The Merionite Ardmore, PA, 19003
September 12, 2013
The official student newspaper of Lower Merion High School since 1929 www.themerionite.org Special Commemorative Issue
District commemorates 50th anniversary of historic “Moment of Integration” A.Levitt/ C.Henneberry Class of 2014/ Teacher, Social Studies Department
On a crisp fall day 50 years ago, 223 students who had previously attended the Ardmore Avenue School stepped for the first time into new classrooms, forever changing life in Lower Merion. On that morning, Thursday, September 5, 1963, the dream of complete racial integration for the Lower Merion School District was finally achieved. In what would come to be known as the defining year of the Civil Rights movement, a year in which police assaulted protesters in Birmingham and Dr. King proudly proclaimed his dream from the steps of the Lincoln Memorial, the Lower Merion community took brave measures toward full Civil Rights and equality for all. Today we commemorate those first steps as the “Moment of Integration.” A few weeks earlier, on the evening of August 26, the Lower Merion Board of School Directors met to make a historic decision. For the previous two years, this board, under leadership of president John F.E. Hippel, was urged by members of the local chapter of the NAACP, especially youth advisor Isabel Long Strickland, to improve the Ardmore Avenue school. The facility and resources of the school were widely accepted to be inferior to those of the four other elementary schools in the district. For example, the school had no playing fields, only asphalt parking lots. In addition, the majority of African-American students
in the district attended this school, while the remaining four elementary schools had overwhelmingly white student bodies. While students from all five schools would meet in Ardmore Junior High School and later attend Lower Merion High School, the perception remained that racial inequities among the five elementary schools, and the inferior facilities of Ardmore Avenue School, led to a condition of de facto segregation. On that August evening, after a summer of many petitions and marches, the Board of Directors cast its final vote on Superintendent Philip U Koopman’s plan and effectively closed Ardmore Avenue for good. Starting on September 5, those who had attended Ardmore Avenue walked or were bussed to the remaining four other elementary schools of the district: Wynnewood Road School, Bryn Mawr School, Penn Wynne School, and the Penn Valley School. The decision for complete integration was not without its challenges. Opposition to the move emerged in parts of the district, from those who felt threatened by the new arrivals to their local schools, or from those who regretted the closing of an elementary school central to the Ardmore community. However, despite the swift nature of the decision and the considerably slower changes in mindsets, the process of complete integration had begun, and today we reap the benefits of that momentous resolution. President Hippel commented, “The ultimate decision was based upon humanitarian values and on consideration of the disadvantages ultimately inherent in any form of segregation.”
Past and present, Civil Rights in the district and in the nation The original Ardmore Avenue School, it burnt to the ground in 1900.
Ida B. Wells, an early leader of the Civil Rights movmenet.
Students practice morning callisthenics, In 1954, the Engelhardt Report, comcirca 1910. Following the World Wars, many missioned by the district, found the African-AmerArdmore ican families Avenue School moved into the to be in a state Adrmore comof disrepair. munity.
African-Americans served in both World Wars, but in segregated units.
1961-1963: the NAACP puts pressure on the School Board to integrate the distict and end inferior schooling
Thurgood Marshall and the NAACP 1957: Soldiers escort the celebrate the Brown decision, 1954 “Little Rock Nine” into Cenrtal High
August, 1963: Dr. King and the March on Washington