Another reader shares memories of growing up in the South, before the Brown decision was implemented.
And by the way, I don’t mean to suggest by reprinting these accounts that segregation no longer exists. In some places today, de facto segregation is even more extreme–and unnoticed–than the de jure segregation of the pre-Brown era. As I pointed out to an Internet friend last night on Twitter, in the 1950s, he and I would have never met, never exchanged ideas, never shared the same space. What I didn’t say was that if we had met, I would automatically be his superior because of the color of my skin, not because of anything else. There was a caste system in place, and it was race-based. I do not mean to minimize in any way the persistence of segregation today. It is one of the root causes of low academic achievement, especially when it is linked to poverty. The combination is toxic. Some day, when I have time, I’ll share some of my memories of growing up in the South.
| Segregation was my silly mother’s excuse to baptize us Catholic in Atlanta in 1954, when my older brother was ready to start first grade. Did y’all know that the Catholic schools were already desegregated, all that time? New Orleans was the only specific date I could find, just now. It was desegregated in 1948, the year before I was born.When We lived in San Antonio, we attended Our Lady of Sorrows, where we were a minority. My daddy had died, his military life-insurance was tangled up in paperwork for years, and he had set up his meager NCO pension allotment to give a share to his mother and his many young siblings, back in Florida. My mom worked off our tuition as a crossing guard. Our landlady, Mrs. Morales, was always claiming she’d cooked too much, and brought us nutritious and delightful combinations of cornmeal, beans, and every possible local vegetable. There’s so much I could say about the intelligent, creative, and devoted polylingual women who taught me. Oh, my God. I just this second realized, that’s what I’ve always expected of myself as a teacher.And I was in eighth grade at Everett Junior High School in Panama City, Florida, the year it accepted its first black students. I can’t even begin to convey all that. We should all write memoirs, or even novels, so history will know.Each of us who grew up in those momentous decades has a different and specific historical context, depending on our birth year, city, economic level, and the racial identities of our own families. You who aren’t “baby boomers”, stop a minute and realize what Linda Brown’s victory over the Board of Education of Topeka, Kansas, meant to the other little girls of her generation. We lived it from the inside out, as children, while the fabric of our own selves was being woven.
Injustice and division seem overwhelming, but look around, inside and out, and realize the majesty of what we did accomplish, and what we are. Whatever happens to our children is happening to OUR children. We are one people. |
Diane Ravitch's blog 
I too was educated in the deep south, but during the sixties. My catholic grandmother insisted that we attend catholic school and paid our tuition. I have no memories of going through desegregation since my school had been integrated long before the law required it. My husband, on the other hand, attended public school and recalls a different account of those days. He remembers it being chaotic and turbulent an full of racism from all sides. I now teach in those same schools he attended. Remnants of that racism still exist here in the deep south. There continues to be a strong catholic base in this area, and catholic schools continue to educate our children both black and white. So it is true that we all have our own stories. As turbulent as it all was, I am happy that my own children are now the beneficiaries of those turbulent times. Although they attended private school (not catholic), we made sure that there was a diverse population at that school, so that they would grow up comfortable interacting with friends from many other religions and cultures.
Yes, segregation still exists and upper/middle class families send their children to parochial schools causing public schools here to be filled with many students of poverty. As a parent and educator, I personally chose private school for my own children not for segregation, but for access to rigorous curriculum, small class sizes, and no high stakes state tests. I wish I could provide my own students with access to those same things here in public school. I believe that No Child Left Behind is the cause of most of our school failures. I taught in the eighties when teachers were allowed to actually teach. More accountability may have been needed back then, but Public schools are now forced to function in a way that is not conducive to rigorous learning. If the freedoms allotted to charter schools were also allowed in public school, we as educators could get down to the business of educating our students. Why is it that so called school reform still insists that public school continue to function under the same accountability rules that have so far proved disastrous? Why don’t reformers insist that public schools be allowed the same choices as charter schools, if it is such a great thing that charter schools are doing? Why do education reformers still refuse to admit that poverty does make a difference, as researchers have already proven.
I know the answer already. It is because this has nothing to do with educating children and everything to do with privatizing education ( i.e. ALEC agenda) for financial/economic reasons. The result will be a resegregation of our nation, separating the haves and the have nots and widening of the achievement gap. Just my opinion.
A small piece of history that is not understand. The case was decided as Brown v Board of Education of Topeka, because it was the case listed first among the five argued as one, the other being Briggs v. Elliott (filed in South Carolina), Davis v. County School Board of Prince Edward County (filed in Virginia), Gebhart v. Belton (filed in Delaware), and Bolling v. Sharpe (filed in Washington D.C.). The cases were argued twice, first in 1952, but because the Courts was split Felix Frankfurter stalled and got the case reargued again in 1953 after Chief Justice Vinson had died and was replaced by Earl Warren. There were many major political and legal figures involved in the case, which in 1953 had 3 days of oral arguments for the facts in all the cases. Future US Senator Ernest Hollings was a supporting attorney in 1952 to perhaps the most prominent of those arguing the segregation case, John Davis, who had been Solicitor General of the US and one-time Democratic nominee for President. Another was the future Governor of Virginia J. Lindsay Almond, who as Governor continued to be a segregationist.
There are two separate decisions and a great deal of misunderstanding. First, Brown did NOT overturn Plessy, because the Court was able to achieve the goal of ending racial segregation without doing so – finding that segregated schools were inherently unequal meant that they were unconstitutional under Plessy’s doctrine of separate but equal. To quote from Warren’s opinion, “We conclude that, in the field of public education, the doctrine of “separate but equal” has no place.” Thus the ruling was limited to education, and there are no words in the opinion applying the ruling outside of education.
Second, because the Constitutional issue at hand was the equal protection clause of the 14th Amendment, which was written to prevent state discrimination, the DC case, Bolling v Sharpe, had to have a separate decision. In this decision Warren relied upon the Fifth Amendment’s notion of liberty to achieve the goal of finding segregation in DC unconstitutional. Warren wrote “In view of our decision that the Constitution prohibits the states from maintaining racially segregated public schools, it would be unthinkable that the same Constitution would impose a lesser duty on the Federal Government.” In legal terms, this is a form of reverse incorporation – the idea that the 5th Amendment could be used to incorporation the protections of the 14th Amendment against Federal government action, the same way the 14th Amendment’s due process clause had been use to incorporate the protections of the Bill of Rights against state action.
It is important to realize that while we call the case Brown v Board it was actually far more complex than that.
My take on segregation comes from being an English child brought to America to escape WW!!. Fourth grade in the Aiken, S. C. public school was about 2 years behind my London County Council school near Edgeware Road. No, I was the right color. I just sounded funny and that made me a pariah. I was not aware of the color line until my parents allowed me to visit the Aiken jail in the company of their friend the chief of police. The black prisoners were kept in an unconditioned ‘trailer’ 3 bunks high in back of the station, and I remember when chief opened the door, black faces stared down at me, waved and said, “How-ya doing little girl?” The chief had a black woman who did all the cooking and cleaning, and who went into the back yard to catch a chicken and prepare it for Sunday supper. I was told that Saturday night was the night on the town for the ‘coloureds’. The movies were segregated with black audiences seated in the balcony, and the local Baptist church was all white and all ‘ Christian.’ A polio scare that spring shut the school down to my everlasting thanks, and my Father’s employer escaped Aiken for his penthouse in New York City. I felt even as a child that I could breathe again, to be accepted, and to live where many nationalities and races mingled. I cannot compare my experience with Jim Crow South to the black experience. That would be insulting. But having had a small whiff of that corruption, I think America has much to atone for, to correct, and finally to ask forgiveness.
Each time I read or talk with those who went through the turmoils of desegregation in the South, I honestly have trouble even imagining or comprehending what it must have been like. Why? I grew up in the Midwest where in my hometown I went to school with “black” children from the time I started kindergarten in the 50’s. In fact one of my best grade school friends was “black”. We went through grade school, middle school and high school together. I hope she and others will be able to be at our high school reunion in September.
I found it striking that a mother had the forethought to baptize her children as Catholic in Atlanta so they could go to desegregated schools. Catholicism is not a major faith in Atlanta. Baptist tends to be the religion of choice. There was always a small Catholic system though and one of our paraprofessionals put all her children (5) through it. They went to college at places like Georgia Tech and MIT, becoming engineers and architects and one daughter sang with the Atlanta Symphony.
I did not get there until the 1975 and as I explained previously, the schools were very heavily black by then, with a few majority white schools on the Northside that allowed the system to do MtoM transfers. Interestingly, Fulton County Schools wanted to combine with Atlanta City Schools for a long time. If you think of a sandwich, Fulton is the bread and Atlanta is the meat. They were on the north and south ends. But the reason was not educational quality but that Fulton was having trouble meeting the federal guidelines for the numbers of black teachers, especially on the North (wealthy and mostly white) end and somewhat on the South (redneck whites and black) end. Atlanta would not budge. The north adjusted over the years as Alpharetta and Roswell became less white and added the multimillion dollar homes of football players and rappers.
Diane, I think this could develop into a book. Why don’t you solicit stories from your boomer and pre-boomer readers (those who were actually teaching in the 1950s and 60s before they die on us.) about segregation both from growing up with it and from teaching with it and after it ended. You will need stories from various perspectives and races. I know I have some stories to tell well beyond what I have said here and I’ll bet a lot of others do too.
It is something the newbies could read and learn from because I often get the impression the youth of today don’t understand that Dr. Martin Luther King was not just a civil rights leader, he changed the world.
I’ll never forget explaining about desegregation to my special needs students in Louisiana during Black History month. I told them that their classmate, Arneshia, would have had to go to a different school under segregation. (I did not go into the fact that none of them would even have been allowed to attend public school, since they were mentally handicapped, until 1975). They looked at me wide-eyed and asked the question of the ages. WHY?
It’s a good idea. I wish I had the time.