Louise Kerr Hines ephemera collection

Louise Kerr Hines was born in Baltimore in 1916 and raised on Division Street. Her father, Dr. T. Henderson Kerr, was a pharmacist who owned Kerr’s Drug Store at 723 George Street. Her mother, Geneva Louise Lyles, was a trained seamstress. A lifelong Baltimorean, Hines graduated from Frederick Douglass High School in 1934 and Coppin Normal School, now Coppin State University, in 1937. On February 28, 1946, she married Morsell Hines, a former classmate.

Hines spent most of her professional life as a civil servant working for the Maryland Department of Human Resources from 1951 to 1978. Her prior work experience included 5 years of teaching in the segregated Baltimore City Public Schools, reporting for the Baltimore Afro American during World War II, and employment with the NAACP’s Baltimore office.

Hines is best remembered for her contributions to the local Civil Rights Movement. In 1943, Hines responded to a job posting for trainees with the Enoch Pratt Free Library. The Pratt rejected her application on account of her race. The institution had a longstanding policy of not employing African Americans as library assistants that would be within public view. Encouraged by Carl Murphy, the editor of the Afro American, and Lillie Mae Jackson, president of the Baltimore NAACP, Hines filed a federal lawsuit against the Pratt for denying her equal employment rights; Hines sought $4,500 in damages. In 1944, U.S. District Judge W. Calvin Chestnut dismissed the lawsuit on the basis that the Enoch Pratt Free Library was not a government institution and was therefore not beholden to equal employment legislation. Hines’ attorney appealed the ruling in the Fourth Circuit Court of Appeals in Richmond, Virginia, arguing that the Pratt was indeed a public institution because of the $500,000 in operating funds it received annually from the city of Baltimore. On April 17, 1945, the court ruled that the Pratt was an "instrumentality of the State of Maryland" and that it had discriminated against Hines because of her race. During the trial, the court also discovered that Hines was one of approximately 200 African American applicants whom the Pratt denied access to the training course. The Pratt appealed to the Supreme Court, but the Court declined to accept the case. The Pratt’s Board of Trustees abolished the discriminatory policy and determined that "further action of this board and the library with respect to the training class and the recruiting of the library staff will be in accordance with the language and spirit of that opinion." Although Hines never replied for employment with the Pratt, her resistance to the Pratt’s discriminatory practices secured greater employment opportunities for African Americans and marked an important milestone in the struggle for Civil Rights in Baltimore.

Hines remained civically active throughout her life, particularly in education and African American and Civil Rights organizations. Notably, she was a longtime volunteer at the Maryland Historical Society, where she served as a tour guide in the education department and conducted several oral history interviews for the institution's oral history office. Hines also contributed to MdHS’s McKeldin-Jackson Oral History Project as an interviewee (1976; OH 8117) and later conducted a self interview for MdHS’s oral history collection (1980; OH 8298). Individuals seeking additional biographical information on Ms. Hines should access the aforementioned oral histories.