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William Peck, one of the first black students to graduate from Fort Hill High School, Cumberland, in 1956, was honored by the Allegany County Board of Education, in February 2023.
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William Peck honored by ACPS
Fort Hill graduate was part of county’s 1st integrated class
Teresa McMinn
CUMBERLAND — William Peck talked of struggles and triumphs he and other Black students experienced in high school in the 1950s. Although Black kids weren’t allowed to play school sports at that time, Peck was recently inducted into the Fort Hill High School Hall of Fame.
“I walked out on the (football) field and I got emotional,” he said.
On Tuesday, Peck was at the Allegany County Public Schools Board of Education meeting where he was presented a certificate of recognition for the Fort Hill class of 1956, the first ACPS integrated class, of which he was a graduate. After attending the Carver School for Black students, Peck, Harold Hilton, and Judy Leath were integrated into Fort Hill during their senior year.
“It’s difficult to put into words what I feel tonight,” Peck said
“In (1955 and 1956) if you were a Black student in Allegany County, no matter where you lived, you walked to school,” he said.
“There were many people that were opposed to us going to school,” Peck said. “Many people told us we were going to destroy the educational system in this city if we were allowed in the schools.”
He talked of his family’s concern for his safety in school, and his mother’s warning that he stay quiet and unresponsive in the face of abuse.
Peck also said his white friends told him they would stand up for and protect him if he were attacked.
“When we first got into the school, there were teachers that didn’t believe Black and white students should share the stage together, shouldn’t dance together, shouldn’t play music together,” he said.
“But what all the bigots, the haters, didn’t count on were that the white and Black students were gonna become friends,” Peck said.
After he graduated from Fort Hill, Peck enlisted in the U.S. Army and spent two years as a communications specialist.
He later applied for a job at Cumberland’s police department and was first on the civil service list, but “watched as white applicants way below me on the list were hired,” he said.
Following an application to the Metropolitan Police Department in Washington, D.C., Peck was soon hired and assigned to undercover work.
“Through my career, a young Black kid from Central Avenue, I got to meet two presidents, shake their hands,” he said.
“When I retired I came back here,” Peck said. “We still cared about Fort Hill.”
Also at Tuesday’s meeting, local historian Dan Whetzel, retired ACPS supervisor of social studies, talked of Fort Hill’s class of 1956.
“What the (Black) graduates accomplished marked a milestone in local history because it ended 170 years of segregated schools in Allegany County,” he said.
“The journey to integration was a long one,” Whetzel said. “It was filled with many obstacles.”
Those hurdles began with attempts to establish school houses for Black students, he said and talked of “part of the story that’s gotten lost over time.”
Local Black clergy “persistently approached school commissioners for facilities for Black students in Allegany County,” Whetzel said.
Through their efforts, classes were held in some local churches, he said.
“We recently uncovered a long forgotten Black school located directly behind us on Greene Street,” Whetzel said. “It was used by Black students from 1888 to 1890.”
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Cumberland Times-News, February 15, 2023