“Hell No, We Won’t Go”

2018 ◽  
pp. 167-187
Author(s):  
Natalie G. Adams ◽  
James H. Adams
Keyword(s):  
Civil Rights ◽  
Black Students ◽  
Civil Rights Movement ◽  
White Students ◽  
School Administrators ◽  
School Desegregation ◽  
Black Parents ◽  
Black And White ◽  
Racial Tension ◽  
Freedom Movement

This chapter looks at more conventional forms of resistance, such as protests, demonstrations, marches, boycotts, and violence. It links the resistance efforts of students and parents during school desegregation to the larger freedom movement. Black parents, students, and local National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP) activists organized marches and boycotts to protest desegregation plans that continued to discriminate against black children. Black students staged walkouts, defied disciplinary policies particularly targeted at black students, and issued demands to their school administrators to be treated equally in their newly integrated schools. Occasionally, racial tension erupted into physical altercations between black and white students. The chapter then describes how whites employed the strategies of the civil rights movement and the antiwar movement to protest court-enforced school desegregation.

The Blurring of Public and Private

2018 ◽  
pp. 82-113
Author(s):  
Michelle A. Purdy
Keyword(s):  
Civil Rights ◽  
Black Students ◽  
Civil Rights Movement ◽  
White Students ◽  
Independent Schools ◽  
School Desegregation ◽  
Open Admissions ◽  
Public And Private ◽  
Admissions Policy ◽  
National Effort

In this chapter, the author analyses Westminster’s development and its adoption of an open admissions policy in 1965 alongside an increasing national effort to recruit black students to independent schools. The civil rights movement and possible changes in federal tax-exemption policies for their institutions captured the attention of independent school leaders, and these leaders then increasingly sought to diversify their student bodies through shifts in policies, practices, recruitment programs, and scholarship funds including A Better Chance and the Stouffer Foundation. Westminster became a southern exemplar of this national agenda with its striking and political announcement of tis open admissions policy, but the school was also emblematic of the pragmatic desegregation politics of Atlanta. The first black students—the fearless firsts—who excelled academically, applied to Westminster as public school desegregation progressed slowly. The Westminster that awaited them had an environment that included racist traditions and a segment of white students who raised important, nuanced questions about the issues of the time.

Race and Cultural Flexibility among Students in Different Multiracial Schools

2010 ◽  
Vol 112 (6) ◽  
pp. 1529-1574 ◽  
Author(s):  
Prudence L. Carter
Keyword(s):  
Black Students ◽  
White Students ◽  
Research Question ◽  
Mixed Race ◽  
Interview Data ◽  
Black And White ◽  
Cultural Flexibility ◽  
White School ◽  
Southern City ◽  
The Impact

Background/Context One of the most critical functions of a well-integrated school is the development of “culturally flexible” students who, over the course of their social development, effectively navigate diverse social environs such as the workplace, communities, and neighborhoods. Most studies, albeit with some exceptions, have investigated the impact of desegregation on short- and long-term gains in achievement and attainment, as opposed to its impact on intergroup relations. Mixed-race schools are vital not only for bolstering achievement outcomes of previously disadvantaged students but also for promoting social cohesion in a diverse society. Purpose/Objective/Research Question/Focus of Study Specifically, this article examines the difference in cultural flexibility between black and white students enrolled in schools with different racial and ethnic compositions. Cultural flexibility is defined as the propensity to value and move across different cultural and social peer groups and environments. Furthermore, this article provides some insight into how students in different mixed-race and desegregated educational contexts experience their school's social organization and cultural environments, which influence their interactions and academic behaviors. Setting The study was conducted over a 6-month period in four high schools: a majority-minority school and a majority-white school located in a northeastern city, and a majority-minority school and a majority-white school located in a southern city. Research Design Survey data were gathered from a randomly stratified sample of 471 Black and White students attending. In addition, ethnographic notes from weeks of school observations and transcribed interview data from 57 group interviews conducted in the four schools with students in Grades 9–12 complemented the survey research. Data Collection and Analysis Findings reveal significant associations among self-esteem, academic and extracurricular placement, and cultural flexibility for black students. Also, black students in majority-minority schools scored significantly higher on the cultural flexibility scale than those in majority-white schools. Among white students, regional location and academic placement showed statistically significant associations with cultural flexibility. The ethnographic and interview data further explicate why these patterns occurred and illuminate how certain school contextual factors are likely linked to students’ cultural flexibility. Overall, this study's findings highlight some connections between student and school behaviors as they pertain to both students’ and educators’ willingness and ability to realize the visions of racial and ethnic integration wholly.

The American South

2020 ◽  
Author(s):  
Charles Reagan Wilson
Keyword(s):  
Civil Rights ◽  
West Africa ◽  
Civil Rights Movement ◽  
Western Europe ◽  
American South ◽  
Public Memory ◽  
Film Music ◽  
Short Introduction ◽  
Racial Tension ◽  
The American South

The American South: A Very Short Introduction explores the American South, a distinctive place with a dramatic history. It is a cultural crossroads, where Western Europe met West Africa in a colonial slave society. The Civil War and civil rights movement transformed the South and remain a part of a vibrant and contested public memory. Moreover, the South's pronounced traditionalism in customs and values have always contended with the forces of modernization and the continuing challenges of racial tension. This VSI looks at Southerners' diverse creative responses to these experiences, in literature, film, music, and cuisine, which have had worldwide influence.

“Say What you Really Believe”1: Freedom Schools, Youth Empowerment, and Black Power in 1960s Milwaukee

2020 ◽  
Vol 122 (7) ◽  
pp. 1-33
Author(s):  
Katerina Suchor
Keyword(s):  
Civil Rights ◽  
Civil Rights Movement ◽  
Black Power ◽  
School Desegregation ◽  
Historical Analysis ◽  
School Curriculum ◽  
Youth Empowerment ◽  
Black Liberation ◽  
Freedom Schools ◽  
Core Components

Background The historical literature on the civil rights movement has tended to underemphasize the movement's educational activities, while literature on the civil rights and Black Power movements has overemphasized ideological and tactical differences between these chapters in the struggle for Black liberation. A few studies have examined Freedom Schools—educational projects established as part of larger civil rights campaigns—but these studies have focused almost exclusively on Freedom Schools in the Southern context. Purpose Focusing on Freedom Schools organized as part of a school desegregation campaign in Milwaukee during the mid-1960s, this article explores the pedagogical purpose and philosophy of the Freedom Schools, as distinct from other protest activities undertaken as part of the campaign, as well as the legacy of the Freedom Schools after the campaign's conclusion. Research Design This historical analysis examines materials such as lesson plans, flyers, and correspondence from the archives of the Milwaukee United School Integration Committee (MUSIC), the organization responsible for the school desegregation campaign. Findings This article shows that core components of the Freedom School curriculum, which sought to challenge deficit-oriented policies and empower youth to create social change, foreshadowed key tenets of Black Power ideology. Conclusions These findings suggest that the Freedom Schools, as important sites of ideological development, highlight continuity between the civil rights and Black Power movements and situate the Freedom Schools as part of a longer tradition of education for liberation and self-determination.

Introduction

2018 ◽  
pp. 1-17
Author(s):  
Scott L. Matthews
Keyword(s):  
Twentieth Century ◽  
Civil Rights ◽  
Civil Rights Movement ◽  
Caste System ◽  
The South ◽  
Folk Revival ◽  
White Southerners ◽  
Black And White ◽  
Travel Writings ◽  
Frederick Law Olmsted

The introduction explores why the South became known as America’s “most documented” region beginning in the 1940s and into the twenty-first century. It argues that documentarians saw the region as a fertile place to do fieldwork for two main reasons. First, the region possessed unique and seemingly fragile folk cultures in need of preservation before modern influences erased them. Second, the region possessed seemingly endemic problems associated with its racial caste system and agricultural economies that needed documentation, study, and reform. The introduction also provides an overview of how historians and theorists defined “documentary” throughout the twentieth century and how and why some black and white southerners resisted the intrusion of documentarians into their lives. Additionally, it traces the history of documentary fieldwork in the South from the eighteenth through the nineteenth century and demonstrates how the tradition’s dominant themes developed during this time, particularly in the travel writings and sketches of Basil Hall, Frederick Law Olmsted, Jonathan Baxter Harrison and others. Finally, it highlights the distinguishing features of twentieth-century documentary by emphasizing the role of Progressive and New Deal reform impulses, the Folk Revival and Civil Rights Movement, and the development of portable recording technologies.

The End of the Brown Era

2004 ◽  
Author(s):  
Derrick Bell
Keyword(s):  
Civil Rights ◽  
Civil Rights Movement ◽  
Educational Opportunity ◽  
Black Children ◽  
Equal Educational Opportunity ◽  
Black Parents ◽  
Court Order ◽  
Civil Rights Organizations ◽  
Emancipation Proclamation ◽  
Racial Balance

The Emancipation Proclamation remains a positive moment in American history despite its mainly symbolic character. Brown v. Board of Education has achieved and will probably retain similar status. The three decades of campaigning to desegregate school systems, though, came to a less-than-exultant end. Black parents recognized long before their civil rights lawyers that the effort to racially balance the schools was not working. Desegregation plans were designed to provide a semblance of compliance with court orders while minimizing the burden on whites. Judges, many more conservative than their predeces­sors, found ways to declare the schools desegregated even in districts where the percentage of black children rose in the wake of white flight. Finally, the statistics on resegregation of once-nominally desegregated schools painfully underscores the fact that many black and Hispanic chil­dren are enrolled in schools as separate and probably more unequal than those their parents and grandparents attended under the era of “sepa­rate but equal.” Because the value of integrated schooling proved elusive, black parents and educators began looking for a more viable vehicle for their educa­tional goals. The search was opposed by those civil rights leaders who maintained that Brown could only be read to require an end to intentional discrimination against black children through their assignment to integrated schools. With an advocate’s hindsight, Robert Carter suggested that while Brown was fashioned on the theory that equal education and inte­grated education were one and the same thing, the goal was not integration but equal educational opportunity. If equal educational opportunity can be achieved without integration, Carter reasoned, Brown has been satisfied. In this, he parted company with those claiming that the inescapable conclusion of the Court’s decision in Brown is that racial separation is itself an injury, regardless of parity in the facilities. By the time of his article, Carter had been out of the civil rights movement for a dozen years, but he now supported those who focused on quality of education and challenged proponents of racial-balance remedies in the courts. When groups not committed to racial balance obtained a court order for educationally oriented forms of relief, they were often opposed by civil rights organizations committed to inte­gration, who intervened with more expertise and resources. This sometimes resulted in open confrontations between the NAACP and local blacks who favored plans oriented toward improving educational quality.

A Chink in the Armor: The Black-Led Struggle for School Desegregation in Arlington, Virginia, and the End of Massive Resistance

2001 ◽  
Vol 13 (3) ◽  
pp. 329-366 ◽  
Author(s):  
James McGrath Morris
Keyword(s):  
Public School ◽  
Civil Rights ◽  
Civil Rights Movement ◽  
Black Student ◽  
School Desegregation ◽  
School Integration ◽  
Board Of Education ◽  
Massive Resistance ◽  
Segregated Schools ◽  
White School

As it had for countless other children in Arlington, Virginia, the idyll days of summer had come to end for eleven-year-old Edward Leslie Hamm Jr. on the morning of 5 September 1957. After donning a pair of clean khaki pants and a freshly pressed, short-sleeved white shirt, Hamm was heading back to the classroom along with twenty-one thousand other students in this Northern Virginia community. That alone was enough to put a pit in any child's stomach. But for Hamm the day possessed an added dimension. Instead of riding a bus for forty-five minutes to the Negro school six miles across the county, his parents were dispatching him, along with two other black pupils, to challenge the continued exclusion of blacks from the all-white school, one mile from their isolated exclusively black neighborhood. A full three years after Brown v. Board of Education, not a single black student had yet attended a white public school in Virginia, seen by many observers as the frontline state of resistance to school integration. The three children were nervous and took no comfort in thinking of themselves among a vanguard of the civil rights movement. “I wasn't into an integration thing,” recalled George Tyrone Nelson, who was fourteen at the time and among the trio challenging the segregated schools that day.

“I Wish I Knew How It Would Feel to Be Free”: Nina Simone and the Redefining of the Freedom Song of the 1960s

2008 ◽  
Vol 2 (3) ◽  
pp. 295-317 ◽  
Author(s):  
TAMMY L. KERNODLE
Keyword(s):  
Civil Rights ◽  
Civil Rights Movement ◽  
Nationalist Movement ◽  
Black Freedom Movement ◽  
Black Freedom ◽  
New Type ◽  
The 1960S ◽  
Freedom Movement ◽  
Nina Simone ◽  
Important Shift

AbstractThis article explores the work of pianist/vocalist Nina Simone as the catalyst for a new type of freedom song in the black freedom movement during the 1960s. It examines the lyrical content and structure of Simone's music, which reflects the rhetorical and geographical shift of the transition from King's nonviolent, southern-based civil rights movement of the late 1950s to the mid-1960s to the militant black power nationalist movement of the late 1960s. Curtis Mayfield's Chicago soul style is also referenced as marking an important shift in mid-1960s R&B, which had largely avoided overt political statements.

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