By Susan Parker

Seventy, 80 or 90 years ago – before the Civil Rights Movement of the 1960s, before the Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. advocated for peaceful protest to bring about change, before Rosa Parks refused to give up her seat in the front of a public transit bus – the black communities of the lower Eastern Shore of Maryland were suffering from the Great Depression alongside the region’s white communities.

Alongside, but not together in solidarity, the United States was a segregated society despite the Civil War and promises of freedom and equality for all.

However, that didn’t mean those minority communities and the children who grew up in them were bereft of some of the more important things in life.

While disproportionally hit by the Depression that led up to our country’s entry into the fray known as World War II in 1942, these children – now in their 80s and 90s – recall fondly those early years, enveloped as they were by loving parents, extended families, church leaders and teachers who made sure they would be well-prepared for adult life and community leadership.

Audrey Matthews

Audrey Matthews of Salisbury is 93 years old. She grew up in Salisbury’s Georgetown neighborhood, which was disrupted when Route 50 was constructed, cutting through the Georgetown community and leaving what is now known as Newtown separated by a dual-lane highway from Salisbury’s Downtown commercial district.

“On Poplar Hill Avenue, white and black children played together,” Matthews said, recalling her own childhood. “We played jump rope, dodgeball, basketball and hopscotch.” She recalls her mother attending PTA meetings at Salisbury Colored High School, where elementary students attended on the first floor.

“But my father didn’t go,” she said.

“Parents supported the teachers,” she said. “If you did something wrong, my parents were right there.”

“But it was a big difference; we didn’t have the advantages that children have now,” she said.

Matthews lived in her family’s Poplar Hill Avenue residence until she graduated from high school.

Jean Morris

Jean Morris, now 90 years old, grew up in western Wicomico County, in Wetipquin. She attended a two-room school, exclusively with other children in her community. Her classes had three to six children per room.

“We got good quality education,” Morris said. “Nowadays they don’t teach cursive writing, for example. But we were educated as a whole child.”

Morris remembers short programs before starting school, plays or play days, which they also had in church.

“I give them credit,” she said. “Back in the day, parents were involved with their children more than they are today, both parents and teachers. The teachers lived in our community and went to church with us.”

Morris attended Salisbury Colored High School, which had just begun to have clubs for students.

“Our activities were plays, field day and we had a prom,” she said.

“Folks during that time were close-knit,” she said. “We called everyone aunt or uncle, even if they were not.” Morris remembers one relative who, when she called her “aunt,” corrected her, saying she was a cousin, not an aunt.

“The schools and churches were both teaching places for our spiritual needs, attitudes and our beliefs,” she said. “There were Easter programs, Christmas programs, plays and many other activities that kept us busy as children.”

This well-connected, nurturing childhood, she said, inspired her to open a daycare center as an adult.

Edward “Sonnye” Henry

Edward “Sonnye” Henry was 11 or 12 years old when he moved with his family to Salisbury – a return to his family’s roots, as his father was a Salisbury native. He doesn’t recall much about Greensboro, North Carolina, where he was born.

“I really call Salisbury my home,” said Henry, now 78 years old. He attended Salisbury High School.

“We lived on Second Street, next door to Professor and Mrs. Charles Chipman and on the other side, Mr. Clinton Stewart,” he said.

Both Stewart and Chipman were strong role models. Henry spent his first years as a child in Salisbury literally sandwiched between two community leaders.

“I remember around the fifth grade we moved from Second Street to Delaware Avenue,” said Henry. “Those days there was the Friendly Benefit Playground, which was provided by the Friendly Benefit Club.” That club comprised a group of neighborhood women. The playground was next to St. Paul Church.

“We played basketball at City Dump before the incinerator was there,” said Henry. “We played football and basketball in neighbors’ yards. As we grew up and became teenagers, we played at the Lake Street Playground.”

“We were all one big family.” Henry said, “The thing that was important was that the entire community was your family. The adult neighbors could correct you and punish you, and call your parents. Parents supported each other as well as the teachers. That became the basis as adults for knowing what it meant to respect your elders.”

Jesse Ballard

Jesse Ballard, 71, grew up in Princess Anne as one of 12 children in his family. He attended Old Greenwood Elementary School, and Somerset Junior and Senior High School. He and his siblings were evenly divided – six boys and six girls.

“The boys had to go out and help all the farmers and people in the neighborhood,” said Ballard. “Our nearest neighbor raised chickens and we had to clean out the chicken house. Our other neighbor had thousands of pigs. They never missed the pigs that neighbors found running wild. The neighbors would kill and eat the free-ranging pigs.”

That farm, located in Dublin, now has solar panels and no animals at all.

There were many opportunities for children in that community to have fun.

“We made our own wagons out of peach bottom baskets,” said Ballard, “and bicycles with no chains. We’d take the old wheels from cars and bat them down the road. We played softball and baseball. We had so many children in our family, we played in our yard and the neighbors would challenge us.”

After high school Ballard went into the U.S. Navy.

Kirkland Hall Sr.

Kirkland Hall grew up in Oaksville, in Somerset County. Now 69 years old, he started his formal education at Old Greenwood Elementary School and continued by attending Somerset High School.

“The fourth and fifth grades were in a one-room building,” said Hall. “Then the fifth grade was moved into the new school.”

Hall’s father worked as a laborer at a sawmill. His mother worked in food processing plants including Dulaney and Shoreland Freezer.

“We also worked in the fields,” Hall said. “We picked strawberries before we went to school, along with tomatoes, string beans and cucumbers.”

Oaksville was a close-knit community where every family tried to help one another, making sure everyone had food on the table.

“We had chicken-killing days and hog days,” he said. “Each family had a garden and they shared the produce.”

Hall only remembers one grandfather, who died when Hall was 10 years old.

“We were so poor, we had to make up toys to play with,” he said. “We used old sticks and boards to make a wagon. We played hopscotch and sometimes baseball. Three of us played with one paddle ball.”

Hall confessed to sometimes using the heads of his sister’s baby dolls as a ball so they could play.

“She never complained,” he said. “We apologize.”

Hall remains grateful to his early teachers.

“Our teachers did the very best they could under the circumstances,” he said. “And our parents believed everything those teachers said.”

There were clubs for every student who attended Somerset Junior and Senior High School, Hall said.

“Education was the most important thing in our community,” he said. “I was in the Esquire Club in seventh and eighth grades, French Club in ninth and 10th grades and I played basketball, cross country, and baseball.”

That focus on education during their early years paid off.

“Thirty kids from Oaksville graduated from college,” Hall said. Hall received his PhD in organizational leadership and government from the University of Maryland Eastern Shore in 2012, where he also served as acting chair of that school’s Department of Exercise Science starting in 2007.

Warren White

Warren White, 70, attended Salisbury Elementary School and until 10th grade, Somerset High School. He went on to graduate from James M. Bennett High School in 1968.

“I grew up on Snuff Hill,” White said, “off Riverside Drive, on Moore Street. We moved from there in 1954 to First Street. That’s where much of my childhood memories are from. We lived there until 1969.”

That area was known as California. Many of White’s neighbors were teachers, some of whom lived in Maple Tourist Home – a building that began as the original Parsons Rest Home, which later moved to its current location on Lemmon Hill Lane and became John B. Parsons Home, now an assisted living community.

“My family rented from Mr. and Mrs. (Charles) Chipman,” said White. The neighborhood, he said, was mixed, but later the whites moved out.

“Very rarely were we inside,” White said. “We did outside activities. Only time we came inside was to eat. Then we went back outside. We played marbles, checkers, jacks, stick horses, hopscotch, double dutch and jump rope. We played out in the street and when cars came, we got out of the way, racing from tree to tree and playing softball. Basically you never saw an overweight child.”

His parents each had limited educations, but they were involved with White’s teachers and made sure their children had a good education.”

“Everyone looked out for others’ children,” he said. “You wouldn’t dare do anything wrong in somebody’s house. There were many adults who kept an eye on the children.”

For all the disadvantages of the system of segregation, White speaks glowingly of his education.

“At Salisbury High, we felt right at home,” he said. “When I got to James M. Bennett, they played different music and I didn’t make the choir. We had a sense of comfort that some of our black teachers were there. We got involved. One concern today is that there are not enough black teachers. While we came from a school with 100 percent black teachers, now it is about 10 percent.”

One of the biggest impressions on White came from his church community.

“I grew up at St. Paul and St. James,” he said. “A lot of my teachers were members. They taught us how to speak. We learned social skills. We had dances. There were a lot of social activities at church.”

White went on to become a longtime girls basketball coach at Parkside High School, serving more than 24 years and in 2020, celebrating 400 wins for his team.