Reading my last article about the Greenbelt ordinance regarding proper attire in what is now Roosevelt Center (See the March 5, 2026 issue), one might have thought the article was merely about shorts. However, women have had to stand up everywhere for their rights on issues big and small, from time immemorial, and Greenbelt is no exception. The 1938 ordinance, contrary to many reports, prohibited anyone over the age of 14 from wearing shorts in what is now known as Roosevelt Center. Women pressed for change.
In 1955 Frances Herling was in the Center wearing shorts, which earned her a talking to by a policeman, who then sent her home. She was incensed that she could not wear in the Center what was acceptable anywhere else in Greenbelt, and it incited her to action. She found two other women (whose names are no longer known), and in an act of civil disobedience they went to the Center clad in shorts. They were arrested and served a few hours of jail time.
Karene Herling Lagrone, age 8 at the time, answered the door of the Herling home and Officer Austin Green asked for her father. Officer Green looked very serious. Karene, worried about what had happened, summoned her father. Officer Green informed Albert that his wife was in jail for wearing shorts in the Center. Karene noticed that both men were trying not to laugh.
Once Frances was released from jail the couple discussed the issue, Karene said.
The city had not resolved the issue by August. An editorial in the News Review on August 4, 1955, called the ordinance archaic and said, “We do not advocate that this ordinance be ignored, and most of us have tried to obey it, even though we think it pointless.” They formally asked that the issue be put on the ballot in a city election; the next one was coming up in September but there were no ballot questions that year.
There are several mentions of the shorts incident: in an article by Sheila Maffay-Tuthill for the Greenbelt Museum in 2020 (greenbeltmuseum.org/post/summer-in-greenbelt), a reference to it in the News Review relating to the play The Story of Greenbelt, which was performed at the Greenbelt Arts Center in 1997, and in Frances’ obituary in the News Review in 2001. None of them recount the resolution of the issue, though her obituary says the act led to the prohibition being eliminated.
Konrad Herling was 2 at the time but certainly heard the family stories. He said that his father, Al, “who was never shy about expressing his opinion,” went to a city council meeting to discuss the issue, threatened a lawsuit and the council voted unanimously, though whether that was to repeal the whole ordinance or amend it to take out shorts could not be verified in the News Review archives nor contemporary city council minutes.
Frances said the policeman who arrested her apologized in 1992.
The famous shorts, now in the Greenbelt Museum’s collections, were below the knee and baggy, sometimes called Bermuda shorts. Lagrone said her mother never wore anything clingy.
Whatever and whenever resolution took place, we can thank the heroines, or sheroes, who opposed the ordinance and finally achieved the change that legally allows the wearing of shorts in Roosevelt Center.
Thanks to Museum Director Megan Young, City Clerk Bonita Anderson and Public Information and Communications Officer James Wisniewski for research assistance for this article.
