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Arrested at a segregated amusement park
The protest
James Coleman, a prominent sociologist at Johns Hopkins University, brought his wife and sons. Protesters were paired, a white family with a Black family, and walked up to the gate, where they were asked whether they were there to go to the amusement park or to be arrested. The Colemans were there to be arrested.
After the arrest
A photo of the family being led away ran on maybe the front page of the second section of the Baltimore Sun. They were taken to detention at an armory. Thomas Coleman was asleep on a bench, while his brother John stayed awake and went with their parents to be fingerprinted.
Three years later
Three years later, over the same July 4th weekend, a report bearing James Coleman's name was published, a 700-page collection of data that would shape American public education for generations.
Why did protesters want to be arrested?
Deliberate arrest was a tactic of nonviolent civil disobedience that made the injustice visible. Filling jails also strained local authorities, as it did in Birmingham, Alabama, in the spring of 1963, when thousands of demonstrators were jailed. At segregated private businesses the charge was usually trespassing, which let protesters test the law in court.
How did Gwynn Oak finally end segregation?
After weeks of demonstrations that included the July 4, 1963 arrests, the park admitted Black visitors on August 28, 1963, the same day as the March on Washington. National news coverage reported that Presbyterian leader Eugene Carson Blake was among those arrested on July 4. Gwynn Oak had been a target of protest groups in the Baltimore area for years before it opened to everyone.
What did the Civil Rights Act change for amusement parks?
Title II of the Civil Rights Act of 1964 banned discrimination in places of public accommodation, including hotels, restaurants, and places of entertainment such as theaters and arenas. The Supreme Court upheld the title in Heart of Atlanta Motel v. United States in December 1964, ruling that Congress could regulate such businesses under its power over interstate commerce.
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