John Ash

Dr. Gagnon

HIST 3090

Friday, November 19, 2004

 

District 078: Desegregation in Jackson County

The history of school desegregation in Jackson County is one of extremes. Like every southern county, Jackson possessed segregated schools and struggled with the issue of integration. The decision of Brown v. Board in 1954 did not receive coverage in the county newspaper. Though never mentioned by name, the struggle against Brown occupied the pages of the local newspaper for the next six years. Speeches and press conferences from state officials attacking the NAACP and other integration groups occupied the front and editorial pages of the newspaper. Jackson County during those six years remained heavily segregationist, overwhelmingly voting for the segregationist governors of the state and supporting the state rights ideology against integration. Despite the intense opposition to integration, violence against blacks did not occur. When the county began its desegregation policies, though people did protest, they did not resort to violence.[1]

Before 1952, Jackson County forced black students to attend numerous small schools. Aware of the inequality of these black schools and possibly anticipating a challenge based on the inequality of the schools, the Jackson County Board of Education began negotiations with the city of Jefferson to create a unified all black school at Bryan Hill, a predominantly black community in the city of Jefferson. The two boards signed the contract on September 26, 1952. The signing of the contract brought Jackson County into an era of “modern” segregation. The contact with Jefferson City Schools called for the creation of a jointly operated all black elementary and high school. Jefferson and Jackson County agreed to jointly run and finance the facilities. Jackson also financed the construction of the schools. However, they would be located in Jefferson. The purpose of the buildings in the words of the Jackson Herald, the weekly county newspaper, “provides for equal” facilities for all the county’s children”.[2]

Two years later, Jackson County completed its attempt to equalize the school facilities available to black students when it signed a contract with the city of Commerce. The contract with Commerce City schools provided for many of the same issues that Jefferson contract did. Black elementary students would attend Commerce’s existing black school at Johnstown. However, black students living in Commerce would be transported by Jackson County to Bryan High School in Jefferson. The contract also gave full control over the Johnstown facility to the Commerce Education board, unlike the joint control exercised by Jefferson and Jackson County over Bryan. The contract, similar to the one signed with the city of Jefferson required the construction of a new school to house the newly expanded black student population in Commerce.[3]

The contracts between Jackson County, Jefferson and Commerce had several results. The first was the reduction in the overall number of all-black facilities in the county from eleven to two.  Second, the size of the remaining institutions was drastically increased as the 272 students from the small black schools in Jackson County were consolidated into the Bryan Elementary School and the Johnstown School in Commerce. The effects of the contracts were not limited just to black schools. The county overall reduced the number of facilities in exchange for larger, more modern facilities for whites as well. Across the county school, both black and white were modernized in order to bring them up to state standards. On May 3, 1954, the Georgia Board of Education approved the building plans for Jackson County that included the construction of the Bryan Elementary and High School, just two weeks before the announcement of the Brown v. Board decision.[4]

Brown v. Board provoked a strong surge of resistance to desegregation in both Jackson County and the state as a whole that dominated the rest of the fifties. The decision opened a long simmering political dispute between the southern states and the Federal government. The Jackson Herald broke with a long-standing tradition and began running stories on events outside of Jackson County. The stark break occurred only during the intense anti-integration period of the mid-late fifties. The next eight years saw the dramatic increase in anti-integration and pro-states right ideology in the editorials and letters to the editors. The first resistance seen in Jackson County was the support in 1954 of Amendment 4 to the Georgia Constitution, also called the School Segregation Amendment. The amendment was the result of segregationist attempts to prevent the integration of local school systems in the state with two purposes. First, according to the supporters of the amendment, because the state’s constitution prohibited the use of state funds for “mixed schools” any integrated schools could not receive state funding the amendment would “save” the public school system by laundering the money through the parents and back into the school system. However, the true purpose of the amendment was to prevent the United State’s Supreme Courts attack on the use of public money to support school segregation through the Brown decision and preserve segregation. Supporters ran numerous ads in the Jackson Herald to convince votes to approve the amendment to the state constitution. The support of segregation was enough that the editors of the Jackson Herald felt safe in running an editorial by Governor Talmadge supporting the School Segregation Amendment.[5]

The results of the vote however were not overwhelming. Though the amendment passed in Jackson County, it did so by only 247 votes out of 2197 cast. The close margin in Jackson County casts doubt on the idea that the county fully supported the idea of segregated schools in 1954. The only two precincts in the county that did not have a close margin was the city of Jefferson, who supported the amendment by a margin of 107 votes and the district of Minish, containing the city of Commerce, which voted against the amendment by a margin of 195. In spite of the close results, the Jackson Herald called the result a, “victory for the citizens of Georgia”. However, the victory was short lived, as a year later, President Eisenhower’s decision to intervene in the integration of Little Rock, Arkansas once against threatened segregation in the South. Like the Brown decision three years earlier, the intervention in Little Rock did not make the paper’s news. Instead, the paper concentrated on pro-segregation speeches and events in Georgia and Jackson County. The resurgence of segregationist ideas would reoccur every election year, until the sixties.[6]

Nineteen fifty-six marked the opening of an intense two year period of extremely strong segregationist feeling in the county making the level of opposition during 1954 seem almost non-existent. The tone of coverage in the newspaper continued to attack the idea of integration. The coverage included the use of fierce editorials and letters to the editor and selective story coverage to attack integration. As southerners began to unite against integration under the banner of state’s rights, Jackson County hosted a gathering of the State’s Rights Council in Jefferson on March 23. A week prior to the event, the Jackson Herald ran an editorial discussing the organization. Calling segregation an institution that was, “the benefit of both white and colored”, the paper called on members of the community to support the organization. In attendance at the rally on March 23, Governor Griffin, Commerce’s state senator William Harden, local ministers, and the Jefferson Marching band lent their support to the speech. Senator Harden, one of the speakers at the event called segregation, “God’s Purpose.” Following the rally Jackson County formed its own chapter of the organization. The Herald’s editorial page began to express segregationist sentiment with increasing frequency. In an editorial entitled “Integration Does Not Work”, the paper echoed common segregationist sentiment. Blaming the attempt at integration upon whites instead of blacks, they called white supporters of integration, “members or affiliates of the communist party, socialists or atheists who believe there is no God”. Continuing to support the State’s Rights Council the editorial continued to push readers to support the organization.[7]

Following President Eisenhower’s use of federal troops to safely integrate Little Rock, Arkansas, the Herald championed the racial harmony at the segregated schools in the state of Georgia. Blaming the problems of integration on blacks instead of violent white opposition, the paper discussed numerous instances of black on white violence. However, though the paper willingly devoted space to violent acts occurring because of integration, local black students were rarely mentioned. Articles detailing the activities of white students were commonplace. Excluding black students from the paper, Bryan High student activities rare appeared in the paper. When the Herald ran its usual graduation photos and articles, one out of county’s three high schools was not mentioned – Bryan High. Segregationist and often-racist sentiments continued to appear in the paper, but following the passage of the 1964 Civil Rights Act sentiments gradually changed.[8]

The last major expansion of segregation in Jackson County occurred with the completion of a new Bryan Elementary and High School. Finished in 1963, the construction resulted in Bryan being the most modern school facility in Jackson County. The completion of the unification of the black schools in Jackson County had occurred in 1958. An expansion project by the county modernized and expanded the facility. Able to accommodate more than the 562 students in attendance that year, the school signaled the continued desire of the county’s three school systems to remain segregated. [9]

 The process of desegregation in Jackson County began in 1965 when Jackson County announced a plan to desegregate its schools to comply with federal law or face loss of funding. After the passage of the 1964 Civil Rights Act, Jackson County found itself forced to comply with the federal law. Calling the plan the “Annual Freedom of Choice of Schools,” Jointly announced with the City of Jefferson, the desegregation plan called for the elimination of race as factor in student and faculty placement at the various schools and integration of the elementary schools in the county. Previously, the contractual agreement between the two counties placed students according to race. The plan removed the references to race in the contract between Jefferson and Jackson County. Despite the removal of race in the placement of students, the plan did not call an end to Bryan High School. In addition, the plan was did not include mandatory integration of students in the school system the school system. Calling employee integration, “ a necessary part of school desegregation”. The plan began the gradual integration of employees in the county school system. Instead, Jackson County offered parents the choice of schools for their children to attend. Because of the intimate relationship between the three school systems, Jefferson and Commerce announced plans virtually identical to the county’s plan to parental choice. [10]

Jackson County took the next step in desegregation of its school system in 1967 with the elimination of school choice except for high school students. Moving to a residence based attendance policy for elementary school students, Jackson County integrated elementary school students except in the Jefferson area. When a group of local black parents petitioned the Jackson Board of Education not to close Bryan, the school board replied that though Bryan would not be closed in 1968, that it eventually would be. In September, the board heard from a group of white parents who objected to their students riding with black students on integrated buses. Replying to the complaint the board told the parents of their intention to fully comply with federal law and integrate. The next step in desegregation occurred in 1968 when Jackson County submitted a plan to eliminate its segregated school system to the Department of Health, Education, and Welfare. This proposal modified the 1967 plan by moving all county elementary students outside of the city of Jefferson to the schools closest to their residence and by moving all high school students to the county high school in Braselton. However, Jackson County would continue to run the Bryan school for the city of Jefferson. As part of a political play for power, the county’s plan for the desegregation of the Bryan Elementary School closed the Jefferson Elementary school and brought white students from there into Bryan.[11]

In 1969, the federal government launched its attack on Jackson County’s system of segregated schools. As part of a larger offensive against segregation in the south, the Department of Health, Education, and Welfare filed a lawsuit against Jackson County for its delay in implementation of the plan submitted to the department in the fall of 1968. The lawsuit charged that though the county had begun desegregation, it had not completed its process of desegregation. In the 1969-70 school year over half of black students were attending integrated schools in the county. The remainder was at the Bryan Elementary School operated by the county. Though the Bryan School had not yet closed, it has seen significant reductions in the size of the student body since the enactment of the desegregation plan in 1965. Bryan had declined from 518 blacks at the school in 1965 to only 198 students by 1969. At a hearing on September 30, the judge ordered Jefferson and Jackson County to submit plans to desegregate the jointly run black school and complete the desegregation process.[12]

As result of the order, the two systems submitted drastically different desegregation proposals. First, Jackson County offered a plan that differed little from its original desegregation plan. The city of Jefferson however offered a completely different proposal. Instead of busing white students to Bryan to integrate the school, Jefferson instead proposed to abolish the Bryan schools entirely. Black students still in attendance at Bryan would then be integrated into the Jefferson School System. The Jefferson proposal also included the integration of staff and faculty from the Bryan schools into the Jefferson School System. For the remainder of the year students of Bryan would attend the Jefferson School System. The city’s plan called to begin the construction of additional classroom facilities to accommodate the influx of students from Bryan.[13]

On October 2, 1969, the judge ruled in favor of the Jefferson plan. Ordering the two county systems to comply with the Jefferson plan, he set the compliance date, January 1970. The judge also ordered Jefferson to immediately begin construction of additional classrooms to contain the newly integrated student population. Immediately following the decision, Jefferson began construction of additional classrooms at the Jefferson Elementary and Jefferson High School. The newly built facilities were completed during the December break and the move into the building rapidly occurred. Jackson County formally transferred all equipment and students to the Jefferson School system to fill the newly integrated school. The county also amended its contract with Jefferson to finally strike any reference to race in the contract. When the school opened for classes again in January 1970, the newly integrated JES and JHS were fully functional. As the black students walked to their classrooms, no violence occurred.[14]

The desegregation of Jackson County Schools took sixteen years, from Brown v Board to the closing of Bryan High and the integration of the school system. Jackson County delayed full integration as late as possible, only integrating fully after a federal court order. However, Jackson County did integrate peacefully. Unlike the earlier attempts at school integration, Jackson integrated with remarkable ease. This is especially remarkable in light of the intense anti-integration sentiment expressed during the 1950s. What prevented this segregationist sentiment from turning to violence? One factor in the peaceful integration of Jackson County may have been the early date at which integration began. Unlike many southern counties that waited until the last possible moment to begin integration, Jackson County finished its integration before many counties even began theirs. The gradual nature of the integration, with the idea of parental choice allowing parents to remove their children from an integrated school may have helped diffuse the situation as well. Regardless of the reason, Jackson County integrated peacefully – the best outcome for all.

 

Related Links

Jackson County Board of Education – the local county school board and the topic for the paper. The board possesses two files containing their board minutes. Contact the system superintendent for best results in gaining access to the documents.

http://www.jackson.k12.ga.us/

 

Jefferson City Schools – the most significant school board in the county other than the Jackson County Board of Education. They do have board minutes but they are not organized. Contact the superintendent for arraignments and details.

http://www.jeffcityschools.org/

 

The Jackson Herald Online – this is the online version of the paper. There are a few editorials on the site that discuss the desegregation of the school system.

http://www.mainstreetnews.com/

 

School Desegregation an Article in Slate Magazine – interesting article discussing the post 1970s world of desegregation.

http://slate.msn.com/id/1035/