Freedom of Choice Desegregation: The Southern Reality
Branch, Taylor
’FREEDOM OF CHOICE’ DESEGREGATION: The Southern Reality by Taylor Branch Four years ago this fall, six black students enrolled in Georgia's Seminole Country High School under a...
...Moses Price is the toothless, unemployed mother of one of the veterans of the 1965 desegregation episode...
...Afterwards, they add less confidently, the school boards assign teachers on the basis of their own preference...
...private education is well within her means...
...They'll take over baseball and football in the future, you watch...
...The black people will be left in poverty, probably more intimidated than ever, totally without elective offices, even though they are a substantial majority of the population, and still subject to the coarse whims of the sheriff...
...And our school policies have been pretty good, too...
...But she does speak for and help shape the opinions of the local mothers who would...
...But the students could never escape the tension of the issue, which was not settled in anyone’s eyes...
...I can show on paper that there isn’t any discrimination here...
...Well, we ain’t lost yet, not by a long shot...
...On their first day of classes, the bus driver for the white school refused to transport them, and a group of local Klansmen threatened to stone the teenagers to death if they passed through the school's doors...
...It was just atrocious...
...In a climate of contrictive small-community racism, the cycle is virtually airtight...
...As one defeated old warrior remarked, to tell the truth is to arm the enemy...
...It was about going to buy some cloth to make a dress in a home economics class, and it said, me go to the store me go buy cloth me buy needles and thread’-no periods, misspelled words...
...They ain’t never gonna step out about nothing,” observed one old farmer...
...Why, during that two weeks when the nigra children were going over to the white sschool, one poor lady teacher came up to me and she says...
...This cautious approach almost always results in attrition, rather than growth, of the desegregation statistics, as test cases lead to unpleasant experiences for those who stick it out...
...Adaptation draws little favor from the same county’s septuagenarian attorney, whose pedigree is unquestioned and whose views on race encompass all the sexual and biological overtones of the cariacatured South...
...Given a friendly or neutral audience, they often take advantage of the opportunity to expound upon local problems...
...Far from it...
...There’ll be hell to pay...
...poverty and impotence are produce by-and tend to producepoverty and impotence...
...I’ve been saving them for five years so that if they ever get me into court I can prove that we spend our money fair...
...This county is four-fifths nigger...
...What’s more, not many of the nigra teachers can teach whife kids who have had several years of good education...
...Now you go talk to the President if you want to...
...Such a comparatively comfortable opinion results from confusing the visible symbol of an unacceptable condition with its core reality...
...Black people are free to choose almost nothing in southwest Georgia...
...only six families indicated that they preferred the white school for theirchildren...
...Price remains convinced that she did the right thing in her attempt at desegregation, and she will forcefully repeat her defense to anyone who even mentions the incident...
...Mr...
...The Black Principal The most time-honored tool for control of desegregation relies on the economic power of the school budget...
...She lost her $15-a-week job as a motel maid the day after her daughter attended the white school...
...They flock to a life of relative affluence, evidenced by their houses, clothes, and automobiles...
...Since that meeting, our policy here has been open schools...
...He lives too well...
...If Mrs...
...You know, the nigras around here can do a lot...
...We had to raise school taxes, but most of us think the money is well spent...
...Southwest Georgia will remain a backward area by almost any standard...
...I make sure that equal money is spent on books and supplies, too...
...Teacher pressure is transmitted through the children, who want to watch the game anyway, to the poor parents, who cough up the fee for each of their myriad children between two and five times per week...
...I think segregation within a school’s worse than segregation between schools, don’t you...
...The students returned to the black high school, allowing the balm of racial peace to resettle over the county...
...I was the first one to buy them any store-bought desks and storebought supplies...
...A look at some white leaders may help to illumine this powerful sentiment...
...Those who don’t go must remain inside and clean up their classrooms...
...Within a few days, the black population of Seminole County had totally ostracized Mrs...
...At purchase time, I bring in Mr...
...Black schools are merely worse-in teacher competence, in equipment, and in morale-and it is not unusual to find black sixth-graders unable to spell “cat” or “dog” or to perform simple addition correctly...
...Can you picture that...
...What Freedom, What Choice...
...By law, black members of the academic guild receive salaries comparable to those in the white school, placing them far above the mass of black laborers, $&a-day field hands, and welfare recipients...
...And, almost without exception, a black person will not reveal his true feelings to a strange white man unless extraordinary events convince him that somehow his caller is different from a lifetime of experience with whites...
...Isn't that something...
...The issues of equal education and integration are thus resolved in one neat package: if quality is in question, one may always choose what he considers the best school in his area...
...1 said, ‘Now, look here-you can be misquoted and I can be misquoted and I just don’t like the way things are going on here, and I’m tired of you calling me up...
...They've made a lot of progress since I've been school super intendent...
...Price...
...Some may recommend a tryandsee policy for a few brave souls who can test the atmosphere without provoking too much trouble...
...She cuts corners on the welfare regulations to keep working black people on the welfare roles for $1 a month so that they may continue to receive such vital fringe benefits as Medicaid...
...He’d say, ‘Have you sent any white children over to the colored school?’ and I’d say no...
...It would be so easy to return to the familiar environment of the black school...
...In the charged atmosphere, every barbed remark by a white man seemed like a threat of violence...
...and deception in freedom of choice, one must also recognize that public education is only an element of the larger problem of black peoples’ acute powerlessness in small rural counties...
...People seen what happened to us,” she said, “and they afraid to put out something to get something...
...Teachers curry favor with the principal while striving to acquire a permanent academic position, which carries with it the highest salary level in the black community, deliverance from hard physical labor, and a modicum of respect...
...This sounded fine to everyone because there was an element of truth in it and because they did not enjoy being in the superintendent’s courthouse office...
...Determined not to drop back a grade in the white school, they scrambled to make up lost ground...
...But School Superintendent N. P. Malcom quickly intervened...
...All six families obtained an audience with Professor Rambeau...
...The firings, then, were individual actions by employers who found it impossible to restrain themselves...
...Sincere interest and assured privacy, however, sometimes uncover at least a portion of the feelings under the veneer...
...You take him over to the white school and run him against the fastest white boy-he'll beat him 50 yards...
...The quality of these teachers seems to have deteriorated in recent years, as principals experience difficulty finding young teachers willing to smother any stir over wretched local conditions...
...The dual school system could be eliminated almost overnight by removing the racial labels from the schools and substituting, for instance, a countywide junior high in the black facilities...
...Obviously, the implications of this condition go far beyond the scope of education...
...She also discounts the universal country belief that black people would rather be on welfare than work...
...Of course, the NAACP and the federal government will keep those teachers around...
...Only routine inconveniences, such as occasional “nigger-callin’ ” and classroom isolation, bothered the black students during their stay at Seminole County High...
...That poor teacher said, ‘Now if I fail this girl, the federal government will say I’m a racist-but if I pass her, the other kids in the school will know I’m not being fair because they know this girl can’t do the work.’ “There’s not much you can do...
...The California Aptitude Test and a number of other standardized examinations show that our average nigra is three years behind by the ninth grade, and he probably has to cheat to get that high...
...The first batch fails to be replaced, and desegregation is slowly strangled by drop-outs and a rare graduation at the white school...
...Now you write me a letter and put all those questions in it, and I’ll give you my answer in black and white.’ I’m not ever going to put any colored or white children together here in Seminole County unless they want to go by freedom of choice...
...They’d fill it full of cotton and go on with it...
...But such consolidation would not pay for the increased cost of providing equal education for black children...
...The very remoteness of tiny rural counties, as well as the isolation of their black people, gives special license to the local whites...
...and the 450 younger students pay a dime apiece to watch the exhibition...
...Why no, we don’t get much skilled labor out of the nigra school here, much less college material,” he began after a 15-minute warm-up on economics...
...Indeed, the school situation in southwest Georgia is but one aspect of a racial picture whose injustices are so raw that they steal the solitude of the white population, imparting mass paranoia and nagging guilt to an entire section of the country...
...Rambeau, the nigra principal, and say, 'We've got so much money for books this time, nigras are 40 per cent of the school children, and here's a requisition for 40 per cent of the money.' He trusts me anyway, but I want to make it formal just to keep things clear...
...George Jordan, wife of Talbotton’s mayor, works in the county welfare office and is unusually sensitive to the cycle of black poverty in her area...
...Federal school desegregation efforts are harmful only insofar as they persuade people that the one real problem of Southern black people is segregated schools, thereby leading them to conclude that other private and governmental attempts at change should be held in abeyance until Washington has taken care of the groundwork in the schools...
...This civil rights thing is like religion: people want to go to heaven, but they don’t want to die...
...The principal, counseling moderation, steps into any controversy with a muffling volley of long words about how bad it would be to make trouble...
...thundered the white-haired old man...
...The facts of the Seminole County case seem clear: every black family was offered ”freedom of choice” in the summer of 1965...
...Obviously, the problem of school desegregation is not one of a confused, rapid pace...
...The teachers scurry and worry, but rarely do anything...
...Let me tell you a little something about what I’ve done since I’ve been superintendent here...
...And it is far from certainthat schooldesegregation provides the firstbest step toward the solution...
...What is more, if one disregards the edge in her voice and some of the hyperbole, her educational analysis is very close to the truth as far as it goes...
...The principal keeps his employers in touch with the latest developments among his people: what workers are disgruntled, who is a level-headed young future worker, who might be breaking store windows, what marginal improvements are in greatest demand...
...Each teacher, who must supervise cleanup efforts unless his room has 100 per cent softball attendance, enthusiastically encourages softball fervor so that he may go home early...
...It would replace a symbol of fear with one of achievement, and people can do very little until they begin to defeat fear...
...Imagination and suggestion fed on each other so rapidly that the pre-skhool days soon looked like paradise next to those nights when families went to bed wondering if they would have a house or job the following morning...
...The election of a black sheriff would probably be the single most beneficial development for black people in these counties...
...The failure of freedom of choice, then, illustrates the legacy of black bondage rather than an unfettered black preference for separate and inferior schools...
...In other words, if the fundamental priority of racial consolidation within school districts were accomplished, freedom of choice in the Whitten context would necessarily cease to exist...
...The quickness with which black people act to restore a segregated equilibrium assures the white leaders that separation of the races is indeed ordained by God...
...I remember that Supreme Court decision in 1954...
...It’s too hot...
...But if some unforeseen quirk clogs the process of resegregation, there are a number of carrot-andstick adjustments that may be used against students or their parents...
...There will undoubtedly be a great deal of unchecked violence against black people, segregation within schools on a contrived track system, large-scale evacuation by whites, and many more private schools...
...As a consequence of this educational structure, teachers are the least active segment of the literate black population in civil rights...
...Civil rights would then be at home in the suburbs, where the maids and the garbage men come...
...Mrs...
...The whites find such liaison invaluable, for they generally know much less about the daily crises of black people than the blacks know about them...
...There was no violence...
...He’d call back two or three days later and we’d go through the same thing...
...This theme, in fact, became the subject of sermons by ministers, who found several passages of Scripture which reflected poorly on the spiritual status of those who forsake their people...
...in 1968-69, none...
...They don’t want that bread snatched out of their mouth...
...But the more telling criticism of "freedom of choice" lies in the sheer falsity of the words themselves...
...Certainly desegregation and equal education are important...
...Drew a big square on the wall and wrote on it, wrote on the plaster...
...People started asking pointedly whether a few people had the right to endanger so many lives...
...But Professor Rambeau said he would take what steps he could toward their rescue, including a word to Superintendent Malcom...
...It is argued that HEW, through arbitrary manipulation of percentages, undermines educational standards and relentlessly pursues “integration for integration’s sake” at a feverish pace which ignores the weighty problems of administration and efficiency...
...They've just about taken over pro basketball...
...They said I was real nice to them...
...We’re getting along fine now,” said one leader, with only the slightest touch of rancor...
...The basic quarrel still concerns the doctrine of racial segregation itself, not the speed with which an agreed policy of integration is implemented, or the principle of home rule...
...When I came here, they were using a sock, a man’s old sock, for an eraser...
...But if equal opportunity and historical culpability are rigorously defined, the issues would become national in scope...
...Ironically, liberals across the nation might hail this as a great leap forward in civil rights, having for so long associated that movement with Southern school desegregation...
...The federal investigators asked those six nigra children that went to the white school what they thought of me...
...At the Democratic National Convention in 1968, he was a member of the Georgia challenge delegation led by Iulian Bond...
...They can't do any algebra...
...They’re not interested in education at all...
...Also, the organization and cohesion required to win such an election would be a critical building block toward political and economic power...
...they circumscribe the very life of every black person there...
...I was the first man to buy them any storebought blackboards and any storebought erasers...
...Malcom sent the paper around, and I signed it,” she said...
...But foremost among the joys of teaching is the lucrative salary...
...Perhaps the nation preserves its preoccupation with school desegregation in the knowledge that the step beyond will bring in much broader questions of equity and power...
...A veneer of numbness is a rational strategy for the fearful...
...I haven’t put up with any racist policies here for 15 years...
...Why, they can sing all over the white kids, just make the white kids look sick...
...Neither does the problem stem from administrative tangles...
...Now the nigras can jump this much higher, maybe a foot, than the white boys...
...Consequently, black working people began to compete with one another in heaping opprobrium on the “troublemaking” parents and children...
...Despite a few ominous phone calls, the coast looked clear by noon, and Superintendent Malcom persuaded a local black faith healer to take the historic half-dozen to school in his white Cadillac...
...This staggering pressure came just as the students were struggling not to crumble under the impact of isolation among a host of white people at school...
...I’ve heard that Columbia University mails a degree to almost any nigra these days...
...I knew one of the investigators well enough to ask him what they said, and he told me all they could talk about was how I bought each one of them a Coca-Cola when they were in my office that first day of school...
...Mrs...
...He outlined how bad the situation looked to him: Superintendent Malcom was not required by law to allow their return and was empowered to make them stay at Seminole County High...
...Most all the parents would vote for me, just ask Mr...
...No one really knows where the proceeds of this perpetual march of dimes wind up, but the principal lives in a $40,000 home...
...by her teachers as “very good...
...Jordan herself would not have to adapt...
...But political power appears to be the only means of breaking the cycle of impotence which renders freedom of choice meaningless...
...Integration, here...
...but the black power idea was conceived in a rural setting and seems essential there...
...Malcom, have your problems changed much since Nixon came in...
...In his fervent but dignified manner, he expressed the belief that the colored should stick together under one roof instead of splitting up...
...The whites reason that most of the Title I money would have gone to the black school anyhow...
...So the children remain uneducated but happy, as segregation finds strange allies in the space age...
...Four nigger boys dancing and picking on one little white girl...
...Far from receiving close-knit support from their friends and the respected elders, they got open rebukes...
...Softball teams are chosen from the high school seniors and neighborhood visitors...
...No, I’ll tell you, the nigra schools have made a lot of progress here...
...Successful teachers are normally addressed as “professor” and they enjoy many other formalities reserved for the bourgeoisie...
...The Thoughts of Superintendent Malcom School officials shy away from the race issue only when they feel threatened by a hostile do-gooder...
...This went on and on until finally I got exasperated...
...The superintendent and school board can literally purchase racial tranquility through their agent, the black principal...
...There is no force involved, no unpleasant government regulations, and the question is handled in true Jeffersonian fashion...
...Understandably, few black principals in southwest Georgia agitate for school desegregation, a prospect which would certainly undermine their power and status...
...You know what that would mean...
...We'll, it's hard to answer that scientifically...
...if integration is desired, one may select the mixed school...
...Eliminating the dual administrative apparatus would obviously save money...
...Images of burned houses and pulverized black people were conjured up by the “old heads,” most of whom relied more on memory than on imagination...
...Well, I think the Nixon Administration has handled things a little bit differently...
...Regardless of what the law is, or how fast things are changing, or who makes the rules, or any of the other circumstances over which the false debate rages, the important issue remains racial segregation...
...The crucial point is that in the process of recognizing the naiveti...
...Now you go out on the playground and you try to find the fastest nigra boy in the fifth grade...
...There would be no arbitrary redistricting, complicated bussing patterns, or costly adjustments in personnel...
...I don’t want you to think I’m a racist...
...Why, I drove back here the next day, and we had a special school board meeting...
...He told the Klansmen that he would not tolerate violence and that he would move summarily to restore quality education to the country's school system...
...Whenever possible, such questionable tactics like job-snatching and physical assault are eschewed in favor of incentivesthe carrot approach...
...no blacks have subsequently desired to break the barrier...
...and the principal, after firing them, must compensate for their absence by hiring less qualified people...
...What are you planning to do, then...
...Professor Rambeau, the black principal of the black school, said he had heard that some people thought they were too good for his school...
...Rambeau and I have had an excellent working relationship for 17 years, and in all that time I've only had to overrule him twice, and with good reason...
...Hoping that their listener’s ignorance of conditions will produce a favorable response, they intently seek his agreement for morale purposes...
...He’d say, ‘Well, have you sent any colored teachers over to the white school?’ and I’d say no...
...His teeth clenched a fat cigar, which hung over his expansive chin...
...He, in turn, uses his hiring power to protect the board’s interest in an absolutely inactive teaching staff...
...The local interpretation of these facts is that not a single set of school parents wants to integrate the schools...
...Professor Rambeau’s school remained” an alternative, an outlet promising to take them out of the white community’s harsh spotlight...
...For the principal, the resulting power- over jobs, grades, and diplomas-is by far the greatest held by any of the county’s black people and may be used as a virtual license to steal...
...The more your opponent knows about your inner soulthose things you ultimately care about - the more he knows about how to hurt you...
...Considerations of equity are distant when a white mother ponders the effect of black education levels on her own children...
...With “freedom of choice,” guidelines, and endless litigation, we are presently hurling feeble weapons toward the margin of the problem...
...But history adds a rough and raucous cutting edge to the caste system in the South, and social relations are much more visible in simple, small towns where everybody knows everybody...
...Consequently, the educators make up 90 per cent ofthe black middle class...
...Seminole County whites argue that economic intimidation of black parents was not part of any deliberate plan by Superintendent Malcom and the influential community leaders, who were confident that subtler, more natural means would restore segregation...
...Like many counties in the black belt of southwest Georgia, Seminole feels that its position lias been strengthened by the pending Justice Department desegregation suit against the entire state school apparatus...
...moreoever, Malcom would not be inclined to allow their return if the development would do further damage to his relationship with Uncle Sam...
...He drove the four girls and two boys to his office, pacified that part of the Klan delegation which followed him, and, in his words, “waited like hell” for the remnant at school to disperse...
...We’re going to make it on our own, no matter what HEW does...
...We’ll just have to adapt,” she replied...
...HEW, therefore, is denounced as an outside violator of popular democracy and home rule...
...All they had was a board across two sawhorses...
...Loyalty to one’s superior commands the first position among academic requisites, followed by the ability to be all things to all people...
...You show them a sentence of English and it's almost ridiculous...
...I can remember after the Civil Rights Bill was passed-an HEW man would call me once every two or three days and he’d say, ‘Have you sent any colored children over to the white school?’ and I’d say no...
...Southerners tend to treat freedom of choice as an end in itself, an equitable adjustment to a sticky problem...
...They unerringly take their cue from the principal, which results in a crippling loss of talent for efforts at organization...
...But if integration ever comes, everybody who can’t afford a private school, and that’s most everybody, they’ll just leave...
...They had been among the best and most respected students at the black school: suddenly they were trying to adjust to sitting alone and being stared at...
...Many feared that they, too, would be fired if their respective employers thought they approved of the upstarts...
...It's w- simply easier for the extraordinary black man to move away...
...They just stood here and wrote on the wall like this and called it a blackboard...
...After some ne,gotiation, he assented...
...The Johnson people used to come in and say you got to have this many nigras in the white school this year, and this many per cent next year, and so many per cent the year after that...
...The kids appreciate me...
...At present, every classroom in the black school has a TV and most have record players...
...That HEW bunch is a bunch of crooks and you never can tell what they’re going to be doing...
...Such accommodation is usually the advice of the black elder statesmen-funeral directors, preachers, and teachers...
...The doctrine enshrouds public debate simply because it sounds so good and hides so much...
...Normally, his troops consist of a number of overaged, poorly-qualified women, who are no match for their students...
...The Basic Issue The elementary fact, often obscured, is that school desegregation is still anathema to the white population of southwest Georgia...
...I just don't see why the school is so far behind if you spend the money equally, Mr...
...Shoot, we had complete freedom of choice 10 years before Washington even thought of itand now that’s not enough...
...Well, the President of the United States said it, and Mr...
...Now you go down to that nigra school, and go in any old grade you want-second, Third, fourtj-and ask them to sing...
...Superintendent Malcom got up from his desk and walked to the wall of his cramped office...
...This is not to say that country white schools embody the highest educational ideals...
...Black Ostracism A woman whom we shall here call Mrs...
...You just can’t step out there by yourself,” said Mrs...
...Their parents began to waver, wondering how they would eat in the absence of work or community support...
...The prevalent view holds that the effect will be a restoration of federal funds at the end of the litigation, which will undoubtedly drag on for years and may be inconclusive even then...
...That is, racial tension always produces pressure for a comfortable submission among the black people...
...You see that stack of yellow requisition forms there...
...In return, he supplies his own community with regular, edited reports about what the white people are planning...
...Four of the five other working parents were also fired, including one man who worked 30 miles away in the adjacent county...
...It always helps to depict racial integration as a “surrender to gun-waving black militants” or, better still, as a vital part of the “international Communist conspiracy for world domination...
...No efforts toward school desegregation have been made in Seminole County since that time...
...Now the Nixon Administration is more a mixture of education and integration, a more balanced approach...
...One may argue, as the desegregation litigation does, that this line of reasoning misses the thrust of national legislation, which is designed to eliminate the dual school system...
...That’s important, because from a schoolman’s point of view, excluding race, segregation is better than integration for teaching the little ones...
...This sectional label of prejudice is a bit unfair, a fact increasingly noticed in the past few years...
...Fewblackpeople in Seminole County will break the mysterious cloud of unity which envelops the local opinion that segregated schools are best...
...Their use has become the key to order in crowded classes, especially since the pupils have become involved in every soap opera’s suburban drama...
...The racial composition of the school system remains as it was in 1900 or, for that matter, 1937, when Superinltendent Malcom rose to office...
...Less timorous students at the black school seldom take heart from their comrades’ tale of going to school with white students...
...Her fears are an acute commentary on the extent of equal education in a dual school system...
...He would allow the black students to return to the black school if they would agree that their return had nothing to do with their treatment at the white school...
...The Southern whites who rally to the formula know this, and the uncomfortable awareness of hypocrisy often rankles them...
...The difference between 1900 and 1969 is that the arrangement now costs Seminole County more than $100,000 a year in federal funds, a loss that only mildly distresses the white citizenry because it brings a welcome independence from Washington...
...Now it isn’t because we don’t spend the money out there...
...I was in Atlanta, and I heard them tell about it on the radio...
...Irresistibly, these devices tantalize the youngsters from perches in the front of the rooms...
...The figures in Early County reflect a common pattern: in 1966-67, there were 12 black students in white schools...
...Jordan’s views on welfare are liberal for her county, she is more representative when she discusses school desegregation: “In this county complete integration will put about four nigras to one white in the schools...
...Now there was a time, about when I got this job, when nigra schools didn’t even have a blackboard in them...
...Hence the Whitten Amendment, which seeks to establish legislatively that a freedomof-choice plan in and of itself satisfies nondiscrimination requirements...
...Unlike some urban areas, where segregated neighborhoods produce segregated schools, the “neighborhood” in a rural county is the county itself...
...They can do all this a lot better...
...Now look here at this theme that nigra girl wrote.’ I can still remember that theme...
...The cycle in operation is familiar...
...Since the basis of the principal’s power-and employment-is quiet Negroes, not quality education, competition for the coveted teaching jobs in his jurisdictio...
...In the midst of all this trauma, the six students were expected to keep up with schoolwork much more difficult than they had dealt with before...
...They just don’t treat you right, like gentlemen...
...The social dynamics within Seminole County’s black community are fairly representative of the small rural counties of Georgia’s black belt...
...One girl described her treatment by the white students as “pretty good” and that Taylor Branch, a native of Georgia, is a graduate student at the Woodrow Wilson School of Public and International Affairs at Princeton...
...Now it hasn’t always been true that the nigras got fair treatment in the schools, I’ll admit...
...Superintendent Malcom emphasized that the transfers were highly irregular and that the whole matter was a lot of trouble for him...
...Then HEW will call that segregation within the school...
...Price and her compatriots...
...Freedom of choice should be evaluated only as a means toward the disestablishment of the dual system and its racial core, which has been declared inherently discriminatory...
...The principal receives autocratic control over both his teachers and his students...
...The local power structure stifles the unusually aggressive balck man, since the range of advances-from bank loans to labor unions to businesses on main street-are taboo for him...
...Why we’ll give them tests to put the slow learners together and they’ll all be nigras except for one or two, and all the fast learners will be white except for one or two...
...Rambeau...
...she was asked...
...Underneath, they’d put an apple crate for their books...
...A lifetime of paralytic fear inexorably induces a subordinate accommodation unlikely to spawn daring or ambition or even freedom...
...Most of them go to school around here, get a piece of paper with ‘master’s degree’ on it, and still can’t write a decent letter or speak correctly...
...When I came here, they didn’t have any desks...
...No doubt the Charles Evers approach would require vast outside assistance, as yet almost non-existent, and would be both dangerous and difficult...
...Having formally established the program, they half expect the clamor for integration to halt...
...But anything that has a whole lot to do with the head, they just can't do it...
...This assessment would be made easier because black fear and geographic iaolation would keep most of the local repercussions out of the media...
...But even under Nixon, I can’t stand those people at HEW...
...The teachers now fight a losing battle without support from the principal, who cannot buck the educational judgment of the school board...
...Anybody can go to any school in the county he wants to...
...Tell him to run over to that oak tree over yonder and back...
...No nigra school in Georgia can turn out kids who can go to white schools and not be a drag on their class...
...The white people may even form private educational corporations and then use their absolute governmental control to cripple the public schools...
...The school board of Webster County, for example, devised an ingenious plan to make the black school more attractive to the children...
...Even if the federal courts effect desegregation by 1980, what will be the probable results...
...He counseled parents and students alike to be kind to Malcom...
...Then he’d say, ‘Well, when are you going to do it?’ And I’d say I don’t know and hang up...
...Having taken little part in the desegregation process, they will remain virtually inert...
...Any public figure who can deliver these sentiments in the popular idiom (“ the people will not tolerate tyrannical tactics by government”) becomes a valuable political commodity at once...
...Less thanthree weeks later, the same six students assembled in Superintendent Malcom’s office to request transfer back to their old school...
...Its security, like the curious peace of one who embraces failure and is no longer challenged, seemed particularly attFactive to those who saw the fears of their elders rising to the surface...
...Price’s neighbors began to hold her accountable for the extra, and even some of the normal, indignities they suffered in town or at work...
...The events on opening day, especially the appearance of the Klan, produced instant tension throughout the black population...
...Striking at the schools, the most sensitive area of racism, would produce a white reaction of maximum intensity wit4 highly questionable immediate results...
...There are more master’s degrees over in that nigra school than in the white, and the facilities are just as good...
...With the federal funds targeted for the black school, the board purchased a large batch of television sets and record players...
...The bottom would fall out of our school standards...
...The arrangement between a black principal and his white superintendent is usually the smoothest, if most pernicious, inter-racial working relation ship in rural country...
...And they like me, too...
...Soon the inevitable rumor began circulating that somebody had paid the families to send their children to the white school...
...in 1967-68, less than six...
...Malcom...
...The six students not only suffered rebuffs from their friends (usually under parental instruction), but were forced to spend a great deal of time trying to explain to irritated and intimidating adults, both black and white, their reasons for “crossing over...
...To gain this information, they extend to the principal and his small group of community leaders a kind of diplomatic recognition as informal representatives...
...No more black students now consider going to the white school, where there are no TV’s, the work is difficult, and black children feel lonely...
...takes place under a curious set of rules...
...When five young Negroes could not be dislodged from the white school, primarily because the parents enjoyed relative economic independence, the board decided to cease its efforts to restore the status quo...
...In fact, they were to insist that they wanted reassignment only because the work was too difficult across town...
...The public officials emphasize that the schools are just there in the country, and free citizens exercise the privilege of choice to determine where their children attend classes...
...all of them voluntarily applied for (and were granted) reassignment to the black school shortly thereafter...
...In such a framework, Seminole County Superintendent N. P. Malcom delivered what amounted to a monologue on school desegregation...
...Such a picture emerges upon projecting the current pace of civil rights activity in southwest Georgia and an enormously accelerated pace of school desegregation...
...FREEDOM OF CHOICE’ DESEGREGATION: The Southern Reality by Taylor Branch Four years ago this fall, six black students enrolled in Georgia's Seminole Country High School under a newlyinstituted "freedom-of-choice" desegregation plan...
...Racism in small towns is like the railroad: a single track running down main street appears to dominate the town, while in a city a large terminal and dozens of tracks may go unnoticed...
...She does not expect any of her people to try the white school again, although it is universally agreed that the black school is inferior...
...Instead, it welcomed the five transfers, put one black teacher in the white school (but not in the classroom), and delared Webster a model county...
...The principal of Talbot County’s Ruth Carter School dismisses classes about 1:30 p.m., when the weather allows...
...The typical small county in Georgia’s black belt has less than six black students in white schools, a black teacher about halfway into a white school, and no whites at all in the black school...
...She thinks that the problem is rooted in the shriveling local economy and the trifling wages offered, and she notes that fewer employers call the office seeking help than welfare people seeking work...
...His rule is facilitated by the typical small-county set-up: a single black school serving kindergarten through 12th grade, a white high school, and a white grammer school...
...The parents finally made the decision to take their children out of the white school, reasoning that they could not be blamed for retreating by a black community which had given them no support...
...six black students entered the white school...
...Mrs...
...To a small number of young teachers, the role of cog in a wet blanket goes down about as poorly as that metaphor...
...The local white people generally have to do very little to stimulate the desired reaction...
...Excelling in both these qualities himself, the principal exercises absolute authority over his employees...
...What’ll the county do then...
...I just don’t know what we’ll do if they ever make us mix up the nigra and white here- educationally, I mean...
Vol. 1 • November 1969 • No. 10
