Hello class!
This weeks class session was especially interesting to me, due to the many different and extremely rare primary sources we were allowed to look at. Once the vastness of the archives were explained to us I knew that I probably would need to focus much of my time on specific sections based on my interest. The first section I spent the largest amount of time in was the Wyatt Tee Walker Collection. Through looking at this collection I came across many different extremely graphic images, some of people being attacked by dogs, sprayed by hoses, and even people being assaulted in peaceful sit-ins. These images were extremely moving to me, but what was even more moving were the articles and journal correspondences I was able to read during my time with the collection. As a young black man growing up I always felt that there was so much more to African American history in America, things in which I was never told or taught growing up. This collection gave so much insight into many things I have been dying to learn about during my young adult life. One thing that especially stood out to me was Wyatt Tee Walker’s integral part in the formation of the SCLC, in that he founded it with Martin Luther Kind Jr. He even lended considerable aid in organizing The March on Washington.
After spending a large amount of my time in the Wyatt Tee Walker collection, I decided to move to the section in which the class was warned about due to the insensitive language and bigoted ideals throughout the documents, in this section proposed by a former congressman (I cannot remember his name for the life of me). I went to this collection without truly knowing what to expect to see but if I had any expectations they would have been blown out the water. Through peering at the documents within this collection I noticed a trend that most of them were private correspondences about upholding the institutions of segregation. This congressman and his constituents were extremely concerned with the possibility of desegregating schools, and allowing schools to educate people of different racial and ethnic backgrounds aside from white. This congressman’s constituents were so adamant that the “problem” of segregation be stopped that I ran across quite a few letters mentioning the composition of militias to fight against desegregation, many of which called for this congressman to be the leader of their militia. But this was not all that surprising to me as I read it, what was most surprising to me was the passage and execution of the Pupil Placement Act within Virginia.
Upon further research of this law I realized this was not something which was just executed in Virginia but in many of the states throughout the country, mostly within the south, who did not agree with the integration of public schools. The Pupil Placement Act was drafted and written into law to directly oppose the federal mandates to desegregate schools, and it did this by actively slowing or in some cases completely halting the integration process within their respective states. States would accept the smallest fraction of black students into their schools to seemingly appease the federal government, but they truly were doing everything they could to stop progress towards the desegregation of schools. Some states or districts decided to just completely close down schools when they were told they needed to be desegregated and other districts even created scholarship like programs for white students to go to private schools to get away from new black students in desegregated schools.
Through learning about the many different strategies people of the past used stifle desegregation efforts it made me think about an event I heard about recently, like two weeks ago from one of my best friends from high school. He plays football at Delta State University, a division II school in Mississippi. Throughout his time there he has told me about many different and scary incursions he has had with extremely bigoted people during his time in Mississippi. The other day he told me that some schools in Cleveland county Mississippi were still segregated until August of 2017. Through looking at the documents during class and keeping these events in mind it made me wonder how any school over 60 years after the passage of Brown vs. Board of Education could continue to perpetuate segregation. More info can be found at these websites:
https://www.cnn.com/2017/03/14/us/cleveland-mississippi-school-desegregation-settlement/index.html
My question to you all, is what do you think? How do you think a school district could uphold segregation for this long? Have you heard about this? If so, how? If not, why do you think?
Hi Dante!
This is a very intriguing post. I am shocked to hear that somehow schools have been able to keep students segregated until August 2017. I honestly don’t know what to say. I’m genuinely surprised that this is the first time I am hearing of this, and how did this not get more national news coverage?
I feel as though the school system would have had to be fighting multiple lawsuits for literally years over this. Also, in the articles you posted at the bottom, there was a link within the Clarion Ledger that stated this: “Black Mississippi valedictorian’s discrimination suit going to trial.” I followed the link and it appears as though in 2019 Jasmine Shepard sued the school district because she was forced to share her valedictorian title with a white student who has a lower GPA that was altered to match Jasmine’s GPA. The other individual was also provided with more opportunities to take AP classes that were not offered to Jasmine.
The more I read about the Mississippi Delta school district the more irritated and appalled I become. How can a school district keep students so separate? How can administrators alter student achievements? I just am really in shock that this was allowed to happen for so many years and struggles in this area are still continuously occurring.
Thanks Jordann and Dante for some very well developed and thoughtful posts regarding our last class session. I was a little overwhelmed by the amount of primary sources we had available to review and unfortunately I was only able to review 3 of the tables of information. First in reference to your post Jordann, I understand you are saying about private correspondence being made available for all to see but I would guess whomever provided the documents thought the importance of having as much historical information as possible was worth it. The one thing about history is that no matter if we like it or not, it did happen and we cannot change but we can definitely learn from it. In adapting any documents for better understanding by the learner is almost necessary when teaching history to younger students, although I think we should always strive to keep the integrity of the document facts and information intact. It is important that our students learn as much about history as possible because it provides the background knowledge of why our state/country is structured the way it is now.
Dante, I too spent a large amount of time reviewing the Wyatt Tee Walker information, I was aware of how much Martin Luther King depended on him but to see the daily work they put in just to ask that everyone is afforded equal rights, as stated in the Constitution, was a lot! So regarding your question, I was not aware that there are STILL places that are trying to uphold segregation but it is sad to hear this. I think there are far fewer differences in all people if you take time to talk to one another. During all of my school years, my classes were integrated which I understand now was not the norm. I started kindergarten in the early 70s in the Henrico county school system and never had any racial issue to happen nor did I hear of anything. Unfortunately, I think it is easy to stay with fear and stereotypes, then taking a step outside of that to try to get to know others as another human being. The places were you still have a lot of racism and segregation probably have persons that do not have the chance to interact with others that don’t look like them, this is a missed opportunity. We learn to live together with one another and stop being divided just because of the color of someone’s skin. I found a couple of articles about the tragedy of racism and not appreciating those that may not be “just like us”.
https://newhampshirebulletin.com/2023/01/23/how-racism-hurts-us-all-including-racists/
https://deathpenaltyinfo.org/news/the-reverend-dr-martin-luther-king-jr-hate-cannot-drive-out-hate-only-love-can-do-that
Greetings, Dante! Thanks for all the additional research you did in the course of making this post. To address your questions: I do not wish to seem as if I am trying to claim some sort of Cynicism Prize, but I cannot say that I am in any way surprised by the articles you shared on segregated schools in Cleveland, Mississippi.
First of all, it’s worth noting that the segregation was not quite so drastic as the titles of these articles suggest; if I read their contents correctly, the district contained one all-Black school and one school almost evenly divided between white and Black students, rather than one all-Black school and one all-white school. By bringing this up, I don’t mean to dismiss the segregation that did exist as unproblematic, only to point out that it is not hard to understand how incomplete segregation of this type could remain unaddressed and unacknowledged.
Second, it kind of baffles me that people, including me, forget this so easily, but the period of explicit, institutionalized racial segregation in America was not that long ago! Brown vs. Board of Education was only sixty-nine years ago, less than a human lifetime—the blink of an eye in anthropological terms! Real, permanent social change takes an enormously long period of time, proceeds along bumpy and circuitous routes, and often ends up in a very different place than anybody expects. As we all know, conscious malevolent racism is far from dead in American society—it is really just less acceptable to voice it publicly—and the presidency of Donald Trump provides ample evidence that it is not even that hard to get away with voicing it publicly. And school segregation is driven not just by conscious malevolent racism, but also by subconscious racism, and by loyalty toward and convenience of already existing institutions (remember the articles said that even many Black residents of Cleveland did not favor full integration because it would mean the closing of the all-Black East Side high school in which the town’s Black community had considerable pride), and by income-based segregation, and by self-segregation of both whites and minorities who wish to live, work and study among people similar to themselves. Those who wish to oppose integration, or who are indifferent to integration but wish to oppose some consequence of it (such as having their alma mater closed down), have many potential tools in their arsenal, including all sorts of loopholes and disingenuously presented laws such as the Pupil Placement Laws you pointed out.
Third, I was not surprised because, frankly, racial segregation is all around us! I volunteered as a tutor in the infamously poorly performing elementary school of Allendale, South Carolina a little over a year ago. The county is mostly Black; but the school was all-Black except in the very youngest grades. My fellow volunteers and I learned that the few white students in the county are almost all sent to a nearby private school by their parents (whether the private school is actually of higher instructional quality than the public school, I do not know, though that bar is extremely low; but I do not doubt that the white parents would send their students to the private school merely to maintain segregation, or at least because their families have gone to the private school for the past couple generations after anti-integration efforts started that tradition). This is the prevailing state across the nation; most children go to schools where one race is very clearly in the majority, because the social forces maintaining segregation are numerous, powerful, complex, and extremely difficult to uproot, having been entangled with all this country’s institutions since its beginning. Not only have the scars of segregation not faded, the wound has not even scarred over, but is still oozing. Maybe there is some way to speed its healing, but somebody wiser than I will have to come up with it.
Hi Dante! Thank you so much for your post; I appreciated that you linked helpful resources for the class to better understand this issue.
I was very surprised reading your post and viewing the articles you linked. I had never heard of the segregation in these two schools in Mississippi. Your post inspired me to conduct more research, and I found more shocking details regarding our country’s school systems. According to the Economic Policy institute, “The typical black student now attends a school where only 29 percent of his or her fellow students are white, down from 36 percent in 1980.” So, are students actually completely integrated in schools?
Throughout the country, schools differ in the amount of resources they can provide to students. Typically, students in low-income neighborhoods face disadvantages in school as they may be in large classes, have less skilled teachers, and less resources. Although black students achievements in school have increased since Brown v. Board, there still exists a large achievement gap between white and black students. How do we solve this?
During my K-12 education, I feel as though I didn’t learn nearly enough about racism, inequalities, and segregation as I should have. As a teacher, I want to change this for my students. I will educate my students on the history of these problems instead of sugarcoating the truth. Addressing the truth to younger generations will open student’s eyes and help them realize they can make a change. I think people believe racism, discrimination, and segregation are problems of the past. People often forget that these are ongoing issues that still need solutions.
Hi Dante!
Thank you so much for your extremely eye-opening and shocking post.
When you shared the fact that some schools in Mississippi were kept segregated until 2017, I immediately did a double-take. I then re-read that sentence several times to make sure I was understanding it correctly. How in the world were those schools able to continuously keep their students so separate? I wish I had been taught details such as these in my K-12 history classes.
I also found in incredibly interesting how you were able to embed a real-life experience that connected well with the primary source research we conducted last week in class. Although not fully written and published, your friends experience qualifies as a valuable primary source and look into what is still occurring in Mississippi as of late. This is the exact reason I feel as though primary sources are drastically vital to include in our lessons taught in the classroom. It is crucial to remember that real people lived through the historic events we are covering and that their first hand accounts open up a whole other side to our studies.
Hello Dante!
Thank you for your reflection, research, and personal anecdote. Unfortunately, I am not at all surprised that the segregation of this school in Mississippi. However, I am very surprised that I haven’t heard anything about it on any of the news networks/papers I follow. Surely there would have been some commotion stirred up when these two schools were forced to be merged. Segregation is alive and present in almost every aspect of society and to claim we are in a “post-racial” state would be to ignore the past and current experiences of POC everywhere.
I recently read a journal article that showed that Americans as a society are even more segregated than we were pre-civil rights movement. Although it is not as blantly present in our legal system, it is still there and especially prevalent in residential areas through redlining.
https://belonging.berkeley.edu/roots-structural-racism
This article clearly showed me that even if there are no segregation laws like there were in the Jim Crow era, there is still a structural problem in our society that bleeds into education, medical care, our police system, and many more.
I think the reason we haven’t heard of these schools is because this is a problem that can’t be fixed with the instatement of a couple new laws. The reality is that racism and discrimination is so deeply rooted in our society that it will never be an easy fix — and boy do we hate things that aren’t easily fixed. I do not think all hope is lost though. If are aware of the stuctural and systemic racism that is present and recognize that white privilege exists, we can start to make small steps to achieve equity in whatever form that may take.
Carstyn K
Dante,
Hello! Thank you so much for writing a detailed response! It was very interesting to read.
I completely agree, the collections we were allowed to view were so insightful! They allowed us to gain so much more context to our histories, especially for African Americans. There is so much not shown in the classroom that we can introduce and discuss to our own students if we’re lucky.
My parents often told me stories about their experiences with racism, both in the South and North. My mother would be chased by white children while on her bus heading to an integrated school in Chicago, and my father wasn’t allowed to enter through the front door of restaurants as a teenager in North Carolina and DC.
In the present, although integration is a policy that was initiated decades ago, we can still see the effects of segregation in today’s school. Data shows that, “70% of RPS schools are highly segregated, or less than 10% white” (https://www.wric.com/news/local-news/richmond/richmond-schools-today-rps-still-fighting-to-improve-segregation-51-years-after-busing/). The reasons for this segregation are detailed greatly in the book we read, Richmond’s Unhealed History, but it’s still jarring to see the numbers. The history we have in this country has not been faced properly. Resources are not giving to minority communities that need it the most, and politicians don’t see the true problems behind failing educational systems. In my opinion, we are still segregated as a country because of our lack of understanding and working to heal the past.
Thank you again for sharing!
Ashley
Hi Dante,
I’m so glad that you chose to write about this. Thank you for the time that you spent composing this post, which is evident through the many details and links for more information!
Like you, I had never heard of the Pupil Placement Act until we were reading through some of the letters in the Abbitt box. I also didn’t know the details of the lengths that some Virginia politicians went to oppose school integration, including the outright closure of some public schools. What an ugly and shameful time in Virginia history for Abbitt and other like-minded leaders in the Virginia Democratic Party (like Senator Byrd, who was mentioned in several of the constituent letters to Abbitt that we perused).
Additionally, I had NO CLUE about the Mississippi school desegregation efforts until you told me, nor had I given much thought to the question about whether our public school system had moved beyond racial segregation as a country. From the article links you provided, I navigated and explored some other resources, and this is the article that contextualized the situation most thoroughly for me:
https://www.cnn.com/2016/05/17/us/cleveland-mississippi-school-desegregation/
Also, take a look at this video about a speech given by former First Lady Michelle Obama back in 2014:
https://www.cnn.com/videos/us/2014/05/17/newday-intv-brinkley-michelle-obama-segregation-school-remarks.cnn
I really appreciate you, Dante, for being so willing to bring up a tough subject to acknowledge and talk about. It makes me wonder how talking about desegregation in a class full of students that mostly look the same would make the other students feel? I’m excited to become more skilled in how to facilitate potentially difficult conversations like this in the classroom.
Sue Anne
Hi Dante,
Thank you so much for your response! You included a lot of interesting information that I was unaware of.
I did not look at the same collections as you, but I can gather that there is so much students are not being taught based on the information you have provided. The collections were eye opening to see because of how they told stories of real people from a different lense than how they may be portrayed in a history book. You mentioned how many of the accounts were private correspondences, which makes me think about how easy the information in them was able to be covered up.
As far as your personal story, I am completely shocked. I had no idea that schools have still been segregated in this day and age. I do not understand how that has been allowed at all!! It highlights how students are not being informed about events like this is their education, and that needs to change immediately. I personally feel that I was never taught enough about racism, inequalities, and segregation throughout my own education. I plan to do everything in my power to change this for my students in the future because it is vital that people are told the truth in order to make any sort of necessary changes in the world.
I am absolutely disgusted by how the Mississippi Delta School District kept students segregated, and how this went on without being majorly brought to public eye. These issues are very much real in today’s world and they cannot be swept under the rug as if they are a thing of the past. It is up to us all as educators to do everything possible to help fix this issue in any way we can, no matter how big or small, to ensure events like this do not go any further.
Thank you so much for sharing this all! This was an extremely informative post, and I would not have known about the segregation in Mississippi schools without it.
Alexa Cates
Hi Dante!
Thank you for your post, I can see how much you took in and reflected on from our tour of the archives. I agree with you that the Wyatt T. Walker section was truly eye-opening and hard to leave.
After reading your post and having time to reflect on my experience, I can say that, “I’m not mad, I’m just disappointed”. I am not surprised that Mississippi has taken this long to desegregate schools, but it is still very disheartening. I feel like all we hear these days is how open minded and accepting this new generation is, yet we still have people who follow these disgusting beliefs holding power.
My biggest question is how did this happen? As community members of the county, couldn’t they protest and picket at town hall and raise votes to overturn this policy? Or are those in power just too strong and stubborn to let change happen?
Dante, thanks for sharing your thoughts on this. I remember having seen this piece on CBS This Morning a few years ago.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BOzznJD39Ug
At the time of this report (6 years ago), there were still 177 open school desegregation cases pending, with nearly half (86) in the states of Alabama and Mississippi. While these schools are holdouts, what we see today are schools becoming increasingly more segregated by virtue of neighborhood schools and financing based on the tax base. I’m not a school funding expert, but this model is a big part of the problem.
There is much to discuss as it relates to school segregation, but I leave you with two recommendations. If you haven’t read the book Five Miles Away, A World Apart: One City, Two Schools, and the Story of Educational Opportunity in Modern America, you should. It was written by James Ryan, a leading expert on law and education and the current president of UVA. It tells the story of two schools in the metro-Richmond area, one in the county (Henrico) and one in the city (RPS), and explores the differences that allow the gap between schools to persist.
If a book is too much to tackle, consider listening to the episode Three Miles at This American Life, which looks at two very different schools, only 3 miles apart in NY.
https://www.thisamericanlife.org/550/three-miles
Thanks for sharing your thoughts and prompting us to think more deeply about these issues.
Hi Dante!
Thank you so much for sharing this with us.
I was able to comb through the two section you mentioned in your post, however, I felt that to truly take it in I needed much more time. The Wyatt T. Walker section was very eye-opening, and I am sure that most of the information that I would have learned about it within school would not have been the whole truth.
I spent a majority of my time looking at the letters from WWII, but I would only imagine from reading those letters, what more information I would be able to learn from the Wyatt T. Walker section. I would like to return to the rare books section during their open hours to really dive deeper into their resources so I can better educate myself for my future in teaching.
As for the segregation of schools, that absolutely is disgusting and shocking to me. This just shows how the news really picks and chooses what they want to spread, and a lot of times, important information like this is not shared! I honestly had no idea that there were still schools that were segregated today. Although it is hard to feel surprised that segregation within schools would still occur, it is extremely upsetting to know that some states are still stuck in the past.
My questions are what can we do? How can we help? How can we make a difference?
Hello Dante,
I agree with your interpretation of the vastness of the archives provided to us during this class. The information was a bit overwhelming and additional time and attention was needed to gain a better understanding. I took a great deal of time on the speeches from different preachers to include Martin Luther King Jr, there were many speeches to review. I did not spend as much time on the Wyatt Tee Walker Collection, but now I believe I will stop by and review them as well as a few other collections.
Having the opportunity to review many of the images of our history, reinforcing my memory of where we have come and the difficult times we as a people have endured. This gives history a new meaning and a difficult unbelievable feeling of what has taken place over time.
It is so surprising that many trends coming from private correspondences were concerned with upholding the institutions of segregation. Even today, I believe if some people could have their way, segregation would be alive and well in Richmond. It is important that we as a people work hard to ensure our goals and lifestyles are upheld.
To answer your question, I believe school districts could uphold segregation for any length of time through the leadership or lack of leadership in that district. Many people take silence as weakness and this may be true if we allow others to dictate our future and lifestyles. Our focus should be on things that are important to our way of life and not just window dressing, doing things that make us feel good on the inside. There should be value to our actions.
Thank you Dante for your post,
Milton