Whittington vs. The Board of Education
by Charles Paparella
By way of background, we advise that the author worked
for the Somerset County Board of Education between 1978 and
1984, and for two of those years, worked directly with
Dr. H. DeWayne Whittington. At that time, only one member of the Current
Board of Education was in
office, and Dr. Whittington was the Assistant Superintendent
of Schools under Dr. Jack Lynch.
Dr. Whittington filed suit against the Board of Education in 1992, charging that their decision not to renew his contract was racial discrimination, and was not based upon his performance.
A Federal Jury in Baltimore agreed with Dr. Whittington, and awarded him back salary and damages. The County will appeal the decision, and no doubt the case will take years to resolve.
Because we know the litigants, and because the case has reached a conclusion of sorts, we offer the following as a "sense of place", regarding Olde Somerset, people of color, and the world of Dr. H. DeWayne Whittington.
In the town of Princess Anne, Maryland, the county seat of Somerset,
DeWayne Whittington's second-floor office on Prince William Street
was less than two hundred feet from where slaves were once sold.
It was less than one hundred yards away from the tree where the
last Maryland lynching took place.
Did it ever occur to him that high places were unsafe for black men
in that town ? You bet it did.
Did it make him nervous, or timid ? No, to the never-ending dismay
of some people in Somerset, it did not.
Instead, it made him determined to rise to the top of his profession,
and to win for the black children of Somerset County the kind of education
that he knew was possible for them to have. He was not a supplicant, and
supplication is the way for people of color in Somerset.
Whittington accomplished what he did, along with several other lesser-known
black educational leaders, like Kenneth Butler, Hazel Milbourne, Vivian Cheek
and several others, not through intrigue, deception or dirty tricks. They
improved the whole of Somerset County Schools by understanding the
Federal Government, and taking advantage of educational reform at the
national level.
By understanding and utilizing programs like Title I and Head Start, they
built up the educational infrastructre of a rural school district, to the
benefit of all the children and the entire community. They gave of their
time, and their hearts, and they contributed something of value to Somerset.
The press paid little notice, so history has not recorded their accomplishments,
nor does anyone now recall the hundreds of battles they fought through the years
for concessions now taken for granted. But the battles were won, and the
school district is better for it.
Perhaps any one of these educators could have become Superintendent, but it was
Whittington, through tireless effort, who did so. The crowning achievement
of a lifetime of service, he finally made it to the top in 1988. When
the board did not renew his contract, he was but a few years from
retirement.
He planned to leave the district the same way he worked in it: under
his own direction, and at his own time.
It was this simple dignity the Somerset County Board of Education tried to
snatch away from DeWayne Whittington, and it was this dignity that he
took to court to win back. And no matter what happens now, he won.
Those who argue that it was the board's discretion to renew or not to
renew his contract are, we believe, looking at it from the "educational
gun-for-hire" point of view, which is more common these days for chief
executives in many fields. Whittington was not one of these, hired away
from the top post elsewhere in the country to fill the role of "the doc
at the top."
Whittington has spent his entire life working for Somerset County Public
Schools, and he deserved better than a slap in the face at the end of it.
This kind of devaluation of personal value and contribution is rampant in
our society today, and should not be tolerated. We applaud Dr. Whittington
for having the resolve to stand up against it.
The irony here is that the good people of Somerset are not racist.
No doubt, the very board members named in the suit see their own
actions as logical decisions, based on facts, not race.
But a wider view is sometimes needed, to see more than how one
bid was handled, or how some decisions were made. It is only fair,
at the end of decades of faithful service, to view the whole person,
and the whole contribution.
This, by any measure, has earned Dr. H. DeWayne Whittington his place
in the sun. If not him, then who ?
June 28, 1996 Charles Paparella The Shore Journal