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Two years later, at the 1938 national convention in Columbus, Ohio, Enolia
Pettigen McMillan received the NAACP Merit Medal for her work on teachers'
salary equalization/"
But the movement outside of Maryland did more than congratulate
Maryland activists for their equalization campaign. A number of locales emulated
them. In late 1937, after a presentation by Thurgood Marshall on the victory in
Montgomery County, the Virginia State Teachers Association voted unanimously to
take similar actions and pledged to raise $5000 to do so. By December 1939,
Justice Chesnut's decision in the Anne Arundel case had further heightened
interest in local equalization campaigns, and NAACP Executive Secretary Walter
White felt compelled to warn
that these legal campaigns are costly. The association has been assisted by
the state teachers' associations in the states where legal action is being
undertaken... .What is being done in Maryland can be done in other states
if we secure the money to carry on/'
Evidently the money was found in a number of places, for by early 1941, The
Crisis was reporting equalization victories not only in Maryland, but in Virginia,
Missouri, and Kentucky.; the next month it announced that New Orleans was
initiating a test equalization case under Thurgood Marshall's direction. Nationally
speaking, it seems safe to say that the Maryland campaign to equalize the salaries
of Black and white teachers was an important step in the long march to
^Q
desegregated education. °
The equalization campaign also made gains in Maryland beyond raising the
salaries of many Black teachers and making another dent in the Jim Crow system:
the campaign proceeded in concert with, and augmented Lillie Jackson's project of
building the NAACP state-wide. In a number of counties, people attracted to the
NAACP by the equalization campaign helped revitalize or found local branches;
often, teachers became central to the revitalization process. On occasion, teachers
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