3-7 Blog Post

The march for desegregated schooling systems continued. It is clear that during the early 20th century systemic racism was present. On page 152, “Immediately after the state supreme court handed down its decision in 1940, the Ku Klux Klan burned a cross on the lawn of Topeka superintendent A. J. Snout, who resigned immediately. To replace him, the school brought in Kenneth McFarland… who had a reputation as a hard-line conservative and ardent segregationist.” It seems like any kind of progress that the African American community made to receive a pleasant education was met with a violent backlash. Mr. McFarland, on page 153: “brought with him a right-hand man whose job it was to find new and inventive ways to punish any parents who breathed a word about desegregation, and to resegregate black students.” The Topeka school system purposefully separated students of color and placed systems to ensure desegregation would be a long-fought battle. But, these brave African Americans persisted. The final page of chapter 6, “Their (first grade African American girls) persistence in the schools, despite ongoing psychological and physical attacks, stemmed in part from their parents’ investment in them as firsts.” Chapter 6 outlines the true hysteria from white parents at the time. As a student born in 1997 and attended public schools alongside African Americans my entire life, this hysteria was just blatant racism. It is incredible to think that systemic racism was so ingrained, that white parents legitimately were worried for their children; on page 206: “Superintendent James Redmond did what he could to keep the number of black students applying to white schools so low that white parents might be willing to accept a few black children,” “In Louisiana in 1960, a desire of interracial mutuality was so taboo it could neither be named or articulated… Nor was there any evidence that black and white children could coexist in a setting as intimate and absorbing as a school.”