blacksOpposed

Promises and Risks of Challenging Segregated Education
The //Brown// case actually capped various court challenges to school segregation from the 1930s through the 1950s. The NAACP led the fight to integrate, and its original strategy for doing so involved attacks on the poor quality of educational resources and facilities provided by the Southern states for their black student populations. This strategy of "equalization" aimed at forcing the states to live up to their promises of separate but equal, and black educators threw their whole-hearted support behind it. After World War II, though, the NAACP took advantage of the changing political and cultural climate to attack the notion of separate schools per se, shifting its strategy to a direct attack on segregation itself. Black teachers and principals became nervous about the new tactics because they believed that the jobs of all black teachers--not just those who were activists--would be threatened by the closing of separate schools. Given the tortured history of race relations in the South, they knew that whites would not tolerate a situation in which black teachers, especially black male teachers, taught white children, and white girls in particular. If the school systems merged, and all-black schools disappeared, black teachers and administrators might be out of work. In 1953, the superintendent of the Topeka school board--correctly anticipating the //Brown// decision--refused to renew the contract of a black teacher because, as he said, "the majority of people in Topeka will not want to employ Negro teachers next year for white children." One black teacher said that when cases were brought for integration, "the Negro teachers are cut adrift without any consideration." The black community thus welcomed the //Brown// ruling with a degree of ambivalence. from http://jefferson.village.virginia.edu:8090/xslt/servlet/ramanujan.XSLTServlet?xml=/vcdh/xml_docs/solguide/Essays/essay13a.xml&xsl=/vcdh/xml_docs/solguide/sol_new.xsl&section=essay

Across the South, school districts were responding to desegregation mandates by closing black schools and firing black educators. A five-state survey conducted by HEW found that between 1968 and 1971, at least 1,000 black educators lost their jobs, while 5,000 white educators were hired. When black schools closed, their names, mascots, mottos, and traditions were lost. And when black schools were converted into integrated schools, white officials frequently stripped the schools of their black heritage by changing the names of the schools and removing plaques or monuments that honored black cultural, political, or educational leaders, as well as academic and athletic trophies. White resistance to sending children to black schools was also reflected in the dozens of schools that were burned as desegregation approached. When African Americans in Hyde County learned about the desegregation plan and the impending closure of Paey and Davis schools, they brought their concerns to the school board, but the decision had been made and the plan approved. A petition to HEW followed, but the law didn't require that black schools stay open, just that integration happen. Although African Americans supported integration, they opposed the one-way transfer of students, what they considered to be racist terms of the desegregation plan, and the fact that they had no representation on the school board. Knowing that the plan could not be implemented without students, black parents and their children decided to protest by boycotting the schools, beginning on the first day of classes in 1968, and formed the Committee of 14 to lead negotiations. The school board refused to negotiate. The boycott lasted for the entire 1968-69 school year, and was defined by sit-ins at the superintendent's office and local courthouse, organized marches, the arrest of numerous protesters, and massive white resistance. from: [|Hyde County School Boycott]

Achieving Racial Balance: Case Studies of Contemporary School Desegregation
By Sondra Astor Stave