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

CHAPTER FIVE: FREEDOM OF CHOICE FOR WHITES: Massive Resistance by Another Name

117 FREEDOM OF CHOICE FOR WHITES Massive Resistance by Another Name From 1964 to 1969, Mississippi’s school districts desegregated their schools through the mechanism known as freedom of choice.Under freedom-of-choice plans, students were supposedly allowed to go to any school in a district. Though this type of school desegregation conjured up images that suggested the epitome of the American way, white Mississippians sought to mold the freedom-of-choice method into a bulwark for preserving their dual school system. Indeed, segregationists in Mississippi and other southern states believed they had found a way to satisfy the requirements of the Brown decision while still preserving largely segregated schools. Much like the earlier equalization strategy, which was still promoted as a way to forestall school integration well into the late 1960s, freedom-of-choice desegregation was viewed by Mississippi segregationists as a way to bend their devotion to racial segregation just enough to satisfy federal laws and black demands while preserving as much of their dual school system as possible . In other words, as school desegregation finally began in Mississippi, massive resistance to the Brown mandate remained alive and well in the state. The strategy of embracing freedom of choice as a delaying tactic became quite apparent as white officials in Mississippi squared off with a federal government that began, in 1964, to take a more active role in trying to force compliance with the legal requirement for desegregated education.The Civil CHAPTER FIVE Rights Act of 1964 marked the end of a decade-long policy of limited action by the federal government in pressing the Deep South on school segregation. The landmark legislation gave the executive branch additional powers to effect school desegregation in the region. President John F. Kennedy realized as early as the summer of 1963 that while the federal courts had done a good job of “directing the desegregation of schools on the local level,” the use of court action “cannot be left solely to those who may not have the economic resources to carry the legal action or who may be subject to harassment.” This understanding lay at the heart of Title IV of the Civil Rights Act of 1964, which authorized the U.S. attorney general to initiate school desegregation lawsuits after receiving a complaint. Given the history of white hostility to any black support for school integration in Mississippi, however, this method of bolstering federal support for school desegregation offered little chance to change the racial status quo, since it still required blacks to step forward and demand change. A more promising section of the Civil Rights Act of 1964 for advancing school desegregation in the state was Title VI, a controversial and unprecedented federal enforcement measure that barred racial discrimination in any “program or activity receiving Federal financial assistance” and authorized a cutoff of federal funds to violators, subject to guidelines established by federal agencies and approved by the president.1 Title VI became particularly important in the mid-1960s because of the passage of another piece of unprecedented federal legislation, the ESEA of 1965, which initially provided $1.3 billion to fund a variety of elementary and secondary schooling costs, including the development of programs to aid low-income students. Before the passage of ESEA, despite spending a sizable part of its tax monies on public education, Mississippi lagged behind the rest of the nation in key measures of educational health. In 1964, the state had both the lowest average teacher salary and the lowest spending per pupil. Within a few short years, ESEA funding became a significant part of the Mississippi public education budget. By 1967, $38 million of the state’s $00 million education outlay came from federal sources, most from ESEA monies. No other state had almost a fifth of its public education bill paid for by the federal government. Because of the money involved and the basic poverty of Mississippi’s public education system, the state could hardly afford a Title VI federal fund stoppage, a fact recognized by at least some white Mississippians. For 118 FREEDOM OF CHOICE FOR WHITES instance, the Ripley Junior Chamber of Commerce told the local school board that “we are in no way promoting integration but realize that we have no other choice if we are to continue to make the necessary progress of educating our young people. We feel that if we are to improve the...