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?