High School Graduates Who Can't READ?!

This is the second in a series. The next installment will have anecdotes about Klan meetings, Wallace rallies, and other Southern phenomena.

In one of its three stories with an Alabama dateline last month, the New York Times reported the death of a Negro in Prichard. The article said:

The body of a 34-year-old Negro man was found hanging by the heels Saturday outside an abandoned school house. The police identified the victim as E. C. Deloach, a fork lift operator on the Mobile docks.

Deloach's body, clad only in shorts and with slight cuts about the head and abdomen, was found hanging by a telephone cable from an eave of the Joshua Barney School, one of several Negro schools closed in the Mobile area this year when Federal courts ordered a speed-up in integration.

Seven firebombings have been reported in the area in the last three weeks and there has been one clash between a Negro and a white at one of the newly integrated schools.

"There are no racial implications involved," said Detective Lieutenant R. L. Heathcoe.

That kind of violence may be exceptional. But the tension it reveals is not. The Southern school system -- whose violent convulsions marked the beginning of the modern civil rights movement in 1954 -- is bracing for a new showdown. And although Northerners find it hard to understand, this showdown will be far more important than any that have gone before. More than the landmark 1954 Supreme Court decision or the spotty efforts to wipe out segregated schools that followed, the 1968 fight to give black children a decent education will determine the Negro's future in the South.

But, as Negro leaders in the South know all too well, this is a showdown that will pass virtually unnoticed in the North. Things have changed a lot since 1954. Then Northern families could see clearly-cut right and wrong. It wasn't hard to sense that the timid black children were right, and that the thick-necked Southern police were wrong.

Going Underground

Things have changed since then. White suburbanites, feeling the push of black families moving into their neighborhoods, wary of the threatening black men they see rioting in the cities, are now less eager to ram integration down the Southern gullet. George Wallace has found a constituency in the North that Strom Thurmond or Orval Faubus would never have won in 1954.

Even before the white backlash set in, a number of other factors had conspired to make the Southern "racial situation" less visible than it had been in the '50's. After the civil rights acts passed in the early '60's, most Northern whites breathed a sigh of moral relief. Most of the tangible evidences of bigotry were gone: federal inspectors found few "Colored" drinking fountains left. The "White Only" posters were reluctantly removed from the train stations and busses; the black names made their way onto the voting lists; and whites and blacks settled down to the teeth-gritting reality of living together.

But most Southern Negroes soon realized that these tentative victories were in reality a setback. The evening TV news report had been one of the civil rights movement's primary weapons, but now much of its punch was gone. There were no more marches, few boycotts, little redneck backlash. The white Northern conscience turned to other things. Students began to work against the war; white liberals set to work in the ghettos. With no tangible goblins to fight, the Southern Negroes struggled for ways to keep the nation's support mobilized.

Southern whites too were quick to see what was happening. In many small towns, the seemingly cheery acquiescence to Northern laws was in reality a cagey poker-face cover for continued Southern resistance. Bitter experience with the Northern press had convinced the whites that the best way to clamp down on Negro progress was to clamp down on Negro progress was to keep the press away; and the best way to do that was to avoid trouble. So the "White Only" signs disappeared, and so did the press.

In some areas, the token integration that the civil rights laws left was enough. Negroes were content to be able to vote, even if their vote was accepted reluctantly. They were willing, for a while, to ride the busses, even though hostile stares greeted them. Jobs given reluctantly were a little better than none at all. Half a share of American Life would not be satisfactory as a permanent solution, but perhaps it would do for several years.

Blacks Marry Blacks

But there was one area where tokenism was not acceptable. Complete integration of the schools -- not merely the few black faces dotting the formerly-white classrooms -- was essential, the key to all future progress.

Most Northerners find it hard to understand why school integration is so urgent a need in the South. Liberals might rosily dream of the day when all little children could grow up together to love and understand each other at integrated schools; and their main objection to segregated schools seems to be that the children aren't growing up to love and understand. Blunter Northerners see no real danger in separate-but-equal schools; just like blacks marry blacks and whites marry whites, they say, people want to be with their own. Why force them together?

Northerners have the luxury of this speculation because they still believe -- somewhat subconsciously -- in the idea of Separate-But-Equal. Few whites can really believe that Southern hatred could extend so far as to deny little children a good education. A black man in the South, hearing that, would laugh. Because Separate-But-Equal is a farce.

You don't have to look too hard to see why. White schools in the South are no gems -- Alabama ranks 49th among the school systems of the country, and Mississippi proudly follows at number 50. But the eagerness of black children to get into the white schools suggests how bad the black schools must be. And the suggestion of how bad they must be is only a pale hint of how bad they are.

Black schools in Alabama and Mississippi, without exception, are ramshackle, decaying, understaffed and overcrowded. Alabama spends about $1500 per year for each white student in school. That's not much, but it's more than twice as much as the state pays for black students. Things are worse in Mississippi, where two years ago the state board of education coughed up a little less than $250 to pay for the education of each black student in the black schools.

And it's not hard to see the effects of Separate-But-Unequal schools. About one-half of all the Negro children who start school end up graduating from high school. Actually, that's not as great a loss as it may seem; because those who make it out of the twelfth grade have only the equivalent of a sixth grade Alabama education. A little less than two-thirds of black high school graduates are able to read. Many are turned down by the military because they fail the elementary math and reading tests.

The effect of this mass-production of uneducated black children is obvious. Children who can't read turn into adults who can't get jobs. Rednecks point to the black illiteracy statistics, to the numbers of blacks turned down by the military, and to the abysmal inability of black Southerners to get jobs, and use these as sociological proof of the cherished racist theories. "Them niggers will never be any good," they cheerily tell squirming visitors. "They's just so dumb that all they like to do is sit around an shoot pool. Damn federal government comes down here tellin' us the niggers are as good as us. All they gotta do is look at 'em to see they're no good."

Even the more liberal Southerners sometimes fall into the "Unqualified Nigras" trap. "I wouldn't mind hirin' some of the nigras," a lumber-yard owner said last summer, "but I just can't find any who know how to do the work. They just can't read and learn the job or work steady."

But in their secret moments, almost all of the Southerners seem to realize that the black schools have a fundamental relation with the continued black inferiority in the South. The rednecks who will not admit that Negroes are "just too dumb" because they've been at shoddy schools seem to sense that if the Negroes invade the white schools, a change will be imminent. And that is why school desegregation has become the last stand of the old white order.

The history of desegregating schools is short and it is unpleasant. For each progressive step, there seem to be two steps back. In 1954, after 60 years of Supreme Court decisions allowing the dual school systems in the South, Earl Warren's court finally made the break. Warren's decision had two memorable bits of language: the first, now reverently recited by civil rights lawyers, is that "separate schools are inherently in equal." That was good. But the other phrase almost negated the decision's value.

The South wouldn't have to merge its two school systems all at once, Warren said. Instead, it would have to take steps toward desegregation "with all deliberate speed." Negro parents, NAACP lawyers, and the few Northerners who were familiar with the situation soon learned to despise that phrase.

The beginning of integration after the '54 decision was deceptively easy. Black children, brave and resisting hostile taunts, went to white schools. For a year, Southern school districts seemed beaten. No one imagined that "all deliberate speed" could mean a very long time, and individual school boards from Arkansas to South Carolina quietly let Negroes into classes.

Things finally erupted in Clinton, Tennessee. After a Life photographer had done a story on "Peaceful Integration In Clinton," Clinton's parents struck back. Weeks of rioting and violence followed, and spread to other cities in the South. The most important result was that Southerners learned that President Eisenhower was less than eager to jump into their affairs. These things should be left to the states, Ike said; and the states were glad to have them. It wasn't until the notorious Little Rock showdown of the mid fifties that federal force was used at all, and for the rest of Eisenhower's administration it was used only reluctantly.

Things changed under Kennedy, but still there was little progress being made. Individual blacks made it into Ole Miss and the University of Alabama, but the majority of black children still grew up and were miseducated in black schools. It wasn't until 1962 that the next real step came: the advent of the wholesome-sounding Freedom Of Choice plan.

George Wallace, who had won his place in Alabamian hearts with his door-blocking stand at the University of Alabama, came out fuming when federal courts introduced the Freedom Of Choice plan. To outsiders, it didn't sound too threatening. It just said that any student could choose to go to any school he wanted; it seemed like basic American individual choice and everything good. But in the South, it posed an immediate danger: it meant that BLACK CHILDREN would be coming to the WHITE SCHOOLS. The white South had to act fast.

Alabama, the Cradle of the Confederacy, was the center of resistance. George Wallace tuned up for his presidential campaign by swinging around the state, telling devotes about the perils of Freedom of Choice. Those black children are goin' into the schools, George said, and that means that the whites ones are goin' to leave. George said that he was shore nuff sorry, but it looked like the state of Alabama wouldn't be able to keep a public school system goin' no more, because there wouldn't be any support from the legislature and the entire white public would resist.

The Federal judges in Alabama were not impressed. They clamped down Freedom of Choice, and George Wallace, as he had done before in the University of Alabama doorway, backed down. A few whites migrated to the private schools, but they came back soon. Public schools continued.

Unfortunately, part of the reason that Wallace backed down was that he and everyone else saw quickly that Freedom of Choice wasn't much more of a threat than the old '54 order had been. Because a black kid who was theoretically "free" to choose his school could be convinced in a lot of ways that he shouldn't choose the white schools. Teachers and students could make it pretty miserable for pioneering black students. If that did not give them the idea, employers and merchants could subtly let black parents know that their economic future would be brighter if their children "chose" the black schools.

Even school boards thought up clever ploys. In Greene County, the school board told Negro residents of Tishabee that their children could attend either the Greene County High School (white) or the Greene County Training School (black). However, both schools were 20 miles from Tishabee, and the school board said that it was sorry, but it could only provide busses to the Training School.

Once white Alabama learned about this soft underbelly of Freedom of Choice, the people who had resisted it so vehemently suddenly found themselves defending it as "the best hope for quality education in our state." Obviously it wasn't going to turn their schools into segregated ones; and if it did, it would do it more slowly than any other plan. At the same time, the Justice Department and many black lawyers also realized that a new system was needed. So they began yet another legal battle against the sturdy Southern schools.

This summer's court session in Alabama saw two major trials, each illustrating one phase of the fight against Freedom of Choice. The first, held in early August, was mainly valuable as a theatrical production. The name of the suit--The United States of America vs. The United Klans of America--hinted what kind of an affair it would be. An inexperienced Justice Department lawyer brought a parade of 50 residents of Crenshaw County, Ala., to the stand and had them tell what the Klan had been doing to keep Freedom of Choice from working in the county's schools.

The evidence was juicy. Black parents told of cross-burnings, huge KKK's painted on their houses, midnight Klan rallies, and assorted other harrassments designed to keep black kids out of white schools. A few reluctant white witnesses, appearing under Federal subpoena, grudgingly admitted that the white citizens of Crenshaw County had circulated a petition to enforce an economic boycott against all black families who integrated the schools.

The defense's case was even more picturesque than the prosecution's. Ira Dement, a sometimes-liberal lawyer with a hound-dawg face, cross-examined each of the black witnesses, always beginning with the question, "Have you ever been convicted of a felony?" His defense case was as straightforward as it was absurd, consisting of character-witness testimony from assorted Klan members.

That trial turned out all right. The judge ordered an injunction prohibiting the Klan from giving the black people trouble. But even the Justice Department realized that this was a short-term victory, and near the end of August Federal lawyers launched a massive court battle against the whole Freedom of Choice system.

Working from statistics that showed that 97 per cent of Alabama's black children had "chosen" to stay in black schools, and quoting a Supreme Court ruling that invalidated Freedom of Choice when it didn't "speedily end the dual school system," the Justice Department asked for more radical measures. Specifically, it wanted the court to close many black schools and begin bussing and zoning plans to achieve racial balance in the schools. And it wanted all of this done before the 1968 school year opened.

The State of Alabama's case was identical to the one it had made earlier when Freedom of Choice was introduced. If zoning and bussing start, Wallace protegee Gov. Albert Brewer said, whites will flee the shools, and the legislature will end the public school system.

The court didn't buy Alabama's argument, but it still wouldn't end Freedom of Choice. In a compromise decision, it gave the state one year to make Freedom of Choice work, and invited the Justice Department to file a new suit next summer if it has not.

The decision made many Negroes pessimistic. By next summer, it may be too late. Even ardent Wallacites admit that Richard Nixon will probably be President by then, and many of them know that he has promised to call off the Justice Department suits. So Freedom of Choice may go on, and the schools will continue. And a more violent showdown may come