Guest Editorial: Cecilton’s Levi Coppin School Should be Saved

A Public Letter to Cecilton Town Officials — A Guest Column

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April 26, 2020

Dear Cecilton Town Officials:

I am writing to you to strongly urge you not to demolish the historical Levi Coppin School.  While scrolling through my Facebook newsfeed on Sunday, I was surprised to read about the town’s newest project to build a new school and senior housing village. While there is nothing wrong with this idea, I was shocked and angered to read about the plan to demolish the historic school building that sits on the grounds of the construction site. 

The Levi Coppin School follows a lineage of schools that educated African-American children in Cecilton and the surrounding area dating back to the Reconstruction Era immediately following the American Civil War.  In the early 1950s, the current structure was built and dedicated in honor of Levi Coppin who was from the area and became a bishop in the African Methodist Episcopal Church.  He also spent time in Cecilton as a  teacher in the earlier school before pursuing a career in ministry.  Hundreds of African American children were educated at that school until public schools in Cecil County were fully integrated in 1965.

Back in 2013, while attending Washington College, I wrote a senior capstone thesis titled Standing in the Schoolhouse Door: The Desegregation of Public Schools in Cecil County, Maryland, 1954-1965.  In this paper, I spent some time discussing the history of education of African-American children in the county and analyzed the factors that ultimately led to the desegregation of Cecil County Public Schools.  While segregation of public education is not something to be proud of, it is important to document the struggles that students, educators, and community members went through to fight for equality in education.  Preserving the Levi Coppin School would do so. 

There are countless examples of preserved African-American schools in the region.  In Elkton, Wright’s AME Church recently bought the original Elkton Colored School and plans on preserving the building as a community center and museum. The Elkton Colored School’s successor, the George Washington Carver School, is currently the administrative headquarters of Cecil County Public Schools. My current residence, Harford County, has two examples that now serve as museums documenting the struggle for equality, the Havre de Grace Colored School Museum and Hosanna School Museum.

The Hosanna School Museum has also acquired the McComas Institute and plans on turning that into a museum as well.  In Queen Anne’s County, alumni of the Kennard School purchased the facility from the local board of education and converted the building into the Kennard African American Cultural Heritage Center, an organization that hosts after school programs and serves as a museum.  With so many examples in the region of preserved African American schools, why cannot the Levi Coppin School be incorporated into the surrounding construction as offices, community center, a museum, or meeting hall?

Lastly, I wish to challenge the comment presumably made by a town official on the Cecilton Facebook page that argues that Levi Coppin School does not meet the criteria for preservation by the Maryland Historic Trust.  MHT follows guidelines set by the National Register of Historic Places.   The NRHP has the following criteria:

A. The property must be associated with events that have made a significant contribution to the broad patterns of our history.

B. The property must be associated with the lives of persons significant in our past.

C. The property must embody the distinctive characteristics of a type, period, or method of construction, represent the work of a master, possess high artistic values, or represent a significant and distinguishable entity whose components may lack individual distinction.

D. The property must show, or may be likely to yield, information important to history or prehistory.

I argue that the Levi Coppin School meets criterion A.  It was built in 1950 during the time when  separate but equal education was sadly the norm. The predecessor to the school was known as the Cecilton Colored School.  At the insistence of community members, the board of education agreed to rename the school after accomplished former area resident Levi Coppin.  Although Levi Coppin passed away in 1924, this was the community’s attempt to honor his legacy and to rid the school of the belittling norm of naming schools for African-Americans as colored.  As stated earlier, preservation of the school would document the struggle for equality. 

As a volunteer with the Historical Society of Cecil County, educator, and native of southern Cecil County, I urge Cecilton to do the right thing and preserve the Levi Coppin School so that future residents children of Cecilton can learn from the past.  Shamefully, Cecilton has not demonstrated much care for historic preservation as it has been demonstrated in demolition of numerous historical buildings.  Once a historical structure is destroyed, that history is gone forever.  As George Santayana once stated, “those who cannot remember the past are condemned to repeat it.” Thank you for your time and I look forward to hearing your response.

Sincerely,

Kyle Dixon

Havre de Grace, Maryland