A Different Day Page 28
Changes in other areas proved more difficult. White officials countered the struggle for equal education with as much determination as they had fought black voting rights and with more success. Most school districts waited until lawsuits were filed against them before taking any action to end segregation and then adopted plans that ensured integration would be minimal. Under “freedom of choice” plans that placed most responsibility for integrating the schools on black parents and children, little progress was made in the civil rights era. Fear of reprisals and concerns about sending children into hostile environments discouraged many African American families from requesting transfers to white schools. In 1969 more than 90 percent of black children in Louisiana still attended all-black schools. When federal courts began pushing school boards to adopt more effective desegregation measures, such as zoning and busing, many white parents pulled their children out of the public schools rather than allow them to attend classes with African Americans. Private, all-white academies sprang up across the state, particularly in parishes that had black majorities. White people apparently feared predictions like that made in the St. Francisville Democrat by columnist Ben Garris, who claimed that schools could not withstand more than a 30 percent black enrollment without becoming “unstable” and experiencing a decline in the quality of education. In Concordia Parish, the Ku Klux Klan issued a similar warning, portraying school desegregation as a communist plot to take over the country by ensuring the undereducation of American children.9
While white parents worried about the effect that attending classes with African Americans might have on their children, black families found that integrated schools did not necessarily afford black children a better education than they had received previously. Racist white teachers treated African American students with contempt, ignoring them when they asked questions, refusing to give them the same amount of attention that white students received, and in some cases physically abusing them. Administrators maintained segregation within integrated schools by partitioning facilities such as bathrooms, lunch tables, and play areas. Violent conflicts often erupted between white and black students, for which African Americans received a disproportionate amount of blame and punishment. Suspensions and expulsions of black students skyrocketed, with more than one hundred thousand occurring in the 1971–72 school year alone.10
The following decades saw a steady deterioration in conditions in the public schools of many parishes. In 1998 Eunice Hall Harris prepared a list of the shortcomings of the high school in St. Helena Parish that eerily echoed reports on black education from a century earlier: buildings that leaked, classes that were canceled in cold weather because of lack of heat, toilets and faucets that did not work, a gymnasium with no hot water, and a filthy cafeteria frequented by farm animals that wandered in through broken doors.11 The parish's African American school superintendent seemed reluctant to do anything for fear of upsetting his white superiors. Most power in the parish still lay with the white families who had dominated the community in previous decades. Incumbent officials managed to fight off challenges from black candidates by bribing poor residents to vote for them and threatening to remove people from welfare rolls if they supported African Americans in elections. Although physical violence subsided after the 1960s, economic reprisals remained a powerful tool for maintaining white supremacy.12
In St. Helena Parish and elsewhere, persistent poverty hindered black people's efforts to translate their new voting strength into meaningful change. Political campaigns cost money, placing poor people at a disadvantage when it came to running candidates for office. Wealthy white people funded the campaigns of some black candidates, expecting them to maintain the status quo once they were elected.13 In many communities black activists watched in anger as middle-class African Americans who had remained aloof from the movement in the 1960s became the chief beneficiaries of civil rights legislation. Working-class and rural poor people who had led the struggle in the early days were “suddenly unqualified to run for public office,” reported Ronnie Moore in 1967, and were urged by college-educated professionals to leave such activities to them. Once hopeful that black votes could transform communities, civil rights lawyer Lolis Elie stated in 1988 that traditional electoral politics had done little to address the problem of poverty. “What I grossly misunderstood or overestimated was the nature of the black people who were going to seek political power,” he said. “The same people who did nothing at all to change things, when things were changed . . . those were the ones who emerged and got the goodies—as a result of other people's efforts.”14
Although some black politicians seemed more concerned with pleasing their white benefactors than bringing about changes to benefit black communities, many others were genuinely interested in solving social problems. But often their influence on local government was not enough to combat the power of more conservative politicians and businesspeople. In West Feliciana Parish, for example, African American representatives had to work with white officials who openly expressed their contempt for the idea of black people voting or holding office. When two black men who had been elected to the school board attended their first meeting, president Thomas Spillman demanded to see their commissions to office, claiming that he did not know who they were. West Feliciana was the only parish in the state by the late 1960s that still required its voters to reregister every few years. In December 1968 the six white police jurors voted down a suggestion by the three black jurors that the parish introduce a system of permanent registration. Responding to the suggestion that the necessity of periodically returning to the registrars’ office might discourage many African Americans, particularly the elderly, from participating politically, white juror A. A. Wilkinson stated, “I was sorry when they cut the poll tax. . . . If a man can't register, then he doesn't need to vote.”15
Even when black officials were in the majority, as eventually happened in Madison Parish, poverty remained an obstacle to progress. Rural communities often lacked the financial resources and tax base necessary to improve public services or initiate programs to provide employment for jobless people. With the resurgent conservatism of the 1970s and 1980s, federal support for antipoverty efforts declined. At the same time, continued displacement of agricultural workers from the plantations created an even greater need for jobs and housing in the rural parishes. Martin Williams recalled that in Tallulah, “The people on the plantations was moving into town, people didn't need them, getting modern equipment—these people didn't have any place to stay—some of the places you would see where they'd sleep at night, you would cry.” Williams helped to finance and build two housing projects for low-income people in the town, but the lack of employment opportunities remained a problem in Madison Parish and elsewhere.16
In some parishes, white politicians and business leaders seemed to actively discourage any kind of economic development that could provide jobs for black people. According to black activist Wilbert Guillory, oil refineries and other industries that could have been located in St. Landry Parish were instead built in Lafayette, because local employers expressed concern that the new enterprises would “spoil the people . . . people was gonna get a job, and they would no longer work for four or five dollars a day.” Of St. Helena Parish, Eual Hall observed: “There's no future here. White people are not going to let no industry come here, the affluent leaders, they're not gonna let no industry come into this parish unless they have the controlling interest.” African Americans who aspired to occupations other than farming or low-paid wage work had to leave the parish. According to Clifton Hall, “If you were an aggressive individual, being a black man, you could not stay here in Greensburg. So their motive was to get you out of here and that was their way of doing it: if there's nothing here, you don't stay here.”17
At the end of the twentieth century, poverty and inequality remained the dominant features of many rural parishes. In 1989, 46 percent of African Americans in Louisiana—more than half a million people—earned income
s below poverty level. Three decades after the civil rights movement, both former CORE workers and local people expressed disappointment in its outcomes and emphasized the limits that low incomes and poor education placed on efforts to eradicate discrimination and injustice. Rudy Lombard stated: “I think that there is a kind of slavery still exists, we call poverty. . . . If you're financially poor you're a slave pretty much and your life is circumscribed by people who control wealth, and government.” Eual Hall raised the question that has plagued rural black people since the end of Reconstruction: “When everything is kept from you, how do you fight?”18
Yet, as most of these activists also emphasized, the freedom struggle continues. They work and put their children through college, remain active in their churches and lodges, support nonprofit organizations and other projects that aim to enhance economic opportunities for African Americans, lobby for improvements in the quality of education provided by the state's public schools, and vote in every election. Local black people draw strength from the knowledge that their ancestors endured conditions that were far worse and from the tradition of stubborn persistence that has characterized the centuries-long fight for equality. “The white man wonder how we still smile and go ahead on,” says Clifton Hall. “Well, we grew up with it, and we've lived with it, so we know how to survive and still deal with it.”19
Notes
Abbreviations
AESP
Agricultural Extension Service Papers, HML
APTP
Alexander Pierre Tureaud Papers, ARC
ARC
Amistad Research Center, Tulane University, New Orleans
BWEGM
Black Workers in the Era of the Great Migration, 1916–1925, edited by James R. Grossman (Frederick, Md.: University Publications of America, 1985), microfilm
CIR, RG 35
CCC Camp Inspection Reports, Records of the Civilian Conservation Corp, RG 35, NA
CLJP
Clyde L. Johnson Papers, in The Green Rising, 1910–1977: A Supplement to the Southern Tenant Farmers Union Papers (Glen Rock, N.J.: Microfilming Corporation of America, 1977), microfilm
CLMP
Charles Lewis Mathews Papers, HML
COREP
The Papers of the Congress of Racial Equality, 1941–1967 (Sanford, N.C.: Microfilming Corporation of America, 1980), microfilm
CORE—SCDP
Congress of Racial Equality, Louisiana Sixth Congressional District Papers, SHSW
CORE—SHPP
Congress of Racial Equality, St. Helena Parish Papers, SHSW
CORE—SROP
Congress of Racial Equality, Southern Regional Office Papers, SHSW
CRS—SLU
Oral History Collection, Center for Regional Studies, South-eastern Louisiana University, Hammond
CSF, RG 60
Classified Subject Files—Correspondence, Central Files and Related Records, 1904–67, General Records, Records of the Department of Justice, RG 60, NA
CSJP
Charles S. Johnson Papers, Fisk University Library Special Collections, Fisk University, Nashville
DEBP
Daniel Ellis Byrd Papers, ARC
DTP
Daniel Trotter Papers, HML
FCC—NOPR
Friends of the Cabildo Collection, New Orleans Public Library
FDR
Franklin D. Roosevelt
FESR
Federal Extension Service Records, Extension Service Annual Reports, Louisiana 1909–44, microfilm, Historic New Orleans Collection, New Orleans
FFMP
Ferriday Freedom Movement Papers, SHSW
FRSD, RG 44
Field Reports of the Division, 1942–43, Records of the Surveys Division, Research Division, Bureau of Special Services, OWI, U.S. Information Service, Records of the Office of Government Reports, RG 44, NA
GCCO, RG 96
General Correspondence Maintained in the Cincinnati Office, 1935–42, Records of the Office of the Administrator, Records of the Central Office, Records of the Farmers’ Home Administration, RG 96, NA
GCN, RG 16
General Correspondence, Negroes, 1909–23, Records of the Immediate Offices of the Commissioner and Secretary of Agriculture, Records of the Office of the Secretary of Agriculture, RG 16, NA
GCOS, RG 16
General Correspondence of the Office of the Secretary, 1929–70, Records of the Immediate Offices of the Commissioner and Secretary of Agriculture, Records of the Office of the Secretary of Agriculture, RG 16, NA
HML
Hill Memorial Library, LSU
HNLP
Harold N. Lee Papers, Manuscripts Division, HTL
HTL
Howard Tilton Library, Tulane University, New Orleans
IWAP
International Woodworkers of America Papers, Southern Labor Archives, Special Collections Department, Pullen Library, Georgia State University, Atlanta
JZP
John Zippert Papers, SHSW
LFU—FBI
File 100-45768, Louisiana Farmers’ Union, FBI Headquarters, Washington, D.C.
LSFP
Lewis Stirling and Family Papers, HML
LSU
Louisiana State University, Baton Rouge
LWPA
Selected Documents from the Louisiana Section of the Work Projects Administration General Correspondence File (“State Series”) 1935–43, microfilm, Historic New Orleans Collection, New Orleans
MAP
Meldon Acheson Papers, SHSW
MBP
Murphy Bell Papers, microfilm, SHSW
MFP
Miriam Feingold Papers, microfilm, SHSW
NA
National Archives, Washington, D.C.
ODP
Operation Dixie: The CIO Organizing Committee Papers, 1946–1953 ([Sanford, N.C.]: Microfilming Corporation of America, 1980), microfilm
OFWCL, RG 228
Office Files of Wilfred C. Leland Jr., Consultant, October 1943–August 1945, Records of the Division of Review and Analysis, Headquarters Records, Records of the Committee on Fair Employment Practice, RG 228, NA
OWI
Office of War Information
PFUS
Peonage Files of the U.S. Department of Justice, 1901–1945 (Frederick, Md.: University Publications of America, 1989), microfilm
PNAACP—LC
Papers of the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People, Library of Congress, Washington, D.C.
PNAACP—Micro
Papers of the NAACP (Frederick, Md.: University Publications of America, 1982), microfilm
RCFT, RG 83
Records Relating to the President's Special Committee on Farm Tenancy, 1936–37, Division of Land Economics, Divisional Records, Records of the Bureau of Agricultural Economics, RG 83, NA
RFDRA, RG 228
Reference File, July 1941–April 1946, Records of the Division of Review and Analysis, Headquarters Records, Records of the Committee on Fair Employment Practice, RG 228, NA
RFEPC
Selected Documents of Records of the Committee on Fair Employment Practice, 1941–1946 (Glen Rock, N.J.: Microfilming Corporation of America, [1970]), microfilm
RFP
Rosenwald Fund Papers, microfilm, ARC
RG
Record Group
RMRD, RG 44
Reports and Memoranda, 1942–46, Records of the Research Division, Records of the Bureau of Special Services, OWI, Records of the U.S. Information Service, Records of the Office of Government Reports, RG 44, NA
RSD, RG 44
Reports of the Division, 1942–44, Records of the Surveys Division, Records of the Bureau of Special Services, OWI, Records of the U.S. Information Service, Records of the Office of Government Reports, RG 44, NA
RTC
Robert Tallant Collection, microfilm, ARC
RWLP
Richard W. Leche Papers, HML
SEDFREP
Scholarship, Ed
ucation, and Defense Fund for Racial Equality Papers, SHSW
SFDS, RG 381
Subject File of David Squire, 1965–66, Records of the Office of the Director, Records of the Job Corps, Records of the Office of Economic Opportunity, RG 381, NA
SHJP
William Walter Jones Collection of the Papers of Sam Houston Jones, Manuscripts Division, HTL
SHSW
State Historical Society of Wisconsin, Madison
SNF, RG 60
Straight Numerical Files, 1904–37, Central Files and Related Records, 1904–67, General Records, Records of the Department of Justice, RG 60, NA
SS, RG 453
Records Relating to Surveys and Studies, 1958–62, Records of the Commission on Civil Rights, RG 453, NA
STFUP
Southern Tenant Farmers’ Union Papers (Sanford, N.C.: Micro-filming Corporation of America, 1971), microfilm
TAFP
Turnbull-Allain Family Papers, HML
THWC—LSU
T. Harry Williams Center for Oral History, LSU
WMRRD, RG 44
Weekly Media Reports, 1942–43, Records of the Research Division, Records of the Bureau of Special Services, OWI, Records of the U.S. Information Service, Records of the Office of Government Reports, RG 44, NA
Introduction
1. A. Z. Young, Zelma Wyche, Harrison H. Brown, T. I. Israel, F. W. Wilson, and Moses Williams, Joseph Carter, interviews by Miriam Feingold, MFP.
2. See, e.g., Morris, Origins of the Civil Rights Movement; Brown, “Womanist Consciousness”; Lewis, In Their Own Interests; Honey, Southern Labor and Black Civil Rights; Woodruff, “African American Struggles for Citizenship”; Kelley, Race Rebels; Reich, “Soldiers of Democracy”; Hunter, To ‘Joy My Freedom,; and Fairclough, “ ‘Being in the Field of Education.’” In But For Birmingham: The Local and National Movements in the Civil Rights Struggle (1997), Glenn Eskew challenges the emphasis on continuity by arguing that the civil rights movement represented a significant departure from black activism in earlier decades. Before the mid-twentieth century, he asserts, the “traditional Negro leadership class” accommodated the Jim Crow social order, rarely agitating for anything more than small improvements within the confines of segregation. The civil rights movement began “when local black activists in the South organized new indigenous protest groups in the 1950s and 1960s that demanded immediate and equal access to the system” (p. 15). Although Eskew's analysis offers some valuable insights into class conflict and other divisions that afflicted the black community (which has too often been portrayed as monolithic), his account does not warrant rejection of the continuity thesis. Eskew conflates black activism in the early twentieth century with the black middle class, ignoring working-class and rural poor people's resistance to oppression. The agenda that Eskew associates with the “race men” who led the fight for civil rights reflected long-standing goals of many African Americans, not a new departure as he suggests. More than ideology, shifting political and economic contexts that allowed a change in tactics were what set the freedom movement of the 1950s and 1960s apart from earlier decades.