In the fall of 1957, a nervous handful of black students crossed the color line in Greensboro schools, braving the withering heat of racist taunts and the chill of loneliness to attend previously all-white Gillespie Elementary and Grimsley High.
The 1954 Brown v. Board of Education Supreme Court decision had allowed those six students legally to attend schools that previously had barred them because of their race. Vile words and cruel spirits were another matter.
Fourteen years later, what were then the Greensboro City Schools complied with federal pressure to desegregate through a systemwide redistricting plan. To the city’s credit, it didn’t close its predominantly black schools, as in other communities; the orange buses ran in two directions. Previously all-black schools such as Dudley High opened their doors to their first white students. Reluctantly, at first, new friendships were forged. Racial myths melted under the light of familiarity. Many of the students didn’t want the upheaval. But many also still believed that, in the long run, a greater good was being served. Forty-three years later, it’s fair to ask: Was it?
“We were leading the way,” a member of that first desegregated class told researcher Sarah Oatsvall of the University of Kansas. “Now we all look at it and say, what was the point? Why bother?”
As the News & Record’s Marquita Brown reported Sunday, in a quarter of what today are called the Guilford County Schools, 90 percent of the student populations are minorities. In fact, many classrooms are more segregated in 2014 than they were in the 1970s.
What happened? White flight to the suburbs. A mounting wave of private and charter schools. Persistent segregation in neighborhoods. Court rulings that banned race as a factor in school redistricting. And a community that gradually lost its appetite, among both black and white parents, for desegregation, given the growing cost and inconvenience.
To be sure, there is no segregation by law, but there is segregation, and its price is just as steep. Today’s segregation also includes high concentrations of poverty, which too often translates into poorer performance in the classroom. Separate and unequal.
Some remedies, such as specialized magnet schools, have helped. But shifting demographics and logistics make more racially diverse classrooms all but impossible to achieve today. The overall student population in the Guilford County Schools is only 37 percent white; 57 percent of all students qualify for free or reduced-price lunches.
Going forward, Guilford County still should take every step to ensure that every student has the opportunity to succeed, wherever he or she attends. Attracting the best teachers and strong principals to the neediest schools will help. So will more magnets. And having an honest, if difficult, conversation about the racial gap in student achievement, which crosses socioeconomic lines.
As for the broader issue, school boards can’t tell us where to live. It’s up to us as a community to decide that the only place for segregated housing should be in a history book.
