Show 23 - Crow
and Molasses
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Council. All Rights Reserved. May not be
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WILL
THE CIRCLE BE UNBROKEN?
A Personal
History of the Civil Rights Movement in Five Southern
Communities
EPISODE 23: CROW
AND MOLASSES
ATLANTA, GEORGIA
Written by:
George King,
Cliff Kuhn and Steve Suitts with Vertamae Grosvenor
VERNON JORDAN2
You have to remember that when
Atlanta desegregated its schools, you're only talking
about 9 students. And there was as much to-do about 9
students as there should have been about 100,000
students. So it was a gradualist process. But even
that gradualist process had a traumatizing effect on
white people because what it represented for them was
the beginning of the end.
SERIES THEME
MUSIC: "Will The Circle be Unbroken?"
[Staple Singers]
NARRATOR
You are listening to Will
the Circle Be Unbroken?, a personal history of
the civil rights movement in five southern
communities, and the music for those times.
Amid the racial tensions of the
post-war South, Atlanta's white leaders promoted
their hometown as, "a city too busy to
hate". Yet, Atlanta, like many other southern
cities, resisted school desegregation for years after
the historic 1954 Brown decision.
In both black and white
communities, reaction to the Supreme Court's decision
was swift and dramatic.
NAACP leader Jondelle
Johnson...
JONDELLE JOHNSON
It was like I imagine when they
had the Emancipation Proclamation and the slaves was
free...We've won that victory. That is over and from
now on we'll have integrated schools and equal
education.
NARRATOR
State Senator John Greer...
SPEECH: SENATOR
JOHN GREER4
Now I'm not a moderate on
segregation. I'm a segregationist period. All of us
in the state, 99 percent of the people are, but we
must face reality and that is that we're under
federal court order.
NARRATOR
The Supreme Court decision
called for school desegregation "with all
deliberate speed."
Federal Judge Elbert Tuttle...
JUDGE ELBERT
TUTTLE
I don't think it would have
made much difference if the Supreme Court said all
school districts in the South shall be desegregated
no later than the fall term of 1954. I don't think
they would have moved any faster. They'd said you
make us do it -- and that's what they did. Everyone
of them said, "You make us do it."
MUSIC
"Theme from ‘High Noon’"
[Tex Ritter]
NARRATOR
The Georgia state legislature
denounced the Brown decision and quickly
passed a barrage of laws designed to challenge
federal authority and fight school integration, no
matter what the consequences.
Muriel Lokey...
MURIEL LOKEY1
The major response in Georgia
took place in the legislature where there was
developed the policy of massive resistance. This was
designed to prevent integration by closing the public
schools as a last resort and shifting to a private
system. And by 1958, most of the white public seemed
to believe their elected officials, who had been
telling them that regardless of what the court said,
Georgia schools would never have to be integrated.
NARRATOR
Former Governor Ernest
Vandiver...
SPEECH: GOVERNOR
ERNEST VANDIVER4
There is no real sentiment in
Georgia for integrating the classrooms of our schools
and our colleges and we are the targets, my friends,
of destructive forces beyond our borders and the evil
effects of which must be neutralized by Georgians
acting in concert for their best interest. [APPLAUSE]
NARRATOR
That same year, through the
NAACP Legal Defense Fund, black parents in Atlanta
forced the action by filing a suit challenging the
segregated school system. When federal judge Frank
Hooper ruled that Atlanta's schools must desegregate
by Fall 1960, the scene was set for a showdown.
MUSIC
Reprise
NARRATOR
College professor John
Griffin...
JOHN GRIFFIN2
Georgia had a law that called
for the closing down of the whole system if a child
were admitted to any one school within the system.
NARRATOR
So if just one black student
entered a white school--all the city's schools would
be closed--an option many whites preferred. Others
saw the matter differently.
NARRATOR
Nan Pendergrast...
NAN PENDERGRAST2
We were so horrified by what
had happened in Little Rock--so determined that that
not happen in Atlanta.
Of course, it was a tremendous
number of people--well-meaning people, who said,
"You cannot legislate morality." Well, if
we hadn't legislated morality, I don't know if we
ever would have gotten any.
NARRATOR
As the crisis deepened during
the winter of '58, a group of liberal white women
founded a new organization. HOPE–Help Our Public
Education was formed to keep the public schools open.
HOPE leaders, Muriel Lokey and Nan Pendergrast
explain the group's pragmatic approach...
MURIEL LOKEY1
From the beginning we felt that
our best strategy would be to stress the one issue of
preserving public schools. And to maintain a neutral
position in arguments over integration. We chose not
to be a biracial organization but rather to be white
people persuading white people. It was seen as a
tactical necessity.
NAN PENDERGRAST2
My particular job was talking
to the Kiwanis and the Rotarians and the Civitans who
at that time would never have allowed a black person
in their door and probably not allowed anybody who
was known to consort with those people. We had 7
children who were in the public schools for at least
some part of their career.
And I also was very fortunate
in having a grandmother who had been born in Atlanta
during the battle of Atlanta and born in the basement
because the Yankees were occupying the rest of the
house. I exhumed the woman with every speech, because
it was terribly important to let people know that you
lived here--that you understood the situation.
NARRATOR
HOPE adopted many creative
tactics to demonstrate white support for keeping the
public schools open.
FRANCES PAULEY
My name is Frances Pauley. I
remember once we had a telegram that we blew up until
it was about six feet long, you know, about like so
and delivered the telegram to the governor with some
real pretty sweet looking ladies carrying it.
MURIEL LOKEY1
By the end of '59 we had 20,000
names on a statewide mailing list. And when the
legislature convened in January of 1960, the Athens
chapter sent an open telegram to the governor with
747 signatures and a few days later HOPE presented a
statewide edition with 10,000 names on it. We had
pasted them all together and made a big roll.
FRANCES PAULEY
We were up on the third floor
in the Capitol. So over the banister of the rotunda,
we dropped the petition down and it goes down, fell
down to the first floor. And of course we had all the
press and everything taking pictures of it.
MUSIC
"Something’s Gotta Give"
[The Andrews Sisters]
NARRATOR
With NAACP lawsuits, new
federal court decisions, Decisions, and pressure from
hope affirming the necessity for school
desegregation, some Georgia politicians began to back
away from their public rhetoric. In early 1960, the
legislature
appointed a commission to
conduct state-wide hearings on the schools. It was
headed by prominent Atlanta attorney, John Sibley....
Former governor Ernest
Vandiver...
GOVERNOR ERNEST
VANDIVER2
Judge Sibley went into each
congressional district and had...public hearings and
gave everybody that wanted to testify a chance. And
so if they were opposed to it, they had a chance to
say they were opposed to it.
JOHN SIBLEY
Do you think it's better to
have separate schools for the colored people and the
white people or do you prefer having mixed schools?
UNIDENTIFIED
WITNESS4
Well, I tell you, I'm speaking
for the group...cause in my church and, the ah...PTA,
we prefer our school remain unmixed.
CELESTINE SIBLEY
I attended one, one here... I
remember Mr. John Sibley was gentle, and courteous
and encouraged everybody to say what they thought.
Some people said some outrageous things. But mostly
it was constructive...
GOVERNOR ERNEST
VANDIVER2
It quieted the situation -- it
gave the people of Georgia knowledge as to what their
options were -- either have no schools or had
integrated schools.
JAMES MACKAY
And the majority of people that
appeared before that hearing said keep them open and
segregated.
NARRATOR
The Sibley Commission's final
report never advocated desegregation per se. It
favored plans to enable white children to transfer
out of any school where a black child had enrolled.
Vernon Jordan ...
VERNON JORDAN2
But the Sibley Commission was
not in charge of the issue. We were in charge of the
issue. And in effect black people were calling the
shots, and the white community was having to respond.
We had the initiative and it was our call.
MUSIC
"Glory, Glory For Old Georgia"
[University of Georgia Redcoat Band]
NARRATOR
Continuing to apply pressure,
Atlanta lawyer Donald Hollowell and other NAACP
attorneys targeted the state's best-known public
school--the University of Georgia. Under the state's
massive resistance laws, like any other school, the
University would be closed down if black students
were admitted. The table was set.
FRANCES PAULEY
I think that the NAACP was
terribly smart when they picked the University of
Georgia to make the first case. Because if it was one
thing that was close to the hearts of the General
Assembly, was the University of Georgia because too
many of them were graduates.
NARRATOR
Former U.S. Congressman James
MacKay...
JAMES MACKAY
Donald Hollowell understood
Georgia and that football is God! Donald Hollowell
said, we gonna test this allegiance to God Almighty.
And so the crunch ain't coming in Atlanta. And
immediately they said, "Well, you know, we will
be disqualified to be in the football
conference." Well, I mean, you know, you can't
interrupt the football schedule!
NARRATOR
In January 196l, when federal
judge W. A. Bootle ordered two black Atlantans,
Charlayne Hunter and Hamilton Holmes, admitted to the
University of Georgia--a riot broke out on campus.
The school was closed down—Holmes and Hunter
were suspended. Then judge Elbert Tuttle ordered the
university to re-open with the two students admitted.
Governor Ernest Vandiver, going back on his campaign
promise reopened the university.
GOVERNOR ERNEST
VANDIVER2
I spent a lot of time –
prayerful time – on my knees during that period
of history, seeking guidance. I could think of
nothing worse than a million children out of school
and on the streets and what would happen if you
closed the schools. I was caught on the horns of a
dilemma. Finally, I made a decision and recommended
to the legislature that all of the segregation laws
be wiped from the books.
FRANCES PAULEY
Well, I think it turned the
tides as far as open schools and
"Little Ernie" as we
used to call him, Ernest Vandiver, was the governor.
He had said never, never, no never and so then he got
up and said that the schools would open, and so
everybody says all right, now go home and send him a
telegram and I said I cannot send him a telegram! It
was usually me that was telling everybody else that.
Said if he's got to eat crow, at least let him have a
little molasses on it. [LAUGHS].
MUSIC
"Mama Said There'd Be Days Like This"
[The Shirelles]
NARRATOR
With the University of Georgia
Successfully desegregated, the focus shifted back to
the Atlanta public schools. The city school officials
took a "go slow" position, calling for only
token integration in the upper grades alone. But
black community members maintained the pressure,
recruiting students to apply for transfer to white
schools. Student Martha Holmes.
MARTHA
HOLMES-JACKSON
Mr. Jesse Hill with the Atlanta
Life Insurance Company was instrumental in
encouraging us to go down to get the applications.
JESSE HILL
Then we went to the homes and
went to the PTA meetings and we solicited people and
some of them just came forward, and wanted to do
something for history.
MARTHA
HOLMES-JACKSON
We had lived through the
sit-ins with the college students. When I got the
opportunity to do this in high school, then we jumped
right on it.
LONNIE KING
The students who went to the
segregated schools did not come from Atlanta's finest
in the black community. They were regular blue-collar
people's children.
JESSE HILL
I don't think that any one of
the parents were college graduates, and they were
really low income, low middle income families. Hard
working, but very intelligent very determined
parents. Many of them indirectly received some type
of economic retaliation--but of course we were able
to support them, even to get employment for people
who were threatened.
NARRATOR
Judy Tillman...
JUDY TILLMAN
HIWETT2
Someone came to our home from
the NAACP and I remember my mother and grandmother
whispering, "No we don't want to subject her to
that. We don't want her to go." She said that
someone came to the house and asked if I would want
to be one of those nine and my mother said that she
was fearing and especially my being the only child,
she didn't know what would happen.
NARRATOR
Despite the violence that had
accompanied school desegregation in Little Rock and
elsewhere, the first students were assured things
would be different in Atlanta.
RADIO SPOT
MAYOR WILLIAM B.
HARTSFIELD4
I'm William B. Hartsfield,
mayor of Atlanta. Soon now Atlanta's public schools
will be desegregated according to federal law. I'm
sure we'll all meet this change with the order and
dignity that Atlanta's have been famous for and show
the whole world Atlanta is truly a great city. Let's
not let Atlanta down.
NARRATOR
Martha Holmes was among the
students who applied to transfer to a white school.
MARTHA HOLMES
JACKSON
The message was that we won't
let the same thing happen here. We could do it better
in a sense. I guess they couldn't afford to let
something like that happen in Atlanta.
NARRATOR
133 black students applied for
transfer. 10 were accepted.
MARTHA HOLMES
JACKSON
We kind of thought they put
fewer of us in the schools, hoping that we would be
discouraged and want to go back. And they'd say,
"Well, you see we tried and they couldn't stay,
so what else can you do?"
MUSIC
"Brown Baby"
Cordell Reagon
NAN PENDERGRAST2
I awakened that morning with my
heart in my throat wondering what would happen and
worrying about, of course, the transfer students
themselves.
NARRATOR
On August 31st 1961, Atlanta's
public schools would finally admit 9 black students.
RADIO ANNOUNCER4
Nine Negro students are to
attend four previously all-white high schools. The
schools involved are Grady, Brown, Murphy and
Northside High.
NARRATOR
With an eye to the city's
image, mayor William Hartsfield and others carefully
choreographed the event.
Journalist Celestine Sibley...
CELESTINE SIBLEY
In other cities there were
protests and marching. Here, Mr. Hartsfield set up a
pressroom in City Hall for the out of town press,
equipped them with desks, and typewriters, and food,
merchants brought in food, Coca Cola company brought
in Cokes. They were connected by radio with the
campuses of these schools, and then given a bus trip
to visit the schools. The out of town press were
given a party that night. It was altogether different
from what was going on in some cities. It was a great
public relations coup.
RADIO ANNOUNCER4
Everything was beautifully
quiet and just a regular old school day. WSB Radio
News...
LESLIE DUNBAR2
In looking back on it, was sort
of incredible. We had all of that attention to put
how many people was it, half a dozen kids in school.
But the city felt so proud of itself when it was all
over.
NARRATOR
George Goodwin...
GEORGE GOODWIN
You can't imagine the pride in
this town when Jack Kennedy started his news
conference that August afternoon.
ACTUALITY:
PRESIDENT JOHN F. KENNEDY
I strongly urge the officials
and citizens of all communities which face this
difficult transition in the coming weeks and months
to look closely at what Atlanta has done and to meet
their responsibilities as have the officials and
citizens of Atlanta and Georgia with courage,
tolerance and above all, respect for the law.
GEORGE GOODWIN
Even now, I can't talk about it
without getting emotional --- it just set this place
on FIRE!
MURIEL LOKEY1
I don't want to leave the
impression that everything was just beautiful. Betty
Vinson was there at City Hall as a press
representative for OASIS and she still recalls now,
with pain, the shock of hearing on a loudspeaker a
voice coming from one of the schools, from one of the
police cars, saying, "Everything is normal. No
one is eating with them. No one is speaking to them.
I repeat: everything is normal. No one is eating with
them and no one is speaking with them."
MARTHA HOLMES
JACKSON
The very first day we attended
school, we went to lunch. And it was pretty much like
a table had already been reserved for us. Nobody else
was sitting there.
They pretty soon came to be
comfortable enough with us being around that they
could sit and eat their lunch and not have to run
away from us.
NARRATOR
For those first students who
desegregated the Atlanta public schools, the
experience was often unpleasant, lonely, and
confusing-- feelings that would last through
graduation.
MUSIC
"Pomp and Circumstance"
[Arthur Fiedler w/the Boston Pops]
MARTHA HOLMES
JACKSON
Graduation - huh! It wasn't
terribly exciting for me.
They had a class outing at a
place that did not allow blacks to come in and of
course, the principal and other people assured me
that I had EVERY RIGHT to attend and if I wanted to,
they would make other arrangements. But at the same
time suddenly they were telling me you know you
really don't want to spoil this for all of these
students. And I guess I didn't. It wasn't that
important to me.
I did attend the prom, but I
didn't stay very long. My escort and I hung around
for a little while. But then they was playing music
that we didn't dance to.
MUSIC
"I Saw Her Standing There"
[The Beatles]
MARTHA HOLMES
JACKSON
I do remember just being sick
of them. I said I've had enough of it, I've done what
I set out to do and I think my sentiment might have
been let somebody else do their part now.
NARRATOR
Throughout the 1960's, Atlanta
school officials continued to stall desegregation.
They placed the burden on the shoulders of black
students and their families. In the black community
they said, it was easier to get into Harvard or Yale
than to transfer to a majority white school.
Attorney Leroy Johnson...
LEROY JOHNSON
The board of education as it
was then constituted never adopted the theory of
equality of education. So at every opportunity they
resisted it.
LONNIE KING
You see you have to understand
that when these white men were in office no one had
to pressure them. I mean they believed in what they
were talking about. And they believed that the races
should be segregated. They did not believe that black
kids ought to sit in schools with white kids.
NARRATOR
For some years desegregation
continued on a grade-by-grade basis. No white
students were ever required to change schools. The
city rejected any bussing plan whatsoever until the
early 1970s. By that time, massive white flight from
the city of Atlanta and its public schools had made
city-wide integration nearly impossible.
LEROY JOHNSON
That same power structure never
took a stand in education, that same group that
sought to protect the business never took a stand to
protect the schools. Instead, they took their
students, their children out and sent them to some
other school where they could afford to send them.
LONNIE KING
Well, whites were moving out of
Atlanta at a rapid rate to escape school
desegregation.
JONDELLE JOHNSON
They went to the suburbs.
LONNIE KING
So these folks are all over the
suburbs now. Still coming in Atlanta working, but
their kids going to school in their neighborhoods out
there. Mableton, Palmetto, Austell.
At that time I had become
president of the NAACP, this was in 71, I said well
I'd be interested in entertaining how we can drop
this law suit, but there has to be a price for the
dropping of the law suit.
NARRATOR
In the time-honored Atlanta
fashion black and white leaders met behind the scenes
in early 1973 -- to hammer out an agreement on the
schools. Julian Bond, a state senator at the time,
reflects back on the deal known to some as, "The
second Atlanta compromise."
JULIAN BOND
The community settled for black
control of the school system in exchange for an
integrated school system... At the time it had a lot
of attractiveness to it, but in hindsight it was an
awful mistake.
Black control of the school
system was inevitable; population dictated that!
Surrendering integration of the public schools here
and elsewhere in the country has been an awful
mistake. You only have to look at the state of
inter-city education to see how much apartheid there
is in American life and in American education today.
It's epidemic.
NARRATOR
Eliza Paschal...
ELIZA PASCHAL3
We keep putting off the issue
really, which to me is whether or not the color of
your skin really makes any difference to people as
individuals in Atlanta. Schools are not really
integrated and we have never had a discussion on what
it would mean to integrate the schools.
MUSIC
"New York Girl"
[Miles Davis]
CREDITS
Key to Archival Collections
| 1 |
Georgia Legal History
Foundation, Institute for Continuing Legal
Education |
| 2 |
"Dawn’s
Early Light," Ralph McGill Papers,
Woodruff Library, Emory University, Atlanta,
GA |
| 3 |
Howard University,
Ralphe J. Bunche Oral History Collection,
Washington DC |
| 4 |
WSB Television News
Video Archives, University of Georgia,
Athens, GA |
|
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