Destiny and the Desegregation Storm

Effanbee's School Picture Day Libbie

From grades first through tenth, I attended schools in a segregated independent public school system. Before mandated desegregation occurred at the end of my sophomore year by way of busing mostly African American students from their neighborhood schools to white schools, my educators had all been African American, mostly women, but there were several male African American educators on staff.  Most teachers and classmates were dedicated and focused on teaching and learning.  I excelled in all areas except higher levels of mathematics. I hated algebra and geometry was even worse. I paired myself up with those who excelled in math to gain a bit of their knowledge in order to pass those courses with at least a B average. One of the male students who helped me is now an otolaryngologist. 

My teachers actually cared about my academic achievement, but I knew I cared more.  I also knew I would have to deal with my mother's wrath had I not been a high achiever. 

There were one or two teachers who became frustrated with the occasional unfocused or disruptive student. This led them to make such arrogant statements as "I've got mine [education]. You have to get yours." It was in these classes that I worked harder.

Claudia by Gotz for FAO Schwarz

School Day Ginny by Vogue

Leroy (I should rename him) and his sister, Leneda.

Decades after I graduated with honors, school uniforms became a requirement in the local school system.  The only uniforms I wore were those dreadful white gym suits in PE and my band uniform from seventh through tenth grade. 

Fatou by Annette Himstedt wears a cotton school dress.

Carin by Tonner and big Calista by MGA are both redressed.

My primary grade school attire, selected by my mother, was always dark cotton dresses in solid or plaids for the fall and pastel colors during the spring.  Cable-knit knee-high socks in a variety of colors or ankle socks worn with penny loafers or saddle oxfords covered my legs and feet.  By grade seven, I chose my own clothes and by grade nine, I "needed" at least 10 different outfits or 10 different ways to wear my "new" school clothes to ensure that an outfit would not be repeated within a two-week school period. 

Philip Heath's Aaron looks like an avid reader, eager to learn.

Little Calista and Only Hearts Club Briana Joy are fashionably dressed.  (Briana Joy wears Calista's original fashion.)

The school dress code prohibited girls from wearing pants until my freshman or sophomore year. After repeated requests by students and as many denials, pants were finally permitted after a one-day student protest.  I was one of the protestors.  We all decided to wear pants on the same day, knowing the principal could not expel everyone.  It worked. 

Sometimes "you've got to fight the powers that be."

Hearts 4 Hearts Girls Rahel wears her new School Time Play Set, which comes with a soccer ball, her composition notebook, notepad, and pencils.  (I was prepared to replace the outfit's orange flip-flips with penny loafers, but after seeing the flip-flips on her, I decided against restricting Rahel's shoe choice.)

During my sophomore year, I submitted an application to attend the first school in the United States to offer a magnet curriculum.  Applicants could apply for full- or part-time status to study specialized courses.  I opted for part-time attendance and was accepted to attend the Business Magnet at Skyline High School.  I would attend my home school in the mornings to take my core classes and ride a school bus to the magnet school to study business courses in the afternoons.   

Before the end of my sophomore year, I learned that the 12-year school I had attended since the fourth grade (my home school) would only offer first through seventh-grade classes beginning with the next school term.  I was given a choice to choose one of three different high schools as my home school in addition to attending the magnet school part-time.  None of these optional homeschools were in my neighborhood.  With either school, I would be forced to ride a school bus to and from it.  Two of the optional schools were in white neighborhoods, and the third was in a predominantly black neighborhood, quite a distance from the HBCU college community where I lived. 

Wilma depicts the African American girl in Rockwell's painting, "The Problem We All Live With."  The 1963 painting illustrating school racial integration originally appeared in Look magazine in 1964.  The painting was inspired by one of the first African American children to attend an all-white school in the South, Ruby Bridges.

The optional predominantly black school had been labeled a "fashion show" because many students focused more on wearing the latest fashions than on their education.  Without a desire to compete in their fashion show/best-dressed antics, and being open for change, I opted to be among those blacks mandated to desegregate one of the two all-white optional schools.

"You're a radical," one of my eighth-grade teachers once told me.  "What's a radical? "I asked.  "Look it up," he said.

After taking the first yellow bus ride from my neighborhood school to the chosen school, I protested by not getting on the afternoon bus to attend the magnet school where I was to study business.  I was not about to spend the majority of my school day riding a yellow bus to one school, then to another, and back home again.  To and from one school was more than enough bus riding for me.  So, I marched my 16-year-old self to the counselor's office and requested a full class load at the new, desegregated home school.

Determine your own destiny and be radical about it, if necessary.

My first desegregated school year was quite eventful.  I heard about several fights between black and white students, mostly boys.  Differences in culture, skin color, and prohibited racial slurs from whites toward blacks caused these physical altercations.  An ambulance was summoned after one event that caused a head injury during a stairwell fight where several boys attacked another.  Many white parents removed their children from the school.  The majority toughed it out.  By the end of my junior year, the unrest settled; there was quiet after the desegregation storm. 

Was it worth it?  Would it have been better to staff all schools with teachers who possessed the same qualifications and equal desire to educate in equally equipped schools than to uproot children from their communities to others where in most cases they were not welcome?

At my all-black schools, I knew most of my teachers cared about me as a person and as one of their students. Fights were usually only verbal and physical ones were usually limited to the last day of school fights between rival students who knew they could not get expelled on the last day.  Racial slurs were nonexistent.  You knew your teacher would contact your mother with sincere concern if you made even the slightest mistake; your neighbors would "rat" on you, too.  So you were usually always "on" your best behavior.  They (the teachers and the neighbors) all knew your parents, so you had better behave or there would be definite and swift consequences.  There was no calling 911 on your parents because there was no child abuse at least not what is defined as child abuse today.

At the desegregated school with its predominantly white staff, the majority of the teachers cared about educating us as a whole, but only a handful gave me the impression they cared about me as a person.  None of them knew my parents.

School kids appear eager to learn and are uniformly or individually fashionably dressed. 

Because those AA teachers had years before arrogantly proclaimed they had gotten theirs, long before I entered that desegregated school setting, I knew full well that I had better get mine, too.  So I did, sometimes fashionably dressed in an outfit that had not been worn in at least 10 days, but by senior year, I didn't care who had seen me in what.

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