Strawberry Roll, Mrs. William Russell

June 24th was the last day of the 1940-1941 school year. Students received report cards and were dismissed for the summer. The Evening Sun noted that “except for the studious or unlucky few who will attend summer school, there’ll be no more teachers and no more books for twelve weeks.”

For the seventh year in a row, Ellen and William Russell closed up their respective classrooms, bid their students farewell, and went home to pack for Maine.

It was to be a prosperous summer with the railroads, airlines, and steamships jam packed with travelers. Beneath the bustle, tensions were surfacing. A Black passenger on the Illinois Central Railroad had successfully sued when he was forced to give up his first-class air-conditioned car to a white passenger. In Arkansas, several white train riders refused to move from seats in the “Colored” section. There was still a possibility that the Russells could be denied their places on a train to New England to make way for white passengers.

Somehow some way, the Russells made it to Maine, where they assumed their summer roles in the kitchens of the Sachem Hotel in Ogunquit. William had dutifully registered for the draft the prior fall, but at 32 and as a school administrator, he was unlikely to be called. He took leave of his teaching life and returned to the family trade that had given him a financial leg up in the world: cooking. His father, Joseph Samuel Russell, was a chef at Baltimore’s Emerson Hotel. William’s mother and an aunt were cooks in private homes. An uncle was a chef at the Hotel Rennert.

Ellen had not been born into the world of food. Her father was a clerk in a shoe store, and she and her five siblings became teachers. She married William in February 1934, when she was 23 and he was 26.

After spending her first summer as a married woman lonely in Baltimore, Ellen joined William each year at the resort. With a family and a dream house in mind, they worked and saved money. While William cooked, Ellen washed glasses. Before long, she found her own calling in food when the head of the pastry department noticed her interest and offered to teach her. By 1941, Ellen was an experienced pastry chef.

That summer was to be her last year baking for the hotel. When the Russells returned in 1942, they had a baby daughter in tow.

I doubt that any of this was unexpected for Ellen. The Russells were patient planners. They’d been high school sweethearts but earned their college degrees before they married. And then they established careers and savings before having kids.

In 1956, their patience paid off. In 1954 they’d purchased a parcel of land near Lake Ashburton. They put their earnings to work building the dream house.

The Afro-American profiled the Russells in 1957, with photos of the interior and exterior of the home on Powhatan Avenue. The dining area was decked out with a formica dinette set, in “flame and dusty pink with aqua.” “Unusual planter boxes” decorated the hallways. Most of the doors were sliding doors. And of course a “Hi-Fi set” wired music to “all sections of the house.”

“It shows what a couple can do if they work together,” save money, and, the article claimed that the Russels declared “in unison, ‘agree on what you like so that you never have any bitter arguments along the way.'”

The Russells seemed to have a wonderful home life and the whole family shared the cooking and cleaning duties, but if they really said that mouthful “in unison,” I’d be a little weirded out, personally.

A view of the mid-century kitchen in the Powhatan Avenue home can be seen in a 1958 article in which Ellen Russell shared her pastry expertise. By then, their daughter Pamela was entering pre-med at Howard University and Denise was an honor student.

The Russells’ aspiration-worthy dream house and enviable life were seated within a decisive place and time in Baltimore history. According to “Not in My Neighborhood” by Antero Pietila, “the first African Americans to move to an entirely white suburb were William and Victorine Adams,” who bought a home at 3103 Carlisle Avenue in 1949. That’s just around the corner from where Ellen and William moved in 1956.

The neighborhood became a hotbed of “block-busting,” as real estate speculators stoked racist fears in order to encourage white residents to sell at low prices. In 1959, Ellsworth E. Rosen wrote an article in the Saturday Evening Post about the manufactured crisis. Rosen described his economic fears and his optimistic vision of integrating with his neighbors while keeping his fellow white neighbors from fleeing to the suburbs. The article is illustrated with a photo of a meeting of concerned white neighbors. The other photos are all of children at play, presumably unaware that their integrated activities are notable in any way.

Rosen’s story is five pages long. Without the context of a racist society coupled with a system that hinges economic security on home values, the whole thing would be completely baffling.

There is no way of knowing the particulars of how Ellen, William, Pamela, and Denise were affected by the prejudices of their neighbors as one by one, houses went up for sale. Inside historical events there are real peoples’ lives, and real people have everyday concerns.

All four family members signed a letter to the Afro-American, thankful for the article that profiled their home. “We shall be indebted to you forever.” In 1960, Ellen’s mother, Delia Scott, moved into a house a few doors down at 3219 Powhatan Avenue. The Russells stayed in their home until their deaths, Ellen in 1985 and William in 1990. Each had an obituary article in the Baltimore Sun mentioning their contributions to education in Baltimore City schools.

Ellen described her Strawberry Roll as a delicious way to make the most of strawberry season, and something that keeps in the fridge during hot weather. Her recipe is a tad vague, as one might expect from a professional. Her background as a science teacher demonstrated itself in the insistence on always depending upon a “reliable recipe after testing it.”

With that in mind, I actually made the roll twice because I forgot the tablespoon of water the first time. The recipe didn’t mention oven temperature or bake time but I did 350° for about 15 minutes. As promised, it was a delicious use of strawberries, even if my end result didn’t come out as good-looking as Ellen Russell’s cake surely was.

As far as I can tell, the annual trips to Maine ended once the Russells moved to 3211 Powhatan Avenue. In addition to the financial and life planning, they would have had to navigate a logistical minefield of discrimination in transport and lodging, down to more specific and mundane aspects of summer travel. Maybe it was time for leisure. Their obituaries mention that William belonged to a poker club and Ellen enjoyed tennis and croquet. Hopefully they were able to hand out those report cards, lock up their classrooms for the summer, and settle into their air-conditioned rec-room with favorite records on the Hi-Fi, to relax and enjoy the life they had built.

Recipe:

• 0.25 Teaspoons salt
• 0.75 Cups flour, cake
• 0.75 Cups sugar
• 1 Teaspoon baking powder
• 1 Teaspoon vanilla extract
• 1 Tablespoon water
• 1.5 Cups heavy cream
• 3 Cups strawberry, halves
• 4 egg
• 6 Tablespoons sugar, powdered

Sift flour, add baking powder and salt. Separate egg yolks from whites. Beat whites until stiff. Gradually beat in half of sugar.
Beat egg yolks until thick. Add remaining sugar, vanilla and water. Beat until thick. Gently fold in beaten whites. Fold in dry ingredients.
Pour mixture into shallow pan lined with waxed paper. Wrap in cloth and cool on rack.
Combine confectioner’s sugar and cream. Whip until perky. Unroll cake, fill with half of whipped cream and layer of berries. Roll up and spread outside with shipping cream and berries, and refrigerate.

Recipe from The Afro-American Newspapers, 7/12/1958