The Final Compromise: 

The Desegregation of Clarke County Schools

Athens, Georgia

By. Lois Thomas-Wright

When the Supreme Court handed down the decision of the 1954 Brown vs. The Board of Education case making segregated schools illegal under Fourteenth Amendment of the Constitution of the United States, Georgia’s political leaders pulled whatever tactics necessary to resist change. These staunch segregationists did everything from threatening to refuse funds for desegregated schools to threatening to close down Georgia’s public schools all together. In the forefront was Georgia’s Governor, Herman E. Talmadge, who had a reputation throughout the south as being a white supremacist.  In 1951, he first established Georgia’s public schools through funding from a statewide sales tax increase, and now, he was threatening to shut down the whole system should the schools be forced to desegregate. On the opposing side were Georgia’s white moderates who felt that “preserving public schools was more important than preserving total segregation.”[1]  In an attempt to offset the Supreme Court’s decision, Talmadge had to come up with some alternatives.   One was to get an amendment passed that would privatize the schools in the event of desegregation.  But through the efforts of the Georgia League of Women Voters and the Negro Voters League, a large number of voters turned out to defeat the amendment.[2]   Another one of Talmadge’s tactics was to increase funding to equalize the black schools.  During his second term in office, he got legislation to pass a three percent sales tax that would increase the state’s budget to ten million dollars. [3]  Some of this money was earmarked to improve the black schools. The idea was for public education to be made better for blacks where there would be no need for race mixing. It would continue to fit into the “separate but equal” philosophy, but with significant improvements.    These massive resistance tactics failed to work because Georgia was facing greater racial problems than a dual school system.  The deeply rooted segregated way of southern life with its Jim Crow practices was on the verge of crumbling.  Desegregating the schools was just the first step in speeding up the process. 

 It would be years after the Brown decision was handed down that both black and white children would be enrolled in a single school in Georgia. The time and process in which Georgia’s schools desegregated were painfully intense, and the fight to break down racial barriers would be one that Georgia’s citizens would continue pursue through the years ahead.  The purpose of this paper is to discuss how the process of desegregation in Clarke County took place and the events leading up to the disintegration of a dual school system.  It offers useful historical information in understanding how a racially divided educational system was able to work through a series of obstacles on the path of reform.

The desegregation of the Clarke County school system began when five black female students bravely walked through the doors of an all white school in the year of 1963. The opportunity was made possible through the Freedom of Choice plan, which was adopted by the Clarke County School Board in 1959. It was nothing more than a token move to keep the federal courts from forcing integration on the local school system.  Up until 1963, this plan had not been challenged until the local chapter of the NAACP petitioned the Clarke County Board of Education Placement Committee to admit seven black females in the white schools.[4]  The Clarke County School Board was not in favor of desegregating schools; they had planned to maintain a school system in which black and white students remained separated.  The petition of the local NAACP forced them in a position to admit black students rather than facing the federal courts.   The Placement Committee, however, only approved five of the seven females, which leaves to question the criteria they used in their selection process.  It also leaves to question as to why the NAACP only petitioned for black females and not black males to challenge the Freedom of Choice plan.  Having seen a white community vehemently oppose the forced desegregation of the University of Georgia two years earlier, it can only be speculated that petitioning for black females was viewed as less of a threat with the possibility of minimum resistance from the white community. It would be some years later before the Clarke County school system would see some significant changes to the black and white student ratio in its public schools. 

Under the Freedom of Choice Plan, the Clarke County school system was slow to make strides in desegregating.  By the end of the school year in 1968, Clarke County had only approximately 800 black students enrolled in the white schools.[5]  It was apparent that not only in Clarke County, but also across the South, desegregation was not occurring soon enough. To speed up the process, in 1964 the United States Congress passed the Civil Rights Act along with Title IV giving federal officials the authority to cut off funding to any school district not abiding by the law to desegregate.[6]  This took the petitioning off of blacks, and put it directly in the lap of the school districts that applied for federal aid.[7]  The Clarke County school district was one of many required to submit to the Department of Health Education and Welfare (HEW) desegregation plans that would call for more racially balanced schools.  They were required to do so by the fall of 1969.

In February, 1969, forty-eight Georgia school districts that had submitted desegregation plans had been approved by HEW.[8]  With time running out, the Clarke County School District had yet to comply with federal desegregation guidelines. The delay seem to have stemmed from some Clarke County residents who felt that the newly appointed Nixon administration would take a passive attitude toward desegregation and opt to restructure HEW.[9]  On the contrary, HEW remained a tough and unyielding force.  The delay caused the School Board’s attorney, Eugene Epting, to respond to a list of forty allegations made by the HEW’s Office of Civil Rights.  The board and the Clarke County community were accused of resisting desegregation.[10]  These allegations were a strategic move to get the board to make prompt and expedient changes to the school system by fall.

Under the leadership of Board President Broadus Browne, the Clarke County School Board appointed some of its members to serve on a special desegregation and districting committee. The purpose of this committee was to view all recommended plans to integrate the school system.  On the evening of April 10, 1969, the Board got their first glimpse of three new proposals for the upcoming school year.[11]   According to Athens Daily News reporter Bailey,

“The plans were developed by a ‘task force’ of some eight

  Clarke school system staff members, working with four staff

  members of the University of Georgia’s School Desegregation

  Educational Center.” [12] 

Each of the proposed plans involved busing to achieve a racially mixed school system.  Plan A proposed to bus the least amount, affecting only 500 students at a cost of $17,500.  Under this plan, students would be assigned to their district school within walking distance.[13]  Plan B proposed to bus 1,100 students at a cost of $38,500.  This plan calls for seven elementary schools to house grades 1-3, and six to house grades 4-6.[14]  Plan C proposed to bus 900 students at a cost of $31,500.[15]  Under this plan, ten elementary schools would offer grades 1-4, and four would offer grades 5-6.[16]   “The task force also developed eleven criteria for evaluating a school desegregation plan,” explains Bailey.[17] The three criteria that would have the most impact were, 1) achieving a racially balanced school faculty as well as student body, 2) making sure that white students are bused equally to black children, and 3) encouraging all of the Clarke County citizens to support the transition process.[18]  The task force would take the next step in submitting these proposals to the citizens advisory committee, who in turn, would make a recommendation to the full Board for final approval.[19]

On April 29, 1970, the Clarke County school board voted to adopt Plan A – not because it offered a complete racially balanced system, but because it offered minimum busing.  The plan would have the majority of students walking to their neighborhood schools, while others would be bused to various elementary and junior high schools to show some racial mixing.  The predominantly white Athens High School and the all black Burney-Harris High School would remain under the Freedom of Choice plan.[20]  With the adoption of Plan A, the Board had to address how it planned to integrate the staff, and how it planned to desegregate the high schools.  It was decided that the integration of staff would be addressed in a policy that promoted non-discriminatory practices in the hiring and assigning of teachers, and the high schools would integrate during the school term of 1970 provided the construction of the new school was complete.[21] The Board was pressed to get the proposal in to HEW’s Washington office by the deadline of May 1, 1970.  They were trying to avoid a hearing scheduled for May 5 to determine whether they complied with Title IV.[22]  Missing the deadline would mean losing over $600,000 in federal funding. Therefore, to avoid being penalized, school Superintendent Sam Wood and school board attorney Eugene Epting traveled to Washington D.C. to personally deliver the proposal.

It was no surprise when a group of citizens strongly criticized the Board’s decision to support Plan A.  Plan A had too many flaws, which was described in a telegram written to HEW’s Secretary Robert Finch by some 63 opposing parents.  They argued that the plan was not genuine in its proposal to balance the racial composition of the school district, and its instability would eventually cause the system to convert back to being segregated. They were also against the busing of their children to predominantly black schools where the conditions were substandard. They complained of the lack of provisions to desegregate faculty, staff, and the high schools, and the lack of consideration given to a more stable plan offered by the University of Georgia’s Desegregation Education Center.  Community opposition also came from the Athens Ministerial Association and the Athens Council on Human Relations who urged HEW to turn down the plan.  All of the controversy caused HEW to have apprehensions, and on July 1, the day School Superintendent Sam Wood was retiring from his post, he received a telephone call from HEW rejecting the plan.  It would be up to incoming Superintendent, Dr. Charles McDaniel, to urge the board to decide between three alternatives:  to modify the plan, to throw it away and start over again, or to back it up even if it meant going through the appeals process.[23]   Meanwhile, HEW continued to put the pressure on all of Georgia’s school districts to desegregate by September.  With less than two months to get it accomplished, an angry Clarke County Board of Education met on July 16th and voted to fight HEW’s decision.

Two weeks had passed and the Board was pondering over whether its decision to fight for Plan A was the right thing to do.  Eventually they decided to revise the plan and offer a compromise with the following modifications: minimum busing and minimum cost, all elementary schools would have grades 1-6, the all black schools of East Athens and West Broad would have an equal ratio of blacks and whites (all other schools would have 20-40 percent black), five inner city schools would be reorganized, and fair education would be given to all children.[24]  The Board’s decision, once again, ignited sparks in the white neighborhoods that would be affected by busing. This time, University Heights (a community where professors and research people reside) and Oconee Heights hired an attorney to fight the Board’s decision to have their children bused out of their neighborhoods to black schools.  They felt that the Board was singling them out and expecting them to bear the weight of desegregation. [25]  Across town, the children of the all black community, Rock Springs, were experiencing the same dilemma.  They, too, were going to be bused away from their neighborhood schools to white schools. The three parent groups decided to join forces and file an appeal with the State Board of Education. The State Board, at the time, was having problems with the U.S. Department of Justice and was not about to take on the desegregation problems of local school districts. Therefore, the parent’s appeal was rejected.  News reporter, Junie Brown, gave a clear explanation as to the reason why:

A decision by the state board either way…would have been

an admission that it has the authority to regulate school

desegregation on a local level.  Such an admission would

hurt the state board’s defense in a blanket desegregation suit

 filed against Georgia by the U.S. Department of Justice,

which seeks to make the state school board responsible for

 local school desegregation.[26]

The parents prepared to make another legal appeal, this time with Judge James Barrow of Clarke County Superior Court. On December 4, 1969, he handed down his decision ruling against an injunction that would force the school district to implement a new plan. He based his ruling on the fact that busing was acceptable to achieve racially balanced schools.  Unsatisfied with the decision, the parents decided to take the matter all the way up to the Supreme Court.

            In spite of the legal appeals brought on by the parents over the Clarke County School Board’s desegregation plan, the county opened its schools in September 1969 under a newly desegregated system with no encounters of boycotts or racial incidents.  Black student enrollment jumped from 33 per cent (a population of 1,187) in 13 desegregated schools the previous year to 85 per cent (a population of 3,026) in 17 desegregated schools.[27] All elementary and junior high schools had a racial mix of approximately 30 per cent black and 70 per cent white, an increase that nearly tripled in size since the persistence of HEW.[28]  The only school that had not seen any change was the all black high school, Burney Harris, which was still operating under the Freedom of Choice plan. The school board was under pressure to submit to HEW by December 1, 1969 plans to completely desegregate the high schools. When the plans were finally submitted, it explained how the tenth graders, both black and white, would attend Burney Harris High, while eleventh and twelfth graders would attend Athens High.[29] Another reorganization would take place after the completion of the new high school. On December 30, notification came from HEW in the form of an approval letter to Clarke County’s compromise desegregation plan that was already in effect.  The school board had long awaited a victory of this kind. They could rest easy knowing that their federal aid was no longer in jeopardy. Victory, however, would be short lived, as Clarke County fell victim to an intense racial outbreak for its plan to desegregate Burney Harris. 

            Burney Harris High School was the epitome of pride in the black community.  Many of Clarke County’s upstanding citizens and leaders graduated from this historical school that had roots dating back to the mid 1800’s.  For blacks, it represented a high level of achievement and self-worth in a segregated society that was harshly oppressive and discriminating. In the spring of 1970, when it was finally realized that Burney Harris would lose its identity through desegregation, Clarke County found itself in the midst of a racial outbreak that would test its ability to restore peace.  In the months leading up to the tumultuous day of April 16, efforts were made by a planning committee to find solutions for a smooth merger of the high schools.[30] The black students of Burney Harris, however, were resentful of decisions being made without their input. As far as they were concerned, they would lose their identity, self-pride, and school traditions once desegregation took place.  To add fuel to the fire, the move to make Burney Harris a school for 10^th graders while Athens High would be for 11^th and 12^th graders was an insult to this longstanding pillar of the black community.   These and other grievances prompted the students to commit acts of violence and vandalism at both Burney Harris and Athens High.  Broken windows, attacks on students, unruly protest, truancy and delinquency attributed to the racial turbulence that afternoon.   In a desperate attempt to restore order, Judge Barrow was requested by Superintendent McDaniel to issue a temporary restraining order naming 12 defendants and John Does (one through one hundred).[31] In the weeks to follow, there would be a string of vandalisms, protests, sit-ins, marches, and demonstrations from the black, white, and University communities over mounting issues concerning desegregation and racial injustices.

            Concessions had to be made if racial tensions were to be resolved peacefully.  The Board of Education took steps to meet with the black students to discuss their list of grievances. It was a list that called for the attention of the entire community if racial tensions were to ever subside.  To make the community aware of the problems that existed, the Athens-Banner Herald published the grievances and the board’s response on April 30, 1970.  The grievances ranged from sensitivity training for white teachers that would build better relationships with black students to preserving Burney Harris’ name and school traditions. Frances Taliaferro Thomas sums up the compromise made between the two merging high schools:

In the fall Burney Harris opened as an integrated junior high school, and Athens High School became Clarke Central High School.  The Burney-Harris blue and gold Yellow Jackets and the red and white Athens High School Trojans athletic teams merged as the Clarke Central Gladiators; team colors were red and gold.  Blacks and whites shared student leadership roles and formed a coalition for as peaceful a transition as possible.[32]

Although Clarke County met many obstacles on the road to desegregation, it paved the way for better educational opportunities for black children.  In the years to follow, the Clarke County School Board would put out many fires stemming from the desegregation of its high schools.  This was mainly because they stopped focusing on the students’ grievances once desegregation settled into the fabric of life.  Desegregation clearly led into integration where people simply got accustomed to sharing “space” with a different race.  Integration does not, by any means, indicate that the problem of segregation has gone away.  Considering all the years of racial hatred, oppression, segregated practices, and white supremacist views, it would take generations to erase the ugly marks that have scared our society. If there is one inch of racial hatred that seeps through our society, there are miles of segregated practices to back it up. Desegregating the Clarke County school system was an admirable step in the right direction, but history is doomed to repeat itself if the school board, parents, and students fail to take an active role in making assessments and evaluations of how far they have come in order to understand where they need to go. 

            In researching this subject, it was enlightening to find the necessary information and resources to write this paper. One of the best resources was the local newspaper.  The Athens Banner Herald and the Athens Daily News were fortunate to have a staff of very talented writers and reporters that did not waiver in keeping up with the issues involving desegregation.  Two in particular, Sharon Bailey of the Athens Daily News and Chuck Cooper of the Athens Banner- Herald are to be highly commended for their contributions and commitment during those difficult years. They not only kept the issues of desegregation in the forefront of the news, but they took pride in reporting months on end the most historical event in Clarke County’s history. It is through their unyielding passion that this paper could be written. 

External links related to topic:

Segregation, Desegregation, Resegregation: African American Education, A Guide to the Literature   http://www.oah.org/pubs/magazine/deseg/sitkoff.html

1954 Desegregation Decision Reflected in Struggle to Close Achievement Gap

http://ftp.ets.org/pub/corp/newsandviewsspring04.pdf

Life on the Leading Edge of Democratic Reform: Student Perspectives on School Desegregation

http://www.apsanet.org/PS/april04/orr.pdf

University of Georgia: News & Information

http://www.uga.edu/news/artman/publish/040511brownboard.shml