A History of Harriet Tubman High School and Columbia MD

HARRIET TUBMAN HIGH SCHOOL AND THE PROMISE OF EQUALITY IN COLUMBIA, MD

HARRIET TUBMAN HIGH SCHOOL

1948-1965

Harriet Tubman High School was opened in 1949, to serve the Black community in the town of Simpsonville, MD. The town was historically important on the underground railroad, and various oral histories describe how Harriet Tubman took enslaved people and hid them in Locust Cemetery, across the street from what would become Harriet Tubman High School. The town consisted mainly of farmland in between Baltimore and Washington DC, and later became an affluent suburb.

The school was originally set to be called Atholton Colored School, but students requested it to be renamed to Harriet Tubman as a nod to Black liberation.

The school served all the Black students in Howard County at the time, with students from all over the county bussing in daily. It received few resources, with former students describing textbooks as old and outdated.

In 1954, when Brown v. Board of Education declared segregation in schools unconstitutional, Howard County began to desegregate. It took 11 years from this decision, as Howard County opted to desegregate grade by grade, starting with the kindergarten class in 1956 and ending in 1965. They added additional hurdles by stating that Black students in other grades could appear before the board to request to be moved into a white school in the years before complete desegregation.

So this answers the question of how Harriet Tubman High School was open until 1965- the students were experiencing the remnants of legal segregation. But does this innately mean we should preserve the school?

“I loved going to Harriet Tubman High School. We felt like we were a family.”

-Bessie Bordenave

The school became a haven for students who attended. It was administrators who encouraged and demanded better textbooks tools for them.

the Black run by Black their students, and educational

“I’m forever thankful for that school. The teachers really cared, even when the day was over. I and many other students got opportunities we never would have had if we hadn’t gone to Harriet Tubman” -Bordenave Silas E. Craft, Principal of Tubman High from 1949-1956

It brings into focus all of uncertainties of preservation- the school isn’t a completely good or bad memory. Graduates aren’t angry at their experience, but instead remember it fondly, while still acknowledging the negatives. They want to use it as a lens to view Black history in Howard County and in Columbia.

“We don’t want it just to be about the African-American experience.

We want to also recognize other ethnic groups in Howard County,” she says. “The building is very big. There’s enough room to include other cultures. There’s so much history that should be shared about the African-American culture in Howard County that people don’t know anything about.”

-Bessie Bordenave

What the graduates don’t want is what is happening now- the building falling into disuse and disrepair. Currently, it is still owned by the Board of Education and is a storage facility. Before that, it was briefly a homeless shelter. As I knew it in high school, it was simply an empty building which was used as a landmark for cross country practice. But by the time I knew it, context had changed significantly. It wasn’t in the town of Simpsonville, it was in the town of Columbia.

COLUMBIA, MD A “NEW CITY” Columbia began just as Harriet Tubman High School was winding down. James Rouse, an American planner from Easton MD, wanted to create a new city which would be a “garden for the growing of people.” It would be created on the ideal of equality and to ensure that, Rouse forced integration of the communities. If too many people of one race bought homes in a neighborhood, others of that race would be blocked from buying in that specific area until an equilibirum was restored.

Rouse was a colleague of Jane Jacobs but opted for a different approach to her ideals of the organic city, instead creating a fully planned community. He devised a system of 12 neighborhoods, each with their own “town center” with their own schools, stores, walking paths, parks, and interfaith centers, rather than individual churches (he believed these would divide groups). He believed that it would create a better city, in which space would be used efficiently and zoning would create mixed income areas. He created clusters of apartments, townhouses, and single family houses instead of separating them as was typical in the suburbs.

In 1962, he and his company began secretly buying up property (mainly farmland) in Howard County. In 1963, he revealed his purchase to the government and residents, and explained he wanted to create a planned community, which didn’t have to go through the urban sprawl which was plaguing the nation.

“Simply stated, we are ‘colorblind.’ This means that every person or family coming to Columbia to seek a lot, an apartment, a house; to start a business; to golf, tennis, ride horseback, sail, swim, or use any other facility open to the public will be treated alike regardless of whether the color of his skin is white, black, brown, or yellow,” Rouse wrote. “All people will be shown the courtesy and attention by sales personnel that is appropriate to their interest regardless of color.”

-Rouse in a letter to staff

The People Tree- a sculpture which still stands in the main square of Columbia, and symbolizes people coming together to grow.

It seems to be a little on the nose for something created while segregation was still actively happening in the town.

So, while all of this was happening to ensure that Columbia, MD was an egalitarian and diverse place to live, Harriet Tubman High School was still open and Black students had to individually appeal for the option to go to a white school.

But it did close instead of being integrated, leaving it vulnerable to the whims of the county. Currently, it is not well known to the general public, which makes it harder to drum up support for a preservation project.

So why should we save it? The building itself doens’t have any particular architectural significance.

Harriet Tubman High School should be preserved for exactly the situation that is happening now- the town around it doesn’t want to change unless federally mandated to.

It should be preserved as an expression of perseverence and as a reminder of what happened legally not very long ago in our nation. And now, it is still legal, just in other ways. Howard County, which encompasses Columbia, has been in the news in the past few years about redistricting the school system as a method of abating modern segregation. The proposal seeks to redistrict to balance the number of low income students across the schools rather than have some schools with low average income and some with very high.

It received some support, with parents saying things like:

But more alarming were the number of racist emails and letters to the school board. And besides outright racist, some were just delusional.

This is emblematic of Columbia- a town which prides itself on acceptance and diversity, but isn’t aware of its own fraught history.

By allowing Harriet Tubman High School to decay quietly, it allows citizens to forget about the history of racism that occurred and that white citizens tried to continue past the Brown v Board case.

Bordenave has been actively pushing since 2002 for a community center that provides a space for Black residents of Columbia, as well as other residents, to learn about local Black history. She also wants it to be used as a cultural center that could host plays and performances.

Funding was obtained for the building to be preserved in 2017, but since then many setbacks have occurred. The county set the goal of having construction completed by 2019, but currently in 2021, no progress has been made.

In July of 2021, the building was broken into and vandalized.

“Based on the things that I have seen here, I would say yes, this is a hate crime. Because it appears that nothing else was disturbed but things that related to our Black history and to our Black school,” Bordenave said.

She and other former graduates are continuing to put pressure on the local government to continue the project.

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