Dr. Richardson, thank you for your historical look at public education and the corruption of those education efforts by Republicans willing to steal money meant for public good.
Integration in the cities of America, not just southern cities, but northern cities too, was met by either privatization of education (as in Louisiana where paren…
Dr. Richardson, thank you for your historical look at public education and the corruption of those education efforts by Republicans willing to steal money meant for public good.
Integration in the cities of America, not just southern cities, but northern cities too, was met by either privatization of education (as in Louisiana where parents established Catholic private schools to avoid integration), or segregation, as occurred in 100% of all Northern Cities via suburbanization.
Surprisingly, public education remained, in my youth, available for ALL races in the rural areas of the United States. I grew up in rural East Texas. There was one school, Slocum, ISD, that served miles of territory. By 1965 (13 years before Boston integrated), when I was 5 and entered school, Black kids were able to attend my public school. At that time, those schools were still taught by women whose choices had been limited to: Marriage, Nursing, or Teaching.
So, the smartest women in Texas went into teaching. I, and my, my Black classmates (some of them), benefited so very, very much.
So, while education failed in the cities of America, both north and south, for black Americans and white Americans, in the rural areas, Black Americans had equal access to education.
However, because Black Americans did NOT have equal access to jobs, the Black students often dropped out of school by age 14 due to many factors, all poverty related.
In 1976 I obtained a job to read the water meters in all of Slocum water systems homes. This was a great job and paid $50 per month. I needed only my ancient car, a big glove to move the black widow spiders under the covers out of the way to see the meter, and a desire to spend two days a month driving all over creation.
I had map so I could find every home with water.
As I drove southeast from Slocum, toward the Neches River bottom, the map showed a small road leading to what I thought was home with one meter. I drove down a dirt road, for quite a ways, and came out at a clearing where I could see one water spigot rising from the ground next to a water meter with a black cover on it.
But, in addition to the one water meter, there was a semi-circle of shacks s around the one single spigot. There were two outhouses behind the shacks. As I stood there looking for dogs that might bite while I tried to read the meter, one of my Black classmates came of a shack and asked me: “Mike, what on earth are you doing here?”.
For me, this was an easy question: “I have to read this water meter”.
Then, I asked: “What are you doing here?” He seemed confused. “I live here Mike”.
I looked around again. In that look around, my own perceptions about everything changed and have continued to evolve since. I realized that ALL of the black kids that went to school in Slocum lived in this small semi-circle of shacks. This was 1976.
So, sure, Education was available to them. The bus picked them up if they attended. But, they had no running water in their homes. Later I came to understand the parents could only get menial jobs. None of them owned any land which sustained the rest of the school’s kids.
I wrote an essay in college about this and, although my instructor DID believe my story, and made me read it aloud to my all white classmates, some thought I made it up to get an A, which, I did. But, the story is true.
Since then I have always noticed that my workplace, as an engineer, has been almost always devoid of Black engineers. In fact, in my entire career (here in the north and the south), I have seen three Black engineers in my organizations. Out of hundreds I have met.
It seems to me that it is always 1976 in America. Or 1876. Or 1776.
Mike S., thank you for this moving and revealing portrait of your educational experiences in Slocum, East Texas, both in and outside of school. We should all be stunned, as you were, that all your black classmates lived in a circle of shacks with only outhouses and one shared water spigot, in 1976.
I've been on a (too slow) path for a couple of years to move beyond passive sympathy for the suffering of people of color, in which I have given to charities that help those communities, but not taken any action in my own life. In other words, I had lived my life as a typical white person, mostly oblivious to my white privilege, and to all the ways that racism and oppression are structural in our society, and in the Boston area where I grew up and still live.
In adulthood, I and my then husband made the same choice his and my parents had in the early 1960's. As soon as we could afford it, we bought a house in an outer suburb, because that's where the houses were bigger and nicer, where real estate values were reliably high and where the good schools were. It never occurred to ys that we were reinforcing the de facto segregation of the Boston area, or that there might be any other rational or enlightened choice. Like, oh, buying a house in an older, more diverse neighborhood closer to Boston, and then joining the diverse community of parents working to ensure the local public schools provided all our children with a quality education. We didn't do that. We were lazy. We acted purely in our own interest, making the unconsciously racist choices that generations had engineered for us, with slavery, prejudice, redlining, and all the other tools of structural racism. We didn't think we were racists.
We bought the white northern liberal fiction. We thought that to be racist, you had to hate people of color, to wish them ill, and to take active, conscious steps to hurt them or to violate their rights, attitudes we were appalled by and actions we would never do. Racists were the haters in the South who lynched people of color, who murdered Emmet Till, who murdered civil rights workers Andrew Goodman, James Chaney, and Michael Schwerner. In my mind, racists were the white people who screamed vicious slurs at the nine children who integrated the high school in Little Rock, Arkansas in 1957. Racists were horrible people. Certainly not us.
A white privilege awareness workshop at church a couple of years ago was a necessary and long overdue eye opener, but I still live in a 99% white Boston suburb. The racist strategies that created the North's de facto segregation in the 19th and 20th century were so effective that these days, they are self-perpetuating. All the "nice", "I'm not a racist" white people like me just naturally make all the same choices to live in the white suburbs where the schools are good and the real estate values are high and the neighborhoods are "safe". And the 1-acre or 2-acre zoning ensures that the families of color trapped in generations of poverty by job, education, and lending discrimination, can't afford to move to those nice white suburbs.
I'd like to be part of the solution, and I'm looking for ways to do that, beyond donating money and working on raising my own awareness.
Hi Elizabeth. Well. I hope these suggestions are received in the best light. My attendance at churches varies. But I do include visiting a gospel church or an AME whenever the spirit strikes me. I’ve always felt a part of the service. As a teacher, I’ve had many many experiences with families that have enriched my life with different resources and approaches to everyday life. If possible, volunteer in a school different from the ones you attended or that are in your neighborhood.
Probably the most significant thing for me is that since college, never before in my suburban upbringing, I’ve counted as friends people of color that just ended up meeting me on my path. I just made sure never to pass the intersection without noticing who was there to know.
When you feel the desire in your heart to be with all people who are different and yet the same as you, then opportunity will greet you. We just have to be all colors on the inside. Then it gets easy.
Other ideas I've thought of include starting a college/life-launch fund for a young student of color. One of the many hurdles I face is that with one exception of someone dear to me whom I am already helping as I can, all the people of color I know are the ones I run into in my white-and-doing-fine world: People I've met in technology jobs and so forth. The structural racism of our society segregates all of
us so well that I have a puzzle to figure out: how to connect and form relationships with people of color who have *not* already defied all the odds and "made it" into the kind of prosperity that white people have. My best idea so far is to start attending my suburban church's diverse sister church in Boston--and keep showing up with an attitude of service and humility. But have I done it since I thought of it two years ago? Not yet, because ... excuses: I don't have time for the two-hour round-trip drive to the city, every Sunday I have something else important I have to do, where would I park, would my car get keyed or stolen, would I get mugged (all classic racist fears, even if they are not completely unfounded. Do I have the same fears when I think about spending an evening in pretty-white-upscale Cambridge? Nope.) So... umm... I'll figure out how to do it _next_ month....
It's not change and it doesn't count until I put it into action. Clearly I'm not done working on my own self.
I too, have long struggled to sort ways to reconcile what I saw when I was 16.
For all I know, that semicircle of shacks is what anyone would see today. I have not been back to that particular location since I gave up that job when I went to Texas A&M to become an engineer.
For 1000 reasons I have also not sorted how to help the complete absence of black engineers in the workforce.
I was only a manager with hiring ability for two years in my career (by choice I rotated back to technology development).
During that time as manager I found only one black engineer available at the schools my then company hired from at that time. I did not get to choose the Universities we hired from.
We hired one Black guy while I was manager. He was quickly promoted out of my group and onto other groups. I lost track of him.
One Black guy in a 38 year career was all I could muster help for.
What do you know of the "Slocum Massacre" of 1910? I had to do a search to find where Slocum was, and that was the first thing that popped up. Then I saw how close Slocum is to Nacogdoches...
Thank you Ally for the referral to the “Slocum Massacre”.
Helps make it clear why The Texas GOP is so desperate to hide its past and to keep its complete history from being taught in its schools.
I was a liberal Canadian attending SMU’s Cox School of Business and working in Dallas in the late 70’s in real estate development, an area largely dependant on understanding the community I was working in. Even though I had all the resources and introductions I could wish for I always felt I was in a social fog and could never fully grasp what was really going on around me. Most confusing we’re the always pleasant but somehow ominous “Ya’ll take care now, heah” that ended meetings with so many older conservative Texas businessmen.
Mike, in case you are not familiar with the history of the Catholic effort to educate African American students, you might be interested in "Growing Up African American in Catholic Schools" edited by Jacqueline Irvine and Michèle Foster. One contributor contends that the research supports the view of Catholic schools as "more effective for the education of African American students" (p. 21), and that "the deleterious affects of race, gender, and social class seem to be ameliorated, if not eradicated, in Catholic schools" (p. 39). A few religious orders in the Church dedicated themselves solely to teaching minorities precisely because the system didn't allow them in or treat them well. And "back in the day" those schools were supported by the parishes, not the government.
As you probably know, government support began with Everson vs. the Board of Education, 1947, when the SC decided that "government-funded bus transportation and non-religious textbooks for students enrolled in parochial (religious) schools" was permissible.
What began as a sensible decision, has become increasingly complex to navigate.
I say all this to counter the argument that Catholic schools were part of the problem of diverting money from public education. They were begun with good intentions but now have become part of the problem.
And this "problem" is "worsened" by the fact that students from Catholic schools are:
Mary. Thank you for your feedback and your kindness is assuming knowledge on my part.
The Catholic schools I referred to in the state of Louisiana were all white and served the same purpose as suburbs in the north. Legal means of segregation after integration in public schools.
Are you talking about high schools in Louisiana or elementary? I know there were several elementary schools run by a few different religious congregations of Sisters (I was in one of them). I don't have time right now to give you a link but can later if you'd like.
Dr. Richardson, thank you for your historical look at public education and the corruption of those education efforts by Republicans willing to steal money meant for public good.
Integration in the cities of America, not just southern cities, but northern cities too, was met by either privatization of education (as in Louisiana where parents established Catholic private schools to avoid integration), or segregation, as occurred in 100% of all Northern Cities via suburbanization.
Surprisingly, public education remained, in my youth, available for ALL races in the rural areas of the United States. I grew up in rural East Texas. There was one school, Slocum, ISD, that served miles of territory. By 1965 (13 years before Boston integrated), when I was 5 and entered school, Black kids were able to attend my public school. At that time, those schools were still taught by women whose choices had been limited to: Marriage, Nursing, or Teaching.
So, the smartest women in Texas went into teaching. I, and my, my Black classmates (some of them), benefited so very, very much.
So, while education failed in the cities of America, both north and south, for black Americans and white Americans, in the rural areas, Black Americans had equal access to education.
However, because Black Americans did NOT have equal access to jobs, the Black students often dropped out of school by age 14 due to many factors, all poverty related.
In 1976 I obtained a job to read the water meters in all of Slocum water systems homes. This was a great job and paid $50 per month. I needed only my ancient car, a big glove to move the black widow spiders under the covers out of the way to see the meter, and a desire to spend two days a month driving all over creation.
I had map so I could find every home with water.
As I drove southeast from Slocum, toward the Neches River bottom, the map showed a small road leading to what I thought was home with one meter. I drove down a dirt road, for quite a ways, and came out at a clearing where I could see one water spigot rising from the ground next to a water meter with a black cover on it.
But, in addition to the one water meter, there was a semi-circle of shacks s around the one single spigot. There were two outhouses behind the shacks. As I stood there looking for dogs that might bite while I tried to read the meter, one of my Black classmates came of a shack and asked me: “Mike, what on earth are you doing here?”.
For me, this was an easy question: “I have to read this water meter”.
Then, I asked: “What are you doing here?” He seemed confused. “I live here Mike”.
I looked around again. In that look around, my own perceptions about everything changed and have continued to evolve since. I realized that ALL of the black kids that went to school in Slocum lived in this small semi-circle of shacks. This was 1976.
So, sure, Education was available to them. The bus picked them up if they attended. But, they had no running water in their homes. Later I came to understand the parents could only get menial jobs. None of them owned any land which sustained the rest of the school’s kids.
I wrote an essay in college about this and, although my instructor DID believe my story, and made me read it aloud to my all white classmates, some thought I made it up to get an A, which, I did. But, the story is true.
Since then I have always noticed that my workplace, as an engineer, has been almost always devoid of Black engineers. In fact, in my entire career (here in the north and the south), I have seen three Black engineers in my organizations. Out of hundreds I have met.
It seems to me that it is always 1976 in America. Or 1876. Or 1776.
Nothing changes............for Black folks.
Mike S., thank you for this moving and revealing portrait of your educational experiences in Slocum, East Texas, both in and outside of school. We should all be stunned, as you were, that all your black classmates lived in a circle of shacks with only outhouses and one shared water spigot, in 1976.
I've been on a (too slow) path for a couple of years to move beyond passive sympathy for the suffering of people of color, in which I have given to charities that help those communities, but not taken any action in my own life. In other words, I had lived my life as a typical white person, mostly oblivious to my white privilege, and to all the ways that racism and oppression are structural in our society, and in the Boston area where I grew up and still live.
In adulthood, I and my then husband made the same choice his and my parents had in the early 1960's. As soon as we could afford it, we bought a house in an outer suburb, because that's where the houses were bigger and nicer, where real estate values were reliably high and where the good schools were. It never occurred to ys that we were reinforcing the de facto segregation of the Boston area, or that there might be any other rational or enlightened choice. Like, oh, buying a house in an older, more diverse neighborhood closer to Boston, and then joining the diverse community of parents working to ensure the local public schools provided all our children with a quality education. We didn't do that. We were lazy. We acted purely in our own interest, making the unconsciously racist choices that generations had engineered for us, with slavery, prejudice, redlining, and all the other tools of structural racism. We didn't think we were racists.
We bought the white northern liberal fiction. We thought that to be racist, you had to hate people of color, to wish them ill, and to take active, conscious steps to hurt them or to violate their rights, attitudes we were appalled by and actions we would never do. Racists were the haters in the South who lynched people of color, who murdered Emmet Till, who murdered civil rights workers Andrew Goodman, James Chaney, and Michael Schwerner. In my mind, racists were the white people who screamed vicious slurs at the nine children who integrated the high school in Little Rock, Arkansas in 1957. Racists were horrible people. Certainly not us.
A white privilege awareness workshop at church a couple of years ago was a necessary and long overdue eye opener, but I still live in a 99% white Boston suburb. The racist strategies that created the North's de facto segregation in the 19th and 20th century were so effective that these days, they are self-perpetuating. All the "nice", "I'm not a racist" white people like me just naturally make all the same choices to live in the white suburbs where the schools are good and the real estate values are high and the neighborhoods are "safe". And the 1-acre or 2-acre zoning ensures that the families of color trapped in generations of poverty by job, education, and lending discrimination, can't afford to move to those nice white suburbs.
I'd like to be part of the solution, and I'm looking for ways to do that, beyond donating money and working on raising my own awareness.
Hi Elizabeth. Well. I hope these suggestions are received in the best light. My attendance at churches varies. But I do include visiting a gospel church or an AME whenever the spirit strikes me. I’ve always felt a part of the service. As a teacher, I’ve had many many experiences with families that have enriched my life with different resources and approaches to everyday life. If possible, volunteer in a school different from the ones you attended or that are in your neighborhood.
Probably the most significant thing for me is that since college, never before in my suburban upbringing, I’ve counted as friends people of color that just ended up meeting me on my path. I just made sure never to pass the intersection without noticing who was there to know.
When you feel the desire in your heart to be with all people who are different and yet the same as you, then opportunity will greet you. We just have to be all colors on the inside. Then it gets easy.
Elizabeth. Thank you for sharing a path many have taken.
Regarding resolution: A way to begin transition is to will your home to a black family.
If enough people do this instead of preserving the property as white things can change.
Other ideas I've thought of include starting a college/life-launch fund for a young student of color. One of the many hurdles I face is that with one exception of someone dear to me whom I am already helping as I can, all the people of color I know are the ones I run into in my white-and-doing-fine world: People I've met in technology jobs and so forth. The structural racism of our society segregates all of
us so well that I have a puzzle to figure out: how to connect and form relationships with people of color who have *not* already defied all the odds and "made it" into the kind of prosperity that white people have. My best idea so far is to start attending my suburban church's diverse sister church in Boston--and keep showing up with an attitude of service and humility. But have I done it since I thought of it two years ago? Not yet, because ... excuses: I don't have time for the two-hour round-trip drive to the city, every Sunday I have something else important I have to do, where would I park, would my car get keyed or stolen, would I get mugged (all classic racist fears, even if they are not completely unfounded. Do I have the same fears when I think about spending an evening in pretty-white-upscale Cambridge? Nope.) So... umm... I'll figure out how to do it _next_ month....
It's not change and it doesn't count until I put it into action. Clearly I'm not done working on my own self.
One thing we can do is fight for The Voting Rights Act.
Yes indeed, Andrea.
I too, have long struggled to sort ways to reconcile what I saw when I was 16.
For all I know, that semicircle of shacks is what anyone would see today. I have not been back to that particular location since I gave up that job when I went to Texas A&M to become an engineer.
For 1000 reasons I have also not sorted how to help the complete absence of black engineers in the workforce.
I was only a manager with hiring ability for two years in my career (by choice I rotated back to technology development).
During that time as manager I found only one black engineer available at the schools my then company hired from at that time. I did not get to choose the Universities we hired from.
We hired one Black guy while I was manager. He was quickly promoted out of my group and onto other groups. I lost track of him.
One Black guy in a 38 year career was all I could muster help for.
I've thought about doing this for a Native American family.
Excellent idea, Mike. That I can do. Thank you.
Mike, that's a really interesting idea. I'm going to think about whether I could make that work.
Elizabeth, you have told many white people's stories. I'm one of them.
What do you know of the "Slocum Massacre" of 1910? I had to do a search to find where Slocum was, and that was the first thing that popped up. Then I saw how close Slocum is to Nacogdoches...
Thank you Ally for the referral to the “Slocum Massacre”.
Helps make it clear why The Texas GOP is so desperate to hide its past and to keep its complete history from being taught in its schools.
I was a liberal Canadian attending SMU’s Cox School of Business and working in Dallas in the late 70’s in real estate development, an area largely dependant on understanding the community I was working in. Even though I had all the resources and introductions I could wish for I always felt I was in a social fog and could never fully grasp what was really going on around me. Most confusing we’re the always pleasant but somehow ominous “Ya’ll take care now, heah” that ended meetings with so many older conservative Texas businessmen.
I knew nothing of the Slicum massacre growing up. Zero.
Like you, I learned of that massacre from a Google search.
I have a dear friend who grew up in Nacogdoches and graduated in 1980. She has told me stories...
Mike, in case you are not familiar with the history of the Catholic effort to educate African American students, you might be interested in "Growing Up African American in Catholic Schools" edited by Jacqueline Irvine and Michèle Foster. One contributor contends that the research supports the view of Catholic schools as "more effective for the education of African American students" (p. 21), and that "the deleterious affects of race, gender, and social class seem to be ameliorated, if not eradicated, in Catholic schools" (p. 39). A few religious orders in the Church dedicated themselves solely to teaching minorities precisely because the system didn't allow them in or treat them well. And "back in the day" those schools were supported by the parishes, not the government.
As you probably know, government support began with Everson vs. the Board of Education, 1947, when the SC decided that "government-funded bus transportation and non-religious textbooks for students enrolled in parochial (religious) schools" was permissible.
What began as a sensible decision, has become increasingly complex to navigate.
I say all this to counter the argument that Catholic schools were part of the problem of diverting money from public education. They were begun with good intentions but now have become part of the problem.
And this "problem" is "worsened" by the fact that students from Catholic schools are:
- more likely to graduate from college
- Higher average SAT scores. ...
- Higher reading and math scores. ...
- Are service-oriented ...
What are we going to do?
Mary. Thank you for your feedback and your kindness is assuming knowledge on my part.
The Catholic schools I referred to in the state of Louisiana were all white and served the same purpose as suburbs in the north. Legal means of segregation after integration in public schools.
Are you talking about high schools in Louisiana or elementary? I know there were several elementary schools run by a few different religious congregations of Sisters (I was in one of them). I don't have time right now to give you a link but can later if you'd like.
Thank you, Mike.
You look, you see and you remember. Thank you, Mike
Very interesting story, Mike. Thank you for sharing.