Rose Cohen Kramer
Tuesday, March 7, 2006
Rose C. Kramer, 94, a Democrat who was a force for racial integration and liberal social activism during a career in Montgomery County politics, first as a member of the school board and then the County Council, died March 3 at her home in Bethesda. She had pulmonary failure.
Mrs. Kramer, a homemaker with teaching experience, was elected to the school board in 1954, the year the U.S. Supreme Court ruled in Brown v.  Board of Education that public schools must desegregate.
She was known for her aggressive support of the ruling and for criticizing other board members who "pretended nothing had happened" after the landmark court decision. She was board president in 1959, the year a black  teacher reportedly became the first of her race in Montgomery to head a mostly  white school (Bannockburn Elementary School in Bethesda).
In 1966, Mrs. Kramer, then living in Silver Spring, won election to a four-year term on the Montgomery County Council. She worked on transportation, fair housing and human rights issues.
In 2001, she was inducted into the county's Human Rights Hall of Fame,  which noted her early work pushing for the creation of an office that became  the county's Human Rights Commission.
She served on the Metro board from 1967 to 1971 -- the transit authority's  first board -- and from 1977 to 1981.
Rose Cohen Kramer was a native Washingtonian and graduate of Eastern High School. She was a graduate of Wilson Teachers College and received a master's degree in English from Catholic University. Early in her career, she taught   elementary school in the District.
She was a former board member of the Jewish Community Center of Greater  Washington; the Montgomery Hospice; the Community Psychiatric Clinic; and the  county chapters of the League of Women Voters and Planned Parenthood. She was also a member of the Woman's National Democratic Club.
In later years, she was a financial supporter of social service and cultural agencies.
Her husband, Harold H. Kramer, whom she married in 1937, died in 2000.
Survivors include four children, Madelyn Schaefer of Edgewater, Ellen Ross of Silver Spring, David Kramer of Durango, Colo., and Kathye Kramer of San Diego; a brother, Jack C. Cohen of Bethesda; six grandchildren; and 12   great-grandchildren.