Dorsey, 100, recalls growing up Black in Sykesville
Centenarian honored near park named for mother
Warren Dorsey stared at the crowd as children and adults listened attentively for the tales of a Sykesville they never knew. As the breeze chilled the warm summer afternoon, his baritone voice fell back effortlessly to the past, bringing to life a century worth of stories.
He is not just a storyteller. He is living history.
The Gate House Museum of Sykesville hosted a porch talk July 18, in which curator Jack White interviewed the 100-year-old Dorsey, the oldest living person born in Sykesville. What Dorsey didn’t know is that a new memorial was standing at the entrance of what once was Warfield Park and is now officially Carrie Dorsey Park.
In 2018, the mayor and town council passed a resolution changing the name to honor Dorsey’s mother, an African American woman who raised 12 children in Sykesville during the 1920s. The monument and plaque were finally in place for the July 18 event.
“The African American community is an important part of history that has not been told in Sykesville,” said former town council member Christopher True, who suggested renaming the park.
Dorsey reminisced about his upbringing, telling the audience about his father, Ed, a brilliant man who could do anything he put his mind to, and his mother, who was a “wonderful woman.”
Carrie Dorsey fits the description of a modern strong woman, Sykesville Mayor Stacy Link said. Carrie Dorsey would also likely be a matriarch, not just of her family but of an entire community.
“We are certainly proud and honored to call [it] ‘Carrie Dorsey Park.’ [People] will know a little bit about your history and our history,” Link said.
“That’s just wonderful,” Warren Dorsey said.
Born just two generations out of slavery, Dorsey was the ninth of his parents’ children.
His mother, more than anything, wanted them to succeed and face a fate different from hers, he said. She valued their education. For many years, there was no school for Black people in Sykesville, until people in the community began to push back and opened one in 1904, which Warren Dorsey attended.
To advance beyond fifth grade, Dorsey later had to walk four miles to another school in Johnsville. Every day, as Dorsey and his siblings prepared to walk to school, their mother told them: “Children, there will be a better day tomorrow.”
Dorsey calculated he must have walked 10,000 miles by the time he graduated from high school. He has walked a long, long way in this life, he said, chasing
his mother’s dream.
“And it’s come true to a large extent,” he said. “My mother never had the chance to go to formal school. And I have a master’s degree in education.”
After graduating first in his class and winning a scholarship, he decided to attend college. When the day came for him to leave the family’s 40-acre farm, his father could barely breathe due to asthma attacks. Dorsey started to wonder if he should sacrifice his opportunities for the well-being of his family. It was his mother who pushed him to go on to college.
Dorsey became a microbiologist and worked in Frederick at Fort Detrick, the center of U.S. biological defense program. In 1970, Dorsey went back to school to get his master’s degree in education. He became an elementary school teacher in Sykesville and eventually rose to principal before retiring in 1981.
Dorsey took an active role in his community, nicknaming himself and others as part of the “P.U.G.” or political umbrella group.
“We will be a solid umbrella for those who are dedicated to changing the community for the better,” he said.
Mostly, that meant keeping local politicians accountable, pressuring them into “getting off their fannies” and fulfilling the promises they made, especially when it came to desegregating schools in Frederick.
Dorsey has seen some systemic changes in his lifetime. But when it comes to racism and white supremacy in the United States, it is still a trying situation, he said. The public school system is not, in his view, yet integrated.
“It’s integrated when everybody has an equal shot at the opportunities to serve and the opportunity to participate,” he said.
After the round of stories, Dorsey serenaded the crowd with “You Raise Me Up” and “My Way,” his voice reaching beyond the grounds of the museum. People joined him in singing “Lift Every Voice and Sing,” which is sometimes referred to as the Black national anthem.