From 1965 to 1970, I attended six different schools in four states. When my family arrived in Durham, North Carolina, in 1970, there was George Watts Elementary School (school number five), maybe a mile's walk from our house on well-tended city sidewalks. That was mid-year. In the fall, I was assigned to Walltown Elementary School, about a mile in another direction from my family's abode. Durham was beginning to put real desegregation into effect, and Walltown had been up until then a black school. It's shameful to think, but only with desegregation did the city begin to pave the still-dirt streets of much of Walltown.
Watts School was a real change from Minnesota. On my first day attending during a recess on the school grounds, a kid about my age said, "I lost my pencil over yonder," gesturing. Imagining he meant over the horizon or far away, it took me a minute to realize he meant he'd dropped his pencil in the grass a few feet away. Out front, girls played hop scotch and during lunch, hot cornbread was served. In the spring, the building was hot and humid. But the principal was nice and this is where I became friends with Crafton Keller and an older black kid named Charles Faulkner. Crafton was a bit of a hellion, while Charles was just a big guy, having been held back, year after year.
Going to Walltown was even more of a change, enough for a separate post. I remember clearly the drainage ditches ringing the playing fields behind the main building and in those trash-filled ditches, big rats. Kind of like a moat. Also remember turning my ankle playing football. But as far as timing, got to experience desegregation in the Upper South, and got to compare that with my former already integrated schools in the North.
Today's Rune: Self.
6 comments:
"Frances Gray Patton, Good Morning Miss Dove, 1954. The setting for this charming book is Watts Street School. You will enjoy her short stories too."
The Charleston schools were never segregated while I was there. We had only a few black families.
Having gone from first grade (1960) to the same school building through eleventh grade (1971) I witnessed an all white school go to a mostly black school. Funny thing was that white people were leaving Detroit so fast there was no middle years where there was a rough 50/50 split in the racial make up.
They were odd years here in the re-segregated north.
Wow, what an experience for you Eric. In Ossineke/Alpena schools during that time, blacks were still pretty exotic. Our first visit to to Detroit Zoo was our virgin experience with racial variety!
I see segregation every time I step into the prison chow hall.
as i said above - i went to public schools in NJ - 1 black student, 2000 total - not much on the diversity. today it is different, but i wish i had more of a true diverse experience
Post a Comment