OK, maybe I am missing something here, but if the reunion was for classes from the 40's, 50's and 60's then why are folks from the other years all bitter??  Should I be able to attend the Class Reunions from 20 years before I attended my high school?  Would you want to?  WTF?

Yahoo!News Story

By GRETCHEN PARKER, Associated Press Writer

PRINCESS ANNE, Md. - The ballroom is decorated with floor-to-ceiling paintings of shiny soda fountains, classic cars and the old store windows downtown. A stoop juts out from a rendering of the high school facade, so graduates can sit and talk — just like in the old days. And just like in the old days, not everyone in town is invited.

The reunion Saturday is only for those who graduated from Washington High School before it opened its doors to black students in the fall of 1969.

Some black leaders say the all-white reunion is sad and painful evidence that 50 years after the U.S. Supreme Court (news - web sites) outlawed school segregation, some things have not changed all that much in this community on the Eastern Shore of the Chesapeake Bay.

"It's just as divided as it's ever been," said Leon Johnson, a black political activist who worked behind the scenes in Somerset County in 1960s. "The old folks did a good job of teaching the young ones, of teaching them the old system."

Organizers call the reunion a "Grand Homecoming" for graduates from the 1940s, '50s and '60s. The event, last held in 1999, draws about 700 alumni. It is independently organized and is not affiliated with the public school system.

Mickey Wigglesworth, a retired banker and 1957 graduate who has spent the past year organizing the event at the Somerset County Civic Center, said there was no intent to exclude blacks.

Instead, he said, it is a gathering of students from three decades who share music and culture from the era of sock hops and jukeboxes. "This would have no appeal to them," he said of the post-1969 grads.

The integrated post-1969 classes at Washington High hold their own reunions periodically, but they are smaller and are not promoted as community events. The Grand Homecoming, by contrast, gets a weekly mention on the front of the county newspaper's style section, under old photos of the boys' basketball teams and girls' softball teams. A colorful flier posted downtown asks Washington High graduates up to 1969 to "Travel back in time to those good, old years."

"We're still a divided county," said Kirkland Hall, a former president of the county's NAACP chapter and a 1969 graduate of Princess Anne's black high school, Somerset High. Of the county's 25,000 residents, 41 percent are black.

The Supreme Court's decision in Brown v. Board of Education came down in 1954, but it was another 15 years before any schools in Somerset County integrated.

The 1960s saw fierce, sometimes violent, resistance to integration in restaurants and in public facilities across the Eastern Shore. Fiery riots broke out in the town of Cambridge in 1963. In 1964, students at the University of Maryland, Eastern Shore campus in Princess Anne — then known as the all-black Maryland State College — were driven back with firehoses when they marched into town to protest segregation.

Princess Anne, the site of Maryland's last lynching in 1933, did not integrate any public buildings until 1964. Not until 1968 did any white schools on the Eastern Shore open to black students.

"It would be nice if the class of 1969 of both schools would have a reunion. We might have something in common," Hall said, adding after a pause: "I don't think too many people would be up to the idea."

Hall's friends from Somerset High have urged him to organize an all-black reunion that could rival the Grand Homecoming in size. But Hall said: "I don't think that's the way to go."

H. DeWayne Whittington, a 1948 graduate of what was then called Crisfield Colored High School, eventually became the first black superintendent of Somerset County schools, in 1988. He won a lawsuit against the county four years later when it did not renew his contract, and the system was forced to name a school for him.

Whittington said he is less irritated by the Grand Homecomings than he is by the distribution of scholarship money raised at the event. A total of $9,500 has been awarded in 19 scholarships, but only to children of alumni who graduated before integration.

Whittington has helped organize relatively small, multiyear reunions that raise $3,000 annually in scholarships for the children of black alumni. "It came to that point," he said, "because blacks found that out and said, `Let's try to do something for our kids.'"

The separate reunions are a symptom of a lack of black political leadership in the county, Whittington said. No black politicians have pressed for a stop to the practice.

Blacks held few public offices on the Eastern Shore before Hall sued the state in 1993 to keep out-of-town property owners from voting in municipal elections. It was not until 1999 that a black politician was elected to the state Legislature from the Eastern Shore.

Of the racial divide, Hall said: "It's one of those things I've been fighting so long, I'm just tired."

Quoted: Quoted: Goddamnit, because they have a high-school reunion that has no black people BECAUSE NO BLACK PEOPLE GRADUATED FROM THAT HIGH-SCHOOL THAT YEAR, they're racist? The way I read it, they are having a reunion not for just one year, but essentially for all of the years that were from when the school was all white.  It does appear that they are doing it in a way to specifically exclude blacks.  I support their right to do whatever they want, but it does seem like it is in not being done in a friendly way.  Why not have a reunion that includes all graduates?

....it is a gathering of students from three decades who share music and culture from the era of sock hops and jukeboxes

1970 was a different time apparently.....

What about all the post-1969 white, hispanic, asian, european, etc students?  They are all excluded too.

No article.

....but again I ask:

What about all the post-1969 white, hispanic, asian, european, etc students?  They are excluding the totality of the classes post-1969.

Quoted: The article is somewhat conflicted.  It says that the school opened it's doors to black students in '69.  If in fact blacks attended the school in '69 and the official cutoff for the reunion in '68 then I'd say it's race based; what other reason would there be to have the '68 cutoff. If on the other hand there were no black students in '69 and it's simply a "before 1970" reunion then I'd say it's just a coincidence that it's the same year as integration.  I believe some districts around the country integrated earlier, and some later.

Really?  So ONLY black kids went to the school post 1968? Post 1969?

i hate the whole of mankind.

i'm an equal opportunity bigot.

When I was a freshman in high school, I was the only black male in class of 675 students.  By the time I graduated, we numbered 7 total (males/females).  The fact that I belonged to the right clique meant that I had plenty of friends, attended plenty of parties, and experienced no significant racial incidents in 4 years.  I can remember being denied entry at one party, not because of my race, but because I didn't belong to that particular clique (drama pukes).  Big deal.  My buddies didn't get in either.  

I don't believe that there was intent to exclude blacks from the reunion, although some objective people have reached that conclusion.  The question I'd ask is this: If there was intent, why the Hell would one raise a stink about a party where they weren't wanted?  Throw your own!  

Quoted: The question I'd ask is this: If there was intent, why the Hell would one raise a stink about a party where they weren't wanted?  Throw your own!

I think that's what has me baffled.

"I'm not wanted there, so I am going to sit over here and sulk.  Then when I get REALLY angry I am going to accuse you of stuff to put you on the defensive."

That's how I see it going down.

Personaly I think they are stretching for a cause that's not there and who gives a shit!

They got what they wanted which was some publicity.  As a result, attendence will be down since many will not want to be classified as a racist by attending.  

Having lived in part of that era, if this is all they have to bitch about, we've come a long way baby!

Tj