stay in the refrigerator for about 1 hour or until cold. Put onions, celery, pickles, carrots and green pepper in the refrigerator.Take out potatoes, cut them into cubes, and put them in large mixing bowl. Then add your onions, celery, and pickles carrots and green pepper to potatoes and mix lightly. Next add celery seed, sugar, salt, pepper, and pickle juice and mix together. Then add mayonnaise (or Miracle Whip) and mustard and mix and stir together lightly. Add your vinegar a little at a time and mix.After salad is ready, put it back in the refrigerator so that potatoes can absorb seasonings until you are ready to serve. Garnish potato salad with lettuce, tomatoes, and radishes.”
Recipe from The Soul Food Cook Book, 1971, Western High School, found at the Enoch Pratt Free Library
the last of my family pickles made this salad extra special IMHO
Kneeling in the center with the black shirt and white vest is a “T. Falcon,” 1970 Western High yearbook