treatment they get during the day, but sometimes they come home crying. And they ask me do they have to keep on going to the white school. And I just don't know what to tell them."

SCHOOL PROGRAMS AND FACILITIES

It was reported that, in general, the predominantly white schools have a wider variety and better quality of school facilities, equipment, and materials, and a broader curriculum than the black schools. The Special Committee did not hear any specific complaints concerning discriminatory allocation of instructional supplies and materials within the desegregated schools. However, the Committee did hear reports that when athletic equipment is distributed, the white students get the new, better-quality equipment; the black students, no matter what their position on the team, receive what is left. Testimony indicated that black athletes have threatened to resign from their teams in protest against such discrimination and that, as a result, the discriminatory allocation of equipment in their schools has ceased.

The curriculum in the formerly all-white school may have a broader scope than in the black school, particularly at the high school level where, some students reported, they would get a wider variety of trade and business subjects. However, the educational programs of the predominantly white schools contain much that is irrelevant to the lives of black children and much that is damaging to their sense of self-worth and racial pride. History is taught Southern-style. Aside from a fleeting mention of George Washington Carver and Booker T. Washington, the Afro-American contribution to American society is not discussed. In short, the teaching of history, in most instances, is designed to perpetuate in the white youngster a belief in the myth of white supremacy and to inculcate in the black child a sense of deepening alienation and resentment. (In a classroom of one recently desegregated school, a white boy said, "We ought to put all the niggers back in slavery." There was an angry response from black students and a tussle ensued. The principal then threatened the black students with suspension if there were any further fighting over the remark.)

In some districts, the Committee was told, desegregation has meant the closing of relatively new, structurally sound black schools (including some so new that they have not yet been fully paid for) and the reopening of abandoned white school buildings, which are put into use simply to guard the white students from the stigma of attending a "Negro school." The Special Committee read newspaper reports of additional bond funds being sought by East Texas boards of education to finance the renovation of condemned white schools to provide sufficient classroom space for white and black children. Black citizens reported that they have voted against the bond issues: "Why should we pay more taxes* just so those white children * Contrary to the myths circulated by some land-owning segments of the population, the poor do pay property taxes. The burden of taxation falls most heavily on those who are poor and without property The costs of property taxation are hidden in rental fees and in the price of consumer goods and services.

will never have to step into sound buildings where our youngsters went?" Only rarely do school officials desegregate a school that has been used to house black students. When this does occur, the use of the school is usually confined to special education or trade school purposes. One parent testified, "The Negro school had to be used in our district, and before the white students arrived, the name of the school was changed, the school was scrubbed, fumigated, and the toilet seats were changed."

SUMMATION

The NEA Special Committee found that the desegregation of East Texas schools is proceeding at a faster pace than in most Southern states.* School officials of most districts studied can report that they are in compliance either with federal desegregation guidelines or with court orders. But, as the study made abundantly clear, it is only a paper compliance. As desegregation continues, the grievances of the black community become more widespread and more severe. There is every evidence of racial discrimination in the continuing displacement and demotion of black educators; there is every evidence of racial discrimination in the increasing employment of white teachers in preference to blacks; there is every evidence of racial discrimination in the frequent exclusion of black students from participation and leadership positions in the student organizations of desegregated schools; and there is every evidence of racial discrimination in the treatment that black students commonly receive from their white classmates and, in some instances, from their white teachers and principals as well.

These grievances have long remained unresolved; they continue to be unrecognized by school officials. And now that the Supreme Court has ordered the immediate elimination of dualism in all Southern districts, the prospect is that the situation will become worse-in East Texas and throughout the South. The frequency of teacher displacement and student mistreatment that accompanied desegregation "with all deliberate speed" is likely to accelerate as the rate of desegregation accelerates. The laws, including desegregation laws, have never worked well for black people. Unless present trends are halted, the new Supreme Court ruling will serve them no better than did the Brown decisions of 1954-55.

In the following section, the NEA Special Committee discusses the forces of school and community resistance that in East Texas, as in many other areas of the South, militate against the feared social change of desegregation. The Committee

It should be noted, however, that a "desegregated school district" in East Texas (and elsewhere, North or South) is not, in most cases, a district where all the students, black and white, attend desegregated schools. Except in districts where the black enrollment is extremely small, one or more all-black schools usually remain even after the district is officially desegregated. In several of the districts studied, the black students of selected grades had been transferred by administrative directive to predominantly white schools; for other students, the official desegregation policy continued to be "freedom-of-choice." In view of the treatment so frequently accorded black students who have transferred to predominantly white schools, it is understandable that "freedom-of-choice" seldom produces more than token desegregation.

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believes that an understanding of the pervasive and ingrained nature of this resistance may facilitate the development of far-reaching strategies through which the status quo may be changed. If there is such a change, the possibilities of racial harmony may be greater in the South than anywhere else in the nation. If there is no change, the possibilities of racial harmony are dim indeed-for the South and for the nation.

5. Patterns of Resistance

In the South as in the North, in this nation as in other nations, the history of social change is a history of conflict, for it is a universal tendency of society to deify its own traditions and to resist any challenge to the established social order. The conflict between the stresses of change and the forces of custom made the 1960's perhaps the most cataclysmic decade in American history since the Civil War. Amidst calls for law and order, the nation is in disarray: Its teeming, blighted cities; its rural slums; its bitterly devisive war abroad; and its alienated "outgroups" at home-the young, the nonwhite, and the poor-attest to the ramifying crisis of change. Our society has been unwilling to respond to the failure of its established social order until the consequences of that failure become seriously adverse. It is this unwillingness, this blind resistance to necessary social change that underlies the continuing racial struggle in the nation, in the South . . . and in the communities of East Texas.

If the forces of resistance to racial justice are more open and more intense in the South than elsewhere in the country, the reasons should not be too difficult to understand. In the South, racial segregation has been not only institutionalized; it has been legalized. In the South, racial discrimination not only is a fact of life; it is an ideology which, with the sanctity of law and custom, has long constituted a way of life.

After the Brown decisions of 1954-55, the South's elaborate legal structure of segregation began to give way-but not without prolonged pressure from the Civil Rights movement, from the courts, and from federal enforcement action. Laws can be reformed, but ingrained attitudes, and the institutions that reflect those attitudes, are not remade so easily. Thus, even as the legal basis for segregation was struck down, the struggle continued. It still continues; and there is no institution of Southern life that has escaped its effect. Perhaps most deeply affected is the public school system-the institution charged with responsibility for perpetuating the values and traditions of the established social order. But the public school system also has the power to be an important agent of social change—simply by bringing children together when they are young enough to escape the yoke of racial

prejudice and by teaching them the facts, rather than the myths, of history and of race.

There are few questions in American life of greater ultimate importance to our society than the deceivingly simple problem of moving a child from a black to an integrated classroom. Destruction of the walls of legal separation in southern schools is an absolutely fundamental part of the national commitment required to destroy the caste system and make equal opportunity a reality rather than a mockery.8

*

During the long procession of Septembers since the Brown decision, the walls of legal separation have been destroyed; and there has been some gradual change in attitude. Token desegregation has general acceptance now, even in the Deep South states. But the hard core of resistance is unmoved. Although school desegregation can no longer be avoided, it can, by various means, be controlled-controlled in such a way as to minimize its advance. "Freedom-of-choice"-on the surface, an eminently fair and democratic plan―proved to be one of the most effective means of tokenism.

In requiring the Negro to take the initiative, it asks him to put aside a century of fear and suspicion. The Negro knows full well that the whites are acting out of forced compliance, instead of contrition. It is one thing to open a door willingly and invite a guest to enter; it is quite another to set the door ajar and expect an entrant to brave the menacing scowls of those who stand on guard.9

On the basis of statistics that count schools, not students, it is possible to report. as the Department of Health, Education, and Welfare did report in September 1969:

At the opening of school this month, HEW and individual school districts in 14 states reached a significant milestone in equal educational opportunity. Reports from the first 10 days indicate that school desegregation under Title VI of the 1964 Civil Rights Act proceeded on the whole very smoothly, producing the largest volume of desegregation at once since the Supreme Court ordered the end of the dual school system in 1954.10

On the basis of statistics that count schools, not students, Texas (including its Black Belt eastern areas) can be described as a "beacon state in school desegregation." The statistics lie. In many of those districts where desegregation is said to be proceeding "very smoothly," neither the spirit nor the letter of the law is being upheld:

The necessity of overcoming the effects of the dual school system required integration of faculties, facilities, and activities, as well as students. [The Fifth Circuit Court, Jefferson County case.]

Even this statement, drawn from a volume that expresses the author's profound commitment to racial integration, bears the taint of racial bias: Mr. Orfield refers to a one-way integration process-"moving a child from a black [not white] to an integrated classroom."