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Revisited: Ms. Buchanan’s Period of Adjustment · Revisionist History

0:15
Speaker 1: Pushkin back. In season two of Revisionist History, we did
0:21
Speaker 1: a four part series on civil rights, and the first
0:24
Speaker 1: episode of that series was called Miss Buchanan's Period of Adjustment.
0:29
Speaker 1: It's still one of my favorite Revisionist episodes of all time.
0:32
Speaker 1: It was about Brown versus Board of Education, the nineteen
0:35
Speaker 1: fifty four Supreme Court case that desegregated America's schools and
0:40
Speaker 1: is still today maybe the most famous of all Supreme
0:42
Speaker 1: Court cases. And our episode was about what happened after
0:47
Speaker 1: the Brown decision came down, the heartbreaking consequence that no
0:51
Speaker 1: one anticipated and everyone seems to have forgotten. Anyway, it ran,
0:57
Speaker 1: and about a week later, I got a call on
0:59
Speaker 1: my cell from restricted number. And normally I would never
1:04
Speaker 1: pick up a call from a restricted number, but for
1:06
Speaker 1: some reason I did, and a voice on the other
1:08
Speaker 1: end of the line said, mister Gladwell, hold for the President.
1:13
Speaker 1: My first thought was President of what? And my second
1:18
Speaker 1: thought was, wow, this is quite the elaborate spam call.
1:23
Speaker 1: And I was just about to hang up when I
1:25
Speaker 1: hear Malcolm Barack Obama, just listen to your episode on
1:31
Speaker 1: the Brown Case. I loved it. My wedding and the
1:34
Speaker 1: birth of my two children are clearly the first, second,
1:38
Speaker 1: and third most memorable moments of my life, but this
1:41
Speaker 1: is a very strong number four. I mean, come on, Malcolm,
1:46
Speaker 1: Barack Obama. Anyway, fast forward a couple years and Barack
1:50
Speaker 1: Obama's team approached me about doing a project with the
1:53
Speaker 1: President about reconstruction that tumultuous window after the Civil War
1:58
Speaker 1: that you kind of have to understand if you are
2:00
Speaker 1: to understand the story of race and civil rights in America.
2:04
Speaker 1: That project launches next week. It's called Reconstruction the Unfinished Promise.
2:10
Speaker 1: I know I'm biased, but it's really good, and we're
2:12
Speaker 1: going to bring you a preview of it in this
2:14
Speaker 1: feed next week. But for today, let's go back to
2:18
Speaker 1: where this all began and play for you Miss Buchanan's
2:22
Speaker 1: Period of Adjustment, one of my favorite episodes ever and
2:26
Speaker 1: apparently some other people's favorite episode as well. On the
2:30
Speaker 1: campus of the University of Michigan, there's a gorgeous building
2:33
Speaker 1: called the Racam Auditorium, built in the nineteen thirties in
2:37
Speaker 1: the Classical Renaissance style, and in January of two thousand
2:40
Speaker 1: and four, on one of those cold Michigan days, a
2:44
Speaker 1: woman takes the stage in front of a big crowd.
2:47
Speaker 1: She's in her sixties. Her name is Missus Thompson.
2:51
Speaker 2: Good evening, It's indeed a pleasure to be with you
2:56
Speaker 2: this evening here on the campus of the University of Michigan,
3:00
Speaker 2: the home of the Wolverines. Is that right? And I
3:06
Speaker 2: heard you had a game last night. You only lost
3:08
Speaker 2: it by two points, huh.
3:13
Speaker 1: She tells a funny story about how she was once
3:15
Speaker 1: invited to speak at Nasau and thought she was going
3:17
Speaker 1: to the Bahamas, only to discover that it was Nasau County,
3:21
Speaker 1: Long Island. She talks a little bit about her childhood
3:24
Speaker 1: and her family. Then right in the middle of her talk,
3:28
Speaker 1: she starts reading a notice of termination sent many years
3:31
Speaker 1: ago to a teacher named Darla Buchanan.
3:34
Speaker 2: Dear miss Buchanan, due to the present uncertainty about enrollment
3:39
Speaker 2: next year, it is necessary for me to notify you
3:42
Speaker 2: now that your services will not be needed for next year.
3:47
Speaker 1: The students in the auditorium are wrapped. This is not
3:50
Speaker 1: what they expected, but Missus Thompson goes on and reads
3:54
Speaker 1: all the way to the end.
3:55
Speaker 2: I think I understand that all of you must be
3:58
Speaker 2: under considerable strain, and I sympathize with the uncertainties an
4:02
Speaker 2: inconvenience which you must be experiencing during this period of adjustment.
4:08
Speaker 1: This period of adjustment, remember that line. It's a nice
4:12
Speaker 1: bit of condescension and understatement. My name is Malcolm Gladwell.
4:21
Speaker 1: You're listening to Revisionist History, my podcast about things Overlooked
4:25
Speaker 1: and Misunderstood. This episode is about that ethemism in the
4:32
Speaker 1: letter read by Missus Thompson, this period of adjustment. Not
4:42
Speaker 1: that long ago. Americans set out to do something revolutionary
4:46
Speaker 1: to change the world, but we botched it, and we
4:50
Speaker 1: didn't want to admit that fact. So we swept the
4:53
Speaker 1: whole episode under the rug and wrote letters to everyone
4:57
Speaker 1: concerned to try and absolve ourselves of the whole business.
5:01
Speaker 2: I believe that whatever happens will ultimately turn out to
5:05
Speaker 2: be the best for everyone concern Yeah.
5:14
Speaker 3: Right.
5:18
Speaker 1: The letter of termination to Darla Buchanan was written by
5:21
Speaker 1: the superintendent of schools in Topeka, Kansas, the capital of Kansas,
5:25
Speaker 1: a medium sized city in the upper right hand corner
5:27
Speaker 1: of the state. Like a lot of cities and towns
5:30
Speaker 1: in the United States, particularly those in the South, Topeka
5:33
Speaker 1: had segregated public elementary schools. In the Jim Crow era,
5:37
Speaker 1: white children went to neighborhood schools. Black children went to
5:41
Speaker 1: a separate system of schools scattered around the city with
5:44
Speaker 1: their own black teachers and black principles. In the years
5:48
Speaker 1: after the Second World War, the leading civil rights group
5:51
Speaker 1: of the day, the NAACP, decided to start challenging segregation.
5:56
Speaker 1: Topeka was one of their test cases. They found thirteen
6:00
Speaker 1: black families and asked them to go down to their
6:02
Speaker 1: neighborhood white school and try and enroll their children. One
6:06
Speaker 1: of the couples they asked was Oliver and Leo le Brand.
6:10
Speaker 1: Oliver Brown worked for the Santa Fe Railroad. Later he
6:13
Speaker 1: was a pastor. This is lee Ola Brown from an
6:16
Speaker 1: interview she gave in nineteen ninety one to the Kansas
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Speaker 1: State Historical Society.
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Speaker 4: My husband Oliver Brown. He was a heavyweight fighter. He
6:24
Speaker 4: used to fight golden gloves.
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Speaker 1: The Browns had a seven year old named Linda. The
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Speaker 1: black elementary school she was supposed to go to was
6:32
Speaker 1: caled Monroe. To get there, she had to walk seven blocks,
6:36
Speaker 1: often in freezing weather, and cross a busy road, then
6:39
Speaker 1: get on a bus. The local white elementary school was
6:43
Speaker 1: Sumner just four blocks on the Browns, Linda's playmates from
6:47
Speaker 1: the neighborhood all went there. So one day, as instructed
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Speaker 1: by the NAACP, Oliver Brown took his daughter by the
6:55
Speaker 1: hand and walked her over to enroll at Sumner Elementary.
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Speaker 4: As Linda said, when they got over there, and that
7:01
Speaker 4: building looks so bigger, being a little kid going upstairs.
7:04
Speaker 4: And then when they got ready to talk, they had
7:06
Speaker 4: her sit on the outside of the office was talking
7:09
Speaker 4: to the principal.
7:10
Speaker 1: You could imagine how uncomfortable the conversation was. Oliver Brown
7:14
Speaker 1: was not supposed to be there, and the principal would
7:17
Speaker 1: have had no idea what to say to him other
7:19
Speaker 1: than I'm sorry. This is the way it is in Topeka.
7:23
Speaker 1: With little Linda waiting out in the hall, if.
7:25
Speaker 4: She said, you could hear the Vossors kinda getting a
7:27
Speaker 4: little loud. And he said, well, it wasn't him, it
7:30
Speaker 4: was the school board. That was a policy of the
7:33
Speaker 4: school board. He couldn't do nothing about it, you know,
7:35
Speaker 4: So he couldn't, no way could he could not enroll
7:38
Speaker 4: Landon in that school without their approval.
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Speaker 1: All the black families got the same answer, your child
7:45
Speaker 1: is not welcome, So the local NAACP chapter sued the
7:50
Speaker 1: school board. Oliver Brown's name was put first, Brown versus
7:54
Speaker 1: to peak a Board of Education. It was bundled with
7:56
Speaker 1: a number of other desegregation cases from all around the country.
8:00
Speaker 1: More than two hundred plaintiffs in all, went all the
8:03
Speaker 1: way to the Supreme Court, and on May seventeenth, nineteen
8:06
Speaker 1: fifty four, in one of the most famously decisions in
8:09
Speaker 1: American history, the Court ruled in Oliver Brown's favor. The
8:15
Speaker 1: practice of educating black and white school children separately was
8:19
Speaker 1: ruled unconstitutional.
8:23
Speaker 3: It was a unanimous decision and had the broadest possible language,
8:28
Speaker 3: which should set for rest, once and for all the
8:32
Speaker 3: problem as to whether or not a second class citizenship
8:36
Speaker 3: segregation could be consistent any longer with the law of
8:40
Speaker 3: the country.
8:42
Speaker 1: I'm guessing you were taught about the Brown decision in
8:44
Speaker 1: school or have watched a documentary on it. It's a milestone,
8:49
Speaker 1: but at the same time it's a strange case. You
8:53
Speaker 1: could fill an auditorium with all the scholars who have
8:55
Speaker 1: a quarrel with Brown. I mean, just go back and
8:58
Speaker 1: read it. It's supposed to be a ruling in favor
9:00
Speaker 1: of Oliver and Leola Brown and the families of Topeka.
9:04
Speaker 1: But the court actually says something entirely different from what
9:07
Speaker 1: the black people of Topeka were saying.
9:09
Speaker 4: I went to Monroe School here Intopeka from grade one
9:14
Speaker 4: through eight.
9:15
Speaker 1: Listen again to Leola Brown's interview with the Kansas State
9:17
Speaker 1: Historical Society. On several occasions, Liola is asked about Monroe,
9:23
Speaker 1: the black school that her daughter had been attending. Leola
9:26
Speaker 1: grew up in Topeka, she went to Monroe as well,
9:29
Speaker 1: and Leola Brown makes it very clear that she loved Monroe.
9:33
Speaker 4: Oh it's wonderful. I tell you, it was wonderful. And
9:37
Speaker 4: had it not been through this boging, you know, school
9:41
Speaker 4: and going so far to school, we've possibly never wit of,
9:44
Speaker 4: you know. That's what we did.
9:47
Speaker 1: Later in the interview, the issue comes up again. The
9:50
Speaker 1: interviewer asked Leola specifically, you didn't want your daughter to
9:54
Speaker 1: go to the white school because the white school was
9:56
Speaker 1: better than the black school, and Liola is adamant, Oh, no,
9:59
Speaker 1: that never came up. We were getting a quality education
10:03
Speaker 1: at Monroe.
10:04
Speaker 5: We didn't have any.
10:06
Speaker 4: Bane to pick with our schools. For his education, Misiness
10:09
Speaker 4: ignored the teachers because they were qualified and they need
10:12
Speaker 4: what they were supposed to do.
10:14
Speaker 1: For Leola and Oliver Brown, the lawsuit was a matter
10:17
Speaker 1: of principle. They didn't think there was anything wrong with
10:20
Speaker 1: the quality of education at Monroe, the all black school.
10:23
Speaker 1: They just thought that the Topeka school Board shouldn't be
10:26
Speaker 1: telling them where they could or couldn't send Linda to school,
10:29
Speaker 1: particularly if the only reason the school board could come
10:32
Speaker 1: up with was the color of Linda's skin. Now listen
10:39
Speaker 1: to the argument the Supreme Court makes in the Brown decision.
10:42
Speaker 1: They agreed that the Browns ought to be able to
10:45
Speaker 1: send Linda to Sumner, but their reasoning is different. I'm
10:49
Speaker 1: quoting segregation of white and colored children in public schools
10:54
Speaker 1: has a detrimental effect upon the colored children. The Court's
10:59
Speaker 1: conclusion was that segregation was de facto unequal. That simply
11:04
Speaker 1: the act of educating black children separately from white children
11:08
Speaker 1: caused harm, serious harm. The court goes on, segregation with
11:12
Speaker 1: the sanction of law, has a tendency to retard the
11:16
Speaker 1: educational and mental development of Negro children. This was light
11:21
Speaker 1: years away from Leola Brown's position. Leola Brown said that
11:26
Speaker 1: black run schools like Monroe were good schools, but as
11:30
Speaker 1: a matter of principle, she ought to be able to
11:32
Speaker 1: enroll into at Sumner. The court said, actually, Monroe is
11:37
Speaker 1: not a good school at all. It can't be a
11:39
Speaker 1: good school because segregation makes it inherently Inferiorleola Brown said,
11:46
Speaker 1: we're fine, we just want some control over our lives.
11:49
Speaker 1: The court said, you're not fine at all. Your educational
11:53
Speaker 1: and mental development has been retarded by your inferior schooling. Now,
12:05
Speaker 1: the court could have said something much more straightforward. How
12:08
Speaker 1: about this, schools are where people make the connections that
12:11
Speaker 1: allow them to get ahead in the world. You cannot
12:14
Speaker 1: lock black people out of the place where social power
12:16
Speaker 1: and opportunity reside. That argument would have done the job right,
12:21
Speaker 1: but the court doesn't say that. In order to condemn
12:24
Speaker 1: the discrimination to Brown's face. The court instead makes the
12:27
Speaker 1: case that black people are psychologically crippled. The historian Darryl
12:34
Speaker 1: Scott wrote a brilliant book a while back called Contempt
12:37
Speaker 1: and Pity, in which she points out that there's been
12:40
Speaker 1: a long history behind this talk of psychological damage. It
12:44
Speaker 1: goes back to the days of slavery. It's always been
12:47
Speaker 1: incredibly useful for white people to explain the problems of
12:50
Speaker 1: black people as the result of something personal internal. It
12:55
Speaker 1: makes their problems their fault.
12:57
Speaker 6: If you go even back to an Antebellum period, you
13:00
Speaker 6: would see planners who would talk about how they have
13:03
Speaker 6: no sense of family. Now, of course, these are the
13:05
Speaker 6: very people who are selling people's families at the auction block.
13:10
Speaker 6: They're destroying families, but they were justified in their minds
13:13
Speaker 6: by saying they have no sense of families.
13:16
Speaker 1: Another historian, Charles Pain, makes a very similar argument in
13:20
Speaker 1: his essay The Whole United States Is Southern, which you
13:23
Speaker 1: should read, by the way, if you ever want to
13:25
Speaker 1: be grabbed by the lapels. Pain argues that in the
13:30
Speaker 1: decades after the Civil War, Southern whites attempt to sell
13:33
Speaker 1: the rest of America on this way of thinking about race.
13:36
Speaker 1: They've basically imposed apartheid on the South through brute political
13:40
Speaker 1: and economic force. But they want, quoting Pain, to frame
13:45
Speaker 1: the issue in a language of separation customs are a
13:48
Speaker 1: way of life and social equality, language that constructed race
13:53
Speaker 1: in interpersonal and not structural terms. They want to pretend
13:57
Speaker 1: that racial conflict is just a psychological problem. So what
14:02
Speaker 1: does the U. S. Supreme Court do? In nineteen fifty four,
14:05
Speaker 1: In the Brown decision. It buys into the Southern way
14:08
Speaker 1: of thinking about race. Leo le Brown and the other
14:13
Speaker 1: plaintiffs say, we have a structural problem. We don't have
14:17
Speaker 1: the power to send Linda to the school down the street.
14:20
Speaker 1: The court says, no, no, no, it's a psychological problem.
14:24
Speaker 1: Little Linda has been damaged in her heart. That may
14:29
Speaker 1: seem like a small distinction. Believe me, it's not. We're
14:34
Speaker 1: still dealing with the consequences. This is a little bit
14:39
Speaker 1: of a tangent, but I think it helps to explain
14:41
Speaker 1: why personalizing racial discussions is so problematic. It's about a
14:46
Speaker 1: wonderful bit of research done by two political scientists at
14:49
Speaker 1: Vanderbilt University in Nashville, Jason Grissom and Christopher Reading. Grissom
14:55
Speaker 1: and Redding start with a well known fact White students
14:58
Speaker 1: are far more likely to be in gifted in Talented
15:00
Speaker 1: programs than black students. If your kid is in a
15:04
Speaker 1: gifted in Talented program, you've probably observed this. Where are
15:07
Speaker 1: the black kids, right? I might say, well, that's simply
15:10
Speaker 1: a reflection of the fact that white kids, for whatever reasons,
15:13
Speaker 1: have higher test scores on average and black kids. So
15:16
Speaker 1: Grissom and Reading look at a large national sample of
15:19
Speaker 1: elementary school kids and say, let's equalize for test scores.
15:23
Speaker 7: In other words, let's compare two students, one black and
15:25
Speaker 7: one white, but they both are very high achieving. This
15:29
Speaker 7: is Grisom, would that difference in probability that they are
15:33
Speaker 7: identified by the system as gifted? Would that persist? And
15:36
Speaker 7: the answer is that it does. In fact, it's still
15:39
Speaker 7: the case that even when you look at two students
15:41
Speaker 7: who are similar on math and reading achievement in elementary school,
15:45
Speaker 7: a white student and a black student, that white student
15:47
Speaker 7: is still more than two times as likely to be
15:51
Speaker 7: receiving gifted services as that black student is gifted.
15:54
Speaker 1: Programs are supposed to be meritocracies, places where the brightest
15:58
Speaker 1: children are given a chance to shine. Grisom's saying, that's
16:01
Speaker 1: not the way things work in practice.
16:04
Speaker 7: And you can go a little further, because you can
16:06
Speaker 7: throw other things into the equation that aren't just achievement.
16:09
Speaker 7: You can look at differences in income, the data have,
16:12
Speaker 7: how healthy the parents says that child is. We know
16:15
Speaker 7: what age that child entered kindergarten. You know, on average,
16:19
Speaker 7: white students and black students enter kindergarten at different ages.
16:21
Speaker 7: Because of the phenomenon of red shirting, white parents are
16:24
Speaker 7: more likely to hold their kids back at the start
16:27
Speaker 7: of schooling than black students are. That doesn't explain the
16:30
Speaker 7: gifted gap.
16:31
Speaker 1: In other words, you match up bright black kids with
16:33
Speaker 1: equally bright white kids, then you make sure the two
16:36
Speaker 1: groups are similar in age, class, and the health of
16:39
Speaker 1: their parents, and you still find that the white kids
16:42
Speaker 1: are far more likely to be admitted to gifted and
16:45
Speaker 1: talented programs. Kind of a puzzle, right. Finally, Grissom and
16:50
Speaker 1: Reddings say, look, in many cases, teachers play a big
16:54
Speaker 1: role in which students get into gifted programs. They encourage them,
16:57
Speaker 1: they recommend them. So they think maybe the answer here
17:01
Speaker 1: lies with not who the child is, but who the
17:05
Speaker 1: child's teacher is.
17:06
Speaker 7: In the overwhelming majority of school districts in the United States,
17:10
Speaker 7: the way that a kid ever gets to be identified
17:12
Speaker 7: as gifted is if someone in the school, usually a
17:16
Speaker 7: classroom teacher, has to look at that kid and say,
17:18
Speaker 7: I think this kid might be gifted.
17:21
Speaker 1: So Grissom does something really simple. He looks at the
17:24
Speaker 1: race of the teacher, and what he finds is that
17:27
Speaker 1: for white kids, there's no effect. It doesn't matter but
17:30
Speaker 1: not for black students.
17:32
Speaker 7: For a black student, the world looks different. So if
17:35
Speaker 7: I'm a black student and I have a black classroom teacher,
17:38
Speaker 7: the probability that I'm assigned to giftedness in the next
17:42
Speaker 7: year it looks very much like the probability for a
17:45
Speaker 7: white student. But if I am a Black student and
17:49
Speaker 7: I have a white classroom teacher, my probability of being
17:53
Speaker 7: identified as gifted is substantially lower.
17:56
Speaker 1: How much lower?
17:58
Speaker 7: Okay, So for very high achieving black students, the probability
18:02
Speaker 7: of being assigned to gifted services under a white teacher
18:06
Speaker 7: is about half the probability as an observably similar black
18:11
Speaker 7: student taught by a black teacher.
18:14
Speaker 1: If you're black, having a black teacher makes a difference,
18:17
Speaker 1: and not just for getting into gifted programs. Having a
18:20
Speaker 1: black teacher raises the test scores of black students, it
18:23
Speaker 1: changes the way black students behave, and it dramatically decreases
18:27
Speaker 1: the chances a black male student would be suspended. A
18:34
Speaker 1: group of social scientists recently went over the records of
18:36
Speaker 1: one hundred thousand black students in North Carolina over a
18:39
Speaker 1: five year period. They found that having even one black
18:43
Speaker 1: teacher between the third and fifth grade reduced the chance
18:46
Speaker 1: that an African American boy would later drop out of
18:48
Speaker 1: high school by how much? By thirty nine percent one
18:53
Speaker 1: black teacher. Now, does this mean that white teachers are
18:58
Speaker 1: diabolical racists trying to hold down black students. No, this
19:02
Speaker 1: isn't conscious discrimination. The point is that teachers have power,
19:06
Speaker 1: the gatekeepers. They control the classroom. They decide who gets
19:11
Speaker 1: recommended for prizes like gifted programs and who doesn't. They
19:14
Speaker 1: decide who stays and who gets suspended. By directing their
19:17
Speaker 1: attention to a child, A teacher can inspire by ignoring
19:21
Speaker 1: another or sending him more often to the principal's office.
19:24
Speaker 1: Teachers can discourage. Listen to Leo La Brown again about
19:30
Speaker 1: why she liked her elementary school Monroe so much.
19:33
Speaker 4: I loved it. I loved it the teachers who were fantastic.
19:37
Speaker 4: We got a fantastic education there. It wasn't any say
19:40
Speaker 4: this case wasn't based on that, because we had fantastic
19:44
Speaker 4: teachers and we learned, We learned a lot. They were
19:47
Speaker 4: good to us, more like an extended family like mothers
19:50
Speaker 4: and so forth, because they took an interest in you,
19:52
Speaker 4: you know, and.
19:54
Speaker 1: They took an interest in you. That's what all the
19:57
Speaker 1: research on blacks and whites and gifted programs comes down to.
20:01
Speaker 1: You need to have someone who takes an interest in
20:04
Speaker 1: you if you want education to work and be fair.
20:08
Speaker 5: They made one serious mistake which I will have to
20:12
Speaker 5: hold them responsible for.
20:15
Speaker 1: I came across another archive of interviews from the Brown
20:18
Speaker 1: era Duke Universities behind the Veil Oral History Project. The
20:22
Speaker 1: interview you're hearing is from Richmond, Virginia. It's with an
20:26
Speaker 1: African American teacher named Celestine Porter, and she says that
20:30
Speaker 1: once you grant this idea that a teacher is a
20:32
Speaker 1: gatekeeper and that a child needs someone to take an
20:35
Speaker 1: interest in them, then that means integration should have been
20:38
Speaker 1: pursued very differently.
20:40
Speaker 5: They made students do the integration. They should have had
20:44
Speaker 5: teachers verse, and they didn't do that at every one
20:50
Speaker 5: of those white schools, at every one of the black schools,
20:53
Speaker 5: If they were going to sign white children to the
20:55
Speaker 5: black school they should have had white teachers. If they
20:58
Speaker 5: were gonna sign black children into the white schools, they
21:01
Speaker 5: should have had some black teachers there. Now, the first
21:05
Speaker 5: people that should have been integrated should have been teaches.
21:08
Speaker 5: An administration just first. But they didn't do that. They
21:12
Speaker 5: moved the children.
21:13
Speaker 1: She's absolutely right. Read the Brown Decision for yourself. The
21:18
Speaker 1: court goes on and on about kids, but they have
21:21
Speaker 1: virtually nothing to say about teachers. The word teacher comes
21:25
Speaker 1: up once in the main text and a few times
21:27
Speaker 1: in the footnotes. That's it. How on earth can you
21:30
Speaker 1: undertake the greatest transformation of public education in American history
21:34
Speaker 1: and barely mentioned teachers.
21:37
Speaker 5: Young people didn't not know. Business moved first to have
21:41
Speaker 5: borne the brunt oh the segregation process, and it did
21:48
Speaker 5: something to the Elstons. It did something to them. It
21:52
Speaker 5: made them hay, It gave them a sense of nobody's share.
21:57
Speaker 5: Far me and most of the students that had moved
22:00
Speaker 5: from the black schools into the white situation, we as
22:04
Speaker 5: teachers had been there to nurture, there, to help them along,
22:07
Speaker 5: to recognize that difficulties, to work with them when they
22:12
Speaker 5: moved into the white situation. Teachers didn't know, they didn't not.
22:17
Speaker 5: The teachers were fridled in.
22:19
Speaker 1: The Brown Decision was all about children. The signature memories
22:23
Speaker 1: of the Brown era are all about black children being
22:26
Speaker 1: escorted into previously all white schools. We should have been
22:30
Speaker 1: talking about teachers. About three and a half hours dew
22:37
Speaker 1: east of Topeka on I seventy, there is a little
22:40
Speaker 1: town called Moberley. Moberly is in the area of Missouri
22:44
Speaker 1: called Little Dixie because it was settled by mirgrants from
22:47
Speaker 1: the South before the Civil War. There was a lot
22:49
Speaker 1: of slave owning in Little Dixie compared with the rest
22:52
Speaker 1: of Missouri, a lot of racial hostility in that part
22:55
Speaker 1: of the state. And I don't think you can understand
22:57
Speaker 1: what happened after the Brown Decision without first understanding what
23:01
Speaker 1: happened in Moberley. In the early nineteen fifties, Moberley had
23:05
Speaker 1: a school system employing around one hundred teachers across its schools.
23:10
Speaker 1: One of those schools was black. It was called Lincoln.
23:14
Speaker 1: Lincoln had eleven teachers. The year after the Brown decision,
23:18
Speaker 1: Mobilely integrates. They do that by closing the one black school, Lincoln,
23:23
Speaker 1: combussing all the black students there to white schools. After
23:28
Speaker 1: closing Lincoln, the Mobile School system then says, wait, if
23:31
Speaker 1: we combine all the students in Mobilely into one school system,
23:34
Speaker 1: we don't think we need as many teachers as we
23:36
Speaker 1: had before. So they say, let's evaluate all the teachers
23:40
Speaker 1: from the two newly combined systems, keep the best ones,
23:44
Speaker 1: let the mediocre ones go. I think you can see
23:47
Speaker 1: what's coming. They decide to fire every one of the
23:51
Speaker 1: eleven black teachers who used to work at Lincoln. So
23:54
Speaker 1: the black teachers sue and they lose. They appeal, they
23:58
Speaker 1: lose again. In nineteen fifty nine, they asked the Supreme
24:01
Speaker 1: Court to consider the case. The Supreme Court says, no,
24:05
Speaker 1: Brown is the great victory, Moberly is the great defeat,
24:09
Speaker 1: and they're connected. Let me give you a flavor of
24:14
Speaker 1: the case. The black teachers say, you can't possibly say
24:18
Speaker 1: that we were the absolute worst of all the teachers
24:21
Speaker 1: in the combined system. We've been evaluated for years by
24:24
Speaker 1: our superintendent and have been given high marks. The white
24:28
Speaker 1: school board counters with, sure, but you are being compared
24:32
Speaker 1: to other black teachers. You need to be compared to
24:35
Speaker 1: white teachers. So the black teachers say, yeah, but we
24:39
Speaker 1: stack up really well against white teachers. And by the way,
24:42
Speaker 1: this was not a stretch. Virtually every profession except teaching
24:46
Speaker 1: was closed to educated African Americans in those years. If
24:49
Speaker 1: you were smart and liked learning in that era, you
24:52
Speaker 1: became a teacher. The court then says, so what I'm
24:57
Speaker 1: quoting Human capabilities cannot be reduced to a mathematical formula.
25:02
Speaker 1: Intangible factors such as personality, character, disposition, industry, and adaptible
25:09
Speaker 1: vitally affect the work of any teacher. I think there's
25:13
Speaker 1: one intangible factor missing in that list, don't you what
25:17
Speaker 1: could it be? Dispose? It begins with an r. Forgive
25:24
Speaker 1: me for going on and on about this one obscure case,
25:27
Speaker 1: but you have to get the flavor of it. The
25:30
Speaker 1: plaintiffs say, wait, one of us is a superstar graduate degrees,
25:35
Speaker 1: qualifications ratings to the roof. Her name is mary Alla Timminy.
25:40
Speaker 1: And the white superintendent agrees she's a star, But he says,
25:45
Speaker 1: I'm still not hiring her because, and when quoting here
25:48
Speaker 1: from the judge's decision, because she gave the impression that
25:52
Speaker 1: she considered herself superior to other teachers and was resentful
25:57
Speaker 1: towards authority. Resentful towards authority, you think she just got fired.
26:05
Speaker 1: The judge simply can't get mary Ella Timony out of
26:07
Speaker 1: his head. Quoting again, it is unfortunate when teachers have
26:12
Speaker 1: an attitude such as this teacher has, And I do
26:16
Speaker 1: not mean to say that such attitude is limited to
26:18
Speaker 1: any race or color, but when it does exist, it
26:21
Speaker 1: vitally affects the teaching ability of the individual. She's apity,
26:27
Speaker 1: an apity negro. Of course, they don't want to keep
26:29
Speaker 1: her because they understand the same thing that Leola Brown understands,
26:34
Speaker 1: and all the many academics who have studied what actually
26:36
Speaker 1: happens to black kids in the classroom understand, which is
26:40
Speaker 1: that educational equality is a function of who holds the
26:43
Speaker 1: power in the classroom. So MOBILEI misery gets rid of
26:48
Speaker 1: its Black teachers, and by the way, so does almost
26:52
Speaker 1: everybody else. Across the entire South. Black teachers just get
26:57
Speaker 1: fired left and right. It wasn't something done secretly, It
27:01
Speaker 1: was done right out in the open. There was something
27:04
Speaker 1: like eighty two thousand African American teachers in the South
27:08
Speaker 1: before the Brown decision. Within a decade, as the decision
27:12
Speaker 1: was slowly implemented across the country, about half have been fired.
27:16
Speaker 8: What surprises me is the kind of historical amnesia there
27:20
Speaker 8: is surrounding that issue that many many people today who
27:24
Speaker 8: are searching for black teachers have no understanding of the
27:27
Speaker 8: fact that many of them lost their jobs.
27:29
Speaker 1: One of the few scholars who has paid any attention
27:32
Speaker 1: to what happened is Michelle Foster, an education professor at
27:36
Speaker 1: the University of Louisville. Twenty years ago, Foster tracked as
27:40
Speaker 1: many black teachers from that era as she could find.
27:43
Speaker 8: What role did teachers did black women play in the
27:46
Speaker 8: South relative to children? They were nurse maids, they were housekeepers,
27:50
Speaker 8: they were domestics. That's the role they played. You know,
27:53
Speaker 8: every Southerner I meet a lot of stuff, they say,
27:55
Speaker 8: I had a black somebody who took care of them.
27:57
Speaker 8: But that's a mother. You know, that's a little different position.
28:00
Speaker 8: When you're a teacher. You're evaluating, you're judging.
28:03
Speaker 1: Even those who got to keep their jobs told one
28:05
Speaker 1: story after another of humiliation. It was too much. One
28:10
Speaker 1: of the teachers Foster interviewed went for a meeting with
28:13
Speaker 1: the superintendent with all of the other black teachers who
28:16
Speaker 1: were being kept on um, quoting there were fifteen of us,
28:20
Speaker 1: and not a single one of them in there as
28:22
Speaker 1: dark as I am. Not one that ought to tell
28:25
Speaker 1: you something. By the way, the remaining black teachers couldn't
28:29
Speaker 1: use the teacher's bathroom. They had to use the children's bathroom.
28:40
Speaker 1: To this day, the ranks of black teachers in the
28:42
Speaker 1: United States have not recovered from the humiliations and mass
28:45
Speaker 1: firings of the nineteen fifties and sixties. As a percentage,
28:50
Speaker 1: there are far fewer black teachers than there are black students.
28:53
Speaker 1: And when you think back to studies on how important
28:56
Speaker 1: black teachers are for the performance of black students, that's
29:00
Speaker 1: a tragedy. Georgia, South Carolina, Florida, Alabama, one classroom after
29:06
Speaker 1: another was purged of its black teams teachers and topeaka Kansas.
29:12
Speaker 1: Of course, Topeka made a show of it. They assigned
29:15
Speaker 1: a black teacher to a halftime position at the formerly
29:18
Speaker 1: all white Randolph School, and then the principal, a man
29:22
Speaker 1: named Stanley Stalter, had the task of calling up white
29:25
Speaker 1: parents to see if they objected to this one halftime
29:28
Speaker 1: black teacher, and of course they did.
29:31
Speaker 9: Some were adamant. Nope, some of them had a very
29:38
Speaker 9: peculiar reasons for not wanting this child in the black
29:43
Speaker 9: teacher's room.
29:44
Speaker 1: That's the principal Stalter interviewed by the Kansas Historical Society.
29:48
Speaker 9: Another one said, my child is now twelve years of
29:53
Speaker 9: age and it's beginning her manstrual period, and this is
29:59
Speaker 9: not the time of her life to be put in
30:02
Speaker 9: here with a black teacher, a male that one.
30:12
Speaker 1: There's a limit to how many times a school board
30:14
Speaker 1: is going to try and talk white tax paying parents
30:17
Speaker 1: out of their fear of placing a menstruating adolescent in
30:20
Speaker 1: class with a black teacher. Far easier just not to
30:24
Speaker 1: hire any black teachers at all.
30:27
Speaker 2: Dear Miss Buchanan, due to the present uncertainty about enrollment
30:32
Speaker 2: next year in schools for Negro children, it is not
30:36
Speaker 2: possible at this time to offer you employment for next year.
30:42
Speaker 2: If the court should rule that segregation in the elementary
30:45
Speaker 2: grades is unconstitutional, our board will proceed on the assumption
30:50
Speaker 2: that the majority of people in Topeka will not want
30:52
Speaker 2: to employ Negro teachers next year for white children.
31:01
Speaker 1: I said at the beginning. The woman reading that letter
31:04
Speaker 1: at the conference of the University of Michigan was a
31:06
Speaker 1: missus Thompson. That's her married name. Her first name is Linda,
31:12
Speaker 1: her maiden name is Brown. Linda Brown, the Brown of
31:15
Speaker 1: Brown v. Topeak a Board of Education. This is the
31:19
Speaker 1: little girl Oliver Brown tried and failed to enroll at
31:22
Speaker 1: Sumner elementary school. She was invited to Michigan to speak
31:26
Speaker 1: in celebration of the fiftieth anniversary of the Supreme Court
31:29
Speaker 1: decision and what does Linda Brown Thompson.
31:32
Speaker 9: Do.
31:33
Speaker 1: In the middle of her talk, she interrupts her eyewitness
31:36
Speaker 1: account to remind her audience who bore the cost of integration,
31:42
Speaker 1: not white people, black people.
31:46
Speaker 2: I think I understand that all of you must be
31:48
Speaker 2: under considerable strength, and I sympathize with the uncertainties an
31:53
Speaker 2: inconvenience which you must be experiencing during this period of adjustment.
32:00
Speaker 2: I believe that whatever happens will ultimately turn out to
32:04
Speaker 2: be the best for everyone. Concern yours, Wende Godwin, Superintendent
32:12
Speaker 2: of Schools.
32:24
Speaker 1: Revision's History is produced by Emil LaBelle and Jacob Smith,
32:28
Speaker 1: with Camille Baptista, Stephanie Daniel, and Siomara Martinez White. Our
32:32
Speaker 1: editor is Julia Barton. Lawn Williams is our engineer. Original
32:37
Speaker 1: music by Luis Sciarra. Special thanks to Andy Bauers and
32:41
Speaker 1: Jacob Weisberger Panople. I'm Malcolm Gladwell