CONTENTS Bond, Hon. Julian, member of the State assembly, Atlanta, Ga.. Rilling, Paul, former southeastern regional director of the Office for Civil Rights of the Department of Health, Education, and Welfare, Atlanta, TUESDAY, JUNE 16, 1970 Fischer, George, president, National Education Association; accompanied by Samuel B. Ethridge, assistant executive secretary for teachers rights, and Stanley J. McFarland, assistant secretary, Office of Legislation and Page Appendix IV, Beyond Desegregation: The Problem of Power 1024 Appendix VI, Georgia Teachers and Education Association__ 1145 1162 EQUAL EDUCATIONAL OPPORTUNITY MONDAY, JUNE 15, 1970 U.S. SENATE, SELECT COMMITTEE ON EQUAL EDUCATIONAL OPPORTUNITY, Washington, D.C. The committee met at 10 a.m., pursuant to call, in room 1318, New Senate Office Building, Senator Walter F. Mondale (chairman of the committee) presiding. Present: Senators Mondale, Randolph, Bayh, Javits, Dominick, and Brooke. Staff members present: William C. Smith, staff director and general counsel; A. Sidney Johnson, deputy staff director; and Michael M. Uhlmann, chief minority counsel and staff director. OPENING STATEMENT OF HON. WALTER F. MONDALE, CHAIRMAN OF THE SELECT COMMITTEE ON EQUAL EDUCATIONAL OPPORTUNITY Senator MONDALE. The committee will come to order. We begin today the first half of a two-part series of hearings on de jure and de facto school segregation problems in the North and in the South. We are starting with the problems of integrating schools in school districts which are attempting to comply with court-ordered desegregation plans or plans approved under title VI of the Civil Rights Act of 1964, because this area of the select committee's assignment from the Senate is particularly relevant and timely in view of the administration's proposed emergency school aid legislation. In late July and in August we will turn our attention to the causes and remedies for de facto segregation in all areas of the country. We will seek at that time witnesses who can testify about the relationships between residential living patterns and racially isolated schools. We will endeavor to determine how the existence of segregated housing leads to de facto segregation of schools and examine such topics as the influence of zoning laws, urban and suburban planning and Federal, State and local low-income housing assistance on school segregation. We will also be examining a number of innovative education techniques and school reorganization models which might serve as bases for overcoming racial isolated schools. Our first witness today will be the Honorable Julian Bond. Mr. Bond is a member of the Georgia State Assembly where he is a member of the Education Committee. STATEMENT OF THE HON. JULIAN BOND, MEMBER OF THE STATE ASSEMBLY, ATLANTA, GA. Senator MONDALE. Mr. Bond, we are pleased to have you with us here this morning. (The statement of Hon. Julian Bond follows:) PREPARED STATEMENT OF THE HONORABLE JULIAN BOND, I am happy to have been invited to speak before you this morning about my concerns and hopes for the achievement of equal educational opportunity in this country. The attainment of equal educational opportunity is one of the main goals of minority citizens throughout this country, and black people have gone through decades of struggle and sacrifice to reach this goal. As a black southerner and as a state representative of the people of Georgia, I find myself deeply involved with the issue of school integration, and greatly concerned with the immediate crisis of quality education for all children. BLACK FRUSTRATION AND SKEPTICISM After sixteen years of recalcitrance, intimidation, and illegal discriminatory operation, most schools of my state and all states throughout the South are finally integrating this fall. But the bitterness of the sixteen year wait, the begrudging resignation of many state officials, parents, and students, and the lack of national and state leadership in this area, cause me to be skeptical about how much real integration is going to take place. My concern is for the atmosphere and environment for integration in the country as a whole and the South particularly, and my judgment right now is that in the context of current political and social events, the people of this country are not facing up to the challenge of this fall. Indeed, I am not convinced that national and state leaders view the challenge as a positive one-one which will bring about the improvement of educational quality and opportunity for all children. At the national level, for example, enforcing school desegregation laws solely out of respect for a greater ideal of law and order, but not setting any tone for constructive change, really amounts to a "benign neglect" of the issue at hand. Therefore, without some kind of greater, widespread positive effort, the massive integration expected this fall will be nothing more than a fraud perpetrated under a guise of paper compliance. BLACKS: BELIEF IN INTEGRATION One thing I want to make clear is that black people in the South want and are going to fight for integrated quality education. Parents deprived of decent education themselves are no longer going to allow their children to spend twelve years in school only to graduate with an eighth grade reading level and little chance for economic and social stability. Many whites these days seem to feel that they can speak for black people of the country and find themselves articulating better than blacks the desire for black separatism in our schools. Well, they are not reading black people correctly. Black students, parents, and teachers have sacrificed their lives and careers and have endured great hardships to win integrated education, and the number of people active in this struggle has increased every year. Those black kids whose lives were greatly threatened in Lamar, South Carolina did not go back to their black school, but got back on those buses and rode again through that hostile environment to their integrated school. Faced with incredibly hostile reactions, black people have continued to support the goal of integrated education for a variety of obvious reasons-the overwhelming educational evidence supporting the improved performance of minority students in integrated classrooms: a desire for overall improvement in the educational system which can most effectively be changed by attacking a unitary rather than dual system; the realization that survival of this country demands interracial justice, equality, and acceptance; and most importantly, the well-learned fact that the white power structure puts its resources where its white kids are. This is done without regard for constitutional guarantees of equal protection and with no fear of reprisal. SCHOOLS AND SOCIAL POLICY In this nation, students, in particular, of all ages are raising their voices, organizing, and acting to forcefully bring about change in the institutions and power structures which support the intolerable conditions of war, racism, and poverty which surround them and all peoples of the world. The public school system in this country is a prime focus in the struggle to move institutions into a more relevant role in this society. And this fall, you will be hearing from black students all over the South as they make sure that the newly integrated schools contain no remnants of past racist qualities. BLACK STUDENT DEMANDS Thus, while the commitment of black students and adults to integrated education continues to increase, the scars of several years dreadful experience with the "first steps" of integration has brought new militancy to the black community's definition of integration. Black students-a generation of kids growing up with the false promise of integration "with all deliberate speed"-and adults are prepared to confront the discriminatory actions associated with the integration of schools in the past few years. Black students will not sit in segregated classrooms in "integrated" schools; will not attend educational dumping grounds on the basis of biased standardized tests; will not arrive and leave, eat, and have recess at separate times from their white schoolmates; will not allow Dixie to be sung at school assemblies; will not be expelled from schools for defending their rights; will not be excluded from Honor Societies and football teams; and will not allow their teachers and principals to be dismissed and demoted. If these concomitants of past school integration are not eliminated, there will be no integrated schools this fall. Black students are no longer going to participate in this type of educational destruction. DESEGREGATION IN SEPTEMBER, CONFRONTATIONS? While I would like to think that such confrontations over the above issues will not be necessary this fall, I am very pessimistic as to the chances that they will not occur. In my own state, possibly as many as seventy-five percent of the black and white students will be attending school together-most for the first time. I have hope that finally education in Georgia will move beyond the wasted effort of segregation and into a period of racial harmony and a joint effort at achieving quality education. But when you examine the facts and situations facing black people today, and the atmosphere in which massive integration is to take place, you should understand the bitterness, skepticism, and frustration with which we approach this fall's expected events. POLITICAL LEADERSHIP-NIXON AND SOUTHERN STRATEGY The key to overcoming racism in general, and, therefore, to successful integration this fall is governmental and political leadership, and it is the performance of such leadership to date which necessitates my pessimistic predictions. The Nixon Administration has viewed the central political issue of the South to be school desegregation. Yet the only southern constituency that it addresses itself to in depth-the depth of political appointments to executive positions and judgeships, of personal contact with White House staff and Congressmen, of speeches to its organizations by Cabinet officials, of clearance of proposed legislation, etc.-is the white South. When it does address itself to black southerners, it is only in terms of constitutional requirements-perhaps the least offensive rational for integration to whites-and with little sensitivity to the moral and educational arguments in its favor. President Nixon's March 24 statement on school desegregation displayed a reliance on law alone with little evidence of executive leadership. President Nixon's only secondary consideration for the educational benefits of desegregation was evident in his support of neighborhood schools which have questionable relevance to school desegregation in the rural South and mean in urban areas the transfer of segregated housing patterns, which are often the result of official action, to the schools. When will the Federal Government focus on damage done to children and not just on its cause de facto or de jure segregation? Even President Nixon's proposal of $1.5 billion dollars to desegregating schools in the South smacks more of political payoff than concern for the problems incident to integration. |