Donna Ladd wrote a compelling story about how white flight in Noxubee County, Mississippi, killed hopes for integration in the 1950s and 1960s. Ladd is the founder and editor of the Mississippi Free Press.
Whites had long controlled the county and its schools. They were determined not to permit any racial integration. Their response to the Brown decision of 1954 was to stall, stall, stall.
When whites realized that the federal courts were determined to integrate the schools, they had two strategies to defy court orders. One was to open “segregation academies,” like today’s charter schools. The other was to create voucher programs so that white children could participate at all-white private academies.
The story is fascinating. It’s not likely to be taught in public schools, because some people might think this honest retelling of what happened might make white students—more likely, their parents—uncomfortable.
Diane Ravitch's blog 
Abeka’s textbook “America: Land I Love In Christian Perspective” shared a popular white myth about Black people during Jim Crow segregation and the Civil Rights Movement: “Most black and white Southerners had long lived together in harmony; they had been taught to accept segregation as a way of life,” it states as if it was fact that Black people enjoyed complete white control over their lives, choices, education and opportunities. The same textbook has declared: “Through the Negro spiritual, the slaves developed the patience to wait on the Lord and discovered that the truest freedom is from the bondage of sin.”
Thank you for this fascinating article that confirms the validity of CRT. It did make me feel a little uncomfortable, particularly since my mother’s family has Mennonite roots that date back to some of the earliest settlers in Pennsylvania. However, history is based on recorded reality, even if it makes certain people uncomfortable.
What struck me the most in this post was the active role the federal government played in integration in the ’60s and ’70s. Charter schools are the embodiment of a racist tradition going back to the Brown decision. Today, the federal government has turned a blind eye to way in which many charter schools discriminate against students of color, even though most are supposed to accept all students. The federal charter schools program that incentivizes the establishment of more charter schools is a no more than a barrel of pork for the charter lobby. Charter schools continue to expand despite the fact that they have failed to deliver on their promises, and they do so at the expense of public schools that continuously lose funding due the ever expanding charter schools. Charter schools continue to waste, embezzle and sometimes do not even open, but they are always looking to expand into more territory. They view federal dollars as an entitlement, and the impact on local public education is largely ignored. The federal government should not be funding schools that discriminate and destabilize neighborhood public schools.
Your takeaway omitted the religion connection?
We’re lucky conservative churches aren’t at it again?
If the nation doesn’t talk about weaponized religion for the right wing, it gives license to continue?
Religion “freedom” is often behind establishing separate and unequal schools that do a disservice to Black and Brown young people.
A recommended reading – an opinion just posted at the right wing, The Hill, “Beginning of the end for religious discrimination in education,” by Neil McCluskey of the Koch’s Cato. The McCluskey identifiers at the end of the article won’t tell readers that he is best known for writing about the Catholic viewpoint in education.
Libertarians want taxpayers to fund the schools of the Catholic religion- a religion that justifies discrimination against women and people who are gay, a Church with decades of widespread priest abuse of children which was covered up by the hierarchy.
Chillingly close to what the Republican Party is working so hard to recreate today.
It’s interesting that there is ample evidence that the school choice campaign has been substantially helped (if not driven by) state Catholic Conferences.
The linked article, looking back on what transpired in the 60’s, doesn’t omit the religion connection to segregation academies. In the future, historians, unlike today’s chroniclers, will likely highlight the conservative churches’ role, once again.
Someone else can possibly answer why public education defenders don’t describe it now, contemporaneously with the activities and funding.
It should be very easy to report connections. The state religious conferences post at their sites and the legislation is at the state level.
When Church-affiliated groups align with Charles Koch, it should be front page news, assuming a free press.
Thanks and please keep hammering on the religious faith belief aspect of the reich wing.
reich wing- clever and accurate
If you are unfamiliar, as I was, with the doctrine, “error has no rights,” I recommend reading the Wikipedia entry for it.”
I’m not sure the white parents of today’s school children would be embarrassed as much as their grandparents might be — with an emphasis on “might”. I don’t think hard core racists are ever embarrassed about their racism.