The Daily Work of Doing Brown

This introductory chapter provides an overview of school desegregation in Mississippi. After the Alexander v. Holmes Board of Education ruling on October 29, 1969, thirty Mississippi school districts were ordered to open as desegregated schools after the Christmas break. Left to deal with the hundreds of decisions that had to be made to reopen as fully operational desegregated schools were the principals, teachers, and other school personnel employed by their local public schools. Because every school district had to create its own desegregation plan, the particularities of school desegregation varied greatly. Thus, no singular narrative can adequately capture the complexities of school desegregation, and no one explanation can account for its success or failure. This book then focuses on the arduous task left to local Mississippians in implementing school desegregation in their local communities.

“We All Came Together on the Football Field” But …

This chapter assesses the role of sports in the transition to desegregated schools. It shows the many ways in which sports helped ease a transition to desegregated schools by uniting black and white fans around the common goal of beating their opponents on the field. Indeed, it is no surprise that many of those involved in the early years of school desegregation laud the role sports played in this historical social transition and locate the football field or the basketball court as the place blacks and whites, sitting by each other and cheering together for a common cause, worked through the initial tensions of school desegregation. However, the chapter also reveals how sports was not the panacea many had hoped, and discrimination of black players and coaches persisted both on and off the field long after the initial desegregation dust settled.

Just Trying to Have School

After the 1954 Brown v. Board of Education ruling, no state fought longer or harder to preserve segregated schools than Mississippi. This massive resistance came to a crashing halt in October 1969 when the Supreme Court ruled in Alexander v. Holmes Board of Education that “the obligation of every school district is to terminate dual school systems at once and to operate now and hereafter only unitary schools.” Thirty of the thirty-three Mississippi districts named in the case were ordered to open as desegregated schools after Christmas break. With little guidance from state officials and no formal training or experience in effective school desegregation processes, ordinary people were thrown into extraordinary circumstances. However, their stories have been largely ignored in desegregation literature. This book explores the arduous and complex task of implementing school desegregation. How were bus routes determined? Who lost their position as principal? Who was assigned to what classes? Without losing sight of the important macro forces in precipitating social change, the authors shift attention to how the daily work of “just trying to have school” helped shape the contours of school desegregation in communities still living with the decisions made fifty years ago.

Lowcountry, High Demands: The Struggle for Quality Education in Charleston, South Carolina

Chapter documents the strategies employed by local governing officials to resist the implementation of a racially desegregated public school system in Charleston Country, South Carolina in the wake of the landmark 1954 Brown v. Board of Education ruling. It discusses the role of student-led activism in maintaining the momentum of the desegregationist movement, as well as recounts the often traumatic experiences of black children who were among the first to attended desegregated schools in Charleston County. The chapter also considers later battles for education reform in South Carolina and, as such, highlights the ongoing struggle to realise the promises of quality education throughout the state.

Pulling Apart

Covers the rise of Ronald Reagan and a more conservative, individualistic approach to government and society that would have far-reaching effects on Charlotte schools.Explores persisting obstacles to racial advancement, including shifts in job markets, housing patterns and political priorities that perpetuated income and homeownership gaps into the 1980s and 1990s, and sharpened distinctions between struggling central-city neighborhoods and increasingly prosperous suburban communities. Traces the national shift in education priorities from promoting integration to a concern with test scores and an interest in "choice," which led Charlotte's business leaders to promote a desegregation plan focused around magnet schools instead of race-based busing. Examines growing concerns about the performance of African American students in desegregated schools, and about the challenges faced by young black men in urban neighborhoods. Follows the Capacchione lawsuit, which challenged the use of race in student assignment and brought an end to Charlotte's busing plan.

THE INCLUSION OF UBUNTU IN POST-APARTHEID SCHOOLING – MANDELA’S TAKE

This study explored the inclusion of Ubuntu in post-apartheid South African schooling – with a specific focus on Mandela’s take. The objective was to study possible benefits for the learners and the extent to which Ubuntu could affect desegregated schools in South Africa. The current discourse is born out of the findings of a major study on cross-racial interactions in desegregated schools, as found at one school in Gauteng, a province of South Africa. A qualitative approach study was conducted to obtain a purposive sample where learners were conveniently selected from grade 11 (both black and white learners). The Critical Race Theory (CRT) that was framed within the narrative design was undertaken to ascertain the extent to which integration processes have been implemented in former white schools in South Africa. The nature of this study fits well with CRT, as it helps to interrogate how marginalised black learners are now trying to co-exist in an environment that government purports to be integrated. Results show that although the country purports that schools are integrated, in essence the contrary is found in the schools. There is, in reality, continued polarisation and sheer segregation in the schools. Plans to revisit more than six sampled schools are afoot.

School Desegregation and the Swann Case

This chapter examines Chambers's and his firm's immense contributions to the legal campaign to end school desegregation in the U.S. Chambers filed federal lawsuits against scores of recalcitrant school districts across North Carolina. His most significant victory was the landmark Swann v. Charlotte-Mecklenburg Board of Education ruling from the U.S. Supreme Court in 1971, hailed as the most significant schools ruling since Brown v. Board of Education in 1954. Litigating Swann at trial, Chambers convinced federal District Court Judge James B. McMillan to authorize the busing and other remedies to overcome a system of racially dual schools. Later, still just 34-years old, Chambers argued the case for the Legal Defense Fund at the U.S. Supreme Court. Chief Justice Warren Burger's unanimous opinion appeared an unqualified endorsement by the High Court of the use of aggressive remedies finally to defeat school desegregation. By the mid-1970s Charlotte had come to serve as a national model of successful transition to desegregated schools.