Need some desgregation history - Mississippi ***1970's***

[ehrnst]

I have a new family member by marriage who grew up in MS.

He relates the following story about how desgregation destroyed any sort of ability to get an education in his previously segregated all-white school, because white schools were required to hire unqualified black teachers -

First post in the discussion:
"Had the black schools been preparing for integration it could have been a smoother transition. What we were hit with all at once were an influx of teachers that did not speak correct or even understandable English which meant as the settling in period developed the teachers had to be moved into subjects that could be taught by anyone. They were removed from Reading, History, Science and Math in the lower grades. In upper grades they could teach typing, shorthand and things that were leaned from the book.I know it hard to even conceive but it was a pure mess for a few years. The good teachers found that they must teach to the lowest common denominator which meant at least 2 grades behind. If the teacher expected more from the black students there was hell to pay because that clearly means racism is at work."


Second post by her son:

"Mom lived through it as a parent; I did as a student. She is not exaggerating in the least. I will never forget in the 7th grade (3 years after integration) when we were studying the constitution. A fellow student asked the teacher to define "consecrate". She said "Oh, you know; be quiet; I'm trying to consecrate". I swear this to be true. I closed my book and said to myself "I'm not going to learn a damn thing in this class this year". She was hell-bent on us watching "Roots" though and made it the most important assignment of the year. Her focus was completely on black history-not American History. Although I was an "A" student, I refused to be manipulated in this way and in my own form of protest refused to watch the film-and I took my failing test grade.
Oh, interestingly enough, this teacher also did double duty as our French teacher; what a joke. "

They believe that this was endemic through the south.

However, I found this online:

"By 1964, ten years after Brown v. Board of Education, a Department of Health, Education, and Welfare (HEW) study indicated that only 2.4 percent of African Americans in the South were attending largely white schools. "

http://legal-dictionary.thefreedictionary.com/School+Desegregation

Now - I'm curious if anyone has any sources, anecdotes or stats as to this phenomena that they experienced.


Edited to add: the city was Columbus, MS and to revise the year.

[HiFructosePronSyrup]

1. Your new family member and her son are both stupid racists. That's correct.

It's not the fault of incompetent black teachers, even if such existed. Which they didn't.

[SargeUNN]

26. they did exist

of course from recent discussions with you I am sure you will disagree with me even though I was there and you weren't, don't let that simple fact make me more aware of the real history than you. Yes there were black teachers that were poor, I had one my senior year and while a very nice guy, he was the poorest teacher you could imagine.

[mahatmakanejeeves]

2. 1957?

Can't be right. Do you mean 1977? Roots didn't run on TV until (let me check Wikipedia) ... 1977.

Roots, TV series

**Edited to note that the title of the thread has been changed to note the time in which this happened was the 1970s, not the year 1957.**

[geardaddy]

27. The son says:

"I will never forget in the 7th grade (3 years after integration) when we were studying the constitution."

Then talks about being forced to watch "Roots"

Methinks he lies.

[ceile]

3. I think you should ask them to prove what they're saying.

Ask them for stats and sources- call them on their bullshit.

[ehrnst]

11. It's their recollections of what happened to them in their school district (nt).

[CBGLuthier]

4. Roots was made in 1977

WTF is this dumb cracker on about. 20 god damned years later and he blames desegregation.

I think the rantings of people who are obviously fucking racists is useless, meaningless, and totally a waste of time to read or comment upon.

[NoGOPZone]

5. So it's the teacher's fault he didn't learn?

What happened to the vaunted Republican personal responibility?

Furthermore, Roots was more than three years after integration.

[SargeUNN]

6. I can help

I grew up in Mississippi. I was in the 9th grade when Freedom of Choice was instituted and 11th grade when FoC was declared unconstitutional which resulted in my being in the first class to be forced to combine black and white schools. FYI the first school to open after the Christmas/New Year's holiday was Columbia High School and the black school was John J. Jefferson. Walter Payton the NFL Hall of Famer was the Jefferson Student Body President, Tommy Barber the Columbia High President both were friends of mine. In fact if you would like to hear my account of it, I did make a show that will air Sunday at 3:30 pm Pacific 6:30 pm eastern at http://www.novaexile.com/radio.htm or http://www.ustream.tv/channel/ nova-exile-radio sorry I have no podcast of it yet and not sure I will but if you contact me I can get you a copy of it.

[ehrnst]

13. Thanks! What year was that?

And yes I will contact you for a copy.

I want to reconcile what they honestly remember with what was going on historially in the late 70's - which may have been how long it took to enforce it in their town.

[ehrnst]

28. Do you remember the elementary school/ jr high situation?

Here's his response:

"The REALITY of it was this: The black school that was closed (named Concord-just to show my memory is pretty sharp) was brand new. NEW EVERYTHING-books, projectors, desks, buildings et...c. They even had AC, which we did not. I remember looking through the window wide eyed at all the stuff that school had.
I, on the other hand, was using text books that had kids names in them from being issued 5-7 years earlier. I was in a school that my father had attended some 40 years earlier using a gymnasium that had been condemned by the county.

The reports would have you believe that the black school had hand-me-downs and we had all the nice things. This is simply not true. Period.
They closed down the new school and bussed the kids to the other school. The new school was abandoned and disintegrated from vandalism eventually.
That's why I say if someone just reads the reports they are getting a very skewed (read agenda) perspective."

Do you remember that? Or maybe even the stated reason that they would shut down a new school?

[ehrnst]

7. This guy is not a cracker at all - his mom's another story...

He's one of the few family members of that branch that I do get along with, because he is indeed open minded and way to the left of the rest of them. He's an Obama supporter.

He is relating what he remembers as middle schooler. I'm just trying to find out if indeed there was some documentation to disprove that this was the result of some local school board showing how they were going to 'comply' with segregation by sabatoging it, and giving white parents a "reason" to start a private school.

[EFerrari]

14. He's wrong. The year is too early for one thing

and typically what happened in those districts is that the black school was shut down and the black teachers were thrown out of work.

He may not sound like a racist to you but what he is doing is taking what might have been the behavior of one individual, tarring all black teachers with it and using it as an excuse for segregation. What would you call that?

In fact, the black community had a parallel intellectual culture that couldn't have been more distinguished. This is utter crap.

[ehrnst]

25. I don't think he is, but his mom is. (nt)

[zipplewrath]

8. My problem is the time line

You start out with 1957. Then you mention "3 years after integration". In Mississippi, depending upon exactly where you are discussing, that could be the very late 60's. Then the mention of "Roots" puts it in the late '70s.

I think mostly you are hearing how "urban legends" get started. They seem to be mixing events, some more fabricated than others, into a narrative to make a larger point. There is probably little reality to any of it.

[ehrnst]

9. Ah - you are right - my estimate of 1957 was wrong.

My Bad - this would have been the 70's - and this would have likely been bussing.

[SargeUNN]

10. Ok here is the timeline

Freedom of Choice came about 1968 or 1969 (I don't remember exactly but I was in the 9th grade) then that was struck down and in Jan. 1970 Columbia High School and John J. Jefferson High School in Columbia Mississippi were merged and the first to open after the Christmas/New Year holiday.

[ehrnst]

12. So the "integration" that they're remembering isn't Brown v. Board

What would have happened in the late 70's to have caused this sort of huge change in a MS school district?

[SargeUNN]

15. different parts of the same thing I would say

the case you mentioned is the early parts. It really would take awhile to recount all but FoC is a result of the Brown case and so is the striking down of FoC. I never had a black classmate until the 9th grade because none ever tried it out until my 9th grade year. If I remember right, the FoC was in all the time but it really wasn't exercised until the late 60s but I might remember that wrong.

[SargeUNN]

16. guess I should add this

I went to Columbia Ms. City Schools from the 1st grade through the 11th Grade and graduated in 1971 from Forrest County Agricultural High School. Walter and I were classmates for half a year in 1970 before I became a boarding student at FCAHS.

[azureblue]

17. I graduated from a little town outside of Jxn, MS

in 66. my sibs followed through the deseg mess, and it was a mess. the chief problem was the black schools were so far behind the white schools. This happens because of a number of reasons: low expectations, lack of decent curricula - old books, lack of books, lower standards for black teachers, decaying school buildings, years of lack of funding for the black school system, remote locations of the black schools.

I knew about the Columbus MS problems, and the story is correct. Columbus had the same problems my school had, and it was a pretty much universal issue across the states- the years of neglect of black education resulted in far less educated black kids and black teachers. Throw this difference into a much better white school system and it was a nightmare. My sis related the exact same story- her black teacher's dialect was so thick, no one could understand what she was saying, and she was so woefully undereducated, my sis's class was teaching the teacher about half the time - she barely read the textbook. The black kids were probably about two grades behind the white kids, so, when they were thrown into the age related grade, they were lost. Many still could not read, too. There was no way to remedy this, without having to stop the class and bring the black kids up to speed. Thee was no remedial program to get the black kids up to par -- they got thrown in with no help at all. So my sis lost the entire year's education. The black kids wanted their school back - for one thing they totally hated the white school's mascot- the black school's was much cooler) , the white kids were resentful of having to accommodate the educational level differences, the forced busing from both sides of town (my family lived 1/2 mile for the school, but sis was bused 12 miles away to the old black school), the teachers were all ready to quit, the principals could not fix anything and the integration rules did not take into account the education gap and how to resolve it. Nobody was happy about it, everybody knew it had to be done, and nobody had a workable plan that would satisfy all. I recall one that was to put the black kids on a fast track with 12 month education to get them up- heavy summer schooling, but, due to the wording of the integration rules, the school system could not appropriate money for this purpose because, under the guidelines, it would be discriminatory.

I will say this, at the risk of destroying a lot of stereotypes about the south at that time: the kids, for the most part, were willing to integrate. Most of them had been listening to black music and dancing to it, for years. Little Richard, New Orleans R&B, Ray Charles, Otis, Same & Dave, Motown, James Brown (and more), then Hendrix. Add in the emergence of the hippie culture with its "love for all" idealism, and the gates were open, as far as the kids went. It was the political leaders and some rednecks that were the problem, and those are the ones that everyone points to when stereotyping the south.

The kids hated integration because of the mess and whopping disparity between the B&W school systems, and so did their parents, who decided to create a private school system. It took too many years to fix the years of disparity. Some communities, where the private school system is prevalent, have funding problems for public schools, which are now black majority, and the circle of benign discrimination begins again. My town's school system area has higher taxes for schools, one of the best on the state, and they had three bumpy years, but they had the money to make it work. They got into trouble with the feds when they tore down the black schools, but it had to be done- they wee in such a state of disrepair, it was better start from scratch and build anew.

[SargeUNN]

19. Yes

I remember how badly funded and how the standards for the black schools were so unimportant there was almost none. I remember if a black girl didn't want to go to school she might get pregnant and thereby not be required to attend school. It was one of the most sad times.

I did have a black teacher for the first time my 12th grade year and he was not real bad but he was certainly below the norm I had had. The big thing I attribute this time to is the mindset of our times then, because the blacks were seen as less entitled to what we white people were. I can recall my adoptive father telling me the blacks were inferior and should be treated in such a manner, and the way they were restricted from advancement was pathetic since I got to see blacks just as talented and smart as Walter (Payton was a very smart person) not get to move on. I saw a few of our players in the football season who got college scholarships that never made it because they were not allowed a fair chance because they were black. If Walter had gone to Ole Miss he wouldn't have ever had a NFL career.

[ehrnst]

20. So basically, the school board hired less qualified black teachers on purpose

And when some were kept on after the merge, white parents were outraged - not that they had been hired to teach black kids in their town in the first place, but that now the lack of competence that the school board doing the hiring of these teachers was now affecting their own kids.

[zipplewrath]

23. Our story was similar, in the North

We were starting "busing" about that time. The "problem" was that a natural, almost economically based, segregation had formed. The courts forced busing to try to balance out the populations. But the "other" school had no honors/AP kind of courses, the science classes were poorly populated. Language and literature classes were unpopular and their skills were sorely lacking. When the mix happened, it wasn't as "bad" as these southern stories, but kids suddenly found themselves in classes for which they were poorly prepared, or not in classes because of a lack of the prerequists. There was a huge push to "catch up" these kids quickly. Not that anyone knew how really. Children that had never heard of "advanced math" were suddenly dumped in the middle of classes of kids that had been in such classes for years. They would sign up for the advance organic chemistry class because a counselor had suggested it. Problem was the counselor was suggesting it because they were trying to "get their numbers up", not because the kid showed talent or interest.

I don't really know what anyone could have particularly done to make it better. Some tutoring or such wouldn't have hurt. But really, it isn't clear how one "catches up" a kid whose education has been effectively ignored for 8 years or so. A more rational approach would have been to start integrating the kids at the elementary school level, and just keep advancing by a year what classes got integrated. If you started in about 5th, you'd be done in 7 years.

[Solly Mack]

18. Something that might help

Segregation Academies and Other History Stuff

[sinkingfeeling]

21. I did a search and found several papers on the impact to black teachers by desegregation. Here's one

http://eps.education.wisc.edu/reference/displacement.brownconf.pdf


This tells the other story of well-qualified black educators being fired due to desegregation.

[ehrnst]

24. Looks like the stories that they tell are classic examples of "displacement" described here:

"From the mid-50's throuth the mid 1970's African American school staff at all levels --- teachers, principals, coaches, counselors, band directors, even cafeteria workers --were fired, harrassed and bullied as White communities throughout the South reacted first to the prospect and then to the reality of court ordered segregation. No one was exempt.

"Displacement" became the phrase which subsumed the many policies and practices by southern school boards, school superintendents, and politicians that sought to undermine the employment and authority of African-American educators: dismissals, demotions, forced resignations, "nonhiring," token promotions, lower salaries, less responsibility, coercion to teach subjects or grade levels other than those for which individuals were certified or had experience --- all of those practices fell under the rubric "displacement."

[sinkingfeeling]

22. Duplicate post deleted.