Integration: A Progress Report
BOHN, WILLIAM E.
Wilmington, Delaware, schools show that Supreme Court decision is workable Integration: A Progress Report By William E. Bohn Aweek or Two ago, I decided to take a second look at school...
...Miller is a careful and conservative man...
...In another school, I saw a different exhibition which had a like significance...
...No one was required to accept a situation which was objectionable to him...
...And now, at the end of the year, she has asked the principal to arrange to have another, younger child taught by the same Negro teacher...
...I saw six second-graders sitting about a low round table with their heads down as they took turns reading a story...
...For a half-hour, a group of fifth-and sixth-graders had been singing...
...We are hopeful that our fears will not be realized...
...In some ways they are, on the average, the most attractive people you could find anywhere...
...1 would like to say to my friends to the Southward that when Dr...
...and then two little Negro girls with their crinkly hair carefully and neatly combed and tied back...
...Everyone agrees that the Negro teachers who have come into the integrated schools are really first-class...
...Yet, out of the thousands of transfers which might have been expected, only a score were actually presented...
...So there was a long discussion about how much money was to be spent and what present would be most suitable...
...This thing really works if people will give it a chance...
...That is an argument for integration rather than against it...
...When the teacher asked them to suggest songs, it seemed to me that the black pupils were a little more reticent than the whites...
...A white boy, John, who had been active in the anti-dirt campaign had been run over by an automobile and his leg had been broken...
...For a good part of the school year, the student councils of two schools have been conducting a cleanup campaign...
...There was a plump girl with the blondest of long braids, probably Norwegian...
...Wilmington, Delaware, schools show that Supreme Court decision is workable Integration: A Progress Report By William E. Bohn Aweek or Two ago, I decided to take a second look at school integration as it is being carried on in Wilmington, Delaware...
...They were sitting close, heads almost touching and childish voices taking up the story in turn...
...Every effort was made to satisfy the requests of both parents and teachers...
...John's chum is a colored boy named Donald...
...I may be wrong about this, but I have a notion that they are a little more affectionate—or at least more openly affectionate—than the white teachers...
...They chose partners in every possible combination...
...I sat for an hour with the two groups of young people while they discussed the ways in which they have got rid of a good deal of the dirt which used to litter the streets of the neighborhood...
...They have improved their own habits, they have made other children litter-conscious, they have distributed leaflets to the houses, they have persuaded the garbagemen to put the garbage into their trucks rather than to scatter it along the pavements...
...The execution of this great social experiment for which he has furnished the leadership has been more brilliantly successful than he suggests...
...I was curious to see how the youngsters would pair off...
...If they could see what has been done here in Delaware by people who have the same tradition, the same general attitude as Southerners, they might get jolted into a new way of thinking...
...To me this was a picture of youngest America...
...And when the time came they gave me a lesson...
...The oldest of these children were 13 or 14 years of age—and most of them were Negro...
...One Negro teacher told me that white children sometimes absent-mindedly address her as mother...
...Our people themselves have been only gradually won over to educating all little Americans in all-American schools...
...Public hearings were held by the Board, homes were visited by principals and teachers, conferences were arranged to clear up doubtful points and to answer questions, and staff meetings were called to consider each problem as it arose...
...When a little white boy at the blackboard had trouble with a problem in addition and the whole class was watching his struggles and then suddenly his face cleared, he saw the answer and triumphantly wrote it down, the whole class was happy and it was perfectly natural for that black teacher to give the white boy a big hug...
...The folks down South are making up their minds without giving it a chance, without giving themselves a chance...
...The wise old principal talked to her calmly: "All right...
...His words are generally understatements...
...a boy with bright red, close-clipped hair, perhaps Irish...
...The Board of Education, the professional staff, parents and pupils worked cooperatively as each move was made...
...As one teacher said: "There have been troubles to straighten out here and there...
...the same procedures will be followed...
...All that I can record here is a rapid, composite picture of the impressions received from a series of interviews and a good many hours watching the work and play in the classrooms...
...There was no pattern at all...
...About half of them were Negro...
...Some of the white teachers have the impression that the colored pupils in the colored schools have not been held to quite as high a standard as has been set for white children in the white schools...
...Rut these months of experience have won practically all of them over to the new way...
...Basically, everything is going all right in these six elementary grades in which we are trying integration...
...Our experiences to date give us confidence that the program will move on to completion...
...The period ended with a dance —and the children voted to do the Mexican Hat Dance, which requires partners...
...What I have have discovered on my second journey through the integrated classes is that principals, teachers and parents agree that the great experiment has been successful...
...If the Southerners will listen to anyone, they will listen to him...
...a very pretty girl with glossy, soft, long black locks, obviously Italian...
...Here is what Superintendent Miller has to say: "The integration of the public schools of Wilmington has been possible and successful for two reasons: the careful planning which preceded and accompanied each step and an understanding by the public of the purposes of the program and the procedures through which it would be accomplished...
...another boy with a sandy and rather hard-to-manage poll, possibly Scottish...
...At the end of the session occurred a significant incident...
...But they were equally eager, and their faces fairly shone when they asked for their favorite numbers...
...The press, radio and television were used effectively to explain the actions contemplated...
...As I reported last October, the City of Wilmington has made a brilliant success of the amalgamation of its white and Negro public school pupils...
...Just leave her here for a week or so until we have time to transfer her to another school...
...I have my mind set exclusively on the people down in Georgia, Alabama, Mississippi and other Southern states where I have spent so many happy days...
...I am not writing this little article for people in New York or Maine or Minnesota...
...Or maybe some rich foundation can arrange to send Dr...
...One of these schools, being in a Negro section, is still exclusively attended by Negroes...
...Anyone who knows the Southerners knows that basically they are just as decent, humane and progressive as any other people in the world...
...The whole group, led by Donald, was eager to visit John and lake a present to show their concern...
...Any sort of children have problems...
...A teacher who is a teacher just naturally loves children anyway...
...No incident of consequence has arisen...
...The whole thing was just friendly and jolly...
...Certain questions are in our minds...
...Dr...
...After his year of successful experience, 1 suppose he knows as much about this matter of integration as any other school official in this country...
...In one of the schools on the East Side of Wilmington, I saw modern education going to work on a social problem...
...Miller and his staff began to plan for integration many of the parents in Wilmington were opposed to it...
...But what would you expect...
...There is an impression in some quarters that Negro teachers are a little softer, a little easier than white teachers...
...This time I decided to go at my investigation from the top down...
...My purpose, of course, was to show the authorities down South what can be done by people who take the decision of the Supreme Court seriously and honestly go about the business of putting it in practice...
...And then, very solemnly, a committee was selected to buy the present, pay the visit and make the presentation...
...Suppose that, on the average, the Negro children have not been as well-trained as the whites...
...To call on this while boy, there was designated a committee of one while boy and three Negroes...
...Maybe bringing the colored children into the white schools has added a little to our difficulties...
...I asked this teacher whether, in her opinion, the Negro teachers are more affectionate than whites...
...What we need now is real, straightforward contact between North and South...
...But what of it...
...Miller and some of his principals and teachers down South to tell our story...
...The man who engineered this great social experiment is School Superintendent Ward I. Miller...
...My observation is, of course, too slight to serve as any basis of judgment...
...But assume that the difference does exist, that the schools provided for Negro children have been inferior...
...The other is racially about 50-50...
...She replied: "Ah no...
...I wish we could run excursion trains to bring Southerners up here to see things for themselves...
...In some classrooms, I looked over work in Arithmetic done by the children of the two races, and I could discover no difference that followed racial lines...
...And this part of the problem, if it does exist, is one that will disappear within a very short lime...
...As integration moves into our junior high schools...
...But in regard to this race problem they have allowed themselves to get psychologically stuck in a morass...
...Within the week, that mother changed her mind...
...In various rooms, I was witness to scenes symbolic of the lack of race consciousness among the children...
...But all of them were excited about what they were doing...
...Teachers and principals did not try to tell me that everything has gone perfectly...
...All of the colored teachers and some of the white ones vigorously deny this...
...In one of the schools which I visited last week, a mother began by saying that never, no never, would she allow her darling to be taught In a Negro teacher...
Vol. 38 • June 1955 • No. 25
