curtains around tables for blacks were violations of the Interstate Commerce Act. It noted that
the impact of the segregation would on some occasions force blacks to wait for a table when one
was available in a white section, and would force whites to wait when a table was available in a
black section. The Court concluded that this was an unreasonable discrimination against both
races.

The Henderson decision made it virtually impossible for an interstate carrier to maintain
segregation on board the train, although it had been decided under the theory that the Interstate
Commerce Act merely required that racially separate treatment be equal.144 In Maryland, the
declining significance of segregated transport and pressure from Civil Rights groups led by Lillie
C. Jackson and the Baltimore branch of the NAACP combined to persuade the legislature to
repeal the transportation segregation laws in 1951.145

When Brown was decided in 1954, the link established in Henderson between the
nondiscrimination standard of the Interstate Commerce Act and the constitutional requirement of
equality in the fourteenth amendment meant that segregation of any type on interstate carriers
was illegal. Implementation of this law posed some problems in parts of the south, but Maryland
had already accepted integration in its transportation systems.

B.        Integration of Governmental Facilities

1.        Application of Brown Beyond the Public Schools

The opinion of the Supreme Court in Brown v. Board of Education appeared to focus on
the special characteristics of education which made segregation inherently unequal. The general
principle that segregation in any governmental activity violated the fourteenth amendment was
established by a series of per curiam decisions of the Court which cited Brown without further
explanation. One of these cases arose in Maryland.

While Brown was pending before the Supreme Court, Jack Greenberg of the national
NAACP and local lawyers Linwood Koger and Tucker R. Dealing represented plaintiffs in suits
to integrate parks and bathing facilities in the state and in Baltimore City. In Lonesome v.
Max will, the federal district court judge, Roszel Thomsen, held that Brown did not overturn
segregation in all public facilities, and a trial was necessary to determine whether the facilities
provided were equal.146 Robert L. Carter from the national NAACP argued the cases before the
fourth circuit on appeal. That court reversed the district court in a per curiam opinion, stating
that if segregation could not be sustained where presence was compulsory, as in Brown, there
could be no legitimate reason for state imposed racial segregation where attendance was optional.
Dawson v. Mayor and City Council of Baltimore.147 The Supreme Court affirmed the fourth
circuit per curiam without opinion in 1955.148

The principle that segregation was a violation of the constitution was not self executing.
For example, reform schools remained segregated by law until 1961 when Tucker Dearing and

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