Reflection on the Desegregation of Schools

By: Joyce Raney

AHTC Summer Institute 2010

When I applied to attend the Summer Institute—The Civil Rights Movement, I was hoping to receive information beyond what I already teach, specifically about additional people who impacted the Civil Rights Movement. I did receive new information and the names of important people of whom I was not familiar, but I gained so much more than that.

I attended schools from 1960-1973 but never even knew much about what was happening in the Civil Rights Movement. I had heard of Martin Luther King, Jr. and remember when he was assassinated. I knew that “colored” people came to fish in the reservoir of the small town where I lived but had to leave by dark. I heard adults call black-skinned people “coons”, and I knew they lived on the other side of the tracks in the town where my dad worked. But I never saw them as real, live people who were being treated terribly; I mistakenly thought that’s just the way things were supposed to be!

During the institute, we watched documentaries in which we saw people from this time period being interviewed. To listen to the people who were students and parents of these students describe the experience of trying to go to the white school made the people and events so real for me. By reading newspaper articles from that time, listening to Dr. Williams describe what desegregation looked like in Urbana, and reading sections of books, I was able to more clearly see the true picture of segregation and desegregation.

According to the book Putting the Movement Back into Civil Rights, between 1849 and 1924, several Black parents went to court to fight for their children’s right to attend a desegregated school. They wanted schools to be desegregated because they thought if white children came to their school, books would improve, and their quality of education would improve so they could go to college. Some Black students lived close to the white school but had to walk several blocks to the black school. Schools for Black children had few books in their library.

On May 17, 1954 in the case of Brown vs. the Board of Education of Topeka, KS, the US Supreme Court outlawed racial segregation in public schools. And yet according to the section of the CD “Chicago Segregated Case”, schools in the Chicago Public Schools system were still segregated in 1963. One of the parents interviewed thought “schools should rescue children from their blighted environment and prepare them to meet the difficult problems in life.” Another parent reported that the schools the Black children attended were on the verge of collapse, had inferior equipment, and the students were only able to attend school for ½ day. The Board of Education wouldn’t allow Black students to go to another school, even if the school for whites was closer to their home. White children who lived in Negro areas were urged to transfer to schools in another district, even though enrollment in the schools for Blacks was declining. The Board of Education forced Negro property owners close to school to sell their homes so another school for Negroes could be built, even though there were other schools with empty rooms. One of the school principals refused to let colored students go to school and gave them a permit for a different school because they were colored. Colored teachers were persuaded to transfer from a school where they’d taught a long time to a school near their home, which was a Negro school. Principals were permitted to reject teachers on the basis of color.

The Board of Education restricted admission of colored students to the Chicago Teacher College. The proportion of Negro students had to be kept down because after graduation, there’d be no place for them to work because they wouldn’t be accepted by the principal in the white district and weren’t wanted in the Negro district. Colored college students were told they’d be teaching only colored students.

Black students couldn’t have vocational training in school because the equipment was furnished by a private organization which reserved the right to say what types of students could be taught on the equipment. Negro schools had too few playgrounds, swimming pools, gyms, stadiums and athletic fields, which contributed to the delinquency of colored children. Children were not allowed to bring books home and couldn’t have assemblies. Many of the schools for Black children were overcrowded; one parent interviewed said that some classes were even taught on the stage. According to another parent interviewed, schools for Black students had incompetent, unsatisfactory or newer, inexperienced teachers, who were often transferred from other districts to the Negro school. Students frequently had 4 or 5 different teachers during one semester.

In Dr. Williams’ presentation about the desegregation of Urbana schools, he shared that Hays School was desegregated in the fall of 1966. Some of the parents wanted Urbana schools to be desegregated, so Black students were bussed to other schools in the district. Children from Orchard Downs were bussed to Hays School where there was an enrichment program. When Black students came to Prairie School, they were met by angry white parents.

By listening to Dr. Williams’ presentation, reading from the CD and reading excerpts from books, I gained more knowledge about desegregation in our schools and will use this information to share with my students. We will even talk about the desegregation of the school the children attend today.