Both Sides Now: The Story of School Desegregation’s Graduates

8. But That Was a Different Time

264 EIGHT But That Was a Different Time The history of school desegregation in the United States includes many instances of white students never showing up to their newly assigned racially mixed public schools. This was not at all uncommon in the South, where “segregation academies”—private schools for white children— opened just in time to enroll students who were fleeing desegregated schools. Yet in Charlotte, North Carolina, the focus of a famous 1971 Supreme Court case that allowed districts to transport students, or “bus” them, to achieve racial balance, relatively few whites fled the public schools. Many attribute this to the role that several affluent and prominent white families played in supporting the desegregation in Charlotte—in some cases, putting their own children on buses to attend a historically black high school. In Charlotte and other cities across the country, as we noted in chapter 3, the black students were most likely to bear the burden of busing, since they were more likely to be reassigned to white schools and at a younger age. But when it came to the historically black West Charlotte High School, a source of pride in the city’s African American community and the only black high school the district had not closed down, the district leaders knew desegregation would be possible only if white students were reassigned there—and if they showed up. The Charlotte-Mecklenburg School Board and several community leaders agreed to a plan that sent white high school students from some Chapter 08 10/1/08 12:00 PM Page 264 of the wealthiest and most influential families on the east side of town to the black community that was West Charlotte’s home. Reassignment to West Charlotte of some of the district’s best teachers—along with the establishment there of a special program called the Open Program— helped entice white students. Hannah Monroe was one of hundreds of white students who, in the mid-1970s, along with Betsy Hagart, was assigned to West Charlotte High. Hannah’s parents, unlike Betsy’s, supported desegregation in Charlotte and never questioned whether she would go to her newly assigned school. In fall 1977, she and several of her friends from her affluent white neighborhood set out for West Charlotte and did not look back. Hannah, who is cheerful, warm, and outgoing (“My husband and my children laugh at me because I talk to anybody, anywhere”), said she had not missed her neighborhood high school, Myers Park, which people in her community had attended for generations. It was seen as the most desirable school in the district, and some white students from Hannah’s neighborhood who had been reassigned to West Charlotte tried to appeal the transfer. Some families moved to keep their children in Myers Park. As Hannah explained it, “When you pull a group of people, and a pretty small group of people, [who] . . . had focused most of their life on attending a school that perhaps their parents attended, it is a big change.” The change had cultural and other dimensions, many of which Hannah and her white classmates ended up embracing. For instance, as we noted, West Charlotte’s band and cheerleading squad had a different, more fluid style than those of the white schools. Although, as discussed in chapter 3, much of the tradition and pride of the old West Charlotte High School was hidden or at the very least downplayed, the new West Charlotte of the late 1970s, with a student body that was about 50 percent black and 50 percent white and a long tradition of serving the black community , was not going to become just another white school. According to Hannah, West Charlotte was an important part of the black community, so certain traditions were not going to die easily. “So assemblies and things, [we] just did the way they’d always been done, and that didn’t bother anybody.” b u t t h a t wa s a d i f f e r e n t t i m e 265 Chapter 08 10/1/08 12:00 PM Page 265 Hannah laughed, noting that West Charlotte was in many ways different from the predominantly white Myers Park: it was a more forwardlooking , more “hip” high school. For instance, Hannah noted that the school play at West Charlotte one year was Godspell, whereas the Myers Park production was The Sound...