Desegregating Public Schools

U.S. Post Office issued a stamp in 1999 commemorating the desegregation of schools courtesy https://www.pinterest.com/pin/71353975320065661/.

Brown vs Board of Education marked the desegregation of public elementary schools in the United States.  In 1951, Oliver Brown, along with twelve other parents, filed a lawsuit in a Kansas court fighting the "separate but equal" status of American education.  While he lost the case, in 1954, he filed another suit with the Supreme Court and won.  His daughter Linda was able to attend a white school for the first time (http://alinefromlinda.blogspot.ca/2012/05/brown-vs-board-of-education.html).

In 1957, the cause was further advanced by the integration of Little Rock High by nine brave black students.  A famous photograph showed a student named Ruby, her books in one arm, walking to school surrounded by white parents shooting daggers from their eyes and hate from their lips (http://alinefromlinda.blogspot.ca/2012/09/little-rock-nine.html).

It seemed the integration of American public schools was complete.  However, that was just the beginning.  Many whites protested by fleeing to the suburbs, leaving the blacks in the city core schools.  In the 1970's, the situation reached a crisis point in Boston where they invoked forced bussing, a move that both whites and blacks protested against (http://alinefromlinda.blogspot.ca/2014/09/violence-over-forced-busing-in-boston.html).

In the 1990's, my sister-in-law, Ingrid, taught in a North Carolina high school where the majority of the students were black or Hispanic.  The educational system seemed to be letting them down:  some of her Grade 9 and 10 students could barely read.

Today, the schools in Cleveland, Mississippi remain largely segregated.  D.M. Smith Middle school is predominantly black while Margaret Green Junior High School is almost completely white.  Black students attend the virtually all black East Side High while white students attend the overwhlemingly white Cleveland High.  U.S. District Judge Debra Brown has ordered that the Cleveland school board present a timeline for integration.  Former board member Jim Tims says that integration will not be well received by everyone:  "If they feel threatened, or for some reason race bothers them, then they have an option and they're going to leave the schools.  The question is:  Do you want to have 'integration'?  Or do you want to have white flight?" (http://www.inquisitr.com/3105243/cleveland-mississippi-schools-ordered-to-desegregate-after-51-year-court-battle/).

http://www.npr.org/sections/thetwo-way/2016/05/17/478389720/after-50-year-legal-struggle-mississippi-school-district-ordered-to-desegregate

The Ghosts of Mississippi

On June 12, 1963, a Mississippi housewife is home with her three children when she hears a shot, runs to the door and sees her injured husband drag himself up the driveway 30 feet and collapse in a pool of blood.

This is a scene from Rob Reiner's movie "The Ghosts of Mississippi" which premiered in 1996.  It is based on the life of Black civil rights activist Medgar Evers who was the victim of a racist killing.  Ku Klux Klan member Byron de la Beckwith was arrested and tried for the murder in 1964 and again in 1965.  However, he was freed twice by an all-White jury and returned to his home in Tennessee.

Medgar's widow, Myrlie, moved to California after the second trial and attempted to provide a safe home to raise her three children.  Although she left Mississippi, she continued to further Medgar's cause, working for the NAACP and later becoming its chairwoman.

In the meantime, lawyer Bobbie DeLaughter, played by Alec Baldwin, managed to secure a new trial to attempt to convict Byron de la Beckwith, played by James Woods.  Although many of the witnesses who spoke at the first and second trial had since died, Mr. DeLaughter was able to find some surviving witnesses who were willing to talk.  Incredibly, he also found the murder weapon in his late father-in-law's house, knowing that judges used to collect trial evidence as souvenirs.  Equally important was the original trial manuscript which Myrlie guarded with her life.  Bobbie was able to establish a trust with Medgar's widow and eventually she gave him the manuscript.

In the movie, there is a disturbing scene in the men's  washroom where Mr. DeLaughter asks Mr. Beckwith how he could just shoot Medgar Evers the way a hunter would shoot a deer.  Beckwith's response is that a deer is one of God's creatures and he would never shoot a deer.

With a passionate lawyer on the case, a new judge and a new jury, the State of Mississippi was able to secure a conviction against Byron de la Beckwith in 1994, over 30 years after the original crime.  As Bobbie DeLaughter said in his closing statement, "it's never too late to do the right thing".  The final scene in front of the courthouse when Myrlie Evers, played by Whoopi Goldberg, pumps her fist in the air victoriously after the conviction, is heartwarming.  Will the ghosts of Mississippi finally be laid to rest?

http://intl.target.com/p/ghosts-of-mississippi/-/A-13082039

*Originally published in 2011.

Oprah Winfrey: Getting My Library Card Was Like Citizenship

"Books were my path to personal freedom.  I learned to read at age 3 and soon discovered there was a whole world to conquer that went beyond our farm in Mississippi." (Oprah Winfrey)

How did a young black girl raised on a farm with no running water nor electricity grow up to be a billionaire?  It all started with a library card.

Oprah Winfrey spent her childhood on a farm in Mississippi where she wore potato sacks as dresses. The daughter of a broken home, her father remarried.  It was her dad who instilled in her the importance of education, taking her to the public library every two weeks where she withdrew five titles.  "Books were my path to personal freedom.  I learned to read at age 3 and soon discovered there was a whole world to conquer that went beyond our farm in Mississippi."  Not only did Oprah have to read the books she borrowed but she had to present a book report to her parents about each one.  While other children were watching Leave it to Beaver, Oprah was visiting the public library.  

Oprah's passion for reading allowed her the chance to dream.  As she explained: 

"As a young girl in Mississippi I had big dreams at a time when being a Negro child you weren't supposed to dream big.  I dreamed anyway.  Books did that to me.  Books allowed me to see a world beyond the front porch of my grandmother's shotgun house and gave me the power to see possibilities beyond what was allowed at the time:  beyond economic and social realities, beyond classrooms with no books and unqualified teachers, beyond false beliefs and prejudice that veiled the minds of so many men and women of the time.  For me, those dreams started when I heard the stories of my rich heritage.  When I read about Sojourner Truth and Harriet Tubman and Mary McLeod Bethune and Frederick Douglass.  I knew that there was possibility for me." (http://www.ilovelibraries.org/article/reading-life-oprah-winfrey)

Oprah Winfrey's talk show, which debuted in the 1980's, was seen by more than 40 million Americans each week, as well as millions of viewers worldwide,  Oprah's Book Club, which debuted in 1996, sewed the seeds for new readers.  Ten thousand copies of each selection were sent to over 3500 public and secondary schools.  Oprah's Book Club has boosted sales for authors, who would normally sell thousands of books to hundreds of thousands or even millions.  

Oprah has furthered her love of reading with her Oprah magazine which first hit newsstands in 2000. Among other categories, the magazine has a book review section.  While back on her Mississippi farm, she only had an audience of two for her book reviews, now she has a readership of about 2.5 million.  Upon receiving a United Nations Humanitarian award in 2004, Oprah said:  "Getting my library card was like citizenship."  It paved the way for this self-made billionaire.

Oprah Winfrey at 2 years old, only a year before she learned how to read courtesy http://www.oprah.com/pressroom/Oprah-Winfreys-Official-Biography.

Richard Wright's "The Ethics of Living Jim Crow"

"There was but one place where a black boy who knows no trade can get a job.  And that's where the houses and faces are white, where the trees, lawns and hedges are green.  My first job was an optical company in Jackson, Mississippi.  The morning I applied I stood straight and neat before the boss, answering his questions with straight yessirs and nosirs.  I was very careful to pronounce my sirs distinctly, in order that he might know that I was polite, that I knew where I was, and that I knew he was a white man.  I wanted that job badly." (http://xroads.virginia.edu/~ma01/white/anthology/wright.html)

Richard Wright grew up in in Mississippi, "where nothing green ever grew in [his yard]".  In the 1910's, he remembers an early lesson his Mom taught him about Jim Crow laws when she tanned his backside for getting into a battle with the white boys from the other side of the tracks, even though he came home with a three inch gash behind his ear.

Wright talks about losing his first factory job because he called his boss Pease instead of Mr. Pease. He talks what was accepted conversation and what was taboo for a black man; how he had to respond constantly with "yes sir" or "no sir" to a white man; how, when he entered an elevator full of whites, he had to remove his hat, even if he had a handful of packages.

Wright remembers frantically pedalling home one night from a delivery to a white home, and being stopped and questions by a police officer, just for being in a white neighbourhood after dark.  He remembers not being allowed to meet the gaze of the white guests at the hotel where he worked.

He learned how to "lie, cheat and steal" to eat and live once he moved to Memphis, Tennessee.  It was in Memphis that he met a Roman Catholic white man sympathetic to his cause.  Wright wanted to borrow books from the local library, but blacks were denied the simple right to a library card. Wright's co-worker lent him his card.  Wright would write a note that said:  "Please let this nigger boy have the following books."  He signed the note with his co-worker's signature.  So as not to alert the librarian that the books were actually for Wright, "[He] would stand at the desk, hat in hand, looking as unbookish as possible."  For more on Richard Wright, read "The Freedom of a Library Card" at http://alinefromlinda.blogspot.ca/2011/06/freedom-of-library-card.html.

Wright later moved to Chicago where he penned the famous novels Native Son (1940) and Black Boy (1945).  He finished his years writing in France, far away from the tentacles of Jim Crow.

Richard Wright received pennies from men in a Mississippi saloon courtesy http://www.blackpast.org/aah/wright-richard-1908-1960.

The Ghosts of Mississippi

On June 12, 1963, a Mississippi housewife is home with her three children when she hears a shot, runs to the door and sees her injured husband drag himself up the driveway 30 feet and collapse in a pool of blood.

This is a scene from Rob Reiner's movie "The Ghosts of Mississippi" which premiered in 1996.  It is based on the life of Black civil rights activist Medgar Evers who was the victim of a racist killing.  Ku Klux Klan member Byron de la Beckwith was arrested and tried for the murder in 1964 and again in 1965.  However, he was freed twice by an all-White jury and returned to his home in Tennessee. 

Medgar's widow, Myrlie, moved to California after the second trial and attempted to provide a safe home to raise her three children.  Although she left Mississippi, she continued to further Medgar's cause, working for the NAACP and later becoming its chairwoman. 

In the meantime, lawyer Bobbie DeLaughter, played by Alec Baldwin, managed to secure a new trial to attempt to convict Byron de la Beckwith, played by James Woods.  Although many of the witnesses who spoke at the first and second trial had since died, Mr. DeLaughter was able to find some surviving witnesses who were willing to talk.  Incredibly, he also found the murder weapon in his late father-in-law's house, knowing that judges used to collect trial evidence as souvenirs.  Equally important was the original trial manuscript which Myrlie guarded with her life.  Bobbie was able to establish a trust with Medgar's widow and eventually she gave him the manuscript.

In the movie, there is a disturbing scene in the men's  washroom where Mr. DeLaughter asks Mr. Beckwith how he could just shoot Medgar Evers the way a hunter would shoot a deer.  Beckwith's response is that a deer is one of God's creatures and he would never shoot a deer. 

With a passionate lawyer on the case, a new judge and a new jury, the State of Mississippi was able to secure a conviction against Byron de la Beckwith in 1994, over 30 years after the original crime.  As Bobbie DeLaughter said in his closing statement, "it's never too late to do the right thing".  The final scene in front of the courthouse when Myrlie Evers, played by Whoopi Goldberg, pumps her fist in the air victoriously after the conviction, is heartwarming.  Will the ghosts of Mississippi finally be laid to rest?



Photo courtesy http://portsmouthfreemasons.org