In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:

  • Governor William Winter and the Clarion-Ledger:A Symbiotic Relationship during the Adoption of the 1982 Education Reform Act*
  • Kathleen W. Wickham (bio)

William Winter was a third-grader when he first became aware of the disparity between schools attended by white students and those attended by his black playmates in Grenada County, but it was not until he became governor in 1980 that he was in a position to make changes in the state’s commitment to education. Even then it took him two years and a boost from the state’s largest newspaper to persuade the legislature that education reform was vital to Mississippi’s economic development.

The result of his efforts included legislation that created publicly funded kindergartens, an improved elementary school reading program, substantial pay raises for teachers, the hiring of classroom teaching assistants for the primary grades, the hiring of truant officers, and a raised mandatory attendance age to fourteen from the previous age of twelve (Wright, Douglas, and Herron). A statewide testing program was implemented, no-pass-no-play rules were adopted, and high school graduation requirements were stiffened. In addition, changes were made in teacher certification and professional development requirements. School accreditation programs and statewide salary plans were implemented. Adequate and fairer school district financing and establishing qualifications for school board members were part of the package, too.

The son of teachers, William Winter was raised in a family interested in public affairs and in improving the well-being of the state. His mother [End Page 63] taught for over forty years, and his father not only taught but also worked as a farmer and served in the state legislature for twenty-four years. “I grew up in a rural section of the county,” Winter recalled in an interview. “The only public school was one room with one teacher for grades one through six. My mom taught me and all the first-through six-graders.”

After second grade the one-room school was closed, and Winter, along with his nine classmates, was sent to the Grenada city schools. He recalled riding the school bus to school and seeing his black playmates toiling in the fields. The black children, however, could not attend school until November because they had to stay home and pick cotton. “I’d grown up on this cotton farm. Most of my friends were black. I played with them. I learned to swim with them and did everything kids that age do,” he said, “because I was white I could go to a good school and they could not.” The memory stayed with him: “We emphasized separate but we didn’t emphasize equal. That caught on in my head that we were not treating the black kids the same way we were treating the white kids.”

Until the 1970s Mississippi operated a segregated school system under the 1896 US Supreme Court decision Plessy v. Ferguson, which allowed for the creation of “separate but equal” public schools and facilities. The schools were seldom equal in terms of budgets, school attendance, or educational expectations. In 1954 the US Supreme Court overturned Plessy in the controversial Brown v. Board of Education decision, creating a new focus on public schools. A second decision the next year called on the states to integrate public schools with “all deliberate speed,” but it was not until 1970 that the entirety of the state’s public schools was integrated. At that point integration occurred, for the most part, under federal court orders.

Opposition to school integration was so strong the state legislature approved, in 1956 by a two-thirds vote, a constitutional amendment allowing for the closure of the public schools. The public schools never closed, but there remained little interest in funding schools for blacks, nor in educating the state’s minority citizens so that they could qualify for higher-paying jobs. Jim Crow laws adopted by Mississippi and other Southern states after Reconstruction further enforced rigid segregation of the races at all levels of society including employment, housing, and travel.

Winter made an unsuccessful bid for governor in 1967 after having served in the legislature for twelve years. He also served terms as state tax collector...

pdf

Share