Theodore Blum, a veteran of the U.S. Navy and Word War II, came to Milton, Delaware to teach vocational agriculture to farm kids in 1954-"the year that they said that 'separate but equal' was not equal.". Blum had attended Hunter College and Rutger's University's College of Agriculture on the G.I. Bill and was teaching in New Jersey when a college friend convinced him to take the job in Delaware, which was very different from where Blum grew up in Bronx, New York. "I had gone to school with black kids and I didn't appreciate the whole South, to be honest, their attitudes," Blum recalled. "[They were] farmer's kids, who you know, are pretty conservative to start with, and Sussex County is the lower county in Delaware and they thought they were further south than Georgia…. I talked to these kids and, you know, I wouldn't go for the 'nigger' bit." Still, Blum liked his new job

When Blum went into the classroom that day in September 1954, one of his students had written in chalk, "The only thing black in the Milford schools today is the blackboard." Blum was convinced that some of the students were good at heart, a product of the ingrained attitudes held by their friends and their community. But the segregationists, led by Bryant Bowles, leader of the National Association for the Advancement of White People, organized rallies to protest the integration of Milford High School and won. The schools closed, the school board was replaced and Milford schools would not be integrated until 1962.

Soon after the Milford incident, Blum went back to New Jersey to work as a 4-H agent. Integration proved to be a challenge throughout Delaware, including in the city of Wilmington, where racial tensions continued through the late 1960s.