The desegregation of Northwood Theatre

8 photos

Fifty years ago this week, the matinee of the Disney movie “In Search of the Castaways” played to the Northwood’s first-ever integrated audience, writes Jean Marbella. Look back at photos of Northwood Theatre and the student protesters who fought for its desegregation.

Former student protesters remember civil rights battle over the Northwood Theatre
By Jean Marbella, The Baltimore Sun
12:36 p.m. EST, February 16, 2013

Movie tickets at the Northwood Theatre cost just 90 cents back in 1963. But for some, the price of admission was considerably higher.

It took years of picketing and nights in jail for hundreds of African-American college students and their supporters before the theater in the Hillen neighborhood of Baltimore dropped its whites-only policy. Fifty years ago this week, the matinee of the Disney movie “In Search of the Castaways” played to the Northwood’s first-ever integrated audience.

“It was just something in my opinion that needed to be done,” said Joyce I. Dennison, 71, who, as a student at Morgan State College, joined the protests that led to the theater’s desegregation on Feb. 22, 1963.

“You say you want to open a facility to the public — we are part of the public.”

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