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HATTIESBURG -- The fight to end Mississippi’s
school segregation policy is chronicled by historian and Southern
Miss alumnus Dr. Chuck Bolton in his latest book The Hardest
Deal of All: The Battle Over School Integration in Mississippi,
1870-1980.
Bolton’s work details the persistent efforts of Mississippi’s
ruling elite to maintain a dual, “separate but equal” school
system, one for whites and one for blacks, and the ensuing legal
battle to bring about a unified education system.
“I’ve always been interested in school desegregation,” said
Bolton, a former Southern Miss history professor who was at
the Hattiesburg Public Library recently to sign copies of his
book. “There’s been some great books about the civil rights
movement, but they didn’t fully address school desegregation.
I felt it was a topic that needed to be pursued.”
Tragically, Bolton said, this system as well as efforts to
resist desegregation orders from the federal government, per
the Supreme Court’s Brown v. Board of Education decision in
1954, wasted untold amounts of funding that could have been
used for a more efficient, unified school system.
Ironically, it was a case involving Mississippi plaintiffs
in the case Alexander v. Holmes in 1969 that finally put the
teeth in the Brown case. The Brown case directed that school
desegregation take place with all due speed, giving those opposing
desegregation altogether an opening to prolong it indefinitely.
Alexander v. Holmes, in effect, ordered that desegregation take
place immediately.
“That meant Mississippi schools had to be desegregated in January
of 1970,” Bolton said.
As a rule, black schools and their students and faculty were
inadequately funded and served by the state. “For many black
Mississippians, integration was not the ultimate goal,” Bolton
said. “The goal was to get a better education for their children,
and the way to do that was to force the two systems to become
one.”
Although desegregation was achieved in 1970, in most cases
it came with white terms, as many black teachers and school
principals found themselves out of jobs when white staff were
kept on to run the newly integrated schools. In addition, many
African-Americans lost a rallying point and source of pride
– their high school – since in most cases the white high school
was ultimately chosen as the facility where all students would
attend.
Approaches to handling the imminent desegregation of public
schools varied across the state. In the Mississippi Delta, most
whites completely abandoned the public school system as desegregation
became a reality and created private academies for the education
of their children. “Basically they (Delta counties) long had
a private (segregated) system before, but it was paid for by
the state,” Bolton said of the separate but equal system.
In Hattiesburg, however, Bolton said the situation was unique
in comparison to the rest of the state, as blacks were brought
into a community decision-making process over how best to desegregate
the schools. “It (Hattiesburg approach) brought in everyone,
which would have been the best way for the rest of the state
to approach the issue, and desegregation could have been achieved
much sooner and with less strife.”
John Dittmer, author of Local People: The Struggle for Civil
Rights in Mississippi, said Bolton’s book gives a comprehensive
look at educational developments in the state and deals with
the racial implications of public education. “He (Bolton) is
perceptive and evenhanded in his judgments, particularly with
the controversial questions surrounding the racial dimensions
of education today.”
Bolton, a Picayune native, earned his undergraduate degree
in history from the University of Southern Mississippi and a
master’s and doctorate in history from Duke University. He is
a former chair of the Southern Miss History Department and former
director of the university’s Center for Oral History and Cultural
Heritage. He now serves as chair of the history department at
the University of North Carolina at Greensboro.
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Last updated:
12/22/05 |
