The Hardest Deal of All: The Battle Over School Integration in Mississippi, 1870â?"1980

CHAPTER EIGHT: SCHOOL INTEGRATION: A Pyrrhic Victory?

193 SCHOOL INTEGRATION A Pyrrhic Victory? At the end of the 1971–7 school year, the second full year of school integration in Meridian, the local chapter of the NAACP registered complaints about a number of problems in the public schools. The group charged that black students were unfairly disciplined and subsequently suspended for lengthy terms. Black leaders in Meridian suggested that a biracial student and parent committee develop “uniform disciplinary rules” and that suspensions last no longer than three days for each infraction. Black citizens in Meridian also pointed out that many schools had no black administrators and that the number of white teachers had increased in the district even as the number of white students declined. Blacks demanded more black administrators and a “freeze” on hiring white teachers. In addition, blacks in Meridian perceived that their children were “being labeled ‘retarded’ and ‘unteachable’ by white administrators and forced out of regular classroom situations”; the parents called for an end to such practices. Other problems cited by the local NAACP chapter included a lack of black history offerings and the failure to develop biracial social activities “that will help the students of both races become better acquainted with the other.”1 The ongoing battles between blacks and whites in the Meridian public schools after integration were stoked by the fact that whites continued to exercise total control over the schools and neglected to ask for or heed black CHAPTER EIGHT input on how to operate an integrated school system. After the first year of school integration in Meridian, for example, the local chapter of the NAACP sent the Meridian school board, an all-white body, a list of problems that parents and students had pointed out concerning the integrated schools. The NAACP claimed that overall, “progress has been made, but existing problems tend to overshadow such progress.” During the second year of school integration, these concerns merely continued to fester, since the school board failed to address any of the problems or even respond to the complaints. As the NAACP pointed out, blacks in the city had a “different view point of school matters” than the all-white school board; without any real communication between whites and blacks, school difficulties continued to plague the Meridian schools for many years after integration. The problems identified by the Meridian NAACP were not unique to that school district. Indeed, the Meridian catalog of complaints about the state of integrated education resonated with blacks in many of the state’s school districts during the 1970s. Although the dual school system was eliminated in Meridian and throughout Mississippi in 1970, blacks across the state found that racial discrimination did not suddenly disappear merely because the state’s separate but equal educational arrangements had been dismantled through forceful federal action. Eight years after the transformation to unitary schools, Aaron Henry delivered what by then was becoming a familiar message to NAACP members at their annual state meeting: segregation and discrimination in education were still problems in Mississippi.He specifically cited the“push out of Black students particularly Black males,”the demotion or loss of black teachers and administrators, and “the many hostilities and discourtesies heaped upon Black children daily by school authorities.”3 For black Mississippians, the achievement of school integration in 1970 represented a giant step forward in their century-long battle to secure the bestpossible education for their children, but many soon recognized the often staggering price exacted for this triumph.School integration occurred largely on white terms, typically with a diminution of black control over education , a loss of black institutions nurtured during the years of enforced racial segregation, and a thinning of the ranks of black teachers and administrators . For many, the integration of the state’s public schools represented a pyrrhic victory over Mississippi’s dual school system. 194 SCHOOL INTEGRATION: A PYRRHIC VICTORY? White leaders had the power to shape school integration in ways that suited their concerns, primarily how to allay the fears of their white constituents, since they remained firmly in control of the state’s public school system when the U.S. Supreme Court issued its Alexander decision in October 1969. Faced with a mandate to abolish the dual school system immediately, or at least by the fall of 1970, many school districts had to act quickly to come up with acceptable school integration plans. While some districts sought black input, in most areas...