Civil Rights in Tennessee: School Desegregation

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Civil Rights in Tennessee: School Desegregation

Before the 1954 milestone ruling by the U.S. Supreme Court that barred racial prejudice in schools, schools in Tennessee and nineteen other states featured some level of segregation. During this period, school facilities were divided between those that served blacks and those that served whites. Those that served whites were better maintained and whites enjoyed such privileges as newer textbooks, good equipment and buildings, smaller ratios of pupils to teachers, and better administrative processes (Clotfelter 14). Indeed, blacks were treated and considered second rate citizens and schools or facilities reserved for blacks were not by any means equal to those reserved for whites. While it is difficult to determine exactly when segregation had begun, it had been in existence at least since 1870 when the new constitution of the state required that blacks and whites receive separate instruction (Lovett 419). While the constitution as well as some schools’ regulations did not deny blacks an education, they did emphasize that separate facilities and instruction be provided for both blacks and whites.

During this period, funds that were meant for allocation to separate black colleges would often be restricted. In addition, blacks would be given education that whites deemed ‘suitable’ for them such as industrial education and agricultural education. Blacks nonetheless still enrolled in schools attended by white students even though they had to use different facilities and undergo different instruction. This changed in 1901 however, when Moses Houston Gamble, then legislator of Tennessee, drafted a bill that discouraged places of learning such as schools, academies, colleges and other places of learning from allowing both white and blacks from attending the same institution (Wolters 32). This law essentially encouraged segregation of schools in the region for half a century. It was the Brown v. Board of Education Supreme Court verdict that was to transform this situation, bringing about the beginning of desegregation of schools in Tennessee and all over the South.

Oliver Brown was presented as the wronged party in the landmark case even though there were thirteen plaintiffs, all parents in Topeka, Kansas. Cited were instances such as Brown’s, who argued that his daughter in third grade, Linda, had to walk for six blocks to catch a bus ride to a school a mile away. This was because a white school that was only seven blocks away from her home, Summer Elementary, would not accept her due to her color. Under the tutelage of the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP), a representative action grievance against the Board of Education of the City of Topeka was initiated (Clotfelter 17). The plaintiffs appealed to the Supreme Court after the District court went the other way to the benefit of the defendant – the Board of Education – using the basis of the U.S. Supreme Court’s ruling in Plessy v. Fergusson (1896) where segregation was allowed so long as the facilities for both blacks and whites were equal.

Together with four other cases, Brown v. Board of Education was presented before the Supreme Court in spring of 1953 but was reargued in the fall of the same year. It was important that the decision be unanimous in order to eliminate the chances of pro-segregationists presenting any dissent as a counterargument (Wolters 11). There was no fear of lack of unanimity however as the final decision was endorsed by all members of the Supreme Court. While the District Court had found that segregation might be harmful to the psychology of black children, it had nonetheless found that white and black schools in Topeka were equal in terms of curriculum, teachers’ qualifications, buildings and transportation. Conversely, the Supreme Court found that the question about segregation was not whether it presented ‘equal’ opportunities to both blacks and whites, but whether it was ‘constitutional’ to allow black children to continue undergoing social and psychological disadvantage in the school system. The Supreme Court noted that segregation, when sanctioned by the law, denoted one race as being superior to the other. The Court therefore went the plaintiff’s side, marking a beginning of desegregation in schools in the South, including Tennessee.

Despite this ruling, schools in Tennessee took years to integrate fully. However, one of the first instances of desegregation in the state happened in 1957 with the desegregation of ClintonHigh School. According to Lovett, the school prepared for desegregation by engaging students in class discussions, assigning of papers that dealt with the issue, and publishing the news in the local papers (421). While not everyone may have been in support of desegregation, the citizens of the town were willing to accept the ruling and most played their part in ensuring smooth desegregation. However, not everything went smoothly, and there were reported incidences of violence, spurred by segregationists. The major incident that was reported across the country however, happened in August 1956 when even State troopers had to be sent from out of town to contain escalating threats of violence. This instance in Clinton is often cited as one of the main stories in regards to desegregation in Tennessee, and indeed in the whole country. While integration of ClintonHigh School may have been marred by incidences of violence, it is still regarded by many as a success because the local people were not overly against desegregation, but rather it was the segregationist groups led by John Kasper, which had come from out of town (Wolters 83).

Nashville, Tennessee was also a leader of desegregation of schools in the South. Some schools had been integrated, albeit minimally, even before the Brown v. Board of Education ruling. However, complete desegregation was still elusive until a suit was filed by twenty-one plaintiffs against the Nashville Board of Education. The case, known as Kelley v. Board of Education, was named after Robert Kelley, a fourteen year-old boy who had been restricted from joining East High School in 1955 (Summerville). The District Court gave schools an additional six months to comply with the ruling of the Supreme Court. The board of East School High proposed systematic desegregation of its school by beginning with integration of students in the first grade and moving up the grades with time. The lawyers agreed to this so long as the school gave a fixed period to complete the entire process. However, even agreeing on the fixed period proved to be problematic (Clotfelter 107). This led some of the other Southern States to pass new laws that slowed down desegregation. Meanwhile, the school board involved in the legal battle appealed to the Federal Court for more time to prepare for change and was granted the request. The implication was that an additional school year would pass without any steps toward desegregation.

When it did come time to register first graders in Nashville, a number of black parents took their children to schools slated for desegregation even though protestors, again led by John Kasper, had already surrounded the buildings holding placards that claimed segregation as the will of God. Only a few African American students – 126 out of an estimated 1,400 children – were registered in white schools slated for desegregation. Some parents of these children received anonymous threats by post or through phone calls while others were told they risked losing their jobs if they enrolled their children in formerly white elementary schools (Lovett, 421). Before the first day of school, there was apprehension as to what would happen.

John Kasper, who was not a native of the city, was particularly vocal about the disadvantages of desegregation and urged whites to take their rightful place and ensure that black children did not attend formerly white schools on that first day (“School Desegregation”). Protesters waited outside such schools as Jones, Fehr, and Glenn elementary schools, which had especially been slated for desegregation due to their proximity to working class neighborhoods where African-American families also resided but in whose schools they had previously not been allowed to enroll their children. On the first day, protestors marched the streets and threatened violence but not much happened during the day. It was in the evening however, that segregationist mobs in Nashville struck. The violence escalated as the evening progressed with torching of crosses outside homes owned by black families, setting of buildings on fire, and occurrences of vandalism of more property. The main mark of violence however was the explosion of dynamite at HattieCottonElementary School that severely damaged the school and led to the arrest of John Kasper who was however later released.

While these incidences marked the beginning of desegregation in Tennessee, there was much more progress to be made in ensuring that desegregation occurred in previously segregated schools. In addition to Nashville and Clinton, public schools in Knoxville, DavidsonCounty and Memphis – including MemphisStateUniversity – were desegregated during this period of the late 1950s. Consequently, there was an upsurge in the number of private schools established in several cities in Tennessee. Whites enrolled their children in these schools, taking them away from public desegregated schools. Because most black parents could not afford to take their children to these public schools, they were essentially segregated, though not intentionally.

As shown, disintegration of schools in Tennessee has had a troubled past. Violent protests and attacks have been a featured prominently in the issue of desegregation but it is safe to say that the state has finally achieved desegregation in all its schools (Clotfelter 201). While some may argue that schools in the state took too long to completely desegregate, it can also be said that one of the aims of desegregation – that of non-discrimination of African Americans in schools – has eventually been achieved.

Works Cited

Clotfelter, Charles. After Brown: the rise and retreat of school desegregation.New York: PrincetonUniversity Press, 2004. Print.

Lovett, Bobby. The civil rights movement in Tennessee: A narrative history.Tennessee: University of Tennessee Press, 2005. Print.

Summerville, James. “School desegregation in Nashville.” CivicScope, 12 Jan. 2010. Web. 26 July 2011.

“School Desegregation.” Tennessee4me, n.d. Web. 26 July 2011.

Wolters, Raymond. The burden of Brown: Thirty years of school desegregation. Tennessee: University of Tennessee Press, 1992. Print.