The Battle for Equality: Desegregation of Jackson County Georgia

Beth Ensley

Establish an integration plan, put it in the newspapers, tell the United States Government that you have taken every step to initiate desegregation of your school system and then sit back and hope that talk of integration will quietly disappear. This was one plan followed by many Southern Boards of Education, and the Jackson County School system is no acceptation. The effort to maintain segregation in Jackson County, received support from the state legislature, from the competition within the county school systems, and from efforts by individual citizens to support their beliefs that blacks desired segregation as much as whites. Because of this desegregation did not occur until forced by the federal government.

There are many reasons why desegregation of our school systems took place almost one hundred years after the Emancipation Proclamation, and most of it centers around the Southern leadership. Like most states, Georgia’s governors and legislatures were whole-heartedly behind segregation, and promised to uphold the will of the white majority to maintain segregation in Georgia school systems. The gung-ho rhetoric of multiple Georgia governors on this issue continued up to the 1954 Brown v. Board of Education lawsuit, when they lose some of their momentum with the decision of the national government. Many things were tried in order to preserve de facto segregation, even though de jure was illegal, even going so far as to craft an Amendment to the state constitution to aid in continued segregation. Governors also, encouraged county systems to bury integration by declaring that blacks desired segregation as much as whites. The main difference between Jackson County and the counties surrounding her was that within Jackson County, the fight to prevent the consolidation of the Jefferson and Commerce school systems into the county system was a harder fought battle than the integration of blacks into white schools.

After the beginnings of integration in the late 1960’s, the Federal Department of Health, Education, and Welfare felt it was necessary to bring a lawsuit against Jackson County and the City of Jefferson for not completely desegregating in the amount of time required. This lawsuit finished the integration process in less then six months.

Never allowing the state of Georgia to be forced to integrate in any area is the theme that is prominent for the governors who were elected during the height of the desegregation movement of the nineteen-fifties to the nineteen-seventies. Numerous articles about the governors and the speeches they gave during this period give us an idea of their sentiments. Governor Talmadge, in the early fifties, claimed that integration was a smokescreen and not the real reason for judicial action because all men, both black and white, viewed segregation as a good thing. He said that the real motivation for pushing the civil rights movement was the Federal judiciary’s desire to become the final authority in, first, education, but eventually, every issue of the nation. Also, he contended, with this blow, the courts had wiped out the Ninth and Tenth Amendments protecting individual and states rights, which had always annoyed the courts. Furthermore, while S. Marvin Griffin was Governor in the late nineteen-fifties, he placed special attention on desegregation, going so far as to make it the central point of his State of the State address at least once. He declared that while he was governor, the people of Georgia never had to worry about their schools being integrated, citing the ratification of a Georgia constitutional amendment giving the state the ability to give individual students personal grants for education-purposes. This was done with the stated purpose of never allowing state money to fund a single mixed-race school. Integration of the schools was also seen by Griffin as just a stepping stone to further problems with uppity blacks; these fears were realized when the U.S. Supreme Court outlawed segregation of intrastate transportation. Griffin considered this ruling to be just another usurpation of states’ rights by a national system and announced that every possible legal means would be used to counter this horrible event. In 1958, Ernest Vandiver rested his bid for governor on the same position that had won in years past, that of there never being a breakdown in school segregation in the South. After declaring Vandiver to be the best, and only qualified man to run the state, the editor of The Jackson Herald announced before the election that all of the Jackson County precincts would vote for Vandiver and he predicted the results correctly. Vandiver received 3,763 votes while his two opponents combined only received 374. Significantly, this proves how much white Georgians still wanted segregation at this point in time.[1]

In order to maintain segregation in Georgia, an Amendment to the state constitution was proposed and voted on in October and November of 1954. The Amendment reads as follows:

“Notwithstanding any other provision of the Constitution, the General Assembly may by law provide for grants of state, county or municipal funds to citizens of the state for educational purposes, in discharge of all obligation of the state to provide adequate education for its citizens.”

In the minds of the legislature this allows them to ignore the U.S. courts’ orders to integrate because they would refuse to use state money in order to pay for a mixed-race school system. The schools in a county ordered to integrate would no longer be able to receive state funds, effectively abolishing the system. This Amendment would allow the representatives in the legislature to grant money to all the parents in that system to pay for their child’s education, completely maintaining free segregation. Talmadge and Griffin worked to reassure the populace that this would not destroy the school systems, but would actually enhance them because not even the federal government can mess in the affairs of a technically private school. Most of Georgia voted yes for the Amendment, and it passed. Surprisingly, considering blacks had been mostly disenfranchised, in Jackson County the vote passed only by around 300 votes. This would mean that either people did not trust that the state would actually pay the money if they technically would no longer have to, or that they just did not believe that the Federal courts would start enforcing the Brown decision to integrate schools.[2]

Unwilling to admit that segregation might be wrong, most white Southerners whole-heartedly believed that both whites and blacks wanted, and thought, that segregation was the best way to handle the issue of race. Whether or not they started out believing their own rhetoric, eventually white people convinced themselves that segregation was of benefit to both races, keeping pure and separate races which would maintain their historical traditions. It is amazing how almost one hundred years after the Civil War, Southern racial prejudices were still rampant. The same ideas that the apostles of disunion espoused before the civil war, the fear of racial war, equality, and amalgamation were nearly as prevalent in the 1950’s as they were in the 1850’s.[3]

To the end of supporting both races in this desire to stay separate and preserve the southern way of life, people were asked to join the States’ Rights Councils in their counties. Jackson County was especially proud to be hosting the Northeast Georgia States’ Rights Council Rally, gathering with other like-minded people dedicated to preserving segregation. The Southern belief that integration of the school system was detrimental to both races was compounded by what they saw as the failures of integration in other regions. They saw the small number of schools where white boys were beat up by black boys, or white and black gangs formed within the school and were uncontrollable by the teachers and administrators. This was seen to be the norm through-out the country, and the quiet peace of the Southern schools because of segregation was lauded. [4]

Needing another excuse for why segregation is the natural state for blacks and whites, Georgia’s Attorney General Eugene Cook decided that the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP) had been founded by white communists in order to use blacks for their own evil gains. He claimed that the NAACP was founded by white people with questionable backgrounds who were members of the communist party or, worse yet, atheists. He believed they were using the organization to force changes on a group of people who were perfectly content with their situation and did not want the “mongerelization” or mixing of the two races anymore than whites did. Even pastors were claiming that it was God’s will that the races should be maintained distinctly, never to be amalgamated. With the scare of the Cold War on a nation fighting communist Russia, accusing an organization of being affiliated with communism, even by accident, was enough to cause people who would normally support it to be against it. It was a shrewd move on the part of the government to use this notion of communism and turn it into a matter of Communism versus Americanism instead of racial motivation. In a stroke of genius in a Christianized South, atheism also reared its head. If communism could not sway you, than surely accusing the NAACP of not believing in God and his divine plan would. Thus segregationists argued that because they were atheist, the civil rights leaders turned their heads at the violence of the race riots and the people being murdered, saying that it was just the way things must be to effect changes, even though the majority of people, black or white, did not want them.[5]

In Jackson County, Georgia, racial integration was not the hardest fought issue. Of much more importance to the county was the struggle of the Jefferson and Commerce City Systems, to be separate entities from the Jackson County school system. In 1952, after battling for several months, Jefferson and Jackson County finally came to an agreement which would be effective for twenty-five years. The systems would share the same basic school plans and Jefferson would nominally report to Jackson County for state funding. Jackson County agreed to fund any building projects, with Jefferson turning over all of their state funds to the county for allotment. In return, the county, as a larger system, would run both a white elementary school and high school, and a black elementary school and high school to be built within Jefferson City limits. Two years later, the City of Commerce signed a similar agreement with the county. The major differences were that the black elementary students in Commerce would go to a black school in the Commerce City limits while the high school students would be transported by county buses to the black high school in Jefferson. Since these were the two largest towns in the county, everyone took sides and many of the rural county residents did not like the towns receiving special treatment.[6]

This issue was very controversial for years, because the county did not want to let the cities’ educational revenues go. In order to integrate the entire county, and form it into more a unit rather than many little school systems scattered all over, in 1954, the county’s request for state funds to aid in building equal schooling facilities was granted. Brand-new permanent schools were to be built in seven areas for white elementary students with three high schools. The black students had one high school and two elementary schools. It was not until 1963 that the blacks actually moved into their new modern and state of the art Bryan Elementary and High School. Before the new facilities were opened, the black students had attended 22 one-roomed schoolhouses scattered all over the county with poor equipment. People were now able to completely salve their consciences because black students had one of the newest, best schools.[7]

Even though Brown v. Board of Education was decided in 1954, Jackson County and the city schools systems did not try to desegregate their systems until the U.S. Department of Health, Education and Welfare started talking to them after the Civil Rights Acts of 1964. Desiring to retain federal education grants, Jackson County decided to at least publish a plan for desegregation, and nominally carry it out. Jefferson and Commerce rapidly followed. The basic plan called for any student being able to choose the school they wished to attend, and being placed there without regard to race or color. Also, the black teachers at the former black schools were to be given a comparable position in the desegregated school system, with pay due their positions. This plan went into effect county-wide for the 1965-66 school year with minimal results. Some black students transferred into former all-white schools, but no whites moved. Nation-wide, as similar moves began to take place, it appeared that black children who began attending former all-white schools were more motivated to learn than their friends who remained in primarily black schools. Thus, it seemed that desegregation led to better academic results, but it was later concluded that the children’s achievements were due mostly to the influence they received at home. This trend was not seen as clearly in Jackson County by the students themselves, but parents and recent graduates did observe that there was a rise in the grades of the black students who transferred to the former white schools.[8]

At the beginning of the 1967-68 school year, all students were again able to choose to go to any school they wished, and surprisingly the black Bryan High School stayed open. Early in the spring of 1967, a group of black parents requested that the high school stay open for one more year, in order to make the integration for their children easier. At that same meeting, a group of white parents spoke objecting to the fact that their children were now required to ride the buses to school with blacks, who they feared would contaminate their children. After discussing these two issues at length, and comparing them to what the U.S. Department of Health, Education and Welfare had ordered, the board members decided that it was legal to keep Bryan High School open one more year. Then the white parents were informed that they were powerless about the integrated busing under the rules of the Department. There was not a lot of violence, other than a few fist fights within the integrated schools to be concerned about and all the transfers of both students and faculty went smoothly. This is surprising considering how only ten years previously, all out race-war was anticipated if integration was ever to be forced on the South, and instead the only concern that remained was amalgamation. Even there, a letter writer to the Jackson Herald no longer feared the annihilation of one race, just the mixing of them so that there would not be a pure, supreme, white race.[9]

By the school year 1969-70, the black and white schools were to be completely integrated with only three high schools, but with the former black Bryan Elementary school and the former white Jefferson Elementary school splitting the students between them by grade. Instead, in September of 1969, the U.S. Department of Health, Education and Welfare filed lawsuits against both the Jackson County and Jefferson City School Systems for failure to comply with the stated plan. The schools were not equally mixed and while Jefferson Elementary had some black students attending, Bryan Elementary had 200 students enrolled, with every single one of them black. When the schools appeared in court, they had two plans with them. One was for the immediate move of all the students in Grades one through five to Jefferson and all the students in Grades six and seven to Bryan. The other plan was for Jefferson Elementary to add on eight classrooms, and move all the grades to one school by January 1, 1970. After deliberating on these two proposals, the U.S. District Court judge ordered Jefferson Elementary to begin Construction saying that in the long run it would disrupt fewer people by allowing them to move over the Christmas holidays, rather than in the middle of classes. The school addition was complete, even down to the desks, when students were ready to move in. This was just a little suspicious. A letter to the editor at that time voiced the opinion that the county had been delaying as long as they could before they had to completely integrate, but were prepared to finish as soon as called upon by the courts. The evidence was that the land at Jefferson Elementary had already been leveled for building, and the materials ordered, but no construction was actually started until ordered by the courts. This is a very valid argument, and would suit the political climate of the time, but no one from the school systems would actually discuss what was going on there.[10]

With all of the changes in policy, it is really interesting how Southern states no longer want to admit there was ever segregation. Take for example the segregation Amendment of 1954. There was never a law passed appealing it, but when the state constitution was edited and revised in 1981, the Amendment quietly disappeared without a trace. So, technically, it could still be in effect. This should have drastically affected Jackson County desegregation when it happened in the sixties, but the state at that point was already ignoring the Amendment. In comparison with other parts of the South, desegregation happened mostly seamlessly once forced to in 1970. This could have been mostly because the school systems with in the county cooperated with each other, not forcing people to choose sides, because there really were not sides to choose between. Desegregation was going to come, even if the citizens of the county did not want it to, and they decided not to bathe their homes in blood to stop the inevitable. Hopefully, the further we are away from this tumultuous period of history, the more we will be able to learn about what actually happened when desegregation began and finished in the seventies. Even though the Board of Education members of that time are entering their seventies and eighties and are beginning to die, in the past few years, some of them have begun to come forward and talk limitedly about what went on in the decision-making process that has never been discussed before. More needs to be learned from these players in history before they die and their knowledge is lost forever.

Links

This is the Jackson County School System website with the Board of Education on it.

http://www.jackson.k12.ga.us/administration/boe.html

Ernest Vandiver Jr. was the Georgia governor who was most involved in the effort to avoid integration. This site gives more details about his life and plans.

http://www.ngeorgia.com/people/vandiver.html

Atlanta Higher Education is about the civil rights and desegregation movement in Atlanta Georgia. It is similar to what happened in Jackson County.

http://atlantahighered.org/civilrights/index.asp

These two websites have pictures of the civil rights movement and pictures of schools integrating across the South.

http://www.picturehistory.com/find/c/160/mcms/html

http://kodak.com/US/en/corp/features/moore/mooreIndex.shtml

Endnotes