As Sherman Howell was marching against segregation in Tennessee in the 1960s, James W. Rouse was building the kind of community Howell could only dream of.
Rouse's vision of a racially and economically diverse city called Columbia was so radical it provoked skepticism. But it attracted many civil rights activists who wanted to believe -- and to live in such a place.
"Columbia was exactly the kind of place that we were fighting for in the movement," said Howell, 54, who moved to Columbia in 1971 after growing up in Arlington, Tenn., where blacks lived in a world apart. "It symbolized a place of hope for so many of us."
Most of these civil rights veterans say Columbia remains true to its integrationist roots. But some see diminished idealism -- less commitment to maintaining affordable housing, a cornerstone of Rouse's goal of an economically diverse community. Some say Columbia hasn't had sufficient impact on the rest of Howard, noting that the county has only two elected black officials.
The views of these now middle-aged Columbians add historical context to several efforts to map the future of Columbia and Howard County.
County officials are beginning to develop a new 10-year General Plan that will go a long way toward determining how much affordable housing will exist.
County Council members Mary C. Lorsung and C. Vernon Gray, Democrats who represent some of the oldest neighborhoods in Columbia, are working on ways to stave off decay in aging communities.
A broad-based, grass-roots group called Howard County -- A United Vision has sprung up to unite residents, many of whom are ignorant of
Columbia's idealized origins, around a blueprint for the next century.
Shaping identity
What Columbia is today is in part the work of civil rights activists who moved here, like Howell and Maggie Brown and John Milton Wesley and Earl Jones. They helped shape its identity as a liberal, progressive community as they turned their energies to new causes, from opposing the Vietnam War to confronting racial problems elsewhere in Howard County.
"You would have to believe in diversity to live in a place like Columbia -- that was true then, and it's true now," said Brown, 59.
She grew up in Cranberry and Bluefield, W.Va., where she boycotted segregated restaurants and movie theaters, and arrived in Columbia in 1970, a "doubting Thomas" on the issue of integration.
"Back then, I didn't believe that we could actually live and work here side by side with people of other races," said Brown. "I was pleasantly surprised."
Yet some activists worry about the future.
Perhaps the harshest critic of contemporary Columbia is Rabbi Martin Siegel.
"Columbia has become a boring suburb for middle-class blacks and middle-class whites," said Siegel, founder of Columbia Jewish Congregation and a civil rights worker in New York who worked with the Rev. Martin Luther King Jr.
"There is no cause that you feel you could give your life for," Siegel said. "Columbia is no longer a frontier for the movement."
Siegel has a home in Columbia but has taken his activism to Baltimore, where he runs an organization that battles substance abuse in the troubled Patterson Park area.
Continued activism
Howell and others from the movement became community activists in Columbia, in one way or another.
A computer software developer, Howell became a member of the Howard County chapter of the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People soon after moving to Columbia, and now is vice president of the African American Coalition of Howard County. He edits a newsletter exploring race relations in Columbia and the county.
Brown is vice president of community services for the Columbia Association, the homeowners group that funds recreational programs and other services in Columbia.
Earl Jones, 65, who grew up in segregated Martinsburg, W.Va., in the 1950s, is a civic leader: vice chairman of the Oakland Mills Village Board in Columbia, and a newly elected member of the Columbia Council, which oversees the homeowners association.
Wesley, 51, godson of famed Mississippi freedom fighter Fannie Lou Hamer, worked in the 1980s as an investigator for the county Department of Human Rights. He tracked cases such as that of a black family in Savage forced out of their home by whites. Today, he is assistant director of public relations for the Housing Authority of Baltimore City.
Rouse inspired action
What drew them to Columbia wasn't just the vision of the city but Rouse himself. Howell remained friends with Rouse until his death in 1996.
"He was just an amazing human being," Howell said. "He believed in nonviolence and passive resistance. He was inspired by Martin Luther King. Everything that Jim Rouse did was radical."
When Alabama Gov. George C. Wallace, then a segregationist, decided to hold a campaign rally in the newly built Merriweather Post Pavilion during his 1968 presidential campaign, it seemed a challenge to Columbia's commitment to equality and diversity. Rouse rallied the community.
"We are being strengthened by these trying, testing days," he said the night before the rally at a community meeting. "We are discovering that we are up to it, that we have the character, the competence, the will to bring forth the next America."
Fear and anxiety yielded to action, as Columbians organized an anti-segregation demonstration. "We were taking a stand against racism and segregation," said George Martin, 68, a retired mathematician, who participated in the demonstration. "We didn't want that here in Columbia."
That incident seemed to illustrate one of the lessons Brown took from Rouse.
"Jim Rouse believed that once Columbia was built everything wouldn't be perfect," she said. "But the people who would come here would take care of the imperfections by rolling up their sleeves and getting involved."
Today, hate crimes and racial incidents in Columbia are rare.
"This is probably as good as it gets to achieving real racial equality while living here in the good old U.S.A.," Jones said.
"Columbia has matured," he added. "The strength of Columbia is that you see a lot more diversity today than when I moved here in 1970. Back then, there were only a handful of African-Americans, but now you'll see Orientals and Indians. There are immigrants -- much more diversity."
Challenges remain
Jones and others are quick to point out that Columbia isn't a utopia -- it still has many challenges, including maintaining economic diversity. There's concern about community opposition to low-income housing.
"Back in the early days, you wouldn't have heard anyone speaking out [for] getting rid of low-income housing," Jones said. "That wasn't something that people believed in or would say."
Activists also want Columbia's spirit of integration to permeate county politics. There is one African-American on the County Council, Gray, and one state legislator who is black, Del. Frank S. Turner. Both are Democrats from Columbia. No blacks serve on the county school board.
Wesley remembers working with other activists to help elect Gray, Howard County's first black councilman, in 1982. The idea that a group of dedicated activists could help to elect a black man to office was amazing to Wesley, who grew up in segregated Ruleville, Miss., in the 1960s.
"When I got to Howard County, I was so far out of sync it was unbelievable," said Wesley. "There were so many things that I had never seen before -- I had never seen a black judge, I had never seen a black news anchorman. When I saw a white woman living in Columbia who had adopted two African-American children, I was blown away."
Wesley's activism can be traced to lessons he learned from Fannie Lou Hamer in rural Ruleville some 30 years ago. Hamer was instrumental in getting blacks the right to vote in Mississippi in the 1960s.
"In the final analysis, what we were trying to do back then and what we're trying to do now is quite simple," he said. "We're just trying to leave the world just a little bit better than we found it."
Howell, who honed his activist skills as a member of the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee, is still putting them to work as a member of the African American Coalition. He has no plans to move.
"I have never thought of leaving," he said. "There is no place in the world like Columbia."
Pub Date: 5/02/99