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from backing Call a way's efforts. In late February 1938, graduation services were
held for the first 183 men and women to complete Callaway's school with a series
speeches by dignitaries including the governor, the police commissioner, several
judges (among them Judge Joseph Ulman of the Urban League), the Grand
Exalted Ruler of the Elks; Rev. C.C. Ferguson of Bethel AME Church gave the
benediction and the City-Wide Young People's Forum Trio sang. In July, three of
the graduates, all men this time, joined the police force. Further progress was long
in coming, for it was September 1942 before a fifth Black police officer was
appointed. And at this time the advisability of allowing Black police to wear
uniforms and to cany weapons was still being debated in city government. The
coalition campaign for more Black police, therefore continued fitfully for years with
the NAACP playing an eve more central role; by March 1943, the NAACP was
itself sponsoring a training school for police candidates.
Another issue that attracted some attention toward the end of the era under
consideration was the segregation of municipal golf courses. The local NAACP was
only peripherally involved in this controversy, yet the battle and the character of the
NAACP's marginal involvement tells something about both the NAACP and the
Black freedom movement in Baltimore of that time.
The Jim Crow golf course controversy first flared in August 1934, when
Edward Lewis and the Baltimore Urban League, responding to the complaints of
Black golfers, threatened to go to court to integrate all the city's public golf courses.
In response, the Park Board declared the nine-hole Cairo 11 Park Golf Course
located in overwhelmingly white southeastern Baltimore a Blacks-only course; the
other three city courses (all containing 18-holes) were reserved for whites.
Immediately there was an outcry from white politicians and white residents in
southeast Baltimore. Clarence Mitchell covered the protests for the Afro and later
noted how white city councilmen cynically used racism to manipulate the poor
white working-class residents against the Black golfers. Mitchell also recalled that,
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