Former Pilot Helped Calm D.C. Neighbors' Anxiety Over Housing Integration
By Joe Holley
Washington Post Staff Writer
Sunday, December 24, 2006

Margery Taylor Ware was never one to walk away from a challenge -- or a fight, for that matter, although she might postpone it until a more convenient time.

That's what happened in 1927 when she was growing up in Stamford, Conn., where she was known by the neighborhood kids as Tomboy Taylor. A boy who lived down the street challenged her to a fight, but she was busy scooping up carpenter's nails discarded at a construction site across the street from her home. Not now, but later, she promised, not wanting the nails to spill out of her pockets. 

A few days later, she went looking for her nemesis, wrestled him to the ground and had an unbreakable scissor lock around his waist by the time his older brother came to his rescue. The incident prompted a visit to the Taylor house from a police officer, who conferred with Mrs. Taylor and then told Tomboy, "Do it again for me."

Margery Fitz Stephens Taylor Ware, who died of renal failure Nov. 22 at age 91, fought what she considered the good fight her whole life: against sex discrimination and racial bigotry, against poverty, against violence. Her father, an Episcopal minister, preached that to whom much is given, much is expected in return. She took it to heart. (He also taught her to use hand tools, so she probably knew what to do with those carpenter's nails. Years later, she and her husband, Robert Ware, built their own home in Bethesda, which came from a Sears kit.)

"Marge really moved with the times, very dramatically, and with the changing agenda of the day," said the Rev. Ginger Luke of River Road Unitarian Church in Bethesda, where Mrs. Ware was an active member for many years.  ....

She moved to the Washington area in 1945 to teach physical education at George Washington University and met her husband-to-be at a Library of Congress lecture by the celebrated peace activist and conservationist Scott Nearing. Members of All Souls Unitarian Church and later River Road, the Wares plunged into politics and social issues. (Her husband followed her in death by three days.)

She served as assistant executive secretary of the National Urban League and then got involved with Neighbors Inc., a group founded in 1958 to stabilize integrating neighborhoods north of Ingraham Street and east of Rock Creek Park. Mrs. Ware became its executive director in 1961.  Her task, she told The Washington Post in 1962, was to "stop the panic," to calm white residents prepared to flee at the prospect of African Americans buying homes in their neighborhoods. Her strategy, in the spirit of Tomboy Taylor, was to throw a scissor lock of sorts around unscrupulous real estate speculators who were using scare tactics to fuel the panic. Mrs. Ware and her cohorts set up a system of 75 "block spotters" and block committees to combat rumors, and they persuaded the city's three major newspapers to stop mentioning race in advertisements for houses to rent or sell. They also worked to cut "the white noose" around the District, the almost-lily-white close-in suburbs where African Americans had trouble buying homes. "She was a fascinating woman, an extremely bright woman," said Adele Hutchins, who worked with Mrs. Ware at Neighbors Inc. "Working with her was the first time I knew about multi-tasking." 

Presenting her an award in 1962, the D.C. League of Women Voters noted: "She battles against prejudice with intelligence rather than passion, stimulating others to leadership while remaining in the background herself." That's the way Hutchins remembers her -- as a hardworking, no-nonsense woman who was a font of ideas. "We got things done that we wouldn't have gotten done without Margery Ware," she said.  Hutchins also pointed out that the neighborhoods Mrs. Ware and Neighbors Inc. worked to calm more than four decades ago are integrated and stable today.