©2018 Deirdre M. Dougherty ALL RIGHTS RESERVED MAKING RACE AND MAKING SPACE: A GENEALOGY OF SCHOOL DESEGREGATION IN PRINCE GEORGE’S COUNTY, MARYLAND 1954-1975 By DEIRDRE MAYER DOUGHERTY A dissertation submitted to the School of Graduate Studies Rutgers, The State University of New Jersey In partial fulfillment of the requirements For the degree of Doctor of Philosophy Graduate Program in Education Written under the direction of Dr. Benjamin Justice And approved by _____________________________________ _____________________________________ _____________________________________ _____________________________________ New Brunswick, New Jersey May 2018 ABSTRACT OF THE DISSERTATION Making Race and Making Space: A Genealogy of School Desegregation in Prince George’s County, Maryland 1954-1975 By DEIRDRE MAYER DOUGHERTY Dissertation Director: Dr. Benjamin Justice Scholars have long approached school desegregation as both a legal and a political problem. More recently, they have acknowledged the limits these framings put on our understanding of the nuanced ways in which identities are formed and have begun to recognize desegregation as a spatial problem. This engagement with space lays the groundwork for shifting desegregation away from a legal and political framing to seeing it as a problem of discourse and representation. Drawing on notions of space from geography and theories of racial formation, this dissertation investigates the relationship among space, race, and educational policy discourses in Prince George’s County, Maryland, from 1954-1975. I use a genealogical approach to historical inquiry in my analysis of primary source documents to consider how space and race were produced through language, and the effects this had on the educational policies that county leadership pursued in the decades following Brown. This dissertation is organized around four policies that emerged between 1954 and 1975: school choice, school construction and closure, busing for racial integration, and school discipline. I argue that each policy ii contained and reinforced assumptions about race and space that led to the exclusion of communities of color and the preservation of white supremacy within the district. iii Acknowledgements It shouldn’t come as a surprise that in a dissertation about space, place factors into the debts I owe. Nor should it be a shock that someone interested in genealogy, would think about acknowledgements as a series of intellectual, emotional, and spiritual lineages. I’ve been lucky enough to have multiple families in different places and to have benefitted from getting to know many remarkable individuals on my journey. My intellectual lineage extends back to Smith College where Dana Leibsohn agreed to be my independent study advisor on a project on collective memory and political violence in Argentina, and I learned for the first time what following an idea felt like—how messy it was and how fulfilling it could be. Ginetta Candelario helped me to begin to understand race as a social construct in her sociology class. María Estela Harretche took the time to work one on one with me as I explored Argentine theater and political activism—her passion, patience, and enthusiasm guided me. Together, Dana, Ginetta, and María Estela inspired me to go to graduate school. At Georgetown University, I benefitted from excellent mentorship and was able to do fieldwork abroad in El Salvador under the guidance of Joanne Rappaport, Denise Brennan, and Susan Terrio, all of whom provided mentorship as I wrote my master’s thesis. They helped me hone the raw ideas that had emboldened me as an undergraduate, and they equipped me with theory and method. They were instrumental in my decision to pursue a PhD. In Prince George’s County Public Schools, I was fortunate enough to work with amazing educators who taught me how to teach— Rashieda Addison, Ann Caldwell, Katie Delp, Ivey Eley, Leticia Green, Zory Kenan, James, Kinnard, La’shauna King, iv Mildred Lagrana, Cody Long, Jason Ray, Dr. Michael Robinson, Alika Walker, and the late John Dudash. In my time teaching 7th Grade, I learned a great deal from my students who, I believe, taught me more than I taught them. I also met Monét Cooper, a true kindred spirit. While we taught down the hall from one another, she showed me how to bring creativity into my Language Arts classroom, how to teach for liberation, and, mostly generously, how to think about my whiteness. Since leaving PGCPS, Monét has repeatedly let me crash on her couch and has patiently talked with me through many of the ideas in this dissertation. As I was losing motivation to finish, I took a screenshot of a text of hers and set it as the wallpaper on my computer: “here’s to dismantling the disparity and the folks who use the names of children to pad their own pockets or make excuses about student achievement. U gonna do this one paper (and lesson and book) at a time.” She helped remind me why I started this whole thing to begin with. At Rutgers, I’ve benefitted from varied influences. My friends and comrades at the AAUP-AFT helped me understand how social change can occur through collective action and have provided inspiration—Anna Barcy, Greg Briskin, Jacob Chaffin, Lauren Frazee, Katy Gray, and Matt Welsh. At the Center for Race and Ethnicity, I’ve been lucky to work with women who have pushed my thinking in fundamental ways that are reflected in this dissertation: Mia Bay, Miya Carey, Kaisha Etsy, Taida Wolfe, and the late Mia Kissil. At the GSE, I’ve been surrounded by an amazing community of doctoral students. Kevin Clay has been a part of this project since it started as a piece of a co-written paper. Since our first semester, he provided encouragement, insight, and a lot of comic relief. I feel so lucky to have had him as a colleague and to count him as my friend. Likewise v Eliot Graham is someone whose calm reassurances helped preserve my sanity and whose sense of humor kept me laughing. Roberta Hunter was always open for coffee and conversation and Jerald Isseks provided a sounding board for my raw ideas. The list of GSE students, to whom I owe a great deal, is long: Na’ama Av-Shalom, Rosemary Carolan, Jessie Curtis, Andrew Leland, Luis Leyva, Brandon Mauclair-Augustin, Meredith McConnochie, Jason Murphy, Atiya Strothers, and Randi Zimmerman. None of my ideas would have taken form without the emotional support and intellectual guidance of my advisor, Ben Justice. As my study morphed and as I struggled with how to articulate the things the documents were saying to me, he said, “It sounds like you’re talking about space.” Ben has been an attentive reader and caring mentor, and he has provided encouragement by referring to this as “your book” from the beginning. Beth Rubin brought me to Guatemala to work as her research assistant, and from working and teaching with her, I learned how to do the hard work of qualitative research and how to make sense of it all. Thea Abu El-Haj exposed me to many of the ideas that this dissertation draws upon, and Catherine Lugg saw the earliest drafts of some of my (bad) attempts to write historically. Committee members Ariana Mangual Figueroa and Louis Prisock provided valuable feedback on my proposal, helped me find sources to address gaps in my knowledge, and made me feel like the work I was doing was worth it. Drew Gitomer, Brent Horbatt, and Colleen McDermott provided numerous forms of support during my time at Rutgers. My family and families, however, have sustained me. To my family in New Jersey: vi Samantha Schertz and Allyssa Sobey have been crucial to the completion of this dissertation. Sam forced me to set deadlines for myself, asked me how the project was going, and told me that I could do it. She offered love and support at moments when my motivation faltered and I was utterly unloveable. Ally gave me a place to live when I most needed it. As a geographer, she helped me develop some of my arguments, and I pillaged her private library on more than one occasion. I’d also like to thank Tom Hicks, for his friendship and patience in teaching me his craft, as well as Kryzctee Battista, Cole Bechtold, Mimi DaSilva, Priya Mukherjee-Klampfl and Markus Klampfl. To the family I left behind in D.C.: Joy Myers and Tom Barnett provided a place to stay on long research trips and I could always count on lively conversation and fun at the end of long days looking at documents. Marri Carrow Tejada opened her home up to me and helped me make it through the grad school application process; her generosity after my first year allowed me to take an unpaid internship at the Smithsonian in the summer of 2013, and it gave me the opportunity to visit archives in D.C. and Maryland. Emily Rindone graciously allowed me to stay in her apartment during the summer of 2015 where I wrote the first draft of my dissertation proposal. The debt I owe to County Historian Susan Pearl at the Prince George’s County Historical Society is both intellectual and material. Susan helped me since the beginning of my research, spending hours in the Greenbelt Library while I sifted through documents. Her research on Fairmount Heights, the Rosenwald Schools, and Black history in the county, provided me with substantive and reliable background information on which I was able to build. I would also like to thank Todd Endo, Mildred Ridgely Gray, Peter Knight, and Kenneth Mostow. vii And then there’s my family: My brother, Greg Mayer and his wife Rachael Mayer (and Josephine) provided humor and diversion, and they taught me how to turn a lathe and how to knit so I could get out of my own head sometimes—don’t worry, Greg, I won’t make you call me Doc.