Fun fact: present-day Lockerman Middle School was once an all-Black high school. But even if you already knew that, don’t you want to know more?
Lockerman High School was named for Joseph Harrison Lockerman, an African American educator born in Caroline County. His father, James Lockerman, was a Black laborer who could not read or write. Joseph Lockerman graduated from Centenary Biblical Institute (now Morgan State University) in 1886 and settled in Baltimore City. A February 1900 insert in the Denton Journal noted that Lockerman was asking Maryland State Legislatures for a large sum of money to build a “Colored Normal School” – that means an all-Black teacher’s academy in 1900 speak. He eventually became the first African American Principal of the all-Black High and Training School (what is now Coppin State University) in Baltimore. After his death in 1923, flags at Black schools in the city flew at half-mast.
Though Lockerman was built in 1930, it could not have been the first of its kind, as Denton native and first woman President of the NAACP Dr. Enolia McMillan is documented as having taught at an all-Black high school in Denton in 1928. However, based on the fact that McMillan’s master’s thesis topic was discrepancies between white and Black schools in Eastern Shore counties, I think it’s safe to assume the original all-Black Denton High School wasn’t great. Another clue is that in 1931, Caroline’s white elementary school teachers made $1,027 annually while Black teachers in the county made $490.
Multiple secondary sources attribute a “Sir Isaac Thomas” of donating the original 6 acres of land to the Caroline County Board of Education on behalf of the Parent-Teacher Association for a school. While I couldn’t track down an undeniable source from the time on the fellow, there did seem to be at least one Isaac Thomas who seemingly dealt in real estate based on newspaper listings of delinquent rent payments and land auctions. What led Thomas to donate the land is something I don’t know, so for now I will just guess he was a passionate member of the PTA. All the sources I could find vaguely claim that the funds for Lockerman’s building were donated by Black locals.
Regardless, Lockerman High School was dedicated in March of 1931 with about 120 pupils in attendance. There isn’t much documented on Lockerman as a high school. Lucky for me, there are some former Lockerman High students still living in the community to fill in some blanks.
Gwendolyn Wright graduated from Lockerman High in 1966, the last year of segregation in Caroline. She, like most of her peers, got involved in Lockerman’s athletic teams. “That was the only time you got to go anywhere, if you played sports,” she said.
The decision to integrate America’s public schools was handed down in May of 1954. Edward Turner, then running to represent Maryland Congressional District 1, published his opinion on the matter in the October 15th, 1954 edition of the Denton Journal (can you tell I like old newspapers?). He wrote “The consequences of any such attempt to disturb the status quo could only be harmful and dangerous…The negroes on the Eastern Shore… for the most part are perfectly satisfied with present conditions.”
Fast forward to 1965, a Mr. Frank H. Kessler published a column that took the opposite stance. He wrote, “It is better to [integrate] voluntarily, peacefully, gracefully, than be forced into it by Federal edict or by the type of mass demonstrations that have rocked the South.” Even though he was clearly pro-integration, Kessler included in his printed musings that “The Board of Education has tried to keep Lockerman equal to the white high schools.” Based on the conversation I had with Miss Wright, he could have saved that last part. She told me that Lockerman and other all-Black schools in the county never received new materials such as textbooks, only the hand-me-downs from the white schools.
Finally, in the 1966-1967 school year, Caroline’s schools were completely desegregated. Wright noted that it wasn’t all rainbows at first, and her younger sisters experienced being singled out at times in the newly-integrated North Caroline. Lockerman High was renamed Riverview and was an integrated middle school (it eventually went back to being Lockerman in 1993).
When asked what she remembers about Lockerman High, Wright said, “Our teachers were very professional.” Some of those who stood out to her were her music teacher, Miss Edna Carter, and her Physical Education teacher, Miss Deborah Spencer. According to Wright, “you embarrassed the family” if you were sent to Principal Frances Gates’ office. And as for Miss Spencer, your white gym socks had to be spotless, or “you were washing them in the sink and wearing them wet.”