Eleanor Roosevelt proclaimed that Daisy Bates' eyewitness account of the 1957
school integration crisis at Little Rock, Arkansas ought to “shock the
conscience of America” into moral awareness of what African Americans had to
endure for the “ideals of liberty, justice, democracy and equality” (Bates
1986). Roosevelt reminds us that eyewitness
accounts can be powerfully enlightening, though social scientists have not
always appreciated their value, especially where blacks are concerned. One
historian of the University of Georgia's desegregation criticizes other
desegregation accounts for excessive focus on “the tactical maneuvering of
southern governors, university presidents, regents, and civil rights
attorneys rather than upon the mindset of southern students.” He then turns
to the eyewitness accounts of white Georgia students, altogether omitting
the black perspective (Cohen 1996, 621).
As the desegregation process unfolded, historians were critically confronting
treatments of slavery that routinely diminished or dismissed the slave
perspective. John Blassingame's path-breaking corrective launched a new
research tradition in the profession (Blassingame 1977).1
See also Blassingame
(1979).
That work suggests
that African-American eyewitness accounts are fundamental to understanding
the politics of race, for they help us confront and assess fully the cost of
reform. We use such accounts here to portray the experiences of
African-American students who integrated Georgia's public schools.
We have selected two cities—Athens and Savannah—for our eyewitness accounts.
From Athens, we chose three African-American students. Maxie Foster and
Bonnie Travis desegregated Athens' elementary and high schools. Chester C.
Davenport desegregated the University of Georgia School of Law. In Savannah,
we chose Sage Brown and Ulysses Bryant. All are alive and successful.
Collectively, their recollections and personal assessments contribute an
important vantage point on the complicated, and often personally horrifying,
school-level enterprise of initial desegregation. Through their experiences
we learn what it was like to be on the leading edge of a democratic reform
effort.
The “Southern Manifesto” and the Implementation of Brown v.
Board of Education
Response by state leaders to the Supreme Court's decision in Brown v.
Board of Education ranged from “compliance” to “defiance” to
“maintenance of the status-quo” (McCain 1968,
371). Political leaders in North Carolina, for example, “initially
responded to the Brown decision in subdued tones,” were
generally “unprepared to engage in hopeless defi-ance,” and effectively
utilized “limited token integration” (Douglas 1995, 27). Mississippi's political leaders were more
defiant. Governor Hugh L. White declared: “We're not going to pay
attention to the Supreme Court's decision. We don't think it will have
any effect on us down here at all” (Douglas 1995, 27).
Georgia Governor Herman Talmadge declared that officials there would defy
the decision. “We're not going to secede from the Union,” Talmadge said,
“but the people of Georgia will not comply with the decision. Even if
federal troops were sent down … they wouldn't be able to enforce it”
(quoted in McCain 1968, 371). Incoming
Governor Marvin Griffin took the same view, successfully supporting a
state constitutional amendment “that would allow the legislature to
change the public education system into a private one and provide
tuition grants for those attending private schools” (Georgia Secretary
of State 1954, 620, 695).2
For a description of the implementation of the Brown
decision at the large white private university in Georgia
see Newman (1979).
By March 1956, three ardently segregationist senators, Strom Thurmond of
South Carolina, Virginia's Harry Byrd, and Richard Russell of Georgia
had produced, and the Senate's Southern caucus had endorsed, a clarion
call to massive resistance, formally titled “A Declaration of
Constitutional Principles,” but better known as the “Southern Manifesto
(Caro 2002, 785–788).3
For the text of the “Manifesto” see the box enclosed in
this article.
The Manifesto was, as Lyndon Johnson
biographer Robert Caro has observed, “nothing less than an outright call
by one hundred elected legislators in the national government for
massive, unified, defiance of an order from the nation's highest court”
(Caro
2002, 786). Journalist Merle Miller
remarked that the Manifesto “was an expression of rage and resentment at
the
Brown decision [that] … was cleverly formulated … to couple
‘change’ with ‘unconstitutionality’ and ‘civil rights’ with ‘subversion’
in the public mind” (Miller
1980, 187). The
entire Georgia congressional delegation signed it and, along with other
top state officials, took the lead role in mobilizing other states
against compliance with
Brown.
4 Nineteen of the 22 southern senators and 77 of the 105
southern representatives signed the Manifesto.
Brown and its aftermath cannot be understood apart from the
Manifesto, which provided the legitimacy of the Southern political
establishment for a ready-made rationale encouraging whites to perceive
themselves as the victims of reform and African-American students as its
villains. The Manifesto nurtured white defiance and helped ignite white
student violence across the South. That document also set the stage for
what our five eyewitnesses, street-level pioneers in social reform,
would later experience on desegregation's leading edge.
Eyewitnesses in Athens, Georgia
Desegregation of Clarke County Public Schools (CCPS) and Savannah-Chatham
County Public Schools (SCCPS) did not occur until 1963. After the
Supreme Court heard the Brown case in 1952, many Southern
states, including Georgia, rushed to upgrade education facilities for
African Americans to deter a Supreme Court decision that would destroy
segregation. In Athens, the black high school had been partially housed
in a building erected in 1890 for the state's first black public
college. The gymnasium for the high school had been built in the 1930s
with funds raised solely by the African-American community. Pressured by
an impending court decision, the CCPS broke ground in 1955 for a new
high school and gymnasium completed in 1957. The new school opened with
used furniture and books sent over from the white high school. When
these meager efforts didn't forestall court action, the CCPS
desegregated as slowly as possible.
Bonnie Hampton Travis
In the fall of 1963, the CCPS formally desegregated when Bonnie
Hampton Travis and two other African-American students entered the
seventh grade at Child Street School. Another enrolled at all-white
Chase Street Elementary School, another at Athens High School
(Shearron 1992).5
The authors thank Travis' mother, Katie Hampton, for
providing a copy of this news article.
Remembering
that first day, Travis recalls that both sides of the road leading
into Child Street were packed with white parents, media, and the
police. “I was anxious, had some anxiety and nervous and this was
the longest walk,” Travis recalled.
6 All non-attributed quotations are from telephone
interviews conducted by the authors in September and October
2003.
“Although I saw the police, I was not sure
that they were there for us or for them. We had become a spectator
sport because for every school day of that year the white parents
lined the walk to the school.”
Reflecting on her experience inside the school, Travis recalls,
“trouble and problems came in the physical education classes and at
the lunchroom.” “There were no physical problems,” she explains,
“but lots of verbal problems. We got verbal stuff left and right.
White boys were always in my face with taunts, name calling, insults
and harassment.” Travis recalls that the verbal abuse seemed to vary
with the social-economic status of the white students. “Lower class
students,” she remembers, “reveled in this verbal abuse that was
heaped upon us. They showed their joy and happiness with it openly
by laughing, giggling and whooping it up. They not only approved of
it but urged the boys on.” Middle class students, she recalls,
“would just smile slightly and indicate by their behavior that they
were happy that some one made these remarks but they would not join
in and urge the boys on. Then there were a few students who clearly
didn't like it but they kept their distance from us and said
nothing.” Several white classmates struggled to treat Travis
humanely. She recalled a “unique incident” that occurred on the day
that President Kennedy was assassinated. On the playground a girl
told Travis that “he was just for the niggers anyway.' The other
white girls told her in my presence that she should apologize to me.
She said nothing. Then the next day she came up to me and
apologized. This was unusual, for when the boys would taunt me, the
girls would never utter a word, never say anything.”
In the presence of the African-American students, Child Street School
administrators and teachers took a neutral stance. According to
Travis, the staff would simply ask us: “Are you having any problem?
Is everything all right? And how are you doing? But beyond this they
never discussed anything with us. Not only did they play a simple
public relations role, our white teachers were very careful to never
let us know where they stood in this desegregation struggle. Yet
they talked to the white students behind our back.” Travis recounted
an incident in which she returned to class to retrieve a book she
had inadvertently left behind. Once back in the classroom, she found
the white teacher talking to her white classmates, “telling them as
I walked unexpectedly back into the class that they should not copy
my hair style. At that time I wore my hair up in two pigtails and
some of the white girls had copied the practice. She told them not
to take any notion of my fashions. Upon seeing me enter the room,
she abruptly cut off the conversation.”
In the fall of 1964, Travis moved to Clarke County Junior High for
the eighth and ninth grades. While the challenges and problems were
“slowly, very slowly abating,” Travis remembers continued abuse.
According to Travis, a local minister stepped in to drive Travis and
other African-American students “to school for protection every
morning because of the threats that had come out of the white
community.”
Finally, after two years at Clarke Junior High, Travis entered the
tenth grade at Athens High School where there were 17 black
students. Verbal assaults continued, along with occasional poor
treatment by school authorities. Once, when the principal accused
the black students of being noisy, Travis responded: “Why are we
always the culprits?” The principal called Travis an “insolent
little whelp.” This was one of the few times that Travis involved
her parents, who went to the school the next day and confronted the
principal. The principal never again verbally abused her. Travis
says that she survived and succeeded academically through “my inner
strength, courage, and family support system. I knew from the past
about hoses, dogs, and lynchings. Other African Americans had faced
much worst. So I simply let the verbal abuse roll off my back and
picked my battles.”
Maxie Foster
Maxie Foster entered Athens High School in the tenth grade in the
fall of 1965 under a “Freedom of Choice” plan. His first semester
set the tone for the remainder of his years there. An assistant
principal opposed to integration, serving as Foster's counselor,
advised him to take all of the “advanced” senior-level senior
courses. Foster eventually transferred to the appropriate courses
but he has always believed that the advice was calculated to ensure
his failure.
Forty years after he integrated Athens High, Foster vividly remembers
the stark differences between his new school and his all-black high
school. “I thought I was at the University of Georgia when I entered
Athens High School coming over from Burney-Harris High School. What
an impressive school, in all respects! Their facilities were the top
of the line, the very best that money could buy. This was not the
case for the black high school.” Ironically, Foster remembers as a
student at Athens High School having to box used textbooks later
given to students at the black high school. “What a strange feeling
for a 16 year-old to deal with during that time,” Foster laments. By
1965 the practice of giving used books to the blacks and buying only
new books for the white students had been in place since 1957.
Along with indifferent administrators and teachers, Foster
experienced tremendous hostility. “The black students,” he recalled,
“could not go to the bathroom all day, could not drink from the
water fountains in the halls and couldn't use the cafeteria for
almost half the year because the white male bullies roamed behind
the few African-American students and physically prevented them from
using these facilities.” Violence, according to Foster, also came
from individual students like the son of the Grand Wizard of the Ku
Klux Klan.
High school sports have long been a popular pastime, especially in
small Southern communities like Athens. Desegregation opened
possible opportunities and new challenges for high school sports
enthusiasts.7
On the impact and
challenges of racial issues on high school sports on a
small-town community see Bissinger (2003).
It created an opportunity for
Athens High School to build a dominant sports program by combining
the best players from the city's white and black high schools.
Foster recalls that during his first years at Athens High, a number
of school boosters openly envisioned a desegregated team becoming
state football champions. The desire to win also tempted the
football coach, who despite membership in the KKK, included several
African-American athletes in the school's spring football practice.
In the end, however, the coach would not permit any black students
to join the team that year. Foster bemoans the “false optimism” the
coach generated.
Undeterred, Foster became the first African American to integrate the
basketball and track teams at Athens High and the school's only
black athlete. Looking back, Foster recognizes that the white men
who coached the track and basketball teams “were both men of courage
because they both permitted me to come and practice, and then to
try-out for the varsity teams. Nevertheless, several white students
from affluent families did all they could at practice to keep me
from playing. I asked my mother to come to practices to ensure that
fairness prevailed.” Foster made the teams and became such an
outstanding performer that the white students voted him captain of
the track team and basketball co-captain. They also supported him
when he won the “Coach's Award.” But his status also made him the
object of taunts at out-of-town games. Being African American also
forced him to stay on the bus because white restaurants would not
serve him.
Eyewitnesses in Savannah, Georgia
Like Athens, Savannah public schools remained racially segregated until
1963. The desegregation of the SCCPS came after the NAACP Youth Council,
organized by civil rights leader W. W. Law, led a successful 15-month
economic boycott of the city's downtown shopping district. In 1962,
buoyed by the determination and tenacity of the young people, the
Savannah NAACP with the Rev. L. Scott Stell as lead plaintiff, sued the
SCCPS, asking the court to order admission on a desegregated basis. A
federal district judge ruled against Stell citing “testimony by whites
that integrated schools were harmful to both whites and Negroes”
(Billingsley 1999, 56). The Fifth U.S. Circuit
Court of Appeals overturned the ruling, instructing the SCCPS “to submit
a plan to desegregate at least one grade by September 1963” (Billingsley
1999, 56). The SCCPS decided to
desegregate the twelfth grade. In the fall of 1963, 19 African-American
students enrolled in previously allwhite Savannah High School (SHS) and
Groves High School.8
The 19 students were:
Groves High: Sage Brown, Martha Coleman, Delores Cooper, Flora
Ann Goldwire, George Shinhoster, Sadie Mae Simmons, and Sara
Townsend. Twelve students desegregated Savannah High: John
Alexander, Eddie Banner, John Briggs, Ulysses Bryant, Jr.,
Frankie Coleman, Geraldine Loadholt, Lillian Meyers, Robert
“Robbie” Robinson, Florence Russell, Robert Stephenson, and
Anstine Thompson.
Ulysses O. Bryant, Jr.
In the summer of 1963, Ulysses Bryant, Jr. had been promoted to his
senior year at Sol C. Johnson High School, one of three all-black
high schools in Savannah. But because Bryant and his family were
active in the Savannah desegregation movement, “W. W. Law approached
the family and encouraged” him “to make application to SHS to
desegregate the schools.” At the urging of the federal court, the
school board established an application process whereby
African-American seniors could transfer to Savannah or Groves High
Schools. Reflecting on why Law approached him, Bryant observed: “He
knew us and we were active in the desegregation movement. We did
attend some of the rallies and participated in a few of the
marches.” Law was also careful to seek out African Americans who
could succeed academically. Bryant, for example, was an “A” student.
As he recalled, “I guess my educational background” played a role.
“I was a pretty good student. I was sort of a low-key kind of book
worm.” Nevertheless, Bryant initially had reservations. It was his
senior year of high school. “I stood very good chances of getting
scholarships from the various schools [colleges],” Bryant says. “I
would also be leaving behind not only friends but I also had at
least one brother at the time who was also a student at Johnson
High.”
Savannah's desegregation plan was born of mixed motives. First,
school officials surely knew that seniors would be reluctant to
leave their home institutions. While the school board had developed
a desegregation plan, it risked failure if no black seniors moved.
The plan was a token measure that might easily have stymied
integration. On the other hand, by focusing on seniors, the school
board allowed the black leadership to choose students who had the
strong community and familial support necessary to endure what were
likely to be nine challenging months. Bryant's parents left the
decision up to him. In the 1960s, Bryant's family would have been
considered, at least in the black community, middle-income. His
father worked on the Savannah River front as a longshoreman, his
mother, self-employed, sold prepared dinners to workers there. As
Bryant put it, “we weren't worried too much about any repercussions
against them.”
In 1963, SHS, located in one of the city's finest neighborhoods, was
synonymous with prestige and privilege. As Bryant put it: “Savannah
High at the time was the school. Savannah High, as far as
the public school arena, was the school of academic notoriety. You
had a lot of prominent Savannah figures—doctors, lawyers, who were
alumni. Savannah High was the school when it came to the
public schools, white or black at the time.” Ultimately, Bryant
decided to transfer to SHS, risking the expected college
scholarships, leaving behind friends and the nurturing
African-American teachers and administrators at Sol C. Johnson.
All of our eyewitnesses have vivid memories of their first days as
social reformers.9
For eyewitness
accounts of white students at Savannah High and Groves High,
see Duffer's (1963) account in the
Savannah Morning
News. Duffer interviewed none of the black
students.
Bryant remembers that he and four of the
12 black students rode together in his 1962 Chevrolet, two black
police detectives escorting them. “We were greeted with a few racial
slurs, but I don't recall a lot of people waiting our arrival,” says
Bryant. City officials had earlier dispersed “a large numbers of
white students” who had gathered at the front entrance of SHS
(Duffer
1963). A small group of white
spectators, including the president of the Cavalcade of White
Americans, were confined to the park across the street. The 12
African-American students were dispersed throughout the huge complex
and among the other 1,200 students. “You could go almost an entire
school day and one not see the other, on lunch or even when passing
in the hallway. The only blacks that we saw were custodial workers
and cafeteria workers.”
Bryant, too, had to cope with abuse from many of the white students
and indifference from many of the white teachers and administrators.
The students, he remembers, “were open, very open with their
feelings.” The students used racial slurs. When exiting classes
during the school day, Bryant always made certain to leave the room
last, making sure not to give anyone a chance to hit him from
behind. This worked well until one day Bryant “got a little
careless,” allowing another student to get behind him. Bryant was
hit in the head with a board and ended up in the school infirmary.
The taunting was always there. “They'll walk by and nudge your elbow
and knock your books out of your hand; when you bent over to pick
them up, some one would come along and kick them a little further.
That's the kind of torment I experienced,” Bryant laments.
Typically, Bryant simply took the abuse. Only once did he fight
back, after a student spat in his food while eating lunch. Bryant
was suspended for three days.
The abuse went beyond the school building. Once Bryant returned to
his car and discovered that someone had put sugar in the gas tank.
At home, he received threats. “My telephone would ring and it would
be nothing but haunting, racial slurs, and threats. I got more
threats it seemed at home than I had communicated to me at school,”
Bryant reflects. Bryant adds, however, that not all of the students
treated him negatively. One student wrote in his yearbook at the end
of the school year. “Some white students were as confused as we
appeared to be.”
According to Bryant, “it was clear” the principal “didn't want us
there and he made little or no concessions for us.” Bryant recalls a
few supportive teachers. “For the most part the teachers didn't turn
their backs on us,” he remembers. “They tried to monitor our
movements closely.” Bryant remembers that English teacher Mary Deal
“tried to reach out” to him and “to reassure” him “that everything
was alright.” She attempted to counsel him, Bryant added, “without
losing her white students.”
The academic school year ended early for Ulysses Bryant. Near the
last week of his senior year he was summoned to the principal's
office. One of the “liberal” white students had reported that
another student supposedly had a gun and intended to shoot Bryant.
Bryant was given his cap and gown on that day and told, for his
safety, not to return for the remainder of year. A few weeks later,
to the surprise of many of his classmates, Bryant participated in
graduation ceremonies becoming the first black graduate of SHS.
Sage Brown
Sunday school lessons at the Rev. Stell's church centered on the civil
rights struggle. Sage Brown, who attended those lessons, remembers how
they influenced his decision to become active in the movement. Brown was
one of the NAACP's youth activists. “I was involved in the civil rights
movement's demonstrations throughout that summer that led up to the
integration of the schools,” Brown recalls. Near the end of the summer
of 1963, when the city's black leadership submitted names of black
seniors to the school board to integrate Groves High School, Brown was
on the list. “The NAACP and the Chatham County Crusade for Voters went
back and inventoried and looked at us and decided who they thought could
best survive” the school desegregation ordeal. In addition to his
academic prowess, Brown was “pretty much prepared and indoctrinated” in
nonviolent disobedience. “Prior to June 1963, W. W. Law had a series of
classes that basically you went through if you were going to be one of
the student leaders. It was a role-playing like situation. You were
placed in situations where you were trained not to respond” to physical
violence. In September 1963, Brown would have to draw on the skills
developed in Law's nonviolent resistance classes as he and six other
African Americans entered all-white Groves High School.
Groves High School is located in Garden City, a small Chatham County
municipality on Savannah's western border. In 1963, Groves and SHS were
culturally distinct. As Brown put it, the two schools were “at opposite
ends of the spectrum. If Savannah High was a cultured environment,
Groves was as rural and as red-neck as you could get.” For Brown, his
senior year at Groves “was a very, very difficult situation.” During the
first days, police escorts met with Brown and the other students who
lived in west Savannah “prior to getting into Garden City” and drove the
students to the school. As Brown recalled, the officers “followed us to
our classes and the police escort was there when school was over.” Brown
and the other students had police protection throughout the school year.
However, according to Brown, the officers (all whites) were not
“supportive” of their efforts to integrate Groves High. Brown remembers
that “on several occasions” the officers “intentionally dropped their
guards so that the [white] students would have access” to him and the
other black students. Concerned about the students' safety, and
questioning the true commitment of the police escorts, several
African-American ministers began to car-pool the students to and from
school. “Basically,” says Brown, “what happened was the entire year that
we were at Groves several pastors from local churches came together and
each day they would form a caravan and drive us into school and out of
school.”
The African-American students entering Groves in 1963 were not greeted
with the kind of public demonstrations displayed in Little Rock in 1957.
Groves High was physically isolated on the urban fringe, in a
predominantly African-American community. Brown recalls that once inside
he met tremendous hostility. The principal, Donald M. Gray, “did not
hide his dislike and distaste for us being there.” After only a few
months, Gray was replaced by another principal “who was a little more
tolerant.” Brown says he has never doubted that school officials removed
Gray because of his opposition to integration. The teachers, Brown
remembers, were not very supportive. Brown was often the only black in
his classes. “They broke us up so that none of us was in the same class.
You were always being hit with objects that were being thrown. You were
always subject to verbal abuse. The teachers knew that this was going on
and they would not do a thing about it,” Brown explained.
The white students, for the most part, did not embrace Brown. “Any
students that showed any kindness towards us were disciplined by the
other students.” Brown remembers one guy who was “friendly” toward him.
“He was friendly to me one day, and when he returned the next day he had
been severely beaten.” Brown recalled that one day “the entire student
body jumped” the black students. “The officers allowed this to happen,”
he says. Brown is certain that Groves' location, surrounded by a black
neighborhood, helped contain what could had been a life-threatening
situation. The black families “that lived on Wheat Hill Road, which was
the road adjacent to Groves, saw what was happening and they came out in
mass to help us. Had it not been for the families … God only knows what
would had happened.”
Eyewitness at the University of Georgia Law School
Chester C. Davenport
Chester Davenport was born in Athens and graduated with high honors
from Athens High and Industrial School in June 1959, and with honors
from Morehouse College in June 1963. That fall, two years after the
desegregation of the University of Georgia, Davenport became the
first African American to enter its law school.
“The administration, staff and secretaries at the Law School were
very supportive and friendly,” he reports. “The Dean had known my
father and family for years. Clearly this helped. And many members
of the faculty, being lawyers knew how things should have been and
this made them opened minded. In fact, the professor who taught me
constitutional law, while an old man, was very progressive and
berated the state's leading segregationists like Herman Talmadge and
Senator Richard Russell despite the fact that Richard Russell IV was
in the class with me.”
As for the students, “they were in shock because they had never been
around African Americans before except for their maids, butlers and
yardmen. Now having someone who looked like these people but as a
competitor made them avoid me. This and peer pressure kept them from
sitting next to me. But by the time I went to the second class the
professor had a seating chart and some of these students were
assigned seats next to me. Nevertheless, this standoff attitude
lasted about six months and until after the first exam.”
“When the scores came back the professor in the class told the other
students that if they wanted to do better and pass the final, they
should look up and discuss the materials with the top five people in
the class. Being number three, I was working in the law library and
looked up and saw most of them seeking me out to help and assistance
them. This searching me out continued when I made the law review and
after I passed the state bar exam during my second year in law
school. Although I was the only African American in the law school
for three years, the question of race never came up and I rarely
ever thought about it. There were no significant incidents”
Lauded at a recent retirement reunion party for a classmate who had
become a federal judge, classmates told Davenport “that they had
learned a lot from him and that they hoped that he had learned a
little something from them. The spokesperson for the class was the
most conservative student in my first year class that went out of
his way not to speak to me. Later that year I broke the ice by
speaking to him and we became cordial over the next three years. It
was nice to hear those words about my role in resocializing my
classmates. Hopefully, my interaction with my classmates will have
helped others of my race that they met in life. I think so.”
“My experience was good in the beginning because I didn't wear my
feelings on my sleeve and/or cuff. I listen to people, but never
gave up. Ultimately, people are people and you can learn a lot from
them. You need to participate and interact with the majority to see
how they think and how they run the country. There is no other place
to learn from as a member of the minority.”
Social Reform and the Southern Manifesto
Historian John Hope Franklin observes that, “reaction to the
[Brown] decision was mixed” (Franklin 1988, 367). Franklin says that the
Tennessee's Knoxville Journal spoke for many Southern
whites when it opined: “No citizen, fitted by character and
intelligence to sit as a justice of the Supreme Court, and sworn to
uphold the Constitution of the United States, could have decided
this question other than the way it was decided” (Franklin 1988, 367). “Throughout the South there were
white people here and there who were prepared to support it …
Although they did not consider segregation to be morally wrong, they
were law-abiding … Their reactions to Brown and Brown
II often depended on the actions of local white leaders”
(Patterson 2001, 89). The Southern
Manifesto, however, unified the opponents of desegregation, and
undermined its implementation by encouraging whites to believe
Brown could be derailed if they followed the “Alabama
model” of massive resistance, that had prevented a young black
woman, Autherine Lucy, from entering the University of Alabama one
month before the Manifesto was released.10
For more on the “Alabama model” of defiance to the
Brown decision see Clark (1993). For Georgia's variation on the “Alabama
model” see Trillin (1964) and his
slightly revised version, Trillin (1992).
Racist mobs forced Lucy to flee
the campus and the university's trustees to suspend her. In 1957
came the events at Little Rock.
This background, in turn, conditioned the circumstances faced by our
eyewitnesses in Savannah and Athens. Despite great unpleasantness
the students ultimately prevailed. As Sage Brown put it, “Those were
dangerous times.” Ulysses Bryant described his senior year at SHS as
“one of the longest nine months in my life.” Major social reform is
never easy, of course. Machiavelli captured the matter in The
Prince when he observed: “Nothing is more difficult to
handle, more doubtful of success, nor more dangerous to manage, than
to put oneself at the head of introducing new orders.” During the
implementation of Brown, the African-American children who
desegregated formerly all-white public schools, the children who
were actually the victims of the failed “American Dream,”
disproportionately bore the burden of social reform. It is only
through the evaluation of their experiences that the real cost and
nature of democratic reform can be measured and fully
appreciated.
The “Southern Manifesto”
102 Cong. Rec. 4515–16 (1956)
[Signed March 1956 by 19 Senators and 81 Representatives from the
South—including all of Georgia's congressional delegation].
We regard the decision of the Supreme Court in the school cases as a
clear abuse of judicial power. It climaxes a trend in the Federal
judiciary undertaking to legislate, in derogation of the authority
of Congress, and to encroach upon the reserved rights of the States
and the people.
The original Constitution does not mention education. Neither does
the 14th amendment nor any other amendment. The debates preceding
the submission of the 14th amendment clearly show that there was no
intent that it should affect the systems of education maintained by
the States.
The very Congress which proposed the amendment subsequently provided
for segregated schools in the District of Columbia.
When the amendment was adopted, in 1868, there were 37 States of the
Union. Every one of the 26 States that had any substantial racial
differences among its people either approved the operation of
segregated schools already in existence or subsequently established
such schools by action of the same lawmaking body which considered
the 14th amendment.
Though there has been no constitutional amendment or act of Congress
changing this established legal principle almost a century old, the
Supreme Court of the United States, with no legal basis for such
action, undertook to exercise their naked judicial power and
substituted their personal political and social ideas for the
established law of the land.
This unwarranted exercise of power by the Court, contrary to the
Constitution, is creating chaos and confusion in the States
principally affected. It is destroying the amicable relations
between the white and Negro races that have been created through 90
years of patient effort by the good people of both races. It has
planted hatred and suspicion where there has been heretofore
friendship and understanding.
With the gravest concern for the explosive and dangerous condition
created by this decision and inflamed by outside meddlers:
We reaffirm our reliance on the Constitution as the fundamental law
of the land.
We decry the Supreme Court's encroachments on rights reserved to the
States and to the people, contrary to established law and to the
Constitution.
We commend the motives of those States which have declared the
intention to resist forced integration by any lawful means….
We pledge ourselves to use all lawful means to bring about a reversal
of this decision which is contrary to the Constitution and to
prevent the use of force in its implementation.
This is available at:
http://www.cviog.uga.edu/Projects/gainfo/manifesto.htm
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