Yazoo: Integration in a Deep-Southern Town

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15·Less than one year after the integration of the first thirty Mississippi school districts, in late 1970, the effects of the Alexander decision had spread throughout the entire South. Those states which had been the most successful in adjusting to the change were those with enlightened leadership, from state governors on down. The Nixon Administration , which had done little to discourage the resignations of a number of key civil rights and education officials who had charged it with vacillation and bad faith (including several black administrators who said they could not face even the moderate black community after what the party of Lincoln was avoiding), claimed that by the end of 1970, 90 per cent of all black children in the South were in unitary school systems. Knowledgeable civil rights workers disputed that figure. Although many areas of the South had finally integrated their schools on a full scale with a remarkable absence of violence or ill 111 Willie Morris will, the dual system in scores of school districts had not been abolished, and the goal of the Alexander decision was still far away. Indeed, the most direct and tangible example of the way the national Administration which ruled this disparate nation in 1970 had failed as any admirable guiding force was on just this matter. If the bedraggled and whippeddown New South were going to make it through all this, it would now be because of itself. From all over the region during these early months of 1970, a number of the old-style segregationist leaders continued on the path of intransigence, re-enacting the old scenarios as if little had changed since 1954. The governors of Georgia, Alabama, and Mississippi were as defiant as ever. Even those school districts which had been predominantly or entirely abandoned to the blacks remained in the control of white superintendents and school boards, principals and athletic coaches in formerly all-black schools were being demoted, and black teachers were being fired. Many school officials, local politicians, and conservative organizations followed the example of the diehard leaders.*The neighborhood school was their symbol, and they took an adamant stand against the use of free busing as a desirable method for ending segregation. Several techniques were used as the 1970 'Paul Gaston, "The South: Goal Still Distant, but Many Schools Go Well," South Today, December, 1970. 112 Yazoo fall term opened to challenge the law. In Mobile, for instance, which had had a particularly long and exasperating history of defiance through the courts and where disillusioned young blacks came closer to talking the language of the Northern black extremists than anywhere else in the South (Roy Ennis of CORE had come there and had found a constituency among these hostile and pathetically disaffected blacks that was highly sympathetic to his idea of a separatist black state in Utah, Nevada, North Dakota, or southern Montana*), more than a thousand white students reported to schools to which they had not been assigned. The chairman of the Mobile school board called the integration plan which the courts had ordered "asinine" and said, "It's theirs and they can enforce it." In many integrated schools, a number of ploys were used to avoid the spirit of the law. A widespread use of "ability tracking" led to extreme situations such as the one in Franklinton, Louisiana, *1 was a delegate to a recent convention of "leading world intellectuals " at Princeton. Roy Ennis is a likable and engaging man, but when he stood up and expounded on his concept of the separate black nation in America (Africa-in-America was its name), the delegates from Europe and Asia were somewhat baffled, but largely took the idea seriously. Ennis spoke of a separate fiscal system, a separate foreign policy, a separate post office, etc. In the question period, a German philosopher was curious to know if the foreign policy would be linked to NATO and the Common Market, and an Italian sociologist inquired in some detail about the monetary issues. Later a distinguished white American historian, a native of Arkansas , said, "Mr. Ennis, we tried that a hundred years ago and it didn't work." 113 Willie Morris in which 150 blacks were put in all-black classes and another 150 were assigned to classes with a handful of whites. In other schools, blacks were excluded from organizations and activities. And in most cases the whole stress of...