Community, Culture, and Economic Development, Second Edition: Continuity and Change in Two Small Southern Towns

Epilogue

111 Epilogue Racial injustice is a thread that runs through all of the preceding chapters. In this chapter, it is the central theme. Shocking racial disparities in the Somerset County government and school system were publicly confronted in a community forum on June 11, 2009. This chapter tells what happened that evening and describes the lengthy contest that ensued. It tells of legal and administrative shenanigans by local officials and the means by which six black county residents, hereafter referred to as the “Somerset Six,” and the coalition that they constructed finally prevailed. Their story is interesting on a variety of levels. Hanes Walton has described problems inherent in implementing federal civil rights legislation following the bureaucratization of the civil rights movement, and he points out, for example, that the sometimes willfully lax enforcement of civil rights laws under conservative administrations has been a problem since as far back as the Reagan administration.1 But even under Democratic administrations, there is a certain leakage of enforcement authority that occurs as policies make their way through loosely coupled and sometimes politically misaligned intergovernmental channels. Tyson King-Meadows points out and this study affirms that neither the language of the Voting Rights Act nor its routine enforcement is able uniformly to protect the rights of minorities when political will at any level of government is lacking.2 In Somerset County, the habitual misuse of local administrative discretion was the source of the problem. But the solution, instead of coming from from state or federal regulatory agencies, as one might expect,3 was initiated at the grassroots level by the Somerset Six. Their story is inspiring and might serve as a model for African Americans and other minorities whose civil rights have not been fully realized. Before I proceed with this remarkable story, I will update readers on happenings in the county, its two towns, and on some of the individuals who appeared in preceding 112 / Community, Culture, and Economic Development chapters. Then I will pick up the narrative that began in the preface to the second edition, starting with the Community Forum. Princess Anne Had a Successful Facelift When I returned to Princess Anne after a twenty-year absence, the national economy was still in a shambles, the housing industry had tanked, and the Maryland seafood industry had continued its decades-long decline. I was therefore prepared for the worst. But the first thing I saw, as I turned off of Highway 13, was an attractive new shopping center anchored by a very good restaurant. Then I noticed lots of new student housing near UMES. Driving farther, I saw that the small downtown area had had a facelift and that many of Princess Anne’s historic buildings had been restored. I learned that a national hotel chain had purchased the historic Washington Hotel where the “good ole boys” formerly gathered for breakfast and planned to remodel it for an upscale clientele. Princess Anne had begun to fare better after its designation as an enterprise zone in 2002. By 2006, near the pinnacle of the real estate boom, a number of housing developments appeared in the town. Princess Anne was benefiting from its new partnership with UMES, and the university was expanding. Between the Rural Development Center at UMES, headed by Daniel Keunen, and the new Princess Anne Main Street Partnership , the town had won valuable federal and state grants.4 In 2008, this partnership won the “Maryland Main Street” designation, which garnered additional grant monies and renewed signs of revitalization. But even as these improvements were taking place, the collapsing real estate market and ensuing economic recession were taking their toll in failed businesses and lost jobs in Somerset County. There was a period when it was hard to say in which direction Princess Anne’s economy was moving. Then in 2010, Northrop Grumman, the aerospace giant, opened a 53,000-square-foot research and production facility in the Princess Anne Industrial Park. Managers said they were attracted by the town’s proximity to UMES and to NASA’s Wallops Flight Facility near Chincoteague Island, Virginia, where the Navy plans future missions. After being in the county for little more than a year, Northrop Grumman was considering an expansion.5 What is more, town officials reversed the unhealthy financial picture, ending 2012 with a $180,839 fund balance.6 With a teetering world economy, it is certainly possible to be too optimistic, but for all of that, Princess Anne seems to be...