The first three chapters in Pratt have been an excellent read and are extremely relevant to future RPS teachers. After all, the shameful legacy of prolonged segregation in the wake of Brown vs the Board of Education is only but a couple generations ago.
One of the first things I noticed while reading the text were parallels to the same kind of Libertarian thinking of today's far right. Senator Mills E Goodwin Jr's quotation of "integration, however slight, anywhere in Virginia would be a cancer eating at the very life blood of our public school system," seems like it would feel right at home on the O'Reilly Factor, had it been around back then. It is a tragedy that some use the idea of Liberty to justify horrible behavior.
One thing I found interesting, which I had not known before, was that the NAACP eventually decided to back off on desegregation for a while in order to show the inadequacies of "separate but equal," ala Plessy vs. Ferguson. The fact that black schools in Prince George closed for five years during this time-frame is beyond absurd. Not outside the reality of the time, of course. I found the tactics used to guarantee segregation, such as segregated housing patterns or grants to white children to attend private schools to not be surprising, sadly.
Another similarity I realized while reading the book was the fear by proponents of segregation that integration "...would extend far beyond the classroom and into the realm of social interaction, which would ultimately pose a grave threat to the sanctity of the white race" (Pratt 29) seemed similar to the "slippery slope" dialogue that homophobes of today have against gay marriage.
It saddens, disturbs, and outrages me that in the 1950s and 1960s (and before), the general perception of the African American race was negative, to say the least. I don’t understand where these feelings of hate came from, why they weren’t immediately extinguished, and why they (have, in some cases) carried on for so long. One thing that truly disturbs me in “The Color of Their Skin” thus far is the extreme lack of opposition to segregation from the white side. “Few white Virginians were openly sympathetic to the black struggle for equality” (8). Where were the allies? Where were those willing to fight for the brother(or sister)hood of humankind? Why, even if they were outraged, did they hide it or do nothing? Virginia Crockford, who was “one of the school board’s most outspoken members, who was often maligned by the white community for her liberal views (and whose life was threatened on many occasions)”, was only opposed to certain parts of the malicious laws circulating Virginia (33). Why was there a general consensus that even a pinch of segregation was okay? Secondly, I am disappointed by the ways in which these laws have carried on into the present. So many of Richmond’s public schools are still segregated, with the poor, mostly black schools being in the worst condition. It pains me to know that private schools were formed so that white children wouldn’t have to go to school with black children. What’s worse is these private schools still hold mostly all white, affluent students, carrying on a tradition of racism within the private school. Still today, when a public school begins to fill with black students, white parents will pull out their children and put them into private school. Most white families in Richmond will send their children to public school for elementary school, where the ratios are favorable to them (such as Fox), and then put their children into private school for middle and high schools because most of the public middle and high schools are mostly black. I don’t understand the hate and racism that existed in the past and I certainly don’t understand it now.
It was very interesting to read as Pratt did a wonderful job in outlining the history of Richmond schools and the progression of the court ruling on desegregation. I was quite shocked by the fact that Virginia decided to close down public schools in response to desegregation ruled by the Supreme Court. What really upsets me is to find a group of people in power who misuse their authority to enforce their own views to fulfill their own selfish desires or plans. The reason for governor Almond to stop pursuing massive resistance movement is for his own sake, possibility of being jail for causing such a rebellion. I cannot imagine living in the era as students since many dramatic changes were taking places due to politics taking major role in educational system. My perception of demographics of Richmond was mainly African Americans. I remembered from one of our class discussions that it is actually approximately close to half Caucasians and half African Americans. When I explore the city, I can definitely locate certain places where majority of people are Caucasians. The book describes “As noted earlier, a history of segregated housing patterns in Richmond had kept blacks confined to certain areas”, and this segregated housing is still existed in today’s society. It’s frustrating to know that it stemmed from 50s and 60s, and it is still existing.
The Color of Their Skin is such an important piece of work. All too often people believe the problems that are happening in present day (i.e school segregation) are isolated events that just happened to occur. Pratt’s work breaks down this notion proving to readers that segregation, integration, and subsequently the re-segregation of the Richmond school system has deep historical roots. In reading this book I couldn’t help but remember conversations I would have with my mother about her childhood school experiences, which coincide, almost exactly, with Pratt’s work. Just to give some context, my mother was born in 1956, two years after Brown was passed, and she did not experience her first integrated class until her first year of high school. Furthermore, she remembers the horrors of going to an integrated high school. In our talks, she would tell me about how the teachers were extremely condescending to the black students, and how school administrators would separate the black students to the point where it would only be one black student in a class. My mother’s stories are quite disheartening, but it shows how deeply situated segregation was in Virginia, and just how much integration disrupted everyday life to the point that people would WASTE money to keep their kids from mingling with black kids.
Interestingly enough, United States history loves to praise Brown vs. Board to be such a monumental case. And please don’t get me wrong on paper, that is the idea to formally desegregate schools, is monumental. However, what many people don’t talk about, when referring to Brown, is Brown II, which was passed in 1955. While there always is an SOL question on the 1954 Supreme Court case that ended school desegregation, there never is a question on when desegregation actually took place. Indeed, people too often forget about the imperative phrase “with all deliberate speed”, which never placed a time limit on when integration needed to take place. Because of this, much scholarship has surfaced on the backlash of Brown, raising the question to how monumental Brown was. This claim becomes even more relevant when we think about the segregation that exists today (61 years after Brown) in our school systems- especially in Richmond.
It should also be noted that Pratt does a nice job merging the effects of neighborhood segregation and its effects on school segregation. The two really go hand in hand. I suspect if nothing else is taken away from this book, we can understand that HISTORY IS IMPORTANT, and we cannot really understand WHY our schools are in the state they are today without understanding the history that caused it. Also, how crazy is it that many of our schools are named after staunch segregationists?
One of the things that surprised me most in reading the first few chapters of Pratt’s book is the amount of effort that white Virginians were willing to exert in order to maintain school segregation. The Color of Their Skin does an excellent job of documenting historical events, court cases, and organizations along with their biases. Pratt notes that for a while, the thinking of the NAACP was that if they went along with “separate but equal” for long enough, they could make gradual progress for black students if they emphasized equal education. Eventually, in theory, policymakers would realize that maintaining separate facilities for blacks and whites that are truly equal would be too expensive, and there would be no other choice but to integrate. I am stunned, however, by how willing white voters were to commit huge amounts of money to ensuring that schools could remain segregated. The budget for the 1954-55 school year expanded to $40,807,500, much of which went to black schools for building construction, repairs, and filling teacher vacancies.
I am glad that Pratt speaks of the adverse psychological effects of segregation on black schoolchildren. All too often, studies of this subject matter can focus perhaps too heavily on court cases and politics, but the reality of human experience speaks volumes and cannot be ignored. To think that these schoolchildren (children! Just kids) had to endure humiliation, name-calling, violence, on top of high pressures to perform well, is unbelievable.
This text is incredibly important to study, especially because we are all going to be teaching in this city. More than that, however, it is a call to remember the gross injustices are still alive and well in this community, and throughout the country.
Growing up my grandmother would always tell me about the troubling times in Virginia when she was in school. Although I never doubted my grandma, I just did not know a time when Virginia was so blatantly racist and unfair. However, reading this book has added an element to my understanding that I find quite disturbing. The quotes of politicians and community leaders trying to hinder the changes acquired from Brown shocked me. I even called my grandmother to get a new perspective of her experience. She graduated in 1965, more than a decade after the Brown decision, from a segregated, rural high school.
She told me she did not know what it meant to attend an integrated school. The idea of segregated schools seemed so odd and foreign to me and here my own grandmother did not have a single, white classmate. It would not be until later in the decade and into the early 70’s that any change in the rural area schools would be seen. In a way this book made me very proud of my grandmother, her classmates and those that came before them who actually graduated from high school. The odds were definitely stacked against them and they prevailed.
After reading Part I of the Pratt text I was encouraged to find out about the school my grandmother graduated from. Portions of the former schoolhouse now houses a parks and rec center, but the fact that it was even built spoke to spirit of fortitude that I feel is present in the book. If you want to take a look at some of the history of the school here is a link to form completed to acknowledge the school as a national historic place: http://www.dhr.virginia.gov/registers/Counties/Westmoreland/096-0113_Armstead_T._Johnston_High_School_1998_Final_Nomination.pdf
After reading a little about how integration affected the black students in the text, I am interested in learning more about the effects. I would also be interested in learning the effects on white students. I wonder how my grandmother’s experience would have differed if schools were integrated before she graduated.
The story of desegregation in Richmond City Public Schools is remarkable. Considering the racial climate at the time in Virginia, I was not surprised at all to read about lawmakers dragging their feet. However I was quite surprised to discover that they were prepared to (and in some cases did) shut schools down rather than desegregate. It demonstrates a real dedication that they would consider ruining public schools for everyone rather than share. Even after schools were officially desegregated, the city of Richmond was making every effort to defy the Supreme Court ruling (e.g. token enrollment, and the pupil placement board).
In particular I was interested to read about the psychological burden placed on the first black students attending predominantly white schools. Seems like an enormous amount of pressure for a kid to handle. Nonetheless, even when the school board and the pupil placement board were doing everything in their power to keep schools segregated, parents were fighting against them, refusing to fill out their paperwork, and attempting to initiate integration through enrolling their kids into white schools. The city council hiring a firm to measure between the one family’s home and the two different schools using a chain was pretty astonishing.
I’d like to also echo Kendra’s frustration with the lack of support for the desegregation movement from the white community. And I agree that it does most definitely spill over into current times. It’s interesting that as I was reading the first few chapters I could almost feel it getting closer to the present day. For whatever reason, when you talk about the Richmond School board in the 60’s it sounds like ancient history. But when you come up to the initiation of busing in 1970, all of a sudden it’s hitting a little closer to home. Feels way more recent to me.
I will just never understand how a person can not like someone so much because of the color of their skin that it produces feelings of actual hatred. I was appalled by the responses of the Virginia officials. They went through such extreme measures to oppose the Brown ruling, at one point even closing down schools rather than letting black students attend. It made me angry that white Virginians truly believed that separate but equal was fair.
Despite the many moments of anger that rose up while reading, it is a very interesting book. For me it still seems kind of strange that these events really weren’t that long ago. One of the reasons that this topic seems so disconnected from me is because I attended a mostly black elementary school in very small school system. There was one elementary, one middle, and one high school in the whole county. I never really encountered racism like this before because we were all black and it never was an issue. There were literally six white people in my graduating class and none of us ever cared that they were white. It was such a small school that we all grew up together going from one grade to the next. But in reading this text is made me go back and do some research on the school and found out that the school system used to be all white and once it was integrated, the white people all moved their kids to the private school in the next county. All these years and I never knew that.
I like the interest that this book sparks in me and I feel that it is a necessary read for everyone. This is definitely a book I am going to make all my friends read and I haven’t even finished it yet.
The first three chapters in Pratt have been an excellent read and are extremely relevant to future RPS teachers. After all, the shameful legacy of prolonged segregation in the wake of Brown vs the Board of Education is only but a couple generations ago.
ReplyDeleteOne of the first things I noticed while reading the text were parallels to the same kind of Libertarian thinking of today's far right. Senator Mills E Goodwin Jr's quotation of "integration, however slight, anywhere in Virginia would be a cancer eating at the very life blood of our public school system," seems like it would feel right at home on the O'Reilly Factor, had it been around back then. It is a tragedy that some use the idea of Liberty to justify horrible behavior.
One thing I found interesting, which I had not known before, was that the NAACP eventually decided to back off on desegregation for a while in order to show the inadequacies of "separate but equal," ala Plessy vs. Ferguson. The fact that black schools in Prince George closed for five years during this time-frame is beyond absurd. Not outside the reality of the time, of course. I found the tactics used to guarantee segregation, such as segregated housing patterns or grants to white children to attend private schools to not be surprising, sadly.
Another similarity I realized while reading the book was the fear by proponents of segregation that integration "...would extend far beyond the classroom and into the realm of social interaction, which would ultimately pose a grave threat to the sanctity of the white race" (Pratt 29) seemed similar to the "slippery slope" dialogue that homophobes of today have against gay marriage.
It saddens, disturbs, and outrages me that in the 1950s and 1960s (and before), the general perception of the African American race was negative, to say the least. I don’t understand where these feelings of hate came from, why they weren’t immediately extinguished, and why they (have, in some cases) carried on for so long. One thing that truly disturbs me in “The Color of Their Skin” thus far is the extreme lack of opposition to segregation from the white side. “Few white Virginians were openly sympathetic to the black struggle for equality” (8). Where were the allies? Where were those willing to fight for the brother(or sister)hood of humankind? Why, even if they were outraged, did they hide it or do nothing? Virginia Crockford, who was “one of the school board’s most outspoken members, who was often maligned by the white community for her liberal views (and whose life was threatened on many occasions)”, was only opposed to certain parts of the malicious laws circulating Virginia (33). Why was there a general consensus that even a pinch of segregation was okay?
ReplyDeleteSecondly, I am disappointed by the ways in which these laws have carried on into the present. So many of Richmond’s public schools are still segregated, with the poor, mostly black schools being in the worst condition. It pains me to know that private schools were formed so that white children wouldn’t have to go to school with black children. What’s worse is these private schools still hold mostly all white, affluent students, carrying on a tradition of racism within the private school. Still today, when a public school begins to fill with black students, white parents will pull out their children and put them into private school. Most white families in Richmond will send their children to public school for elementary school, where the ratios are favorable to them (such as Fox), and then put their children into private school for middle and high schools because most of the public middle and high schools are mostly black. I don’t understand the hate and racism that existed in the past and I certainly don’t understand it now.
It was very interesting to read as Pratt did a wonderful job in outlining the history of Richmond schools and the progression of the court ruling on desegregation. I was quite shocked by the fact that Virginia decided to close down public schools in response to desegregation ruled by the Supreme Court.
ReplyDeleteWhat really upsets me is to find a group of people in power who misuse their authority to enforce their own views to fulfill their own selfish desires or plans. The reason for governor Almond to stop pursuing massive resistance movement is for his own sake, possibility of being jail for causing such a rebellion. I cannot imagine living in the era as students since many dramatic changes were taking places due to politics taking major role in educational system.
My perception of demographics of Richmond was mainly African Americans. I remembered from one of our class discussions that it is actually approximately close to half Caucasians and half African Americans. When I explore the city, I can definitely locate certain places where majority of people are Caucasians. The book describes “As noted earlier, a history of segregated housing patterns in Richmond had kept blacks confined to certain areas”, and this segregated housing is still existed in today’s society. It’s frustrating to know that it stemmed from 50s and 60s, and it is still existing.
Daisy
This comment has been removed by the author.
ReplyDeleteThe Color of Their Skin is such an important piece of work. All too often people believe the problems that are happening in present day (i.e school segregation) are isolated events that just happened to occur. Pratt’s work breaks down this notion proving to readers that segregation, integration, and subsequently the re-segregation of the Richmond school system has deep historical roots. In reading this book I couldn’t help but remember conversations I would have with my mother about her childhood school experiences, which coincide, almost exactly, with Pratt’s work. Just to give some context, my mother was born in 1956, two years after Brown was passed, and she did not experience her first integrated class until her first year of high school. Furthermore, she remembers the horrors of going to an integrated high school. In our talks, she would tell me about how the teachers were extremely condescending to the black students, and how school administrators would separate the black students to the point where it would only be one black student in a class. My mother’s stories are quite disheartening, but it shows how deeply situated segregation was in Virginia, and just how much integration disrupted everyday life to the point that people would WASTE money to keep their kids from mingling with black kids.
ReplyDeleteInterestingly enough, United States history loves to praise Brown vs. Board to be such a monumental case. And please don’t get me wrong on paper, that is the idea to formally desegregate schools, is monumental. However, what many people don’t talk about, when referring to Brown, is Brown II, which was passed in 1955. While there always is an SOL question on the 1954 Supreme Court case that ended school desegregation, there never is a question on when desegregation actually took place. Indeed, people too often forget about the imperative phrase “with all deliberate speed”, which never placed a time limit on when integration needed to take place. Because of this, much scholarship has surfaced on the backlash of Brown, raising the question to how monumental Brown was. This claim becomes even more relevant when we think about the segregation that exists today (61 years after Brown) in our school systems- especially in Richmond.
It should also be noted that Pratt does a nice job merging the effects of neighborhood segregation and its effects on school segregation. The two really go hand in hand. I suspect if nothing else is taken away from this book, we can understand that HISTORY IS IMPORTANT, and we cannot really understand WHY our schools are in the state they are today without understanding the history that caused it. Also, how crazy is it that many of our schools are named after staunch segregationists?
One of the things that surprised me most in reading the first few chapters of Pratt’s book is the amount of effort that white Virginians were willing to exert in order to maintain school segregation. The Color of Their Skin does an excellent job of documenting historical events, court cases, and organizations along with their biases. Pratt notes that for a while, the thinking of the NAACP was that if they went along with “separate but equal” for long enough, they could make gradual progress for black students if they emphasized equal education. Eventually, in theory, policymakers would realize that maintaining separate facilities for blacks and whites that are truly equal would be too expensive, and there would be no other choice but to integrate. I am stunned, however, by how willing white voters were to commit huge amounts of money to ensuring that schools could remain segregated. The budget for the 1954-55 school year expanded to $40,807,500, much of which went to black schools for building construction, repairs, and filling teacher vacancies.
ReplyDeleteI am glad that Pratt speaks of the adverse psychological effects of segregation on black schoolchildren. All too often, studies of this subject matter can focus perhaps too heavily on court cases and politics, but the reality of human experience speaks volumes and cannot be ignored. To think that these schoolchildren (children! Just kids) had to endure humiliation, name-calling, violence, on top of high pressures to perform well, is unbelievable.
This text is incredibly important to study, especially because we are all going to be teaching in this city. More than that, however, it is a call to remember the gross injustices are still alive and well in this community, and throughout the country.
Growing up my grandmother would always tell me about the troubling times in Virginia when she was in school. Although I never doubted my grandma, I just did not know a time when Virginia was so blatantly racist and unfair. However, reading this book has added an element to my understanding that I find quite disturbing. The quotes of politicians and community leaders trying to hinder the changes acquired from Brown shocked me. I even called my grandmother to get a new perspective of her experience. She graduated in 1965, more than a decade after the Brown decision, from a segregated, rural high school.
ReplyDeleteShe told me she did not know what it meant to attend an integrated school. The idea of segregated schools seemed so odd and foreign to me and here my own grandmother did not have a single, white classmate. It would not be until later in the decade and into the early 70’s that any change in the rural area schools would be seen. In a way this book made me very proud of my grandmother, her classmates and those that came before them who actually graduated from high school. The odds were definitely stacked against them and they prevailed.
After reading Part I of the Pratt text I was encouraged to find out about the school my grandmother graduated from. Portions of the former schoolhouse now houses a parks and rec center, but the fact that it was even built spoke to spirit of fortitude that I feel is present in the book. If you want to take a look at some of the history of the school here is a link to form completed to acknowledge the school as a national historic place: http://www.dhr.virginia.gov/registers/Counties/Westmoreland/096-0113_Armstead_T._Johnston_High_School_1998_Final_Nomination.pdf
After reading a little about how integration affected the black students in the text, I am interested in learning more about the effects. I would also be interested in learning the effects on white students. I wonder how my grandmother’s experience would have differed if schools were integrated before she graduated.
Brendan here.
ReplyDeleteThe story of desegregation in Richmond City Public Schools is remarkable. Considering the racial climate at the time in Virginia, I was not surprised at all to read about lawmakers dragging their feet. However I was quite surprised to discover that they were prepared to (and in some cases did) shut schools down rather than desegregate. It demonstrates a real dedication that they would consider ruining public schools for everyone rather than share. Even after schools were officially desegregated, the city of Richmond was making every effort to defy the Supreme Court ruling (e.g. token enrollment, and the pupil placement board).
In particular I was interested to read about the psychological burden placed on the first black students attending predominantly white schools. Seems like an enormous amount of pressure for a kid to handle. Nonetheless, even when the school board and the pupil placement board were doing everything in their power to keep schools segregated, parents were fighting against them, refusing to fill out their paperwork, and attempting to initiate integration through enrolling their kids into white schools. The city council hiring a firm to measure between the one family’s home and the two different schools using a chain was pretty astonishing.
I’d like to also echo Kendra’s frustration with the lack of support for the desegregation movement from the white community. And I agree that it does most definitely spill over into current times. It’s interesting that as I was reading the first few chapters I could almost feel it getting closer to the present day. For whatever reason, when you talk about the Richmond School board in the 60’s it sounds like ancient history. But when you come up to the initiation of busing in 1970, all of a sudden it’s hitting a little closer to home. Feels way more recent to me.
I will just never understand how a person can not like someone so much because of the color of their skin that it produces feelings of actual hatred. I was appalled by the responses of the Virginia officials. They went through such extreme measures to oppose the Brown ruling, at one point even closing down schools rather than letting black students attend. It made me angry that white Virginians truly believed that separate but equal was fair.
ReplyDeleteDespite the many moments of anger that rose up while reading, it is a very interesting book. For me it still seems kind of strange that these events really weren’t that long ago. One of the reasons that this topic seems so disconnected from me is because I attended a mostly black elementary school in very small school system. There was one elementary, one middle, and one high school in the whole county. I never really encountered racism like this before because we were all black and it never was an issue. There were literally six white people in my graduating class and none of us ever cared that they were white. It was such a small school that we all grew up together going from one grade to the next. But in reading this text is made me go back and do some research on the school and found out that the school system used to be all white and once it was integrated, the white people all moved their kids to the private school in the next county. All these years and I never knew that.
I like the interest that this book sparks in me and I feel that it is a necessary read for everyone. This is definitely a book I am going to make all my friends read and I haven’t even finished it yet.
Stevara