Aberdeen High Holds Atypical Integration Story For Baltimore Attorney

Prominent Baltimore Attorney A. Dwight Pettit was the first African American male to attend Aberdeen High School.

 But his isn’t the typical story.

 Supreme Court Justice Thurgood Marshall led the legal team that fought his way into the school long before Marshall came into national prominence. And although racism was still intense in 1960 when Pettit integrated Aberdeen High most of the fervor was reserved for his father, an engineer working at Aberdeen Proving Ground.

 “As a result of my being in the high school, we just about integrated everything in Aberdeen and Edgewood,” Pettit explained. “Every place we went, if it wasn’t integrated, it was because the kids demanded it.”

 The common denominator for Pettit was football. He played for Coach James Grieve Smith Sr. from 1960 to 1963 after winning a two-year court battle against the Harford County Board of Education.

 “The hostility that we expected was dissipated by athletics,” Pettit said. “Coach Smith was fantastic from the very beginning,” Pettit has said.

 Pettit, 65, often tells the story of how Coach Smith called the team together under the goal post and told them that Pettit would be starting at tight end. If anybody had a problem playing with Pettit or blocking for him, Smith told him to leave now.

 “When everybody was quiet, he said, ‘Gentleman let’s play football,” Pettit said.

 That set the tone for Pettit’s interaction with other students. Football practice began during the summer and by the time the school year started he had began gaining acceptance as a standout athlete.

 “Not only did you have the people of Harford County, you also had the military kids. They were very progressive,” Pettit said. “I still maintain that football was the main bridge that allowed me to make the transition much easier.”

 Pettit’s father was transferred from the now defunct Fort Holabird in Batimore City to APG. As such he brought his family with him.

 “That’s how I got there,” Pettit said.

 Back then, blacks attended Havre de Grace Consolidated High School or Central Consolidated High School at Hickory, he said.

 “Basically the black students were matriculating about two years behind the white schools,” Pettit said.

 But Pettit’s father, George Pettit wouldn’t stand for his son getting a substandard education.

 During A. Dwight Pettit’s eighth grade school year, his father attempted to have his son transferred to Aberdeen High School because it included an academic curriculum that prepared students for higher education.

 George Pettit was told that his son must attend Havre de Grace Consolidated High School and apply for a transfer during the summer of 1959. The engineer wasn’t pleased, but complied on the advice of a lawyer. When he was still denied entrance to the school, the Pettit’s filed suit.

Meanwhile, George Pettit moved his son back to school in Baltimore County so that he could remain academically competitive if he was eventually accepted into Aberdeen High School.

“We were doing things in the eighth grade that I had done in fifth or sixth grade,” Pettit said. “There was no separate but equal.”

Marshall was the lead attorney. Jack Greenberg, Juanita Mitchell and Tucker Dearing also represented Pettit.

“That was my legal team. I had no idea that my lawyer was going to be the greatest African American lawyer,” Pettit said of Marshall. “I was ordered in Aberdeen High School in 1960.”

When Pettit attended school he was always careful.

“You’re always on guard and on stage,” Pettit said. “My father would always tell me, ‘you can’t do what the white kids do.’”

Pettit said his parents told him that he had a responsibility both to them and to the black community. Pettit rarely went to any school dances because seeing a mixed-couple was taboo.

“I was very cognizant of my relationship with the white females,” Pettit said. “My father would come on the football field and I would be surrounded by girls and he would say, ‘son, be careful.’’’

Pettit said he even skipped his senior prom.

“I had a very, very Spartan social life in terms of dating,” Pettit said. “In those days, I wasn’t going to get caught wrong. It wasn’t a problem but I wasn’t going to do anything to cause it to be a problem.”

Overall, Pettit said, his integration experience was atypical.

“I had one fight,” Pettit said. “We later became friends.”

Pettit was spared much of the ire of early 1960s race relations. His father was not so lucky.

George Pettit told his son that he suffered all kinds of harassment while working at APG because his son helped integrate Aberdeen High School.

“Aberdeen Proving Ground came down on him like a house of bricks,” Pettit said. “They kicked us off the base. He was denied a promotion for 14 years. They took his name off of certain projects.”

His father also dealt with more overt expressions of racism, Pettit said.

“They hung rebel flags in his office,” Pettit said. “They played Dixie when he would come in the door.”

After graduating from Aberdeen High School, A. Dwight Pettit graduated from Howard University in 1967 and graduated Howard’s Law School in 1970.

Years after winning his own lawsuit to gain access to the education that prepared him for law school, A. Dwight Pettit successfully represented his father in litigation of his own, George Pettit v. the United States that addressed the discrimination he faced at APG.

“My father is deceased, but he had the opportunity to live out his days in victory,” Pettit said. “Education is the whole key to the injustices of race that have been inflicted on African Americans.”

(Editor's Note: Aberdeen Patch will celebrate Black History Month by running a series on African American history makers in Aberdeen and throughout Harford County. Feature stories will run on Saturdays during February. If there you know of an African American History maker who would like to be featured please e-mail Mark.Tyler@patch.com)