Our family has moved recently to Morton, after our arrival in October of this year, we took our son to the nearest elementary school, The Smedley School, for admission. We spoke to the principal, who in seeing that the child was a Negro, advised us that the Phyllis Wheatley School, within the same district was the school for him. Our questions as to why this was necessary resulted only in a maint[ena]nce of her stand and a referral to the School Board if further clarification was desired. In order not to prolong my son’s already overdue enrollment that we placed him in the suggested “Negro” school a couple blocks away and later presented the matter to the School Board at its next meeting. By the time we had looked up the law pertaining to segregation in Pennsylvania and had learned that it specifically forbids “any discrimination whatever on account of or by reason of race or color of any pupil seeking admission “to any public school.” My request to The School Board, therefore, was that the law to be adhered to. It was disillusioning to be advised that a special meeting of the Board members would be required to “decide,” and that I would be informed of the result. In view of the existing law, it is not clear to me what there is to decide but I will wait.

This is the situation my family faced in returning to the United States after a year in Europe. Our home there was in the British zone of Germany, and our son, a foreigner, was enthusiastically and unrestrictedly welcomed in an English school. As an American citizen, in his own country, such was not the case.

The Supreme Court of the United States is at present deciding the constitutionality of segregated schools and wide scale concern is given to the effect of integration in Ala., Miss., and Georgia. Now I ask can we ever consider harmony in these openly opposing states when here in Pennsylvania where democracy and the Constitution was born, is it so passively practiced?2

Elinor E. Albert

For Elinor, her child’s denial of admission was similar to the humiliating slights she had experienced in her own life. The segregation at Camp Florence and the degrading encounters in Göttingen were similar to the discrimination being directed at her son. The message was that Stephen didn’t belong in a white school because he was black, just like Elinor didn’t belong in white establishments because of the color of her skin. It became increasingly clear that racism followed Elinor wherever she went—Boston, Göttingen, and now Philadelphia. It was infuriating, unlawful, and personal.

Elinor sent a copy of her letter to the local chapter of the NAACP in Media, Pennsylvania, which in turn responded:

Dear Mrs. Albert,