Resistance on the Border: School Desegregation in Western Kentucky, 1954–1964

Resistance on the Border: School Desegregation in Western Kentucky,19541964 DAVID L. WOLFFORD fter the Supreme Court ruled unconstitutional separate but eqtial schools in 1954, segregated communities required a transitional period before their schools could reach a fully integrated status. Some southern city and county school districts complied with the spirit of the Brou, ii v. Board of Education ruling, integrating rapidly and with little friction. Iii other locales,segregationists and school officials prevented African Americans from entering the traditionally white schools. Of states in the segregated South,Kentucky integrated successfully and served as a model for the desegregation process. State administrators promised to follow the Court' s luit b all deliberate speed order while encouraging citizens and school officials to do the same. By October 1956, ninetytwo of the state's 160 school districts with biracial populations had mixed enrollments and the state' s largest district, Louisville,received national attention for being one of the first southern cities to integrate.' To paint the Commonwealth's transition as entirely peaceful and local school officials as compliant, however, would be an overgeneralization. Conflicts arose, especially in the state's western region where segregationists publicly protested, instilled fear in the black community,and consciously resisted the new order of things. Public schools integrated at a more gradual rate than the state at large. Lackadaisical school boards ignored the spirit of Brown and played to the will of their constituencies,making necessary lawsuits and extra law enforcement. A close investigation of school desegregation in western Kentucky'reveals how a unique region, in a predominately compliant state, reluctantly integrated its public schools. The National Association for the Advancement of Colored People ( NAACP) faced conflicts early in the Civil Rights era,shaping the organization' s postBrown legal strategy. This investigation also reveals how compliance and defiance coexisted . Some communities integrated quickly and quietly while others compromised. The western Kentucky region differs in terms of its history,culture,and race relations from the rest of the state. Before emancipation,significant numbers of slaves were found in southwestern Kentucky and along the Tennessee borden The area' s hint of plantation culture and its cotton production, itself a major symbol of plantation life in the Old South, increased the reverence for slavery. In addition to laboring on farms, bondpeople were put to work in mines. As SUMMER 2004 41 RESISTANCE ON THE BORDER Justice Jobn Marshall Harlan.a Kentucky native. teas ati early prot) onent of desegregation. Tbe u, ily dissenter in tbe U. S. Supreme Court' s ruling of Plessy L'. Fergitioil, be declayed, " Tbe Constitution is cole, rblind, and neither knc, lus nol' tc, lerates classes among citizells." The F ilsoii Historical Societi George C. Wright states, " the white residents of [ the Jackson Purchase and Western Kentuckyl have long prided themselves as southerners, poiliting to their Confederate ties," making the region not only southern culturally but a Confederate area politically. The 1860 federal elections revealed where residents iii western Kentucky stood. Citizens of the Jackson Purchase ( the state's eight westernmost counties) cast their v() tes for Southern Democrat John Breckenridge in the presidential election;indeed,only one " Southern Rightist" won election to a congressional seat from Kentucky and the seat represented the westernmost district of the state. Secessionists held a convention in Logan County, named Bowling Green as Kentucky's new Confederate capital, and in a May 1861 meeting in Mayfield " advocated joining west Tennessee to form a new Confederate state." As states began tc)take sides,Kentucky remained in the Union, but the Purchase supplied niore than fivethousand troops as Confederate volunteers,while only about five hundred from the same area joined the Union army. During Reconstruction , the region despised the Radical Republicans of Congress, feared federal power,and further aligned itself with southern Democrats: uring the early years of the twentieth century,the Black Patch Wars united inhabitants from northwestern Tennessee and southwestern Kentucky. The conflict over tobacco prices pitted hastily organized labor against the American Tc, bacco Cc, inpany,forcing the company to seek laborers from the African American community . Black Kentuckians who accepted such contracts only heightened the racial tensions already in place. Night Riders terrorized and whipped those who went...