The Caucus of African American Leaders this week proposed renaming the Frederick C. Malkus Bridge across the Choptank River to the Gloria Richardson Bridge.
The proposal is a good idea and should be approved by the Maryland legislature when it is introduced. Richardson is a far better representative of American values than Malkus was.
Richardson was a leader in the Civil Rights Movement in Cambridge in the early 1960s, one of the only female leaders of the movement at the time. She was arrested for picketing against a segregated Cambridge business while the National Guard occupied Cambridge.
Her fiery, steely, fearless personality was captured by an Associated Press photographer as Richardson pushed a bayonet-tipped National Guard rifle away as she moved through a crowd in Cambridge.
According to a Washington Post obituary when Richardson died in July 2021 at age 99, she “remained uncompromising in her demands for equal access to public accommodations such as white-owned restaurants and bowling alleys. A public-accommodations provision went to referendum in October 1963, but she persuaded followers to boycott the vote. She explained that it was grossly unfair to leave ‘the constitutional rights of our people to the whim of a popular majority.’”
“Throughout her life, she spoke truth to power and continued to inspire people around the world — and in her hometown,” reads Richardson’s biography written by the Maryland Commission for Women.
In a Star Democrat article written after Richardson’s death, Dorchester County Orphans’ Court Chief Judge the Rev. George Ames noted leading the movement in Cambridge was not easy.
“She was an inspiration because she stood up at a time when people, and women in particular, didn’t stand up,” he said. “It had to be hard for her.”
After stepping down from her leadership role, Richardson married photographer Frank Dandridge and moved to New York, where she spent much of her life working on anti-poverty issues and programs for the aging in New York City, according to the Washington Post.
By contrast, Frederick C. Malkus, the bridge’s current namesake, fought to maintain the second-class status of African Americans in Cambridge and Maryland.
When Malkus retired from the Maryland Senate in 1994, he had spent nearly five decades as a legislator.
In the 1960s, while Cambridge was going through protests against racial discrimination and Freedom Riders challenged the region’s deeply rooted segregation, Malkus’ civil rights voting record largely reflected the segregationist views of his mostly white, rural constituency.
The Baltimore Sun referred to him in 1966 as a “consistent opponent of civil rights legislation.”
In 1962, then Gov. J. Millard Tawes called a special session of the Maryland General Assembly to consider a public accommodations law that would outlaw racial discrimination in inns, hotels, restaurants and other similar establishments.
The Eastern Shore contingent, led by Malkus, opposed the bill, and through their efforts, a provision was added to the legislation allowing counties to exempt themselves from the statute, according to Peter Levy, author of “Civil War on Race Street: The Civil Rights Movement in Cambridge, Maryland.”
Levy wrote that Malkus participated in a debate on civil rights with then Alabama Gov. George Wallace at Goucher College in Towson, during which Malkus and Wallace denounced pending civil rights legislation as un-American.
The bridge between Talbot and Dorchester counties was not the only one proposed for renaming by the Caucus of African American Leaders this week.
The caucus also passed a resolution calling for state officials to rename the Francis Scott Key Memorial Bridge, which collapsed last month after being struck by a cargo ship.
“The Francis Scott Key Bridge was named in honor of a man who enslaved African Americans and wrote lyrics that scholars have indicated demeaned Black people,” a press release from the Caucus of African American Leaders said.
Both proposals face opposition.
“This has been controversial from Day 1,” said caucus organizer Carl Snowden in an interview with the Star Democrat this week. “It’s not unusual before decisions like this are made that it’s a protracted, long, sometimes intense debate on whether or not to do it.”
I hope public officials in Dorchester and Talbot counties endorse this proposal as soon as possible before the intense debate begins.
Gloria Richardson was a leader in the fight for equal rights for African Americans in Cambridge at a time when segregation was the rule. Her words, quoted by the Maryland Commission for Women are as much a beacon today as they were in the 1960s.
“A first-class citizen does not beg for freedom,” Richardson said. “A first-class citizen does not plead to the power structure to give him something that whites have no power to give or take away. Human rights are human rights, not white rights.”
Jim Johnson is executive editor of the Star Democrat.
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