In 1954, the Supreme Court’s decision — also known as Brown v. Board of Education — ended segregation in U.S. public schools, but Prince George’s County in Maryland delayed implementing it until a federal court in Baltimore forced the issue in 1972.
This seismic social shift is chronicled in the new documentary “The Tower Road Bus,” which recently won Best of the Festival at the Ocean City Film Festival, Best Director at the Chesapeake Film Festival, and Best of the Region at the Alexandria Film Festival. It also recently aired on Howard University’s public television station WHUT.
“In the early 1970s you had a very quick implementation of integration,” filmmaker Michael Streissguth told WTOP. “There was an African-American community near Brandywine, Maryland, along Tower Road. The powers-that-be designated most elementary school children to be bussed into the majority white Crestview Elementary [where] Dotson Burns Jr. became the first African American principal of a majority-white school in the county.”
Suddenly, the trailblazing bus routes to Clinton, Maryland, became key arteries of the civil rights movement.
“By January 1973, 23,000 students were traveling hither and yon across the county to different schools to implement this integration order,” Streissguth said. “It was a chaotic time, it was a confusing time. If this were happening now we probably would slow down and say, ‘Hey, let’s have some workshops … let’s train the faculty members, but that’s not how it happened. People were in one school one day and another school on another day.”
The film also chronicles the backlash from some white parents in the area who ignorantly feared change.
“There’s footage of protests going on in schools in Prince George’s County,” Streissguth said. “One amazing thing is that there was so much opposition to this that on Super Bowl Sunday in 1973, when the Washington football team was in the Super Bowl (George Allen vs. Don Shula). There was a protest at Rosecroft Raceway where thousands of people turned out on Super Bowl Sunday! That’s how strongly people felt about this.”
Streissguth, who graduated from Damascus High School in Montgomery County, actually attended Crestview Elementary School in Clinton, so he remembers it well. He reached out to his former principal, who grew up in the Jim Crow South in Texas during the 1930s and 1940s before moving to the D.C. area in the 1950s.
“My first stop was Mr. Burns,” he said. “I found him living in Fort Washington. I sent a letter and asked if he was indeed the principal of Crestview during the 1970s and he confirmed that. We met and I began to learn about his story and his experiences. He also pointed me to many of the teachers who are still living in that area and many of the students, as well. I had my own contacts with old friends who put me in touch with other students.”
He found it fascinating interviewing his former classmates, including Derek, Lisa and Donna Adams, who lived on Tower Road, and Joey Hoffman, who lived in the Crestview community and is now a retired police officer.
“The film profiles a number of former students who lived on Tower Road and their experiences being on the front lines of integration,” Streissguth said. “I am so happy looking back in retrospect to be raised in an integrated school environment, but I had my integration served to me. … I didn’t have to do anything, but so many African Americans had to be those agents and sacrifice a lot in that process.”
Find more information on the film here.
Listen to our full conversation here.
