Baltimore Polytechnic enrolled first female students 50 years ago

Fifty years ago, Baltimore Polytechnic went coed. In September 1974, a handful of female students paved the way. The timing was right, though opinions were split. A bastion of male learning for 91 years, Poly had both allies and critics of the move to let women walk its hallowed halls. For two years beforehand, readers of The Sun and The Evening Sun had sounded off.

“I can not believe that Poly can remain academically high if a female is allowed to enter this school, for if one tries, there will surely be others to follow,” an alumnus wrote.

“A direct result of female admittance to Poly would be a decrease in scholastic excellence,” offered another.

Others, including Baltimore-area women’s groups, chimed in to disagree. Cynics’ worst fears — a collapse of the school’s academic standards — were typical of the chauvinistic mindset of the times. One reader wrote:

“Just let a female move into a brainy, male-dominated area and — whack! Before she even peeks in the door, the roof falls in.”

A male reader appealed to the baser instincts of the Poly hard-liners:

“Some male students have said that mini-skirts and halter tops would distract them from their studies. The way to deal with this issue is not to bar women, but rather to teach the men how to relate to women as total human beings, rather than only in a sexual manner.”

The debate raged on. In 1972, a straw poll of Poly students, parents and faculty voted 2-to-1 to bar girls from the school’s vaunted “A” course in engineering. The Sun countered with a scathing editorial, calling such a move “a gross injustice” and “a Victorian notion.”

Even members of the Baltimore City school board, which held Poly’s fate in its hands, struggled to concur. In March 1974, deadlocked on the issue, the board tabled a motion on whether to allow girls entry on a full-time basis. One board member, a woman, seemed determined to keep them out.

“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 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-year-old 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 prejudice; 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 a golf shirt and wear it down to my knees.”

In hindsight, blazing a trail for women “wasn’t the easiest thing to do,” said Spearman, a 1978 graduate who now manages a Baltimore jewelry store. “We set the groundwork for other young ladies who’ve attended Poly; it was a great experience, but I hope they realize a lot of blood, sweat and tears went into laying that path.”

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Harlee, for one, met the challenge head-on. No wallflower, she joined Poly’s all-male color guard and performed during pep rallies and football games, spinning her rifle with a prowess that earned her the team’s captaincy in her senior year.

She held her own in shop, making anvils in woodworking, and nuts and bolts in hot metals class.

“Welding was cool,” said Harlee, who likely evoked images of Rosie the Riveter. “At first, guys asked if I needed help, but they saw that I didn’t. My brother was fumbumbly in shop, so I also helped him.”

She attended her senior prom, but not with the first boy who asked. He was white; Harlee is Black.

“My dad wasn’t having any of that, because it was 1978,” she said, “and I wasn’t having it because the guy rode a motorcycle. Think I was going to get on a motorcycle wearing a long gown? No way.”

Graduation that spring was all she’d imagined.

“The boys wore white tuxedos, the [six] girls wore white gowns, and [soul artist] Lou Rawls sang the national anthem. We felt so important,” Harlee said.

Now 63, with degrees from Morgan State University and Sojourner-Douglass College, she lives on the Alameda and works as a case manager for the Maryland Department of Social Services. Harlee’s high school diploma is pressed between the pages of a well-worn yearbook; her color guard uniform hangs in the closet of her parents’ home.

Attending Poly, she said, was “a brilliant experience; the fears [about the admission of females] didn’t work. I feel blessed to have gone there because the instructors’ teaching ‘antics’ disciplined your mind.

“It was like being part of a fraternal order. Fifty years later, Poly men and women, we’re all there for each other.”