The End Of An Era

We have fought this fight as long as, and as well as we know how. We have been defeated. For us, as a Christian people, there is now but one course to pursue. We must accept the situation.

MORE than 100 years after Appomattox, Mississippians found General Robert E. Lee's words newly poignant and appropriate. For over a decade they had used every delaying tactic they knew in their battle to maintain their tradition of educational apartheid. Then, last October, the U.S. Supreme Court ordered an immediate end to segregation in 30 of the state's school districts. Last week Mississippians in 27 of the districts accepted, if not defeat, then at least the reality of binding law. As white parents watched in anger, despair or simply resignation, black children entered once segregated schools and took their places beside whites for the first time. For Mississippi, an era had ended.

But for both Mississippi and the rest of the South, a new era is also beginning. Following the example of its Mississippi order, the Supreme Court is expected this week to order the immediate desegregation of public schools serving some 300,000 white and black children in five Southern states. This will bring an end to the federal phase of the school desegregation fight. The battle will now be fought at the local level, as individual Southerners, both white and black, struggle with their own fears and prejudices to decide what kind of school system and, ultimately, what kind of community they are going to have.

Clue to the Future. For those reasons, the rest of the U.S. followed the events in Mississippi closely. Parents in the more than 500 Southern school districts scheduled to desegregate by next fall studied their Mississippi counterparts for a clue to their own future behavior. Parents and officials in Northern cities, several of which are also under pressure to end de facto school segregation (see following story), watched to see if integration could be made to work. For both groups, the auguries were unpromising.

As officials had expected, the transition proceeded in an atmosphere of orderly tension. Heeding appeals from Governor John Bell Williams to "make the best of a bad situation," Mississippians refrained from the acts of violence that had marked earlier attempts to desegregate the state's schools. Nor, with the realization that Mississippi had gone beyond the point of no return, was there more than the expected chorus of protest as legal desegregation became a fact. White parents in the tiny (pop. 8,000) Forrest County community of Petal reacted angrily to a plan for busing their children. When a school official tried to explain the program, they borrowed a line from antiwar protesters and stormed out, chanting, "Hell no, we won't go." In Hattiesburg, 1,000 white parents paraded in a bone-chilling drizzle as schools there desegregated. Almost everywhere else, opening day was quiet.

Despite the absence of violence, few white Mississippians were ready to welcome the decision of the court. Only in districts with a high ratio of whites to blacks did desegregation bring a measure of integration. In Columbia, where whites outnumber blacks 3 to 1, high school students ignored eight pickets outside and sat down together in an assembly hall to cheer a black student leader who urged them to make their town "a lighthouse in Marion County." In Yazoo City, where the student population is almost evenly divided between whites and blacks, a majority of the whites showed up for registration and classes (see box opposite).

New Kind of Segregation. In districts where blacks are in the majority, however, opening day brought only a new kind of segregation as whites abandoned the public schools to the black invasion. In Natchez, where Baptist churches are pooling their resources to form private schools, a third of the city's 4,500 white students failed to register for classes. In Wilkinson County, where Confederate President Jefferson Davis spent his boyhood and blacks now outnumber whites by at least 3 to 1, only two white children--11-year-old Annette Brown and her brother, Thomas, 10--showed up for the first day of desegregated classes. Their father, eighth-grade Dropout Burnell Brown, says he would prefer, but cannot afford, to send them to school with whites. Thus, he is determined to keep them in public school despite pressure from the rest of the white community. "The main thing I want them to do is get an education," he said.

That is more than a great many Mississippi whites are going to get. The state has no compulsory-attendance law, and rather than let their children sit next to blacks, many poor parents plan to keep them out of school entirely. Thousands of others are planning to send their children to the more than 100 private "segregation academies" that have sprung up in Mississippi, often housed in church basements and unused factories.

Costly Decision. Their decision, which has inspired parents in Georgia and Alabama to establish similar schools, may prove costly both financially and educationally. Few of the schools charge less than $30 a month tuition, fewer still are properly equipped or accredited. Both blacks and Health, Education and Welfare Secretary Robert Finch are determined to keep them that way.

Well aware of the buying power of their dollars, more than 400 blacks met with Charles Evers, mayor of Fayette. They plan a selective buying campaign aimed at the pocketbooks of white merchants and businessmen who donate either money or equipment to the segregation academies. "We're not going to argue with white folks," Evers said. "We're just not going to support them. If we're not good enough for them to go to school with us, we're not good enough to spend money with them." Secretary Finch has called upon the Treasury Department to end the tax-exempt status now enjoyed by private schools that are being set up specifically to avoid integration.

Nor are Mississippi's whites likely to get much help from their state govement. Although Governor Williams has promised to aid white parents who want to avoid integration, his assurances are more political than practical. Federal courts have already struck down schemes for state aid to segregated education in Virginia and Alabama, and Williams' transparent plans differ only slightly from those earlier subterfuges. While the state legislature will undoubtedly support the Governor, the courts are unlikely to go along. Thus, the best that Williams can offer his white constituents is merely another false hope, and that only a short-lived one. Mississippi has already had since 1954 to comply with the U.S. Supreme Court's school-desegregation decision. As the court indicated in its October order to the school districts, 15 years is long enough for any state.

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