10-13-2024 W2W - Flipbook - Page 42
Right: Students from Polytechnic High School and
neighboring Western parade down Remington Avenue
on their way to 25th street school administration
headquarters and finally to City Hall. About 500
students, 200 Western, finally won agreement from
Mayor Schaefer at City Hall for a meeting to discuss
student desire to keep girls out of Poly, and boys from
Western. The school board has dropped sex restrictions
at Poly. GEORGE H. COOK/BALTIMORE SUN ARCHIVE
Shirley Spearman,
one of six females
to graduate from
Poly after the school
went coed.“There
were young teachers
excited to have a
new generation [of
students] coming in.
But there was also
pushback, mainly
from older male
faculty who’d been
Poly grads in the
1930s and ’40s,” she
said remembering
her first year. PHOTO
BY KARL MERTON
FERRON
“This is part of an attitude in America to tear
down everything that’s good,” she said.
Two months later, by a 5-to-4 vote, a consensus was reached: In September, females would
be allowed to attend Poly “on the same basis as
males,” ending the school’s near century-old
tradition.
Reaction was swift. Almost immediately,
more than 500 students marched en masse to
city school headquarters, on 25th Street, snarling traffic, and then to City Hall, to protest
the ruling. Several demonstrators were from
Western High, the all-girls institution adjacent
to Poly, who feared their school might go coed
as well. One Western student had the words
“NO COED” scrawled boldly on her bare back.
On the steps of City Hall, Mayor William
Donald Schaefer addressed the ruffled crowd.
“You may not like the law,” Schaefer told
them, “but the law says you can’t discriminate
on the basis of sex.”
Soon after, the five-hour protest ended
peacefully.
In truth, Poly had already begun to turn the
42 | 2024 | WOMEN TO WATCH
corner. In 1972, school officials allowed a scattering of Western students to take approved
classes not offered at their own institution.
(Years earlier, during World War II, women
were permitted to enroll in Poly’s evening
classes long enough to learn a trade and find
a job.)
Times change. Of the 1,550 students
currently enrolled at Poly, 51% are women.
What greeted those first full-time female
underclassmen who set foot in the school?
“My first day, in the cafeteria, someone had
spray-painted ‘GIRLS GET OUT’ in green on
the wall,” said Evelyn Harlee, then a 14-yearold sophomore from Clifton Park. “It didn’t
bother me because I wasn’t going anywhere
until I graduated.”
Spunky and outgoing, Harlee thrived at
Poly, studying engineering and science. From
the start, she was brassy enough to raise her
hand and ask questions in a room full of boys.
“I needed to know things,” she said. “For
three years, I was the only girl in every class
I took. The [male] teachers showed no preju-
dice; they were eager to teach us [girls].”
Nor did Harlee face bias from male students,
she said — in part, because her brother, Bruce,
kept watch. Born 11 months apart, they’d
entered Poly at the same time.
“Guys knew I was Bruce’s little sister, and
he played football,” she said. “That meant they
needed Bruce’s permission to ‘bother’ me.”
Other female students, like classmate Shirley Spearman, did meet a degree of sexism on
campus.
“There were some great young men there,
and some jerks who made your life a little difficult,” said Spearman, 64, of Sparrows Point.
“There were young teachers excited to have
a new generation [of students] coming in. But
there was also pushback, mainly from older
male faculty who’d been Poly grads in the
1930s and ’40s.”
Once, Spearman said, she arrived at school
wearing jeans and a top, “which, if I moved,
showed a little skin. One department head
grabbed me, pulled me into the office and said
I had to go home. I started crying. I had to buy
