Tiffany Snell
November 5, 2004
HIST 3090
The Desegregation of
the Gwinnett County
School System
Race
relations have dominated southern life and politics since the founding of the
nation. Segregation developed from the belief that the black race was innately
inferior to the white race. This belief justified slavery before the Civil War
and then was used to defend segregation in the years leading up to integration.
After slavery was abolished the segregation of society and its public
institutions, especially education, followed naturally. In Georgia,
and specifically in Gwinnett County,
the education system was undoubtedly the most deeply segregated area of public
life. Children who were raised by black nannies and whose childhood friends
were black, refused to go to school with black students. In the 1960s the
federal government forced Georgia
and Gwinnett County
to integrate the school system.[1]
Segregation
originated from the belief that the black race was childlike and inferior to
the white race. Formal segregation was not needed during slavery because the
white race had an unquestionable power over the black race. After emancipation
segregation laws were put into place to prevent blacks from gaining political
or social power. Historians argue that this was the beginning of segregation.
However, informal segregation has existed since before slavery. Blacks were
always seen as untrustworthy, lazy, and unintelligible, and therefore
prohibited from sharing equal rights. Segregation was much more than a law it
was an attitude and a belief. White people believed that if segregation was
discontinued the white race would disappear. These deep rooted beliefs made it
hard for many areas to integrate. Education was the most controversial area of
desegregation. Educating blacks meant admitting that they were teachable. It
meant that it was not their ability that made them inferior, but that it was
their circumstances. The desegregation of education also meant that blacks
would have the potential to be equal in the business world as well.[2]
The
first Gwinnett county schools were built in the 1800s. On January 1, 1826, Lawrenceville
Academy was built for white
students only. The black population in Gwinnett was so small that a school for
black children was not needed until the late 1800s. Cedar Hill was built for
the black children who lived near the Robert Craig plantation, known as ‘Little
Egypt’. Having a segregated school system in the early 1900s was widely
accepted in Gwinnett county because the black population was so small they
never tried to resist segregation. In 1940, when R.S. Simonton retired from
superintendent of schools he recorded that there were eighteen white schools
and twelve black schools. On paper this may seem like a lot of schools, however,
each of these schools were made up of no more than ten children. R.C. Wilbanks
became superintendent of schools in 1955 and asked the community to raise money
to build consolidated schools. By building a few larger schools, the county’s
resources could be allocated to fewer places, hence raising the standards of
each school. A bond was raised for the construction of Central
Gwinnett, South Gwinnett, West
Gwinnett, and North Gwinnett. A separate
bond was also raised to consolidate the twelve black schools into two,
Hooper-Renwick in Lawrenceville and Hull Elementary in Duluth.[3]
Gwinnett
County’s first experiment with
integration was in 1965 when the school system attempted token integration. Token
integration gave black students who had good standing at Hooper-Renwick the
opportunity to transfer to Central Gwinnett, the white
school in Lawrenceville. Don Phillips was the principal of Lawrenceville
Elementary in 1965 and later became the principal of Central Gwinnett High in
1967. During token integration very few blacks chose to come to the white
schools. Phillips remembers four students moving to Lawrenceville Elementary in
1966. Token integration was poorly set up because black students were not
motivated by their black teachers to transfer, and were often intimidated by
white students and parents. At Central Gwinnett,
Phillips remembers athletics playing a large role in integration. Many black
students who were athletically talented, especially in basketball and football,
transferred in 1967. These students were accepted and well liked regardless of
their minority status.[4]
The federal
government realized that token integration was a failure and gave Gwinnett
County three years to segregate in
1968. Superintendent of schools, J.W. Benefield developed a unique way of
integration that had never been attempted. He recommended that the schools be
integrated according to school bus routes. Other areas had integrated by
transferring a few grades at a time. This took a longer period of time and also
caused more race problems since there was only one age group of black students
at the entire school. Benefield’s way of integration allowed an entire bus
route to be integrated at the same time. Therefore, there were children of all
ages going to the school. Benefield first presented this to the school board,
who excitedly accepted the plan. On the other hand, it was more of a challenge
to convince the federal officials of the county’s plan for integration.
Benefield met with four federal officials to present his recommended form of
integration. The officials were very skeptical and took a recess from
negotiations to fly back to Washington.
Five days later when the officials returned they agreed to Benefield’s bus
route integration plan. Gwinnett county is the only county that integrated this
way and largely because of this, it had one of the quickest integration periods.
Hooper-Renwick, the black school, was completely closed in the fall of 1969. Gwinnett
County consolidated its white and
black schools in an astonishingly short period of time, just two years,
compared to the rest of the state.[5]
School
desegregation in Gwinnett county also differed from other areas in Georgia
because Gwinnett did not experience any racial violence due to integration. In
fact, desegregation went so smoothly that there is nothing in the local
newspaper or in the county school board minutes about it. The Gwinnett county
school board minutes simply acknowledge that segregation existed, and then was
terminated. Joyce Harrison was a student at Central Gwinnett
during token integration. In 1968 one new black student, named Carolyn Wynn, was
added to the school. Students later described her as shy, quiet and probably
lonely. She rarely participated in school activities and was obviously at
Central solely to obtain a better education. No violence or riots broke out
because students seldom noticed Wynn was there. In 1969 when Hooper-Renwick was
closed, the students and teachers that remained at the school were divided up
and sent to white schools. Reid Mullins was the first principal of Snellville
Middle School when it opened in
1969. He was also the first person in Gwinnett
County to hire a black teacher,
Mrs. Annie McKibbins. Mullins and McKibbins both agree that the opposition the
school received for hiring a black teacher was very minimal. Opposition came in
the form of quiet discriminatory comments about McKibbins and her ability to
teach, not in outright violent acts. Being ignored was the worst of all
offenses that McKibbins received in her first few years at Snellville Middle. Don
Phillips also agrees that Gwinnett did not have a problem with violence during
integration. Phillips was the principal of Central Gwinnett High in 1969 when
it consolidated with Hooper-Renwick. Phillips says that the only discipline
problem he ever encountered was a verbal argument between a group of white and black
students. A rumor spread throughout the school that there was going to be a
rumble behind Brand’s Pharmacy. Phillips and the basketball coach, Brooke
Britt, gathered the boys to warn them of the consequences of this fight. The
fight never took place, and no other threats of violence occurred.[6]
Although
Gwinnett never experience the type of violence that was prevalent in other
areas during integration, the rapidness of Benefield’s school bus integration
plan had several negative repercussions The problem that Gwinnett
County school students and teachers,
both white and black, dealt with the most was the difficulty of quickly
adjusting to educational equality. Many students never completely adjusted to the
reality that blacks possessed equality within the school system. The most common
way students and teachers expressed this lack of adjustment was simply to
ignore the opposite race. McKibbins states that being left out was the hardest
thing to overcome when she arrived at Snellville Middle. The other teachers
already had groups of friends and were reluctant to include her. Remembering
how the teacher break room would become silent when she entered, or how someone
would move seats after she sat down was more hurtful than obvious violence. It
takes longer to change people’s beliefs than it does to change their actions.
McKibbins also noted that the small amount of black students and teachers in Gwinnett
County made it harder for the black
people to adjust to an integrated school system. The students at Hooper-Renwick
were divided up into four different school districts. This meant that very few
black students would be attending each white school. In 1969 approximately five
black students were integrated into Snellville Middle and McKibbins was the
only black teacher there for the next fifteen years. The overwhelming majority
of white students made it much harder for the black students to feel accepted.
Since there were so few black students, they were more vulnerable to be ignored
by the white students. In other words, white students were not forced to accept
the black students because there were so few of them.[7]
The
desegregation of Gwinnett county was greatly influenced by the desegregation of
Atlanta. In 1954 the Supreme Court
decided that all schools must desegregate in the case of Brown v. Board of Education of Topeka Kansas. This decision caused talk in Atlanta
of closing Atlanta’s public
schools. Nothing came of this and the school system stayed segregated until 1959
when the federal court ordered the desegregation of Atlanta
schools. Businessmen in Atlanta
began warming to the idea of token integration because if Atlanta’s
schools were closed it would have a significant negative effect on business.
The Sibley Commission was created to inform the public about the real choice at
hand, either integrated public schools or no public schools. The decision was
made to try token integration. The Gwinnett school board followed this
precedent almost ten years later. However, Atlanta
began experiencing problems with integration in the mid-1960s. The Gwinnett Daily News covered stories on Atlanta’s
problems with desegregation. Black students were arrested for storming the Atlanta
Board of Education when they were denied equal education. Many schools were
also punished for discriminatory practices, like overcrowding in black schools.
During desegregation Mayor of Atlanta William B. Hartsfield emphasized peaceful
integration with the slogan, “We’re a city too busy to hate”. This slogan was
created to put importance on the business side of Atlanta
culture and off the problems of desegregation. Atlanta
became the first city in the South to desegregate its public schools without
serious violence. This trend of peaceful integration was definitely passed on
to neighboring Gwinnett county. In October of 1967 the Gwinnett Daily News asked readers if they would be in favor of
reapportioning its five school districts in order to make them more racially
balanced. All six of the respondents were in favor of reapportionment, and
modeling their districts after those in Atlanta.[8]
Gwinnett
County’s desegregation was also
impacted by the race riot at the University
of Georgia on January 11, 1961. This was before Gwinnett county
had begun planning the integration of its school system. The violence exhibited
by UGA students baffled many people in Gwinnett county. Violence was expected
from lower-class ‘rednecks’ who were not educated, but the students and faculty
that participated in the riot at UGA were well respected, educated citizens. On
January 6, U.S. Court judge
William A. Bootle ordered the admission of Hamilton Holmes and Charlayne Hunter
to the University of Georgia.
Only a few hours later students gathered under the arches and hung a
black-faced effigy of Hamilton Holmes. The stage had been set for racial
violence. On the night of January 11, just thirteen hours after Hunter and
Holmes had completed their first day of classes at UGA, somewhere between
five-hundred and two-thousand students stormed Hunter’s dorm. Vulgar signs were
hung on the dorm as people threw rocks and other objects at Hunter’s window. This
riot became imbedded in the minds of Georgians, especially people in nearby
Gwinnett. If a riot of this kind was to break out in Gwinnett during
integration there was no doubt that the police force would be useless in
stopping it. The riot was especially damaging to the University’s reputation.
Students and faculty were gravely embarrassed and the administration was quick
to ban segregationist demonstrations. The FBI was ordered to investigate the
causes of the riot, and to ensure that nothing of the sort happened again. The
presence of the FBI showed the government’s seriousness about integration.
People in Gwinnett responded by writing in to the newspaper. Many citizens were
shocked and feared what integration could cause in Gwinnett, however the
majority of respondents saw the riot in Athens
as something that could never happen in Gwinnett because of the lack of revolutionary
attitudes in both whites and blacks. Possibly to soothe their minds, many
locals blamed the riot on Klan activity rather than a student organized attack.[9]
The
desegregation of the Gwinnett County
school system is most remembered by the peaceful transition of segregated
schools to the consolidation of white and black schools. In the early to
mid-1960s segregation was a natural and widely accepted institution. The black
race was thought to be mentally inferior to the white race. This belief made it
impossible to educate both blacks and whites together using the same
techniques. Over time this theory began to be disproved again and again, and
black people began to fight for an equal education. Giving black people an equal
education also meant giving them an equal chance in the business world. This
idea scared and angered large amounts of people. Students and faculty protested
the integration of the University of Georgia
partly because they felt that subordinate races, like the black race, lacked
morals. They also felt like black people were generally inferior and because of
that they should be denied the same rights as white people. Although many
people in Gwinnett County
no doubt felt the same way as the students and faculty at UGA, there was no eruption
of violence. This can be accredited to three reasons. First, the unique way
that Benefield implemented integration prevented strong racial tensions from
boiling over. Rather than integrating several grades at a time, Gwinnett
County integrated school bus
routes. This allowed for blacks of several ages to be integrated into the white
schools at the same time. Gwinnett County
was also greatly influenced by integration in Atlanta.
Although Atlanta did experience a
few small riots and court cases involving discrimination, for the most part Atlanta
desegregated peacefully. Mayor Hartsfield’s slogan “We’re too busy to hate” was
very popular and helped people realize that integration would not lead to the
end of the white race. Last, another reason that Gwinnett
County integrated so peacefully was
because of the small population of blacks living in the area. It simply was not
a big deal to integrate only a handful of students. Having a small amount of
black students made it easier for the white students and faculty to ignore them
and pretend like nothing had changed. It also made it almost impossible for
black students to collectively cause a riot that would have had any
significance. Therefore, the desegregation of Gwinnett
County public schools was completed
quickly and non-violently.[10]
[1] Robert
Cohen. “Two, Four, Six, Eight, We Don’t want to Integrate: White Student
Attitudes Toward the University of Georgia’s Desegregation,” Georgia Historical Quarterly70, 3
(1996): 616-645; John D. Smith. When Did
Southern Segregation Begin? (Boston:
Bedford/St. Martin’s, 2002), 30
[3] History of Gwinnett County Public Schools 1989
ed.; Gwinnett County Georgia Schools 1923.
[4] Don
Phillips, interview by author, written transcript, Lawrenceville, GA. 19 Oct.
2004; Joyce Harrison, interview by author, written transcript, Lawrenceville,
GA. 16 Oct. 2004.
[5] J.W.
Benefield, interview by author, written transcript, Duluth,
GA. 22 Oct. 2004. ; History
of Gwinnett County Public Schools, 1989 ed.
[6] Gwinnett
County Board of Education. minutes
of Gwinnett County Board of Education beginning 2 Feb. 1954 and ending 23 Feb.
1954; Joyce Harrison, interview by author, written transcript, Lawrenceville,
GA. 16 Oct. 2004; Reid Mullins, interview by author, written transcript,
Snellville, GA. 16 Oct. 2004; Annie McKibbins, interview by author, written
transcript, Decatur, GA. 21 Oct. 2004; “Gwinnett’s First Black Middle School
Teacher’s Early Years a Challenge,” Gwinnett
Daily Post, 23 Feb 2003, sec. A, p.
4 ; Don Phillips, interview by author, written transcript, Lawrenceville, GA.
19 Oct. 2004 ; Phoebe C. Godfrey, review of A
Victory of Sorts: Desegregation in a Southern Community, by Winfred E.
Pitts, History of Education Quarterly,
(vol. 44, 1).
[7] Don
Phillips, interview by author, written transcript, Lawrenceville,
GA. 19 Oct. 2004 ; Annie McKibbins, interview by author,
written transcript, Decatur, GA.
21 Oct. 2004.
[8] James
Patterson, Brown v. Board of Education a
Civil Rights Milestone and its Troubled Legacy (New York: Oxford University
Press, 2001), 65 ; Michelle Brattan,
review of Restructured Resistance: The
Sibley Commission and the Politics of Desegregation in Georgia, by Jeff
Roche, Journal of Southern History,
(66, 3): 683-684 ; “Atlanta Negro Group Jailed in School Case,” Gwinnett Daily News, 11 Oct. 1967 sec.
A, p. 10 ; “Atlanta Negroes Hit
Discrimination,” Gwinnett Daily News,
21 Sept. 1967 sec. P, p. 6
; “Government Pushing Problem of School Discrimination,” Gwinnett Daily News, 15 Sept 1967 sec. F, p. 10 ; “Maddox Asks
10-State Conference on Schools,” Gwinnett
Daily News, 4 Aug. 1969 sec. A, p. 1 ; “School Suit Angers
Georgians,” Gwinnett Daily News, 12 Sept. 1969 sec. F, p. 4 ; Susan M.
McGrath, “From Tokenism to Community Control: Political Symbolism in the
Desegregation of Atlanta’s Public Schools, 1961-1973,” Georgia Historical Quarterly79. no. 4 (1995): 842-872 ; “Gwinnett
Folks Speak Out,” Gwinnett Daily News,
29 Oct. 1967 sec. P, p. 7.
[9] Robert Cohen,
“G-Men in Georgia: The FBI and the Segregationist Riot at the University of
Georgia,” Georgia Historical Quarterly83,
no. 3 (1999): 508-538 ; “Gwinnett Folks Speak Out,” Gwinnett Daily News, 18
Jan 1961 sec. P, p. 8 ; Robert Cohen, “Two, Four, Six, Eight, We
Don’t Want to Integrate: White Student Attitudes Toward the University of
Georgia’s Desegregation,” Georgia
Historical Quarterly, 79, no. 3 (1996): 616-645.
[10] Smith,
30 ; Robert Cohen, “Two, Four, Six, Eight”, 626 ; J.W. Benefield, interview by
author, written transcript, Duluth, GA.
22 Oct. 2004 ; “Atlanta Negroes Hit Discrimination,” Gwinnett Daily News, 21 Sept. 1967 sec. P, p. 6 ; Ralf Green,
interview by author, written transcript, Snellville, GA. 19 Oct. 2004.
Helpful Links:
1. www.gwinnett.k12.ga.us/ This is the
Gwinnett County School Board’s official website. It gives a summary of what is
new in Gwinnett County. I used this site to find the current school board
committee members and their specific districts.
2. www.doe.k12.ga.us/ This is the official site of the Georgia Department of Education. This
site offers information about public, private, and charter schools in Georgia. It also outlines the requirements for new students, the
core curriculum, and different bills that have been passed in Georgia and the U.S. that effect education.
3. www.gwinnettdailyonline.com/ This is the Gwinnett Daily Post’s online website. It
includes the latest news in Gwinnett County, the state of Georgia, and the nation. This website can be especially
useful for research by using the online archives. The archives only go back
fourteen days, but with a subscription for anywhere from a day to a year the
entire archives can be accessed.
4. www.gwinnetths.org/ This is the Gwinnett Historical Society’s home page.
Although the GHS had little information about desegregation, it has interesting
historical documents. It also has information on different exhibitions and
meetings.
5. www.gwinnettpl.org/ This is the Gwinnett Public Library site. It allows
you to search all the Gwinnett County Libraries catalogs to find information
and where it is located. The Five
Forks branch has micro-film
of the Gwinnett Herald, which later became the Gwinnett Daily Post.