Board of Education decision requiring public schools - Best School Kumbakonam
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The Brown v. Board of Education decision requiring public schools to desegregate came down in 1955, but some 14 years later, in the fall of 1969, Clarksdale high schools were still separate and unequal. The African American students at Higgins High used white Clarksdale High’s ripped-up textbooks, nastily graffitied with vulgar words, former student Elnora Fondren Palmtag told a college newspaper reporter decades later. In the 1960s there wasn’t a single bathroom in downtown Clarksdale that African Americans were allowed to use — even at the doctor’s office black patients had to hold it, she said. Palmtag was the only black student to attend Clarksdale High in the 1960s, and it took an NAACP-funded taxi cab with decoys to get her there safely.
On Oct. 29, 1969, the U.S. Supreme Court decided Alexander v Holmes County Board of Education, ruling against the “freedom of choice” plans school districts had maintained in Mississippi and elsewhere. The high court ordered all remaining segregated districts across the country to integrate “immediately.” Some big-city districts adopted busing plans, but in the rural South, mostly districts desegregated by closing and consolidating schools. On Feb. 1, 1970, Higgins and Clarksdale high schools were merged in the Clarksdale building, and Higgins became an integrated junior high. The surrounding Coahoma schools also began consolidating in March.
When the Clarksdale Public schools reopened Feb. 2, 1970, after a one-day integration reorganization break, 574 of Clarksdale Junior High’s 585 white students did not show up, the newspaper reported. White children vanished entirely from the public schools in nearby counties — Indianola lost almost 1,000 to private schools. Mississippi’s public school enrollment fell by 23,000 students that month, the Associated Press reported. The Press-Register editorial board wrung its hands at how “obdurate desegregation policies” were wrecking the public schools.In the lead-up to desegregation, the Clarksdale Press-Register outlined how white parents could leave the districts. About 500 white parents attended the first meeting to discuss opening a private, segregated school; 115 registered on the spot for the future school, which would later be named Lee Academy. A junior high principal resigned from the public school to lead it. A Presbyterian church opened a private school, too, and the Baptist and Methodist schools added grades to accommodate the expected influx of white students, according to contemporaneous press coverage. St. Elizabeth Catholic dropped its expansion plan after the Jackson bishop blasted its board, saying he would go to Rome to stop them if he had to.
Lee Academy moved to a new campus that fall, built on a former cotton field. Courtney Shaffer, who graduated with Lee’s first senior class, wasn’t happy to be pulled from Coahoma High after dreaming about prom and yearbook and cheerleading. Best matriculation girls schools in Kumbakonam But, she said in an interview, you didn’t say no to your parents back then. Plus, Lee had air conditioning, the first school she’d ever attended that did. The education was no different: Lee’s teachers had fled the public schools along with the kids.
Even as white children left the public system, the white power structure remained. When Clarksdale and Higgins merged, the Clarksdale High principal kept his job; his Higgins counterpart was demoted to assistant. Josephine Rhymes, who is black and who had taught at Higgins, ended up as the consolidated high school’s only French teacher, so some white kids switched to Spanish. High school teacher Donell Harrell said he was almost fired for staging a Black History Month program. About 25 years later, Harrell became the first African American schools superintendent, after applying repeated times.
“We never really integrated,” Rhymes said.
The racial divide between the private and public sector is still stark. As of fall 2015, Coahoma County’s three private schools collectively had 7 percent African American enrollment amid public school systems that are more than 90 percent black. The Clarksdale public school system’s lawyer, John Cocke, who graduated from the white high school in 1965, hasn’t convinced his friends of the value of public schools. “Everybody I know goes there, frankly,” Cocke said, when asked about Lee Academy. “All the white people.”
The decades of disinvestment took their toll. It’s no secret now that the condition of the public schools is a roadblock to Clarksdale’s revitalization, residents said. While the city has capitalized on its history as “the birthplace of the blues” with festivals and artsy shops, many downtown sidewalks are littered with shattered glass and poverty remains at 36 percent. People say businesses don’t come to town because they can’t find educated employees. Ben Lewis, a white newcomer who runs a job-training program tied to a café, said he worried that he would have to move away when his children reached school age. (His son now attends Clarksdale Collegiate.)
Schools superintendent Dennis Dupree came to the city 12 years ago, promising innovation. He brought in more than $15 million in federal and state funding for Race to the Top projects, magnet elementary themes and preschool. Voters approved a bond issue for school construction. Dupree introduced literacy and social-emotional learning programs backed by major funders such as The Walton Family Foundation. Dupree’s initiatives were buttressed by community youth programs focused on creativity, employability and college readiness, such as the health sciences mentorship Rhymes now runs.
But the grants ran out, and any lingering positive effects were not visible in test scores. Both the Clarksdale and Coahoma systems were rated F on the state’s 2018 school report cards and are eligible for state takeover. Coahoma county schools have been under interim leadership for more than a year. Dupree, who retired from Clarksdale schools at the end of the 2018-19 school year, declined several requests for an interview.
Amanda Johnson had become an Arkansas charter school principal and made a home in Clarksdale. As she considered where to send her two daughters to school she was at first disheartened, and then inspired. She knew that she could find a way for them in the local district if she had to. But she wanted something better and different for them, and for her neighbors.
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