Or why I can't get over it
A thread.
She said: "A black person’s humanity can never be fully realized in the presence of whiteness"
She also grew up in that town. I've told that story before but my grandparents ended up there when a lynch mob basically chased them out of town.
All my aunts and uncle went to the local black high school when it was segregated.
Everyone thinks their hometown high school was a "good school" even when it is shitty. But for some reason, my grandparents knew. So they shipped my mom off to Boylan Haven Mather, an all-black boarding school in Camden SC.
She never talked about that school.
Plush she was younger than everyone (she graduated at 16) so just because she was the "smart one"
Basically, she lived her childhood "in the presence of whiteness."
The only thing she ever talked about from that school was her roomate, who I'm told could really sing.
Everyone said that about my mom's roommate.
Oh... The company was Motown and the husband was Stevie Wonder
Anyway...
syreetawright.com/about-syreeta
But there are a few things a lot of people don't know or realize about that.
That separate CANNOT be equal.
One of those cases was Briggs v, Elliot, which was the FIRST of the Brown v. Board cases.
Some had to (yall, this is no lie) ROW ACROSS A STREAM to go to school
That motherfucker said no.
Elliot's logic was that ALL THE BLACK PARENTS TOGETHER didn't pay enough taxes to warrant one bus.
When they went to court, the judge pulled the lawyer aside
The lawyer decided to try it.
His name was Thurgood Marshall.
But Delaine wasn't THAT kind of Rev. He shot back (in the name of Jesus, of course). The FBI relocated him out of SC & he never returned because...
That was the charge.
Remember:
"A black person’s humanity can never be fully realized in the presence of whiteness"
HAHAHAHAHA, silly. That's not how white supremacy works.
See, if segregation legal for 100 years, where did black people live? In black neighborhoods.
In black neighborhoods.
So, in a sense, Brown v Board CEMENTED inferior schools because the state no longer had to make sure black schools were equal. And, because of school zoning, the schools would ALWAYS be separate.
In fact, they didn't even allow black kids to ATTEND the white school until 1964 when they allowed ONE GUY to go to school there. scnow.com/messenger/news…
"A black person’s humanity can never be fully realized in the presence of whiteness"
Now, my mom was the same way. When I tell people I was homeschooled at first, its only a half-truth.
When they found out, they wanted her to enroll me in a school in our neighborhood. She was like: "F*ck that."
But here is what I came to talk about.
In 1970 a federal court forced my city them to integrate the schools
I wasn't even born yet. But it changed my life and the course of history
In the town of Lamar, the town was too small to really segregate. Black kids went to the black school and white kids went to the white school. So they REALLY had to do it
The sent 150 highway patrolmen to ride with the buses. After all, the town only had 1000 residents
They attacked the buses.
They used ax handles to smash the bus windows.
They fired guns at THE KIDS in the buses
scencyclopedia.org/sce/entries/la…
But that's not why she believed "a black person..."
Remember the guy who left after integrating schools? His father was my barber. He was my mother's age.
Those people raised the kids I went to school with. Do you think those attitudes changed?
Here's how I know. They didn't my integrate my city's schools in 1970. They didn't do it by 1980.
It was 1982 before the all-black high school finally closed. But the schools weren't fully integrated.
It was so bad that people KEPT SUING the school district telling them to integrate. It happened again in '85.
but for some reason, they resisted
So when I talk about segregated schools, I don't mean Jim Crow era schools. Shit, I don't even mean MY era.
My hometown finally completely desegregated its schools when a district court forced them, for the last time to build equal schools
As I looked at the exhibit, I noticed one of them was from one of the ELEMENTARY schools from my hometown
How close are your values to theirs?
"A black person’s humanity can never be fully realized in the presence of whiteness"