09/15/2026
NINA CLARKE: “THE CHILDREN GOT ALONG ALRIGHT, IT WAS THE ADULTS WHO CREATED THE PROBLEMS.”
By Thomas O’Toole
When the 1965-1966 school year began, integration in Montgomery County had been fully implemented for five years. But what sixth-grader Stephanie Lyons Mills, who is Black, encountered on the first day of classes was nonetheless unusual.
“I had Mr. (Ozie) Jackson, and he was the first male Black teacher I had ever seen in my life,” said Mills who started at Laytonsville in kindergarten. “He was the only Black teacher I remember at the school. I was one of about six Black kids in the whole class.”
Mills said that her experience with integration was largely uneventful. Her late brother Jimmy, who had started at Longview, was three years older and “was one of the first Black students who integrated,” Mills said. She said her mother has told her she was not aware of any problems Jimmy had with integration, and Mills said she did not really experience any of her own. She also had friends who were white.
“No one ever called me names that I recall,” she said. “There were times when I would just tune out (any negative talk). I was not that sensitive to stuff. My parents did not say that you have to be careful in that space.”
As part of a project on what it was like to attend Laytonsville Elementary from the mid-1950s to the mid-1960s, the Laytonsville Historical Center reached out to former students to talk about a variety of topics, including desegregation.
Mills said she thought it was important to mention Mr. Jackson because she realized she was never exposed to any other Black educators as a young student.
“The only other people of color were in supporting roles,” said Mills, who worked for the Montgomery Country Public Schools for nearly 32 years before retiring.
Nancy Welsh Greenan, who started kindergarten in the 1958-59 school year, had similar memories to Mills.
“I was treated very kindly as a person of color,” she said. “There weren't many of us there, maybe seven in the entire school. I liked going there. I had a great time. I was just like anybody else.”
But not everyone had a comfortable transition. Norman Morris, who still lives in the area, was among the seven Black students who were the first to integrate Laytonsville Elementary. He came for kindergarten in the 1956-57 school year and stayed through sixth grade.
He recalls difficult times, mainly how he was treated by white classmates.
“There was some ups and downs when I went there first,” he said. “People just weren't ready, but my parents had gone to meetings about what might happen to us. I understand. I didn't have a color barrier against anyone. I was taught that at home. My parents taught me not to hate.”
He remembers taunting and rough treatment in kindergarten and how at recess the white children would not play with the Black children. “We would play by ourselves,” he said.
Riding the bus was particularly difficult with older kids there. Some even wanted to fight him, and no one wanted to sit with him. He said he did not blame the children as much as the parents.
“It's what they were taught at home or listened to what (others) say,” he said. “You become what your parents are or what they teach you.
“People cannot imagine what it was like. I was taught that you don't start nothing, but you protect yourself. You cannot imagine what people went through. It was hard on a young person.”
Morris said the treatment at Laytonsville improved a little every year, though tense bus rides continued through junior high.
“I just overlooked it and thought, they're being the ones who are crazy. I'm not going to stoop down like that,” he said. “And some of the people who did stuff, I became great friends with. It was amazing. … Children can get along once they get together. But it was a learning experience to be able to cope with all kinds of people. … If people understand there's only one God, and we are all his children, we can get along.”
Morris said he thinks those first seven students were all in kindergarten, but he is not sure. A story in The Evening Star on Sept. 4, 1956, said seven Black children attended classes at Laytonsville “without incident.” The paper said Principal James Shumate had expected no trouble because of an earlier orientation with teachers and parents. But it did not say if the students were all kindergarteners.
Morris said his brother, who was older, was going to school at Longview in Gaithersburg and didn’t come to Laytonsville until a few years later.
Montgomery County was proactive
Not long after the Supreme Court ruled in 1954 that segregation in public schools was illegal, Montgomery County began planning for the transition. It would be another year before the Supreme Court would direct school systems to integrate with “all deliberate speed.” By then, Montgomery County was well ahead of most systems, debating various options and planning. According to the MCPS.org website, “Unlike other districts across the country, MCPS has never been under a court order to desegregate its schools. … MCPS voluntarily desegregated its schools.”
Support for the plans being discussed generally was divided between down-county, which included areas like Silver Spring, Wheaton and Rockville and up-county, which included Laytonsville, Damascus and Gaithersburg. According to newspaper reports, down-county residents favored almost immediate integration. Residents in the up-county area wanted a more gradual approach. Proposals ranged from a 12-year plan to a three-year plan to immediate implementation.
According to a story in the Baltimore Afro-American on March 12, 1955, Dr. P.L. Moore, principal of the combined educational and vocational Carver High School and Junior College in Rockville, said that most Black citizens lived in the upper part of the county, which the paper described as the “area where most of the tension over integration exists.” Integration began in the fall of 1955 for some down county schools, according to Montgomery History.
PTA makes a proposal
On May 8, 1956, the Laytonsville PTA sent a proposal to Superintendent Dr. Forbes H. Norris asking the county to “vary the timing” of integration because Laytonsville would be “one of the hardest hit” schools by transfers of black students if integration began there the following fall. The proposal also said:
“WHEREAS economic and other factors common to rural areas as served by Laytonsville school make it difficult to maintain an average achievement level, and
“WHEREAS Southern traditions and customs that have existed for many generations still prevail in the Laytonsville area and these customs are respected by both races, and
“WHEREAS interference with the prevailing local customs will cause emotional and psychological as well as educational damage to all the children in the school …”
The proposal did not explain “Southern traditions and customs” or offer evidence that they were “respected by both races.” It also did not define what it meant by “vary the timing” or specifically ask for a delay in implementation.
Dr. Norris replied in a letter he would “give it very serious consideration.” The first Black students enrolled the following fall. It’s possible one concession was made by the county. According to the book History of the Black Public Schools of Montgomery County, Maryland 1872-1961, Laytonsville originally was to receive 10 students in the first wave of integration. Instead, seven enrolled.
Nina Clarke, a former MCPS teacher and principal who co-wrote that book, told the Gazette newspaper in a story published in 2004, “We never had any violence in Montgomery County,” but she said some areas protested integration. Poolesville is cited as having the largest protests.
"The children got along alright, it was the adults who created the problems," Clarke, who was Black, told the Gazette. Clarke died in 2021 at age 103.
In addition to Mills, some other former Laytonsville students said they did not recall issues among the children. Lois Sell attended Laytonsville from the fall of 1952 through the spring of 1959.
“I remember two African-American girls, possibly in fifth grade,” she said. “Ruth Green was one of them. I became good friends with her. I was friends with both of them. My parents were very adamant that you treat everyone equally and be kind. I remember thinking over the years how that must have been hard for them to come into the classroom and see all those white faces. I don't remember any issues with it or any problems I know of.
“I think it was a very welcoming school for anyone being different, which my sister and I were. We were the only Mennonite girls at the school. We both had very good experiences.”
Roxanne Ivkovich Frank transferred into Laytonsville in 1964 from Harmony Hills Elementary in Silver Spring for fifth and sixth grades. She said she had never been in a class with Black students before coming to Laytonsville but doesn’t remember thinking it was unusual going to an integrated school. Instead, she “was more fascinated … (by) two girls in my fifth-grade class who were Mennonites. That was kind of exotic. They dressed very old-fashioned.”
Sell, who attended Laytonsville before Ivkovich arrived and whose father was a Mennonite minister, said no one ever called her "exotic," but she remembers one day a boy saying she “looked like a pilgrim.”
Limiting interaction
There was at least one area where the lines clearly were drawn between the white and Black students: when activities were done in pairs.
“I remember we were in phys ed and we had square dancing,” Mills said. “They made sure I was always paired with another Black kid. We could not be close with the white kids.”
Gwen Mayne Sandberg remembers a time when her desk was moved by her teacher to put her between two Black students.
“I was a very talkative child, maybe annoying in that way,” said Sandberg, who attended from the fall of 1961 till the spring of 1968. “One of the teachers, maybe first grade, in an effort to manage the classroom, moved me and sat me between the only two boys in the class who were African-American, I think in an effort to keep me quiet. It didn't work. It was supposed to be a discipline thing. I remember they were Thomas Claggett and Gary Prather. But I talked to them, and we became friends. I really enjoyed Thomas and Gary.”
Sandberg, known as Gwendy when she was at Laytonsville, grew up on a local farm and often interacted with African-Americans. For her, it was not unusual when integration came to the schools.
“I don’t think I even thought about (integration) that much,” she said. “I had positive relationships with people of color. … I did not sense any racial tension in elementary school.”
Sandberg, Mills and Frank started at Laytonsville several years after Morris began. As Morris said, he found it quite difficult at first but said treatment of Black students by others improved a bit each school year.
That doesn’t mean the change was easy or the improvement significant.
“Everybody was nervous,” Clarke told the Gazette in that 2004 story. “We had never had an integrated life. How were we going to make one school system out of two?"
Anne Burke Wolf and Jane Griffith Evans contributed to the reporting and editing of this story.
