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By Root 1481 0

Meredith trying to enroll in the University of Mississippi in 1961 and Governor George Wallace blocking entrance to the University of Alabama in 1963—many Columbia residents feared/expected the worst. “You have to understand that within the previous seven years, we had a president assassinated, Martin Luther King was assassinated, Bobby Kennedy was assassinated, and George Wallace was shot,” said Colleen Crawley, a white Columbia High student. “People were still reeling. And right on the heels of that, we’re integrating.” Though Marion County’s branch of the KKK wasn’t as loud as it once had been, there was always the threat of revitalization. More worrisome was the looming presence of Columbia Academy, a nearby private school that had been founded three years earlier when the inevitability of desegregation forced many white citizens into a state of panic. As soon as the Fifth Circuit Court of Appeals announced its ruling, the phone at Columbia Academy began to ring nonstop. “It was a white flight school in every sense of the term,” said Thomas H. Blakeney, Columbia Academy’s headmaster at the time. “People were motivated by the fear of such cultural change. I knew some black people before desegregation, but only in limited settings. To go from that to completely desegregated schools was a huge upheaval.” Blakeney hardly exaggerates. Pre-desegregation, Columbia Academy had an enrollment of fifty-three students. By the completion of the 1970 academic year, that total had swelled to a hundred and fifty—all white. “Looking back, the school was a big mistake,” said Blakeney. “Clearly it was. But people—myself included—weren’t as enlightened as they are today. I guess we were sheltered.”

Columbia High School’s doors opened at eight A.M. In black and white houses across the town, the apprehension was palpable. Black parents feared white violence. White parents feared the worst: savage black boys trying to impregnate their precious white daughters, brutish black girls lacking couth, mediocre black teachers dispensing flawed knowledge. “Exposure,” said Pat Bullock, whose son Lee was a white student at Columbia High. “Many of the whites in our town didn’t want their kids exposed. When I was growing up, my parents threatened to disown me if I invited a black person to our house for a party.”

“There were a lot of rumors about how the blacks acted,” said Diane Weems, a white student whose parents forced her to transfer to Columbia Academy. “Stabbings and knives and things like that.”

Anticipating hostilities, members of the local and national media camped out in front of the white, concrete brick, two-story building. Newsweek sent a reporter, as did the Associated Press, the Jackson Clarion-Ledger, and all three networks. A bushel of television cameras stood at attention, waiting for . . . something.

Here was something: Eight teenagers, all white, paraded back and forth along the sidewalk, armed with signs reading HELL NO, WE WON’T GO and GIVE OUR SCHOOLS BACK and BIRDS OF A FEATHER FLOCK TOGETHER. They marched for approximately forty-five minutes, and were largely ignored. “They looked ridiculous,” said Archie Johnson, Walter’s friend. “You almost felt sorry for them.”

Once inside, the students were ushered into the auditorium, where Johnson, Jefferson High’s student body president, and Barber, Columbia High’s student body president, sat side by side on the stage. They took turns speaking to the students—590 in all; 180 black. “If everybody could just see everybody else as a human being,” Barber said, “it might just turn out all right. Be a big surprise to everybody.”

Barber’s words were greeted with a loud cheer. Then Johnson stepped to the microphone and flashed a peace sign. “There is no conflict between old and new,” he said. “It is a conflict between false and true. We can become a lighthouse in Marion County. Let it be said we, the students of our community, are trying to improve our conditions.”

The transition went well, though there were missteps. Columbia High’s administration completed the 1970 academic year by