The current Roye-Williams Elementary School began it's building life as a segregated, all-black school serving the Havre de Grace/Aberdeen area of Harford county. In 1953, Harford County Public Schools opened the K-12 Havre de Grace…

In 1961, the Aberdeen Diner existed in the south western edge of Aberdeen, along Route 40 near a creek and where a 7-11 store currently stands. When Freedom Riders came through Aberdeen, they stopped at the diner. They were met by the owner reading…

The Bayou is a well-known restaurant in Havre de Grace, Maryland on Route 40. It opened in 1949 and continued to operate in 2021. In early December 1961, the CORE leadership found out that some of the restaurants on Route 40 were in fact still…

The Hosanna School is an example of an early institution that promoted civil rights. The school is in the historic Berkley region of northeastern Harford County. The area was known before the Civil War as a stop on the underground railroad. Berkley…

The Musical Inn was a bar/restaurant listed in Congress of Racial Equality's (CORE) brochure and targeted by Freedom Riders in December 1961 for its segregated practices. It was listed in the CORE brochure with the group of "Restaurants Still…

The Sportsman Grill was listed on the Congress of Racial Equality (CORE) brochure used as guide for Freedom Riders for the 1961 Route 40 Freedom Ride. The Aberdeen restaurant was on the list of "Restaurants Still Segregated". This meant that the…

The Bonnie Brae diner in Edgewood, Maryland was the site of an incident involving an African diplomat in June 1961.They were made famous by reporting in LIFE magazine. The diner’s owners denied service to the Ambassador from Chad (Adam Malik Sow)…

In 1951, the K-12 Central Consolidated School opened in an area called Hickory outside Bel Air, Maryland to serve black students from the central and northern regions of Harford County, Maryland. All the students and teachers in the school were…

For the first half of the twentieth century, movie theaters around Harford County were segregated by race, as was common throughout the South. There were three main movie theatres in Harford County: in Bel Air, Aberdeen, and Havre de Grace. Each of…

Throughout most of the 1960s, Cambridge, Maryland was a hotbed of civil rights activity and turbulence. Beginning in 1962, students from Morgan State University and other places had gone down to the small city on the state’s eastern shore to sit in…