School Girls

School girls, from left to right, (first row) Pamela Sharps, Pearl Lee Campbell; (second row) Mary Ann Campbell, and Pamela Randall wave their Fairmont Heights Hornets pennant as they prepare to leave Lakeland to support their team during the school’s 1960 homecoming game. Lakeland High School was replaced by Fairmont Heights Junior-Senior High School in 1950. The new school served the African-American students from widely scattered areas of Prince George's County. As a result of the 1964 Civil Rights Act, the school board abandoned its earlier, race-based school assignment plan and instituted a system based on residential boundaries. At the time, housing in Prince George’s County was segregated. African Americans resided in single-race communities, many out of custom and by choice, and others due to housing discrimination. The result of the new boundaries plan was a school system with mostly single-race schools. There was a policy, however, that allowed students to seek assignment to other schools. Few sought that option. In the 1960s, Lakeland students were assigned to the closer, predominantly-white Northwestern High School in Hyattsville and High Point High School in Beltsville.