1968 Integration Push in Rockdale County Schools

1968 INTEGRATION PUSH IN ROCKDALE SCHOOLS — Fifty years ago a bunch of black kids, myself included, made the leap to “the white schools.” Please share your memories of those times!!! I did not want to go. That was a year of great turmoil — Dr. King had been killed by a racist white man that April; Bobby Kennedy, an evolved friend of the underclasses, was mortally shot and actually died on my birthday, June 6. I was not feeling love for white people. But Mama had been persuaded that I should be among the black kids who would leave our beloved J. P. Carr and go to those other schools, including Rockdale High School.

Rockdale, like other counties in the state, was under pressure to comply with federal law. “School Cutoff Due Friday for 4 Areas,” an Atlanta Constitution headline said on Sept. 10, 1968. The article went on to detail the slow progress being made in Georgia, which had one of the nation’s lowest percentages of desegregated schools. With the federal government threatening to cut off funds, counties slowly fell into line. “Slowly” is the operative word because the United States Supreme Court had ruled in 1954 that these dual school systems were unconstitutional and in 1955 had ordered their dismantling “with all deliberate speed.” The four counties facing a loss of funding in 1968 because of their resistance to integration were Chattahoochee, Lee, Lowndes and Monroe. Eighteen school districts had agreed to end their dual systems.

“Those promising to end the dual system at the start of the 1969 term are Bacon, Bryan, Clayton and Clinch counties, Cochran City, Coffee County, Gainesville City, Griffin-Spalding County, Heard and Rockdale counties, Thomaston City and Upson County.”

It had been clear by the fall of 1967 that the ‘Freedom of Choice’ plan that permitted black kids to go to white schools was no longer tolerable. Rockdale had tried to get ahead of the curve and had made plans to heavily recruit black kids for the 1968-69 term. The county gained notice for its plans to build new schools, assign guidance counselors in the elementary schools, increase teacher pay and add advanced classes to the high school curriculum, including analytical geometry, pre-calculus and psychology.

I knew none of this as I reluctantly prepared to go to “the white school” during the summer of 1968 when it seemed that everybody had advice for us black kids on how to act around white folks.

We would not be the first black kids in “the white schools”: Three years earlier, in 1965, Rockdale County had finally begun to comply with the 1955 Supreme Court mandate. As I wrote in a long entry in the Heritage of Rockdale County book (1998): “Kenneth Hall escorted nine black students, including his daughter Sylvia, into Rockdale High School that first day of the 1965-66 school year. Two sheriffs’ deputies and a unit from the Fire Department were there. One white man showed up to protest the presence of black students, but he was led away before the students arrived. Opposition was muted in the main….” The 1968-69 school year became the last one in which the county supported two school systems, separate and unequal. On Aug. 29, 1969, the 1969-70 school year started, marking what the Rockdale Citizen called “a new era of education.”

But back to 1968. There were some unpleasant encounters with some students. There were some teachers and administrators who were not exactly singing Kumbaya. But I fondly remember some white teachers who went out of their way to see to it that I was given opportunities to succeed. Initially, all of us black kids were placed in the vocational track, meaning we were being groomed as the work force for the employers then in the area. It took the quiet advocacy of some teachers to open the college prep track for me and others.

Going into Rockdale High, I felt that I knew two white girls — Beth Foster, because my mother (and I believe my grandmother) had worked for Beth’s grandfather, Dr. Harvey Griggs, and for her mother, Mrs. Ann Foster; and Beth Rogers, because my mother had worked for the Rogers family and had, indeed, helped raise the younger Rogers kids. I immediately told mama that I would not wear any of the clothes — nice clothes, at that — that the Fosters had annually donated to us, clothing no longer needed by Beth or her sister Jane. I don’t think mama ever understood why I would no longer wear those clothes that had been OK to wear at J. P. Carr but did not feel OK for Rockdale, where Beth Foster and I would more than likely have classes together. In the end, I counted both Beths as friends.

Please join with me in reflecting on our days as student-soldiers in the civil rights crusade — the good, the bad and the ugly. Please include photos, if you have any.

Submitted by E.R. Shipp, September 1, 2018 to the Black Heritage of Rockdale Facebook page.