Matthew Bridges

HIST 3090

Dr. Gagnon

 

 

 

Struggle In Clarke County, Georgia: The Experience of One Southern Town’s Attempt at Racial Integration in Public Education

 

 

            The purpose of writing this paper was to explore a very important battle that took place in the city of Athens, located in Clarke County, Georgia.  Clarke County is also the home of the University of Georgia, and during the continued acceleration of the Civil Rights Movement, African-Americans within the area chose selected targets as the focal point to challenge racial segregation.  One of those targets was the Clarke County School District, where an effort was made by black activists to end the county’s dual school system and send black children to historically white schools.  Outside of Clarke, Americans across the country watched in confusion during the civil rights era as many cities north and south succumbed to racial violence.  In the South, where much of America’s black population resides, blacks who sought change were faced with the legal challenge of Jim Crow, a term that was used to describe de jure segregation laws that were enacted by the eleven ex-Confederate states after the white population reclaimed their state governments from Republican control.  Legislation passed at the federal level in the form of the thirteenth, fourteenth, and fifteenth amendments after the Civil War guaranteeing black rights and freedoms was virtually unenforced by the turn of the century, superseded by new state laws designed to preserve the status quo of white dominance and black submission.  From this vantage point, blacks across the South would fight many battles in an effort to secure equality denied to them for so long.  One of those battles is represented here in this paper, serving as a microcosm for a movement for civil rights that labored for years to achieve equal education for blacks across the nation.

           
xxxxxxxxThis year marks the fiftieth anniversary of the landmark Supreme Court decision Brown v. Board of Education of Topeka, a decision that effectively reversed the Plessy v. Ferguson decision of 1896 by declaring racially segregated schools unconstitutional.  The Plessy decision served as the basis for “separate but equal” facilities in public services such as education, and also was the cornerstone piece of legislation that provided for the maintenance of the dual school system in Clarke County, Georgia.  The Brown decision marked the starting point of the effort to integrate Clarke County by dismantling Plessy and initiating the first strike at segregation.  But Brown did not jumpstart an immediate onslaught on the southern way of life, in part because of the court’s later use of the language “with all deliberate speed” in Brown II on 31 May, 1955 that set no definite timetable on when certain aspects should be accomplished.  This glaring fault of the Brown decision was enough for southern politicians to exploit by giving them ample excuse in dragging their feet to avoid the inevitable.  The responsibility of integrating Clarke County schools would fall into the hands of those who were reluctant and often downright hostile to Brown.  The Supreme Court provided no support or continued encouragement to the judges of lower courts to actively engage the issue, effectively turning the movement into a standstill and making Brown a paper tiger.[1]  [2]

           
xxxxxxxxAttempts at integration did not stop here as many white Georgians would have hoped.  Desegregation finally made its way to the University of Georgia in Athens.  In 1961, two black students, Charlayne Hunter and Hamilton Holmes, were admitted under a court order from Macon by Judge William Bootle to UGA.  The two were met with verbal and physical threats, culminating in Governor Ernest Vandiver finally conceding after riots had occurred on campus that there was nothing more that could be done to keep them out of the school.  This incident marks the first time victory was made in Clarke County education to have racial integration, but it only came as a result of blacks themselves acting as the petitioners to make it happen.  In fact, Governor Vandiver had to make the decision of whether or not to close the University, citing that by law he was required to because of state laws that were passed immediately after the Supreme Court’s Brown decision that attempted to act as anti-integration measures to counter Brown.  However, in the entire scope of civil rights, the victory at UGA was only lackluster.  It came seven years after the Brown ruling and was only token integration at best, as well as being opposed the entire way by many powerful southern politicians.  The incident at UGA was a battleground that remained mostly within state politics; it had no effect upon Clarke County’s local public schools.  After the hostilities on UGA’s campus cooled, Clarke’s school system remained firmly segregated.[3]

           
xxxxxxxxFollowing in similar footsteps made by the Hunter-Holmes controversy at UGA, the local NAACP chapter in Athens decided to take action.  The county’s Board of Education had enacted a freedom of choice plan in 1959, but (predictably) never encouraged the black community to exercise this new option.  With support from the Reverend Hudson of the Athens chapter of the NAACP, five black children managed to receive approval by the Board of Education Placement Committee to attend the area’s white schools.  More than one school was chosen so as to have a greater effect of integrating the Clarke County School District.  One was sent to Athens High School (later to become Clarke Central), three were sent to Childs Street School, and one to Chase Street School.  In September 1963, these five made history by officially integrating Clarke County’s public school system.  But unlike what happened at UGA with Holmes and Hunter two years earlier, Clarke’s schools were opened that fall largely without incident.  The children suffered insults and verbal threats, but no serious legal effort was mustered to prevent the children from attending the three schools.  The Board of Education in Clarke made the step of approving the children mostly in an effort to keep the federal government from getting involved in local affairs.  The Board believed that they were sure to fail in keeping large numbers of blacks out of white schools if the federal government was nudged into getting involved with their school district.  According to the minutes taken by the Board at the time,

“The Board would prefer to continue the custom of maintaining separate schools for white and Negro pupils.  At the same time, it is recognized that separation in schools cannot be legally compelled or required.  This matter has been tested repeatedly in courts and all people are familiar with the results of court action in such cases.  The Clarke County Board of Education believes that schools should remain under local control and that administration of school affairs should not be under the direction of a federal court.”

By allowing small token integration, the Board agreed that the county would avoid consequences that were worse in their eyes and also maintain control of the situation.  The official integration of Clarke County was not as momentous as it should have been.  The county was still operating a dual school system long after the fall of 1963.  Much like the token integration that had occurred two years earlier at the nearby University of Georgia, the event could hardly be called a success.  As a testament to how hollow 1963 was for the initiators of Clarke’s first encounter with school integration, these five children would later be referred to by historians as the “Forgotten Five.”[4]  [5]

           
xxxxxxxxTen years after Brown should have found its intended success, Clarke County and much of the rest of the nation had avoided the Supreme Court’s desired outcome by ignoring, intimidating, and outright defying those who attempted to alter the status quo.  The situation in 1964 was not favorable to the Civil Rights Movement.  To rejuvenate their efforts, the federal government needed to take new steps to further their cause.  Luckily for the movement, a President favorable to black equality had come to power by this time.  Lyndon B. Johnson had been sworn in after the assassination of John F. Kennedy and took immediate action at trying to pass new legislation.  Johnson, himself a southerner, breathed new life into an act proposed earlier by Kennedy during his presidency.  But southern politicians delayed its passage with a three month filibuster and attempted to weaken the bill as ninety four amendments to it were rejected.  But Johnson persisted, and with appeals to the slain president’s memory and continued pressure from Johnson at the executive branch, the bill was passed in June 1964, one year after Kennedy sent it to Congress.  Johnson signed the bill into law on July 6^th to make it the Civil Rights Act of 1964, and with this legislation in effect ten years after Brown, that Supreme Court decision now had the clout to strike in the Jim Crow South.[6]  [7]

xxxxxxxxThe Civil Rights Act of 1964 proved to be the most effective piece of legislation to further secure African-American rights since Reconstruction following the Civil War.  The act had the backing of all three branches of the federal government, making the issue of school desegregation a national policy that would be actively pursued.  The act contained twelve titles; the most important titles relating to the desegregation of public schools were titles four and six.  Title VI had the backing of the U.S. Commissioner of Education and the U.S. Attorney General, giving them the authority to get directly involved in desegregating public school systems and force the issue through court action.  Most importantly, to get the attention of local school boards who refused to take action, Title VI authorized the federal government to deny federal funding to any school system that refused to comply with the new act.  This threat would not be noticed by local school boards, however, because the only problem was that at the time there was little if any federal aid to education to deny.  Fortunately, Congress remedied the situation by passing the Elementary and Secondary Education Act in 1965.  This act provided large federal funding to schools across the nation, but it used most of the money allocated to be sent to poor school districts in the South.  With Brown, the Civil Rights Act of 1964, and the Elementary and Secondary Education Act of 1965 to face down, the writing was on the wall for the Board of Education in Clarke County.  Local school officials would soon become well acquainted with bureaucrats affiliated with the U.S. Department of Health, Education, and Welfare (known hereafter in this paper as HEW), an agency which up until this time period had remained relatively obscure and ineffectual.[8]  [9]

           
xxxxxxxxAt the time the Civil Rights Act was passed in 1964, less than 1 percent of black schoolchildren were going to school with white schoolchildren, and less than one-fifth of all southern school districts had attempted desegregation.  But within one year of the execution of Title VI of the Civil Rights Act, 6 percent of black students were attending school with white students and 1,563 school districts had implemented a desegregation plan.  The progress that was made within one year after Title VI made its appearance was more than the combined ten years of progress following Brown.  With HEW officials on their side, black activists no longer would be the ones who were needed to initiate the process of integrating their local schools; HEW officials armed with Title VI now required that the members of Clarke County’s Board of Education act as the petitioners.  The burden had now passed; HEW now demanded that Clarke submit a desegregation plan to Washington and await its approval by the department.[10]

           
xxxxxxxxThroughout the 1967-68 school year in Clarke County, the Board had managed to place almost 800 black students into formerly all white schools under the same freedom of choice plan of 1959 that was responsible for allowing the first five black students into three of Clarke’s white schools.  By the end of that term, five of the eighteen schools in the county were still not integrated.  HEW demanded more action from the Board to increase diversity for the 1968-69 school year.  Part of the Board’s latest plans designated that so-called “inner” areas of the county would continue to have the freedom of choice policy for that school year.  Within this area lay Clarke’s two main high schools – Athens High, formerly all white, now partially integrated, and Burney-Harris, all black.  This school year would be the last that Clarke would see with some of its schools remaining exclusively one race.  For the 1969-70 school year, Superintendent Wood proposed to HEW officials that the entire county would be redistricted, and schools across the county would see a further balancing of the racial composition of the student body.  On 29 April, 1969, Clarke County’s Board of Education approved the desegregation plan for the year’s upcoming school term.  Plan A, as it was referred to, called for half of the county’s high school age students to attend Athens High and half Burney-Harris.  Plan A was sent to Washington’s HEW officials on 1 May, 1969.  As HEW was making their decision, Charles McDaniel replaced Sam Wood as Superintendent on July 1, and after debate about certain details of the plan, HEW sent a formal letter of disapproval back to Clarke County’s Board of Education the following day on 2 July.  HEW recommended a Plan B to the Board, with its most important aspect being that all schools would be majority white with a black range between 20 and 40 percent.  On 16 July, the Board rejected HEW’s recommendation and voted to stand by Plan A.  But after two weeks, the Board came up with a modified version of Plan A, called the “Compromise Plan.”  An important feature of this plan and also its most controversial among parents was the issue of busing students to different parts of the county to achieve racial balance.  Without busing, it would have been difficult to execute the plans of the Compromise Plan that called for 20 to 40 percent of black students to be present in each school.  Over several years, black communities and black schools developed alongside each other; without busing students to schools in other parts of the county and instead continuing sending students to the nearest and most convenient locations would result in lopsided ratios of white to black in each individual school.  Busing was an integral part of the plan, and on 13 August, the Board called one more meeting to reconsider their options.  Many white and black parents had complained to the Board that their children would be sent to schools farther away from their homes and filed suit in court.  The Board voted to stay the course with the Compromise Plan after hearing from local parents, and even though the decision was met with more legal appeals, the Clarke County School District pressed forward and opened on 2 September, 1969 without incident.  On this day, the actions of HEW had managed to increase the number of black students attending school with white students to 3,026.  Seventeen of Clarke’s eighteen schools were now desegregated; the remaining exception was now Burney-Harris and its 525 black students.  The coming spring of this school term would see a significant rise in confrontation between black and white students.[11]  [12]  [13]  [14]

           
xxxxxxxxAfter all the debate over the Compromise Plan, it was now clear that the plan would only be used for the one year that it was implemented.  HEW officials were now calling for a complete desegregation plan for the 1970-71 school year, and demanded that the Clarke County Board of Education send to Washington a plan by 1 December, 1969.  Superintendent McDaniel worked with the University of Georgia’s Desegregation Center on the plan for this school term, one that would eliminate the county’s last all black high school – Burney-Harris.[15]  [16]  [17]

           
xxxxxxxxBefore the 1969-70 school year concluded, the first serious disturbance about the desegregation process happened in the spring of 1970.  But the incident was not instigated by a mob of white citizens protesting black registration as had been seen in the past on many occasions, but rather by black students at Athens High.  There was frustration on the part of many in the entire black community that decisions were being made about them and their future without their consultation, and more importantly, that after this school year was over, there would no longer be a black school in their community to identify with.  Many blacks felt dissatisfied with desegregation and what the results would mean for them.  Many conceded that racial integration was moral and ethically right, but felt that there would be great loss to their community with the loss of an icon like Burney-Harris.  On Thursday, 16 April, a group of black students at Athens High were gathered in the lobby of the auditorium discussing a newspaper article they had found that was about the efforts being done to ease racial tensions at their school.  Principal Don Hight later told reporters that the students were “incensed with the use of the word militant and the article in general.”  After being told to return to class by Hight, some of the students chose to do so, but others instead chose to leave and meet up with other students coming from Burney-Harris.  After grouping together, the students then returned to Athens High together, entered the building, and began attacking other students.  Assistant Principal Walter Allen was even attacked, being “struck in the back a number of times” according to Principal Hight.  The Burney-Harris faction of the incensed group of students then returned to their school, where Principal Roberson managed to diffuse the situation along with the police.[18]

           
xxxxxxxxAs a result, in the aftermath of what happened on 16 April, the Clarke County Board of Education met and discussed what could be done to offer concessions to black students who felt they were being treated unfairly.  In order to prevent the feeling that black students would be attending a white high school instead of attending an integrated school that would belong to them as much as it ever belonged to white students, the Board approved new measures to ensure that the upcoming school year would begin smoothly.  Some of those measures were to create a new name for Athens High, incorporate some of the school colors from Burney-Harris into Athens High’s, consider multi-ethnic textbooks in future textbook orders, the upcoming school curriculum should contain a semester of black studies, a bi-racial committee will advise the administration on certain actions, and many other points of interest intended to promote cooperation between white and black.[19]  [20]

           
xxxxxxxxOn the first Monday in September 1970, the Clarke County School District opened its doors without disturbance.  All eighteen schools were finally desegregated.  Sixteen years after Brown, seven years after the “Forgotten Five,” and after an exhausting encounter with the federal government, Athens High now had a new name – Clarke Central.

           
xxxxxxxxIn the following decades after Clarke County’s experience with the Civil Rights Movement, progress was still found wanting in the South for African-Americans desiring equal opportunities in education.  Many of the white communities in Clarke County took part in a phenomenon commonly called “white flight,” a trend that involved a pattern of private school openings in the county in an apparent last stand against white parents being forced to watch their children go to school alongside the area’s black children.  The same year that Clarke County completed its process of desegregation, Athens Christian School, a privately run school just north of Athens, opened its doors.  During the first phases of HEW involvement in the county, another major private school in the area, Athens Academy, opened in 1967, and shortly thereafter, quickly moved its campus to nearby Oconee County where it could continue to grow unmolested by the Board in Clarke County.  Because of their private nature, schools such as these and many others like them in Clarke County were not subject to the continuous prodding of HEW or their threats of withdrawing federal funds with the power of Title VI.  Many who remained on the Board of Education in Clarke County after 1970 were of course white, and with many of their community’s children and possibly their own children as well enrolling in the latest wave of private schools, Clarke County’s public schools suddenly had trouble locating appropriate funds to operate as less white faces walked through its halls.  Given that the black population of the South was just emerging from years of oppression, most black families were fortunate enough to finally be a part of the county’s historically white schools.  Most did not have the money to send their children to the area’s new private schools where many of the county’s whites were emerging; they were left to face the declining quality of schools like Clarke Central.

xxxxxxxxIn an article entitled “Private Schools Add Diversity to Athens’ Educational System” written by Athens Banner-Herald staff writer Greg Martin in March 1999, he spoke of the rich histories of many of the area’s private schools, but apparently completely missed how these schools have contributed to anything but diversity for the residents of Clarke County.  Since complete desegregation in 1970, the black population of Clarke Central has increased to 52.7% while the white student body has declined to 32.8% in the 2002-03 school year.  On the other hand, a private school such as Athens Academy has a black population that is virtually non-existent, registering at only 3.7%, with a student body that is bleach-white at 86.4% in the 2001-02 school year.  And because of the introduction of higher numbers of private schools into the county, the growth of the public school population for Clarke has been in the negative.  The total enrollment for the 1969-70 term was 10,886.  Thirty years later, in the 1999-2001 term, it had dropped to 10,769, including kindergarten, an option not available in 1969.  In a county that is approximately 27% black, the demographics that are present in the current school system show an inherent unfairness to the county’s minority children.  With numbers like these, it is readily apparent to anyone why it can be argued that desegregation was not completed in the fall of 1970.[21]  [22]  [23]  [24]  [25]  [26]

xxxxxxxxBut for all the gains that have been made by African-Americans in Clarke County, was the course of action that was chosen the correct one?  Looking back in retrospect, the black community in Athens expressed much hesitation about merging with the white community and what it would mean to them.  A school like Burney-Harris was something that identified who they were – something that belonged to them exclusively.  One of the most misunderstood parts of the struggle for civil rights in the South is the fact that many blacks did not want to integrate their schools, businesses, communities, and, thus, their lives with others.  Years of segregation had resulted in black self-reliance and autonomy, and to give this up would be a potential setback.  Many would have preferred to stay at Burney-Harris only if being separate would have been equal.  With the loss of Burney-Harris also came a decrease in other areas of black life in Athens-Clarke County.  Many businesses in the black district of town would later close due to having to compete with white businesses.  Today, a part of the downtown core that contained many black establishments formerly known as the “Hot Corner” is now a shell of what it used to be.  But regardless of any losses incurred and hesitation shown by blacks, when the Reverend Hudson chose to make that first strike in 1963 to register the “Forgotten Five,” he made a move that he certainly knew at the very heart of the matter was right.  Regardless of the situation now, this step was one that improved the condition of the African-American.  With the stalemate that is now ongoing for Clarke’s white and black residents, will it take more federal involvement to make another attempt at leveling the playing field?