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A Mediating Force

by PETER GALUSZKA , September 3, 2009

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Home to a county with changing demographics, the College of Southern Maryland steps in to facilitate discussions surrounding race and class.

Counter clockwise from far left: Journalism student Anacamila Figueroa, 20, praises the College of Southern Maryland for its diversity. The college has grown from its fi rst graduating class of four at Charles County Junior College, to more than 16,118 graduates since it was established in 1958. College of Southern Maryland President Bradley M. Gottfried speaks at the spring commencement in May.
For a suburban area of Washington, D.C., Southern Maryland has remained unusually “Southern.” Its rolling tobacco fi elds, former slave quarters and lonesome two-lane roads through piney woods seem more reminiscent of the Deep South than the nation’s capital. So, too, have its attitudes on race.

That became evident on Dec. 6, 2004, when fi ve men set fi res to 27 homes under construction, destroying 12 of them. All were in a Charles County subdivision favored by upscale African-Americans moving to the area from other parts of metropolitan Washington for its peace and affordable homes.

Stunned, county leaders bristled over the county’s negative reputation in the national media. The situation worsened later when some White high school students scrawled graffi ti such as “KKK” on the doors and sign of a predominantly Black Baptist church to protest the infl ux of minority families. The Black population grew 25 percent from 2000 to 2003.

“This sent the wrong signal about the kind of community we had in Charles County,” says Thomas “Mac” Middleton, a state senator from the area who talked with a trustee at the College of Southern Maryland about what to do.

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Comments posted here may be reprinted in Diverse: Issues In Higher Education magazine, and may be edited for purposes of clarity and/or space.



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