Sweetness_ The Enigmatic Life of Walter Payton - Jeff Pearlman [19]
BLACK AND WHITE
THE ISSUE LINGERED.
That’s probably the best way to explain what was going on throughout the state of Mississippi in regard to school desegregation in the late 1960s.
It lingered.
And lingered.
And lingered.
And lingered.
In 1954, the United States Supreme Court ruled that the concept of separate-but-equal public schools was no longer legal; that, in the aftermath of Brown v. Board of Education of Topeka, black children and white children would have to be educated in the same buildings, in the same rooms, by the same teachers. “Today I believe has been a great day for America and the Court,” wrote Justice Harold H. Burton in a private letter to Chief Justice Earl Warren. “I cherish the privilege of sharing in this.” Across the South, the ruling was not greeted with such magnanimity. In Virginia, Senator Harry Byrd Sr. organized the Massive Resistance movement, which committed itself to closing schools before integrating them. In Florida, the state legislature declared the decision null and void. And in Mississippi, a circuit court judge named Thomas Pickens Brady published a book, Black Monday, that called for the dissolution of the NAACP, the creation of a forty-ninth state for Negroes, and the abolition of public schools.
But the implementation of new laws doesn’t occur overnight. In other words, Mississippi had time. One year after the Brown decision, the Court reconvened to consider the practicality of immediate desegregation. In a ruling known as Brown II, the Court delegated the task of carrying out school desegregation to district courts with an order that it occur “with deliberate speed.”
For all of the decisiveness of Brown v. Board of Education of Topeka, Brown II was a comical ode to ambiguity. To liberal politicians and civil rights advocates, “with deliberate speed” meant ASAP. Yet in states like Alabama and Georgia and Mississippi, the Court’s follow-up decree was accepted as a rare and precious gift. “With deliberate speed” could mean tomorrow. It could also mean next week, next month, next year . . . five years . . . ten years . . . never.
Therefore in Columbia—as with the entire Magnolia State—lawmakers hemmed and hawed and stalled as long as legally possible. A commonly utilized tool was something called Freedom of Choice, which allowed students of all backgrounds to select the local school of their preference. Columbia began the practice in the summer of 1967, informing all students who lived within the town limits that they could decide—regardless of race—where they wanted to go the following academic year. It was, of course, a gimmick. White government and school officials knew darn well that no Caucasians would opt to attend the black schools and that few—if any—blacks would risk the physical and emotional abuse of transitioning to a white school.
In the fall of 1967, an eighth grader named Delores Dukes became the first black student to attend Columbia Junior High. Her parents had been approached during the summer by a local civil rights leader named Ida Grouper, who was looking for someone strong enough to break a barrier. Grouper knew Delores’ mother, Lucille, was passionate about the civil rights movement, and that she had three daughters attending Jefferson. When Grouper asked whether she would be willing to sacrifice one of her girls for the cause, Lucille volunteered her youngest.
“But, Mom,” whined Delores, “why me and not Jean or Dorothy?”
A devout Southern Baptist who never cursed, Lucille looked down toward her daughter and said, matter of factly, “Because you don’t take no shit.”
For Dukes, the transition proved brutal. She recalled the September day when the superintendent of schools welcomed her to Columbia Junior High by walloping her across the legs with a fan belt. (“To discourage me from going to school,” she said.) When Dukes punched the man in the face, she was temporarily expelled. “My father (Willie Dukes) brought his gun to school the next day and told him, ‘If you ever hit my daughter again, I will blow your brains out,’ ” she said. Delores was