learn that the "subject to placement" clause in their contract means no placement at all. With such short notice, of course, there is very little opportunity to protest the decisions that have been made before such decisions are actually implemented. Recent events have newly demonstrated that there is no East Texas-or Southern-monopoly on the tactics of concealment and confusion in matters of school desegregation. Following the July 1969 announcement by the Secretary of Health, Education, and Welfare postponing the deadline for full compliance and suggesting that there would be a relaxation of the HEW Desegregation Guidelines, there was a rash of conflicting statements from federal Administration officials. Even before the present Administration was installed, the very fact that there would be an administrative change in Washington prompted a number of school districts in East Texas (and elsewhere in the South) to renege on desegregation plans that had already been approved by HEW. The uncertain stance of the present Administration with respect to the desegregation issue has produced endless confusion, alternately raising and lowering the hopes of both whites and blacks. The October 1969 decision of the Supreme Court in the Holmes County, Mississippi, case, ordering the immediate termination of dual school systems, does not clarify the confusion. How and when the decision will be carried out by federal administrators is yet unknown. Meanwhile, the uncertainties remain. The people who have complained the least are those who have been affected the most adversely by the results of desegregation. Without a clear understanding of their legal and professional rights and responsibilities, without knowing what is expected of them or what treatment will be accorded to them by their local districts, and without knowing how to go about processing a valid grievance, the black educators, who have been the strongest advocates of integration, are rendered virtually powerless against a desegregation process that works to their continuing disadvantage. ISOLATION In most localities of East Texas, black citizens lack the voting strength of a population majority. Of even greater seriousness, they lack the political organization essential to effective political effort-whether through bloc voting or through coordinated group action in seeking redress of grievances. The communities in this part of the state are not so widely scattered nor is the population sparsity so extreme as to prohibit the political organization of blacks; however, the absence of a center of black population density and leadership, together with the constant presence of a watchful white establishment, inhibits the political cohesion of the black citizenry. The proliferation of small school districts is another inhibiting factor. Black educators and parents, isolated from each other within one district, are further isolated from those who share similar concerns and grievances in neighboring districts throughout the region. School district reorganization, unless gerrymandered to fragment further the voting strength of blacks, could have a unifying effect. At the present time, however, the black educators, like the other members of the black communities of East Texas, are politically isolated and powerless. Surrounded by the real and rumored pressures of white intimidation, they have been effectively discouraged from joining together in any sustained and organized effort to defend their own professional and civil rights. Without strong group support, the aggrieved teacher or principal must either submit to mistreatment or undertake the danger of fighting his case alone. No alternative seems to offer hope. If the educator attempts to grieve individually, he faces the almost certain prospect of failure and the possibility of reprisal, not only against himself but against members of his family as well. If he attempts to join or organize professional or civil rights group as a means of initiating a collective grievance, he finds that there is no organization to join and few who are willing to participate in an organizing effort. For reasons discussed in the concluding section of this report, the present possibilities of collective action within the merged local teachers organization of East Texas are limited. Thus, the culminating injustice against the black educator in East Texas is the fact of his own isolation. As applicant, supplicant, defendant, or complainant, he stands alone against the power of the all-white establishment. END RESULTS A SELF-FULFILLING EXPECTATION There is no way of fully assessing the results of desegregation in East Texas; there is no way of measuring accurately either the psychological or practical effects it has had on the black educators and students who, having looked forward with hope to integration, found that they themselves were the victims of a desegregation screening process that accepted a few and granted equality to none. No statistics are available to show how many black teachers and principals have left East Texas, how many have left the state, or how many have moved away from the South entirely, in the effort to find employment in education or in other fields. Because of the difficulties involved in uprooting their lives-in breaking away from home, relatives, and friends-some have become weekend commuters from such cities as Houston or Dallas. Some have accepted nonteaching employment. The Special Committee met with one ex-teacher, fully certificated and with many years' experience, who had taken a job as a maid in the home of a white couple, both high school dropouts. For those black educators who remain employed in East Texas, there is no present security regardless of what they do-whether they actively assume the risk of challenging discrimination or whether they passively accept the risk of simply being a black teacher or principal in a desegregating school district in the South. Most of the employed black educators in East Texas have taken the path of passive acceptance, waiting stoically for their expectations of hardship to be fulfilled. Those expectations are fulfilled in rumor and in reality with just enough frequency to cast a pall of hopelessness over an entire region. Thus, the vicious circle is complete: With so little countering resistance from the victims of injustice, the white majority's blind resistance to social change is allowed to go unchecked, its injustices to multiply. 6. Possibilities of Remedy In this concluding chapter, the NEA Special Committee speaks primarily to the black educators of East Texas. Typically, investigation and study reports of the National Education Association conclude with recommendations for courses of remedial action that might be initiated by the various parties involved in the problems under study. In this report, however, there will be no attempt to make recommendations to school and governing officials. • It should be clear to these officials and their communities that they are incurring tragic educational and economic losses in failing to ensure equality of educational opportunity, so that every student-black and white-can achieve his maximum potential as a productive, contributing member of society. It should be clear that in the continuing displacement of black educators, school systems and communities that can ill afford it are losing valuable human resources of talent, skill, and professional commitment. • It should be clear that those who persist in defiance of orderly social change merely invite chaotic and disruptive change. Although the truth of the above statements is self-evident, it would be unrealistic to assume their acceptance as truth by the majority of the white citizens of East Texas. Such acceptance would constitute disavowal of an inherited system of values that is intrinsic to the East Texas-and traditionally Southern-way of life. The Special Committee recognizes that in the communities of East Texas, as elsewhere, the blind impulse of the dominant group is to resist any challenge to the established social order. The concepts of racial integration and racial equality threaten to disrupt that established social order and, in so doing, to strike at the very core of what the dominant group believes about itself. For in their resistance to social change, proponents of the myth of white racial superiority are not only defending an inherited value system; as true believers in that system, and the society based on it, they are also defending their own sense of integrity and self worth. Where laws have failed to penetrate the hard core of such resistance, no mere exhortation is likely to succeed. Thus, it is abundantly clear to this Committee that persuasion through reasoned analysis-the usual procedure of NEA study reports-will not be an effective means of influencing East Texas school officials to stem the tide of teacher displacement, to redress the grievances of black educators, and to carry out desegregation in such a way as to achieve true integration. These officials are products of their society and, as such, are as immovably opposed to social change as any other element of that society. Even if there were school board members who had freed themselves from the rigid traditionalism of their environment and who wished to move in the direction of racial justice, they would be limited in their ability to do so. For school boards, like all public bodies, are not autonomous and do not operate in a vacuum, but, in theory and in fact, represent a constituency. In theory, they represent the voters and serve the public good. In fact, they sometimes represent special interests that are in opposition to the public good. In any case, they are subject to pressure. The school boards of East Texas are unexceptional in the fact that they represent and are constantly subject to the overwhelming pressure of the white majority. East Texans-black and white-understand the monolithic power of the white establishment, which blindly adheres to a social order based on the twin traditions of racial segregation and discrimination. To admit equality of opportunity anywhere would be to undermine racial discrimination everywhere. This would mean the end of a way of life, with all of its cherished advantages for some and all of its hardships for others. Thus, even if there were school board members and administrators who wished to comply with the letter and the spirit of desegregation laws, they would be effectively blocked from doing so in the absence of some greater countervailing pressure than now exists to force and sustain such compliance. THE NECESSARY USES OF POWER Obviously, these conclusions are not new; nor do they describe a peculiarly Southern situation. The susceptibility of governing institutions to the influence of dominant power groups is a fact of political life; the political dominance of white, middle-class, and affluent groups is a fact of American life. The historic struggle of the Civil Rights Movement, and much of its internal conflict, has centered on the efforts of various groups within the Movement to devise and apply the necessary combination of pressures-persuasion, negotiation, political action, court action, and nonviolent and violent direct action-to counteract the overriding influence of a white power monopoly on the governing institutions of this nation. What the civil rights struggle has shown, what has been shown by every significant movement for social change throughout history, is that an entrenched interest seldom will surrender its advantage without resistance. Power can only be countered with power. It is a lamentable fact-but nonetheless a fact of human |