Some days, parking is all anyone in Annapolis wants to talk about.

Other days, it’s history. Sometimes, racism.

Today, you can talk about all three at once.

Annapolis is changing the name of the Noah Hillman Parking Garage, a memorial to a respected alderman, adding the name of a local civil rights hero.

Hillman created the Historic District, and as head of the city parking committee — it’s what everyone talks about — wrote legislation for the garage that bears his name. It opened in 1972 on the site of a notorious parking lot.

“It was nuts, particularly in the wintertime,” said former Mayor Dick Hillman, the alderman’s son. “When it snowed, before they could plow, the parking lot was really dangerous.”

As for racism, well, decades before he was elected in 1957, Hillman was the lawyer for one of Maryland’s most notorious racists, George Fox.

Yes, that George Fox. He was the Anne Arundel County schools superintendent who defended lower pay for Black teachers with this outrageous statement: “The worst white teacher is better than the best black teacher.”

Hillman represented Fox in a 1939 lawsuit filed by Walter Mills, a Black educator, and his lawyer, future U.S. Supreme Court Associate Justice Thurgood Marshall.

Mills was the first principal of Parole Elementary School, which opened in 1932 for Black children. Under county rules, he earned $1,058 a year, while his white counterparts earned $1,550.

In 1937, he sued Maryland. Marshall argued in federal court that by allowing separate minimums based on race, the state violated Mills’ 14th Amendment guarantee of equal treatment under the law.

A federal judge dismissed the lawsuit, saying county schools set the salaries. Mills sued the school board two years later, and Marshall faced Hillman in a Baltimore courtroom.

Hillman offered extenuating circumstances, saying white school years were longer and Black educators earned less because their students scored lower. He argued that equal salaries would require a 7-cent increase in the property tax rate.

U.S. District Judge William Calvin Chestnut set them all aside, finally turning to Fox on the stand and asking if he truly believed Black teachers were inferior.

Fox’s answer sank his legal defense.

“Any controversy over the fact would seem to be ended by the testimony of the defendant,” Chestnut wrote in his 1940 opinion.

Fourteen years later, Marshall cited the case as a precedent in a Supreme Court victory that ended segregated schools nationwide, Brown v. Board of Education.

When Dick Hillman joined his father’s law firm in the 1960s, he never heard him talk about the biggest case of his career.

“He was an attorney for the Board of Education and was doing what they instructed him to do,” he said.

Today, there’s a school named for Mills. Marshall’s statue graces the State House grounds, and millions pass yearly through his namesake airport, BWI Thurgood Marshall Airport.

Anne Arundel County schools removed Fox’s name from a Pasadena middle school in 2021. You know, the whole racism thing.

On Friday morning, Annapolis shifted Hillman’s name over to make room for Mills at the rebranded Mills-Hillman Garage.

“I think it’s going to educate some people,” said outgoing Mayor Gavin Buckley, who proposed the change. “I don’t know if it’s going to offend anyone. How could it?”

Valerie Mills Cooper, Mills’ daughter, wasn’t offended.

“It’s interesting that Mr. Noah Hillman was the lawyer for Anne Arundel County schools at that time,” she said. “I’m hoping that you will consider adding his name to the name of the Hillman Garage.”

They unanimously agreed in July. The Caucus of African American Leaders will cover the $15,000 cost of new signs over the entrance and on surrounding streets.

That’s the thing about history. Interpreting the past is always open to argument, and someone is almost always irritated.

“I don’t know what basis there would be to add his name to it,” Dick Hillman said. “He had nothing to do with the garage or with anything in city government.”

No one is suggesting the elder Hillman was a racist. He was a lawyer for a racist leading a segregated school system in Jim Crow Maryland.

“What I’m hoping will happen is someone will put a biographical memorial to explain who Noah Hillman and Walter Mills were,” said Carl Snowden, the caucus leader, a former alderman and longtime civil rights activist.

“Both minorities, one Jewish and the other black, and each played a significant role in the city of Annapolis and its history.”

If this were a plaque in some obscure location, few people would notice. Everyone involved is long dead.

But the garage is a centerpiece of Buckley’s changes in Annapolis, one that irritates his political opponents — and some supporters — right now.

The city rebuilt the garage, expanding it by 150 spaces in a deal that mortgaged parking revenues over 30 years to pay about a third of the $100 million makeover of City Dock.

Complaints about $50 parking tickets are a regular occurrence now. Both candidates to replace Buckley as mayor have promised to address the way Premier Parking, the management company, runs the garage and downtown spaces.

“We’ve been complaining about parking in this town since George Washington tied his horse up in the wrong place on Main Street,” Buckley said. “So there are a lot of moving pieces and there’s a lot of work to do.”

History is full of nuance, often forgotten until we’re forced to remember.

The only Black mayor of Annapolis was John Chambers. An alderman for 12 years, he voted to name the garage for Hillman.

And if Hillman defended racism, his son fought it. While mayor in 1984, Dick Hillman was arrested outside the South African embassy protesting that nation’s apartheid laws.

History is full of twists, constantly changing the way we understand it.

“The idea here is to remind people,” Snowden said, “remind people of the importance of buildings, naming them and helping to remember those who made some contribution to the city of Annapolis.”