An American Hero

A lifelong resident of Baltimore, Md., Sondheim was appointed to the city's school board in 1948. He didn't think much of local and state laws that required "separate but equal" -- segregated -- schools for whites and blacks. By 1954 he was the board's president, and finally got his opening: the U.S. Supreme Court ordered schools to desegregate. Sondheim called all the board members and told them what he was going to do, and then the next day he did it. "It was the first item to vote on, so I asked for discussion and then for the vote," he remembered later. "The whole thing didn't take 45 seconds, and then we went on to the rest of the day's business." That made Baltimore's schools the first district south of the Mason-Dixon line to desegregate, but the state school board president wasn't happy and tried to overturn the decision. He told the man "that he could come to Baltimore and try to unscramble the egg that we had scrambled if he wanted to," Sondheim recalled. After the board's decision, a cross was burned on Sondheim's lawn, but "He wouldn't back off," said former Maryland Gov. William Schaefer. "He wouldn't step aside. He wouldn't do anything except what was right. I've never known a man with so much integrity in my life." Sondheim's impact on education -- and Baltimore -- didn't end there. He led the redevelopment of the downtown area, and then chaired the governor's panel on school performance, which led the nation in demanding improvements in education, holding schools accountable for their performance. In 1995, at the age of 86, he was appointed to the state school board, and three years later ended up as the board's president. Sondheim died February 15 in Baltimore from pneumonia. He was 98.

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