Struggle to stop resegregation of Wake County (NC) schools heats up

[Ed Barrow]

Four activists were arrested during a Wake County Board of Education meeting, June 15, as the struggle to stop the resegregation of Wake County schools intensifies. The civil disobedience action was carried out to protest a 5-4 vote by Wake County's majority conservative board to end Wake's busing program. The demonstrators locked arms and sang We Shall Overcome during the meeting. They were arrested when they did not stop.

North Carolina NAACP President Reverend William Barber was one of those arrested, along with Reverend Nancy Petty of Pullen Memorial Baptist Church, activist Mary Williams and Timothy Tyson, a researcher at Duke Divinity School.

Wake County's new all-white school board majority, which came to power thanks to funding from right-wing foundations in the state, voted to terminate a pro-diversity busing policy in favor of keeping students in schools in their neighborhoods. This will lead to segregated schools and low quality, poorly-funded schools in communities of oppressed nationalities. Protesters have been waging a sharp struggle against this policy for months. On March 23, 70 students and youth marched on the board's meeting to demand an end to racism and resegregation efforts.

A statement from the North Carolina NAACP on the June 15 civil disobedience action said in part, “We are willing to break a lesser law and accept our punishment in order to protect the larger law embodied in the federal and state constitutions and to defend the children of our community... If it is necessary that we be locked up to resist policies that will lock down our children in resegregated, high-poverty and unconstitutional schools, so be it.”

The NAACP has played a leading role in opposing the resegregation scheme, along with a broad united front of progressive organizations and peoples in North Carolina. In a statement in March, the NAACP noted that the attempts at resegregation represent “a clear call to our community - Black, White, Latino, Asian - to employ all the moral, political, and legal means at our disposal to stop it before it’s too late.”


http://www.fightbacknews.org/2010/6/17/struggle-stop-resegregation-wake-county-schools-heats-4-civil-rights-activists-are-arreste

[elleng]

1. Desegregating a NC school system:

Swann v. Charlotte-Mecklenburg Board of Education, 402 U.S. 1 (1971) was an important United States Supreme Court case dealing with the busing of students to promote integration in public schools. After a first trial going to the Board of Education, the Court held that busing was an appropriate remedy for the problem of racial imbalance among schools, even where the imbalance resulted from the selection of students based on geographic proximity to the school rather than from deliberate assignment based on race. This was done to ensure the schools would be "properly" integrated and that all students would receive equal educational opportunities regardless of their race.

The History of Desegregation

In Brown v. Board of Education in 1954 the Warren Court ruled that school segregation was unconstitutional. One year later, in Brown II, enforcement of this principle was given to district courts, ordering that they take the necessary steps to make admittance to public schools nondiscriminatory “with all deliberate speed.”The term “all deliberate speed” was used by school boards to delay desegregation.

Circuit Judge John J. Parker led many in the South in interpreting Brown as a charge not to segregate, but not an order to integrate. In 1963 the Court ruled in McNeese v. Board of Education and Goss v. Board of Education in favor of integration, and showed impatience with efforts to end segregation. In 1968 the Warren Court ruled in Green v. County School Board that freedom of choice plans were insufficient to eliminate segregation, thus it was necessary to take proactive steps to integrate schools. In United States v. Montgomery County Board of Education (1969), Judge Frank Johnson’s desegregation order for teachers was upheld, allowing an approximate ratio of the races to be established by a district judge. >>>

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Swann_v._Charlotte-Mecklenburg_Board_of_Education


I PRAY today's fools will be shot down quickly, but I'm not optimistic.

[bluestateguy]

2. I just do not approve of busing as a policy

It undermines the notion of the neighborhood public school. Now if you want to go to another public school, fine, but don't demand that the school district transport you there.

Busing has enhanced racial tensions in the communities that used it, and in some cases actually enhanced segregated schools when the affluent white parents yanked their kids out of public schools in favor of (lily white) private schools.

It is also a bit condescending to assume that a school cannot be a good school if it is not diverse--I guess that means all of Vermont schools are bad.

[MineralMan]

3. That is civil disobedience properly done.

If there is no arrest, the civil disobedience did not occur. Too many people forget that these days. It is the arrest that creates the public notice and results in the action getting a chance to plead their case in court.

The last thing rarely happens, and the authorities almost always release the protesters. They do not want a public airing of their discriminatory rulings.