Word: chestertown
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This is the third part of a four-part series on Integration and segregation in Chestertown, Maryland. The articles were filed from Chestertown last summer and were originally printed on the dates indicated in the Summer News. The articles recently won the Dana Reed Prize...
...August 9, 1962 CHESTERTOWN...
...Chestertown Chamber of Commerce meets in one of the few air-conditioned rooms in town, a large, nicely furnished place on the second floor of the bank here. Most of its members are professional men who arrive promptly for meetings, dispatch their business efficiently and return to their comfortable suburban homes. Just now, the Commerce's main item of business is the publication of a small brochure describing the placid luxuriousness of life here in Kent County...
...problem of integration off its books, and move along to more pressing affairs. None of its members-believe that integration is an important question, for none can apply the concept of community responsibility to the "colored folk" in town. If Negro housing threatens the health of all of Chestertown's citizens, for example, it is still up to the Negro to improve his conditions: "You have your own grey ladies at the hospital. Why can't they do something to teach your people proper hygiene?" It is useless to argue with this sort of statement. Not even the most liberal...
Many of the older Negroes, recalling what life was like during their youths, share in this sanguinity. The younger ones are caught between an attachment to home and their families' traditions, and the knowledge that they might do better elsewhere, or even in Chestertown if they defy their parents. Getting away from home is a real problem for these young people. One of the brightest of them, for instance, quit Morgan State College in Baltimore after three months because he was too homesick; others have thought to make careers in the army, and then quit after two lonely years...