In general, the conclusion seems inescapable that racial restrictive covenants
have, as a practical matter, been eliminated as effective means of controlling
either the transfer or the use and occupation of land, by virtue of having been
stripped of their enforceability. The Supreme Court's affirmance of the validity of
such covenants as private agreements does not serve to alter the result. A property
right incapable of enforcement would seem of little value, if indeed it can be
regarded as a right at all.136

E.        Public Accomodations

The attack on inequality in state facilities was pressed on many fronts. In 1942, plaintiffs,
represented by Dallas Nicholas and Robert P. McGuinn, sought to open city golf courses by
demonstrating that existing facilities for blacks were unequal. Nicholas and McGuinn obtained
an order from the trial court judge directing the city to open all public golf courses to blacks after
a jury found that the existing facilities for blacks were unequal, hi Durkee v. Murphy, the Court
of Appeals reversed the issuance of the injunction.137 The Court expressed skepticism about the
finding of inequality, discussing the constitutional requirement as "substantial equality." Bound
by the jury finding, however, the Court based its decision on the grounds that the appropriate
remedy was to equalize existing facilities in whatever manner the park commissioner desired
rather than the express directive to integrate.

Pursuant to the decision in Durkee, the city substantially improved the facilities for black
golfers in Carroll park. Although the plaintiffs in Durkee accepted this effort, new plaintiffs
brought suit in federal court in 1948 to challenge the Carroll Park course as inadequate, hi Law
v. Mayor. Charles Houston and William Waddy and W.A.C. Hughes challenged the adequacy of
the nine hole facility.138 Judge Chestnut agreed that the nine hole facility was not substantially
equal to the eighteen hole facilities available for white golfers and enjoined the existing
discriminatory operation of the system.

The City responded by opening all its golfing facilities to blacks only on specified days.
This led to the next suit, an attack by both white and black plaintiffs on all segregation in public
parks. In Boyer v. Garrett.139 Dallas Nicholas and J. Duke Avnet with Charles Boyko and
William Murphy on the brief, argued that the numerous decisions on the inequality of specific
segregated facilities showed that Plessy was no longer viable. This suit signaled the change of
tactics. Fifteen years of suits modeled after Margold's plan had shown the real inequality in the
actual operation of segregation and proven that integration could work. The time was ripe for a
frontal attack on segregation. The lower federal courts, however, responded that they were bound
by Plessy until the Supreme Court overturned it. Four years later, the Supreme Court did so in
Brown v. Bd of Education.

The vigorous attack on racial discrimination in Maryland, sparked by indignation at mob
violence and lynching, fueled by the successful exercise of group economic pressure, and
skillfully controlled in the courts by an extraordinary group of talented black attorneys helped

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