During World War II, the U.S. government urged private entities to create entertainment centers or USOs (which stood for United Service Organizations) for military personnel to enjoy while they were on leave.
These facilities were segregated during World War II and the largest USO facility for African American military personnel was located here at 529 Gold Street and was operated by Druid Heights YMCA. The YMCA rented 62 bunks here for 35 cents per night and provided entertainment from dancing to bingo, from hosting lectures to creating recordings of the soldiers’ voices for them to send home.
After World War II, this building became the Baltimore location of the Cortez W. Peters Business School. Located in Washington D.C., Chicago and Baltimore, the Cortez Peters Business Schools were the first black-owned schools in the business field, and it estimated that the schools trained approximately 45,000 students, including many who rose to senior levels of government and other fields.
Peters, along with his son, Cortez W. Peters, Jr., developed special competition keyboarding methods and techniques that became the foundation of modern typing instruction worldwide.
Prior and during his tenure as the owner of the Cortez W. Peters Business Schools, Peters was famous for his typing skills. He won his first international typing championship in 1925 with a 141 word per minute perfect timing on a manual typewriter. His continual improvement and concentration as a typist coupled with the advent of more advanced typewriters allowed him to set a typing world record of 180 words per minute, without a single mistake (an average of 15 keystrokes per second) on a manual typewriter. His son followed his success with his own career as the fastest typist on an electric typewriter.
Peters’ skill as a typist was showcased on a number of television shows and even on “Ripley’s Believe or Not” in the mid-1950s when he typed 100 words per minutes flawlessly on a manual typewriter while outdoors in subfreezing weather.
