Guilford Park High School

The Naming of High School #13

The verdict is in - Guilford Park High School is the official name of the 13th high school in Howard County.  Although the student survey overwhelmingly voted for "Mission High School" matching a prior community survey, the naming committee recommended Southeast High School as their top choice with Quarry Heights High School and Rocky Springs High School as their second and third choices.  But during the Board of Education meeting on Thursday, February 9th, a surprise decision revealed Guilford Park High School to be the official name of the new school.

This new name gives a nod to the historic Guilford area community described throughout this Website and ensures their identifies will never be erased.  The 70th anniversary of the historic Guilford Elementary School is in 2024, a school built during segregation and the only "colored school" in Howard County to survive integration and still operating as a public school.   Read the Baltimore Sun article about the naming of this school.

Naming Criteria and Process

The policy for naming and renaming schools in Howard County is found at this link. https://policy.hcpss.org/6000/6050/ and was adopted in 2005 and updated in 2020 They wish to have consistency in naming schools in the county and requires that names be of geographic nature of the area served by the school.  There is a school naming committee who recommends names for consideration to the School Board that has the final say on selecting a name after holding a public hearing.  For this process the public hearing will be held on December 5th, 2022.

While this naming process was adopted in 2005 it dates back to at least 1968 (see document on right) with one notable exception – the current policy no longer allows “other buildings and structures” in the school system to be named.  Regarding geography, the Sept. 4, 1968 school board minutes had the following policy – “The names of all schools will be in terms of geography -- that is, sections of the county, appropriate street locations, or established neighborhood or community identifications.”  For over 50 years, it has been a policy to name our schools “in terms of geography”.

Naming Process for High School 12

Please see the 2003-2004 School Board minutes on the right regarding the naming process for High School #12 – the northern school.  The naming committee recommended “Woodford High School” for the new school that reflected a nearby African American community called Woodford.  Other names the committee put forward included West Ridge High, Westwood High, West Branch High, Old Pike High, but Woodford High received the most votes.

At the public hearing alternate names were suggested and Woodford was not favored by 2 of the 5 speakers who said “there were too many names with “Wood” in them in the area” and that “Woodford is not a name preferred in the community”.  Two of the speakers were noted local historians – Dr. Alice Cornelison and Ms. Joetta Cramm who both spoke in favor of the name Woodford.

A month later the committee announced they were now recommending the name “Stone Ridge” for the stone quarries and mining in the area, but that was rejected by school board member Ms. Watson out of the concern about the students being called “stoners”.  By the end of the meeting the school board decided to ignore the committee recommendations and name the school Marriot’s Ridge High on a 3-2 vote.

There is a parallel to the naming of High School #13 and lessons should be learned from this past experience.

Names Selected for High School #13 - Quarry Heights High?

In the fall of 2022, the school naming committee decided to ignore the community’s recommendations of Mission High School based on fear and erroneous information that is corrected below.  Mission, like Woodford, reflected a historic African American community in the immediate area. 

All of the last list of 15 considered names included the word “quarry” and the committee decided to recommend Quarry Heights High with two other mentions - Quarry View High and Quarry Rock High.  And the last Board dealing with naming high school #12 were worried about the students being called “stoners”, but the current committee has no such concerns.  Please see the school board report on this matter posted to the right.

In a last minute surprise decision, the school board decided to name the new school Guilford Park HIgh School to recognize and honor that community.

Clarification/Corrections on the name “Mission”

Perhaps there should be consideration of a name that does not include quarry in it.  For example, some version of Mission, including Mission Heights.  Or Guilford Forest for the nearby community that included those on Mission Road.

What was particularly disturbing were the very lame excuses used to omit the name Mission in any form from consideration.  Let’s go over these.

1) Mission Road was named for a church building or mission from the First Baptist Church of Guilford and therefore the name Mission was promoting religion. 

The First Baptist Church of Guilford, formally founded in 1903, has never had a building or mission on Mission Road.  What it did and does have are families that live on Mission Road that attend the church on Oakland Mills Road.  The road itself predates the 1903 church.

2) There was Ku Klux Klan activity along Mission Road and therefore the name should be excluded.

Whether there was any Klan activity or not should not influence any decision to use the name Mission Road or Mission.  The Klan didn’t name Mission Road and they didn’t adopt the name in their activities.

Klan activity was mentioned in the 1986 Cornelison et al. book on “History of Blacks in Howard County, Maryland” as quoted below.  Any activity along Mission Road was to harass the Black families living there.  The account below does not provide any details to corroborate anything other than what is presented after this account regarding broader Klan activity in the North Laurel area.

On page 58 the following was written:

“Klan activity in the county has been remembered no where except in Guilford around the 1960s. It is believed by neighbors that the Klan held meetings at a white house on Mission Road. A few were seen in robes and hoods some mornings around one o'clock knocking down mail boxes and firing guns. Community and NAACP members went to the police barracks to convey the message from the neighborhood that somebody would get hurt the next time a mail box was torn down because men were on their porches at night with guns. No more hooded men were seen and mai1 boxes stayed upright.”

This story seems to be what excludes Mission, and possibly Guilford, from being considered for the name of the new high school.  Facts are few here, so let’s fill them in.

There was a Klan leader named Francis Raymond Edwards who the Baltimore Sun described as

“a North Laurel-based leader of the Klan who was a master at manipulating the media and garnering publicity for himself. During 1966 and 1967, it was difficult to keep up with the chaos behind his constant threats, boasts, lies, hoaxes, publicity stunts and bizarre behavior. His organization was responsible for numerous terror incidents in Laurel and other DC-area communities. But in the end, his narcissistic addiction to self-promotion eventually led to his downfall in the secretive racist organization.”

So where was he located?  He “ and his wife lived in the Maple Village Trailer Park on Route 1 in Jessup and leased a Phillips 66 gas station on Route 1 southbound in North Laurel”.  The Trailer Park was on the east side of northbound Route 1 a short distance away from Mission Road on the west side of Route 1.  It is understandable that he and his followers were close enough to a Black community on Mission Road, and Guilford Road, to harass them, but that is certainly no reason to exclude either name from consideration for the new school.

There were also Klan activities in other parts of Howard County prior to the Cornelison et al. 1986 publication.  In 1977, a Klan leader was arrested and indicted who lived on Folly Quarter Road in Clarksville (The HoCo Times 3-9-1977) while the Klan estimated it had 200 members in Howard County (The HoCo Times 1-18-1977). In 1983, Klan leaflets were distributed in Savage, including by the Savage Volunteer Fire Department who claimed it as a joke (The Sun March 23, 1983).  It is surprising that these activities were not mentioned in the Cornelison et al. book.

Here are the links to the Baltimore Sun stories that ran a retrospective on Klan leader Francis Raymond Edwards in 2018.

https://www.baltimoresun.com/maryland/laurel/ph-ll-historic-klan-activity-0426-story.html

https://www.baltimoresun.com/maryland/howard/ph-ll-klan-continues-0503-story.html

3) Pallottine Novitiate (aka “Mission”)

Mission Road has existed as a road since at least 1892 (seen on Laurel Topo Map on the right) and a portion of it lead to a public school from Guilford Road in 1878.  It was likely given its name by locals and adopted formally due to the Pallottine Novitiate located off of the road that was opened in 1934 as a school for those seeking to become Catholic priests. The name “Mission Road” appeared in the 1940 census.  The Novitiate was described in 1946 as follows:

“Though its number is small, Pallottine Seminary has students registered from distant parts of the nation, which speaks well of the school's good name. After completing their study in Milwaukee, the young men next advance to the Novitiate in Jessup, Md., where they are given intensive spiritual training.  In the Pallottine House of Studies, affiliated with the Catholic University of America in Washington, D.C., the young theologians receive their final training for the priesthood.”  

(source:  https://www.marquette.edu/cgi-bin/cuap/db.cgi?uid=default&ID=4591&view=Search&mh=1 )

There is no evidence that this was a proselytizing “mission” but the name “mission” stuck as a label that was more understandable than “novitiate”.  There doesn’t seem to be any reason not consider the name “Mission” for the new school based on some negative religious connotation. 

For more information, see: https://www.facebook.com/groups/FriendsGuilfordHistory/permalink/5710390952323235/

4) A Historically Black Community on Mission Road

A reminder about the historically Black community on Mission Road.  Mission Road and Guilford Roads was the site selected for the "Guilford Colored School" opened in 1923.  It was a preferred site for some who didn't want the new elementary school that opened in 1954 to be built on Oakland Mills Road (see that discussion below).  In the 1960s and 1970s, the Black community of Guilford on Mission Road was in the news regarding the building of I-95 and then Rt. 32 that geographically split the Guilford community, and the proposed landfill and then Marriott Theme Park for the site that the new school is being built on.

Mission Road was a predominantly Black community when the new segregated Guilford Elementary School was proposed in the 1950s as you can see from the school board testimonies below.  The following, and more, can be seen on this site at https://sites.google.com/view/guilfordhistoryhoco/home/did-you-know/did-you-know-19-the-guilford-elementary-school-is-the-only-former-publi 

The First Public Schools in Guilford (and the last) – Part 5

In March of 1950, the School Board decided it would be necessary to build a new school at Guilford. They at first decided to purchase and build on a 10 acre lot fronting Mission Road a half-mile away, but later decided the property would not work due to topography and other factors and finally decided to build the school on the Thomas L. Collins property where the current school still operates. They originally anticipated the new Guilford school to be 6 classrooms at a cost of $130,000-$150,000 and later decided on a 12 room school at a price of about $225,000 to accommodate the growth of students.

At this same time, Roger Carter, grandson of the quarry driller Rev. Willis Carter who founded the First Baptist Church of Guilford, and was among the trustees of the first school for black children in Guilford, was awarded his first school bus contract to serve several segregated schools in 1950. The post-war Black population of District 6 had more than doubled - a new and larger public school in Guilford was now needed.

The first delegation of white citizens to object to the new colored school in Guilford

In September of 1952, the School Board made a final decision to build a new “colored” elementary school in Guilford. Elkridge, Meadowridge, and Colesville schools would be combined into this new school. In April of 1953, the School Board authorized purchase of the Collins property along Oakland Mills Road and just a month later, on May 5th, the School Board minutes showed the following opposition to the school site on Guilford Road:

“A delegation of twenty-five citizens of the Sixth District of Howard County appeared before the Board. Mr. Charles Hogg, attorney representing the delegation, lead the discussion. Mr. Hogg stated that the delegation objected to the use of the Collins property as a site for the new Guilford Colored School for the following reasons:

1. the colored school would lower property values in the Guilford area

2. it would increase the colored population in the colored area

3. the delegation was not opposing a colored school but the location of the school

4.  the Mission Road site was more desirable for a school than the Collins site

Mr. Henry Sieling stated that the location of a school on the Collins property would create a traffic hazard and lower the property values of people in the vicinity of the school. Mr. E.A. Connell stated that the school would lower the value of his property and open the area to further colored housing developments. Colonel Atwell stated that the Board would give the matter very careful consideration.”

State Senator Shipley’s objection to the new colored school in Guilford

Another delegation approached the School Board on May 18, 1953 lead by Dr. Frank Shipley of Savage:

“Dr. Shipley stated that several members of the delegation had called on the Superintendent on Friday, May 15, to voice their objection to the use of the Collins property as a site for the new Guilford Colored School. Dr. Shipley further stated that the Superintendent of Schools had requested the delegation to voice their objections to the Board at its next meeting. Dr. Shipley stated that the delegation wished to go on record as opposing the Guilford site for the following reasons:

1. the Crone site on the Mission Road would be more desirable because of its location near the colored population

2. citizens in the community object to the colored school being built on the Collins site

3. some of the large taxpayers of the sixth district feel that the school site is too close to their property and, therefore, would lower property values

4.  the proposed site is very close to the new Episcopal Church Rectory and Hall

Colonel Atwell thanked the delegation for coming and further stated that the Board of Education would give the opposition of the delegation very careful consideration.”

The new “Guilford Consolidated Colored School” on Oakland Mills Road

These objections were a very sad commentary of the times and we are all grateful that the School Board ignored these racist pleas. The school board fell that such a school would be too large and visible to be put on the very small and dirt Mission Road compared to the hard surfaced and easily accessible Oakland Mills Road.

https://www.facebook.com/groups/FriendsGuilfordHistory/permalink/4213145165381162/