Tribute

On my way to get my morning croissant, I spotted what appeared to be a discarded newspaper.  On closer inspection, it's a bronze rendition of the page of a paper celebrating a landmark racial equity victory for William Gibbs. 

As per the city's historian: "In 1936, the Rockville Colored Elementary School was the setting for an historical event. Teacher-principal William B. Gibbs, Jr. volunteered as a litigant to challenge Montgomery County’s practice of paying black teachers half the salary of white teachers with equal qualifications.

Mr. Gibbs earned $612 annually, compared with an average white teacher’s salary of $1,362. Attorneys for the Maryland Teachers’ Association, the black teacher’s organization, and the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP), among them Thurgood Marshall, filed suit in circuit court. Several property owners in Haiti, a Rockville neighborhood, pledged their houses as collateral, should it be needed. They also helped to found the Montgomery County Chapter of the NAACP at Jerusalem Church. 

In 1937, the school board settled out of court. The following year, black teachers received a pay raise equal to 50 percent of the discrepancy, and, beginning in 1938, all teachers were on the same salary scale. The victory was gained at a cost, however. Mr. Gibbs was fired on a technicality regarding his principal’s certificate, and he never taught in Maryland again." 


I like my little city of Rockville, which is determined to celebrate diversity in all its forms -- including not cooperating with ICE agents conducting raids on illegal immigrants :)