Segregation Academies

Sometimes my ignorance comes into sharp focus.? I've read a number of interesting articles in the past months about "segregation academies" in the deep south.? ProPublica has published several blunt exposes recently, and I encourage you to read them.? I had not been aware of this issue before, and I offer no excuse.

"Segregation academies" are private schools with nearly all-white students and staff, in the same counties and communities with relatively underprivileged, mostly nonwhite, populations.? They are designed to outperform public schools at all levels. The segregation academy trend started up immediately after civil rights legislation and court rulings mandated equal education for all races.? Segregation academies are explicitly intended to further white privilege, in an era when we should all know better; but instead, they reinforce institutionalized racism in our country.

Congress made a tremendous mistake in 1877 when it selected Rutherford B. Hayes as President.? Hayes, a Republican, lost the popular vote in 1876; and with both the Electoral College and Congress deadlocked, secured the Presidency for himself by giving southern Democrats exactly what they wanted: removal of Federal troops from the former Confederacy; and Congress gave him the victory.? You can read the dismal details elsewhere.? But we all know the results: the institutionalization and growth of the KKK along with the passage of "Jim Crow" laws throughout the south which kept Blacks effectively disenfranchised and disempowered.

Something drastic needs to be done to effect educational equality in the south, as well as across our troubled nation.? I think Federal troops possibly should once again occupy the South too, to forcibly effect desegregation – and stay long enough to enable a new generation of Southerners to defeat racism and segregation.? But wait!? Numerous Supreme Court decisions since the 1980s have disemboweled national civil rights protections, Congress looks the other way, and no Presidential administration since Lyndon Johnson has chosen to take civil rights seriously.

How long is long enough?? At Yalta, Roosevelt, Churchill and Stalin decided that Germany would be militarily occupied for long enough to effectively de-Nazify Germany.? Churchill wrote that such a time period should be "at least fifty years."? Germany remained occupied for 45 years after the war, with moderate success and a new generation in power.? US Reconstruction lasted only 12 years, not nearly enough to have the desired effect.? Thanks, Hayes.? Thanks, Congress.? Thanks also to the modern Supreme Court.? Our country owes you all a debt of gratitude for perpetuating a truly vile and obnoxious situation.

This said, much of our nation has tackled racism with modest success.? It's not enough.

One final thought:? I'm dismayed that my last post ("A View from the Northeast Kingdom," posted four days ago) has received extremely low readership.? Maybe it's the boring title, photograph, and/or lead paragraph; I don't know.? Problem is, that post is a pretty damn good educational and political critique.? Please go back and read it!

The photo above is of Camay Calloway Murphy (1927-2024, Cab Calloway's oldest daughter) who was my third grade teacher at Burgundy Farm Country Day School, the first school in Virginia to be racially integrated.

Still, I wish my readers a happy holiday season and a New Year that might not end up quite as bad as it looks from here and now.