jennifer-roberts This year marks 70 years since the Brown vs. Board of Education decision that declared racial segregation in public school unconstitutional. While many, to this day, applaud this decision, I believe that the inequitable way that the decision was executed was one of the worst and most dangerous harms inflicted upon Black children, families and communities. It is my steadfast belief that Black people in the United States have always desired freedom, a God-given liberty inherent to all human beings. I believe that the parents/guardians of children in the Brown-decision era wanted educational freedom for their children and may have thought that this decision was the answer. I submit that instead of gaining educational freedom, Black children who went t to white schools lost the rich and relevant education and community that they had with their Black educators. The Brown decision is yet another example of the American education system’s abuse of power and how Black children paid and continue to pay the ultimate price.
The Supreme Court’s landmark ruling declared the segregation of Black and white children illegal. States chose to close Black schools and send Black students to white schools; this was not mandated by law. In Leslie Fenwick’s carefully researched book, “Jim Crow’s Pink Slip: The Untold Story of Black Principal and Teacher Leadership,” she asserts, “Legally speaking, desegregation did not have to mean the closing of all-Blacks schools – but it was made into an excuse to do so. Numerous judicial decisions made it clear that closing schools purely for racial reasons was unconstitutional.”
Prior to the 1954 Brown decision, Black students had been primarily taught by Black teachers who cared about them, affirmed them, believed in them and had high expectations of them. These educators were not random people who had earned teaching credentials; they were highly respected community leaders who wanted the best for their students. The strong foundation that these remarkable educators created had a profound effect on students’ identity, self-esteem an self-worth.
In Vivian Gunn Morris and Curtis L. Morris’ book, “The Price They Paid: Desegregation in an African American Community,” the authors speak so beautifully to the profound impact that Black educators had on their Black students. “Ruby Middle Forsythe, a teacher at the Holy Cross Faith Memorial School on Pawleys Island, South Carolina, reported on the activities that she provided for her students: When children start here, regardless of how small they are, they’re going to be in the Thanksgiving program, they’re going to be in the Easter program, they’re going to be in the commencement program. I start them learning a recitation at the age of three. I put them in a little group and give them a piece to learn. Their parents practice with them until they memorize those pieces and they perform them for the entire school. Some people don’t believe that these three year olds can get up there and recite four to eight lines, but they do. Facing an audience, giving a recitation, and hearing that applause builds up their confidence and I keep building on that all the time they are with me.” This belief in Black students, this confidence in their inherent greatness and dedication to cultivating it is priceless. And sadly, it was lost after desegregation.
Unfortunately, after desegregation, these environments dissipated as Black children were sent to learn with white students, white teachers and white principals who abused them at every turn. We don’t have to think hard to imagine the emotional damage that was done in the name of so-called integration. In exchange for legalized access to more modern facilities, updated curriculum and broader class offerings, Black students and their families traded a strong sense of identity, leadership opportunities, and a tight-knit community of affirming Black educators who believed in their ability to learn at high levels. Because of the racism that Black students experienced in the all white schools, pieces of their souls died daily.
In Leslie Fenwick’s eye-opening book, “Jim Crow’s Pinks Slip, The Untold Story of Black Principal and Teacher Leadership,” the author writes wrote about Lavon Wright Bracey’s experience at the all white Gainesville High School (Florida), “On that first day, Dad drove me to school, followed by a Gainesville police car. I received stares and was called all kinds of nigger. No one spoke to me. No one sat near me. I could expect each day to have some White male or female spit on me and call me a nigger. I began to hate. The thought of looking at someone with White skin made me sick. After about a month at the school, a group of White boys jumped me and beat me bloody. No one offered any assistance. The principal said, ‘How do I know that you did not come to school bloody from your home? I did not see anyone mistreat you.’”
“In 1965, LaVon Wright became the first Black student to graduate from Gainesville High School. She explained what she thought and felt as a young teenage girl in those days after the assault: “I stayed home for three days, pondering what to do. I refused to allow them to win. I returned. The year was long, silent and unhappy. There are still scars there.”
History shows that this price is too high for any child and that repeated trauma has long term effects. And yet, here we are, years later still begging, hoping, wishing that the same white, public school system that destroyed the Black teacher pipeline and subjugated Black students will now equitably serve Black children. It’s not going to happen.
No sane parent teaches their child how to cross the street by having the child stand in traffic or teaches their child that the stove is hot by putting their child’s fingers in the flames. So why are Black parents trying to teach our children to be strong, withstand rejection and become familiar with racism by sending them to hostile public schools? And to make matters worse, many Black children are not being taught how to develop a strong self-identity that could help to combat what they face at school. That is as foolish as sending a child into a snowstorm with no protection. And for what? Access to good schools in nice neighborhoods?” Access to safe schools? Access to Advanced Placement classes? Access to Dual Enrollment classes? Access to sports teams? Access to modern science and technology labs? Our students don’t have to have their identity minimized and their self-esteem marginalized to have a high-quality education but we must be willing to break up with the public school system to give it to them. We must be willing to prioritize our children’s education by collectively investing time, talents and money and by working together.
It is time for us to let go of the hope that the American public school system wants Black children to succeed. It doesn’t. If it did, schools across the country would have been institutionally redesigned to consider and meet the needs of Black students. Black teachers would compose significantly more than 6% of America’s public school teaching force and Black parents would not have to fight for our children as fiercely as we do. Black children would not be labeled, dismissed, overdisciplined and ignored. They would not be recommended for special education as much as they are and would not be suspended and expelled as frequently as they are. Much of what our Black children are experiencing the in the classroom is influenced by the educators in the school building to whom they are exposed. Many Black students have never had an effective Black principal or a Black teacher. Imagine, being expected to learn year after year in environments that may or may not be well resourced but you don’t see yourself reflected in your leaders or in your learning materials and you don’t feel like your educators even see you let alone like you. Does this sound like inviting to you?
I do not paint all educators with a broad brush. I believe that there are Black and non-Black educators inside the public school system who work hard to value Black student’s humanity, to love, see and hear them everyday. However, they are the exception, not the rule. Unfortunately, there are more than a few bad apples in the educator bunch. The basket is overflowing with bad apples. No parent should have to try to find a “good school,” find the “right teacher” for their child to have a chance at having an equitable learning experience that year. Not to mention the fact that students don’t just have one teacher. Even at the elementary school level, students are expected to engage with multiple educators throughout the course of the day. It is not unreasonable for parents to expect that every educator in the school building should be held accountable for prioritizing their Black child’s well-being and honoring their humanity.
It is indeed possible to provide our Black children with the education that engages the genius within them and helps them to become the highest expression of themselves. We must take agency over our children’s education. Their lives depend on it. In the forward of “The Price They Paid: Desegregation in an African American Community” (Vivian Gunn Morris and Curtis L. Morris), Asa G. Hilliard writes, “Whenever we [Africans in America] have the freedom to control the education and socialization process, the old values manifest themselves (Hilliard, 1977). These include a belief in the genius in all of our children, the belief that the entire community is responsible for the education and socialization of every child, the belief in the efficacy of nurturing as an approach to instruction, the belief in the spiritual nature of the teaching and learning process, the belief in our place in the universe as a cosmic people who are reflections of the divine, respect for the environment, a hunger for the truth, and the belief in social responsibility, among others. If African people could ever come to know the traditions in education and socialization from our core cultural base, we would be empowered beyond measure, simply because no other system seems to match the quality of what we have had before (Hilliard, 1977). Slavery, segregation, and White supremacy ideology interrupted and had a major impact on the African community’s control of the education and socialization process and on the ideas that are common to our community.”
Our children’s education is within our reach if only we chose to take hold of it. Let us choose to take our children’s lips from the nipple of a public education system that is feeding them poisoned milk. We must stop hoping that public education will take care of our Black children; we must do this work ourselves. It’s past time for us to stop begging and keep building. We are the answer; we are the solution. Our children are waiting on us.
