From Brown to Meredith: The Long Struggle for School Desegregation in Louisville, Kentucky, 1954-2007

1. School Desegregation in the Wake of Brown, 1954–1971

 c h a p t e r o n e School Desegregation in the Wake of Brown, 1954–1971 In an oral history interview in , Barry Bingham, the white publisher of the Courier Journal and the Louisville Times, remarked, “We did have a record here in Louisville which is worth remembering. I think the year was  when the first integration of the Louisville schools came about, and that was done in such a peaceful way that President Eisenhower gave Louisville a citation for the integration of the schools.” The story he encouraged people to recall was of how the city had managed to implement the Brown decision with broad public cooperation and little of the furor seen elsewhere in the South, winning national and even international renown for its efforts. That story became for a time part of the city’s identity , invoked by both blacks and whites, and many city residents still remembered the success of the school desegregation process two decades later. But other memories of school desegregation in the wake of Brown, especially those of the young pioneers that made it a reality, tarnish that reputation. Later, these young people did not remember the peaceful transition and praise, but rather the barriers to a fully equal education in the newly mixed schools. The narratives in this chapter thus illustrate how the past can be remembered through different lenses, and the way conflicting memories complicate interpretations of the history of school desegregation. In , when the Supreme Court announced the Brown v. Board of Education decision, African American leaders in Louisville responded with an enthusiasm tempered only by concern that the court’s orders be implemented quickly. The editor of the Defender, the local black newsweekly , called Brown the culmination of a thirty-year fight. Expressing  / school desegregation, – optimism for swift action on the decision, African American principal William H. Perry Jr. predicted that “Louisville is one city where desegregation will be accepted without any great problem” and would thus serve “as a pattern for other southern cities.” In the coming months black spokesmen pushed for a rapid pace of change. For example, Charles Steele, the executive secretary of the local Urban League, told the Courier Journal that he hoped officials would make no effort to “dodge” the decision . Exactly one month later, the Defender began a series of articles to press school administrators to make quick progress on integration, calling on city and state officials to make Louisville a positive example for Kentucky and the entire South. White leaders in the city and state initially exhibited some inclination to do so. Louisville school board president William C. Embry announced that planning for desegregation would begin right away. Both the city’s school superintendent, Omer Carmichael, and the county superintendent , Richard Van Hoose, replied that since the decision had been anticipated , their staff had already begun discussing how to accomplish it. On the state level, Governor Lawrence Wetherby asserted that “Kentucky will do whatever is necessary to comply with the law,” and his attorney general, J. D. Buckman Jr., declared that the court’s decision nullified the Day Law and provisions for segregation in the state constitution. However , the momentum promised by these expressions of goodwill quickly stalled. The state school superintendent, Wendell P. Butler, praised the Supreme Court for delaying implementation pending its decision in Brown II, and signaled that Kentucky would put the brakes on for the immediate future. Soon thereafter, the Kentucky Board of Education ordered school districts to delay action on desegregation until at least after the – school year. The Louisville Board of Education agreed to follow the state’s lead. Despite this directive, in November  Superintendent Carmichael asked principals, teachers, and Parent-Teacher Association (PTA) leaders to discuss possible problems that might come up in desegregation and how to avoid them. The Defender praised the move as a valuable first step. Then the superintendent visited a variety of civic groups to talk about desegregation. On one such occasion, a family fellowship night at a Methodist church, he promised to follow whatever the Supreme Court ordered for implementation without “subterfuge or sharp practices to defeat the purpose of the court.” When Brown II was announced in late spring , Morton Walker, the new president of the school board, concluded that they lacked the time to make a drastic change before the fall school desegregation, – /  semester, but he and Carmichael promised that Louisville city schools...