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School Desegregation and Civil Society: The Unification of Alabama's Black and White Parent-Teacher Associations, 1954–1971
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 20 January 2017
Extract
In early September 1956, Martha Rutledge—the president of the all-white Alabama State Parent-Teacher Association—released a statement to the press intended to clarify the organization's position on the Brown v. Board of Education decision and the desegregation of schools in her state:
As president of the Alabama Congress, I am a firm believer in the Southern way of life. The entire organization of the Alabama congress is made up of people who believe in the Southern way of life. There is no organization anywhere that practices segregation more than the Alabama P-TA or an organization that will work toward maintaining segregation in our schools with any more force.
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References
1 “PT-A Councils Battle over Integration,” Montgomery Advertiser, 2 September 1956, folder 26, box 16, Alabama Congress of Parents and Teachers (ACPT) Association Collection (Special Collections, Auburn University-Montgomery, Montgomery, Alabama) and Betty Baldwin McLaurine, “Why? Independent Parent Teacher Alliance?” 4 September 1956, folder 26, box 16, Alabama Congress of Parents and Teachers Collection (Special Collections, Auburn University-Montgomery, Montgomery, Alabama). Hereafter referred to as the ACPT Collection. Brown v. Board of Education Topeka, 347 U.S. 483 (1954) and Brown v. Board of Education Topeka, 349 U.S. 294 (1955).Google Scholar
2 Woyshner, Christine, The National PTA, Race, and Civic Engagement, 1897–1970 (Columbus: The Ohio State University Press, 2009). Overall, the PTA is not widely treated by historians, and its segregated branch has, to date, garnered only brief attention in the scholarship. This is largely due to the dearth of primary source documentation on the black PTA. Works that examine the white PTA include William, W. Cutler, HE, Parents and Schools: The 150-Year Struggle for Control in Education (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2000); Keenan, Claudia, “PTA Business: A Cultural History of How Suburban Women Supported the Public Schools, 1920–1960,” (PhD dissertation, New York University, 2002); Molly Ladd-Taylor, Mother-Work: Women, Child Welfare and the State, 1890–1930 (Urbana: University of Illinois Press, 1993); Theda Skocpol, Protecting Soldiers and Mothers: The Political Origins of Social Policy in the United States (Cambridge, MA: The Belknap Press of Harvard University Press, 1992); and Steven Schlossman, “Before Home Start: Notes Toward a History of Parent Education in America, 1897–1929,” Harvard Educational Review 46, no. 3 (1976): 436–67 Organizational histories have been commissioned over the years and were written by PTA supporters. These, along with dozens of unpublished state histories, document the organization's past and are located in the Special Collections Department of the University of Illinois-Chicago.Google Scholar
3 These include Kluger, Richard, Simple Justice: The History of Brown v. Board of Education and Black America's Struggle (New York: Knopf, Alfred A., 1976); Tushnet, Mark V., The NAACP's Legal Strategy against Segregated Education, 1925–1959 (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 1987); James T. Patterson, Brown v. Board of Education: A Civil Rights Milestone and Its Troubled Legacy (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2001); Baker, R. Scott, Paradoxes of Desegregation: African American Struggles for Educational Equity in Charleston, South Carolina, 1926–1972 (Columbia, SC: University of South Carolina Press, 2006); Callejo-Pérez, David M., Southern Hospitality: Identity, Schools, and the Civil Rights Movement in Mississippi, 1964–1972 (New York: Peter Lang Publishers, 2001); Cecelski, David C., Along Freedom Road: Hyde County, North Carolina, and the Fate of Black Schools in the South (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 1994); Morris, Vivian Gunn and Morris, Curtis L., The Price They Paid: Desegregation in an African American Community (New York: Teachers College Press, 2002); and Vanessa Siddle Walker, Their Highest Potential: An African American School Community in the Segregated South (Chapel Hill, NC: University of North Carolina Press, 1996).Google Scholar
4 My study is based on the understanding that voluntary associations are at the heart of civil society. For the purposes of this article, I define civil society as the networks of groups and organizations within which people relate to one another and engage in community and political affairs. In other words, civil society operates in the space between individual citizens and the government. My thinking has been shaped by Theda Skocpol, “How Americans Became Civic,” 2, 33 and Skocpol, Theda and Fiorina, Morris P., “Making Sense of the Civic Education Debate,” in Civic Engagement in American Democracy, ed. Skocpol, Theda and Fiorina, Morris P. (Washington, DC: Brookings Institution Press, 1999), 1–23. A contemporary look at education and civil society is found in Diane Ravitch and Joseph P. Viteritti, ed., Making Good Citizens: Education and Civil Society (New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 2001). For a discussion of its different uses and applications, see Edwards, Bob and Foley, Michael W., “Civil Society and Social Capital,” in Beyond Tocqueville: Civil Society and the Social Capital Debate in Comparative Perspective, ed. Edwards, Bob, Foley, Michael W., and Diani, Mario (Hanover, NH: University Press of New England, 2001), 1–14.Google Scholar
5 Crawford, Susan and Levitt, Peggy, “Social Change and Civic Engagement: The Case of the PTA,” in Civic Engagement in American Democracy, ed. Theda Skocpol and Morris P. Fiorina (Washington, DC: Brookings Institution Press, 1999), 249–96. On PTA membership see also Theda Skocpol, “Casting Wide Nets: Federalism and Extensive Associations in the Modernizing United States,” paper delivered at the Bertelsmann Science Foundation conference on the Decline of Social Capital, Berlin, Germany, June 1997 (in author's possession), 23; Putnam, Robert D., Bowling Alone: The Collapse and Revival of American Community (New York: Simon & Schuster, 2000), 55; and Skocpol, Theda, Diminished Democracy: From Membership to Management in American Civic Life (Norman: University of Oklahoma Press, 2003), 164.Google Scholar
6 Fairclough, Adam, “State of the Art: Historians and the Civil Rights Movement,” Journal of American Studies 24, no. 3 (1990): 393, 395 Fairclough argues, “Most histories have examined either white actions or black actions; only rarely have the twain met.” I believe this still holds true.Google Scholar
7 “The Alabama PTA Story 1900–1974,” n.d., ACPT Collection and “The Alabama PTA Story 1911–1968,” n.d., ACPT Collection; Ladd-Taylor, Mother-Work, 44–45; and National Congress of Colored Parents and Teachers, Coral Anniversary: History of the National Congress of Colored Parents and Teachers (Dover, DE: NCCPT, 1961).Google Scholar
8 Flynt, Wayne, Alabama in the Twentieth Century (Tuscaloosa: University of Alabama Press, 2004), 223, 225. These data are repeated elsewhere in the scholarship. See, for example, the classic work by James D. Anderson, The Education of Blacks in the South, 1860–1935 (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 1988).Google Scholar
9 Woyshner, Christine, “Gender, Race, and the Early PTA: Civic Engagement and Public Education, 1897–1924,” Teachers College Record 105, no. 3 (2003): 520–44.Google Scholar
10 Bishop Marteinne Montgomery, “The Activities of Parent-Teacher Associations in the Negro Schools of Alabama,” (unpublished master thesis, University of Chicago, 1940), 25, 28, 53 and Christine Woyshner, “‘Valuable and Legitimate Services': Black and White Women's Philanthropy through the PTA,” in The History of Women's Philanthropy in Education, ed. Walton, Andrea (Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 2005), 215–36.Google Scholar
11 White PTA membership data are from Civic Engagement Project (CEP), under the direction of Theda Skocpol and Marshall Ganz, Harvard University (in author's possession). Black PTA data were culled by the author from extant black PTA publications, such as National Congress of Colored Parents and Teachers, Coral Anniversary: History of the National Congress of Colored Parents and Teachers (Dover, DE: NCCPT, 1961) and Our National Family, the publication of the National Congress of Colored Parents and Teachers.Google Scholar
12 De jure segregation was practiced in seventeen states and the District of Columbia, the states include: Alabama, Arkansas, Delaware, Florida, Georgia, Kentucky, Louisiana, Maryland, Mississippi, Missouri, North Carolina, Oklahoma, South Carolina, Tennessee, Texas, Virginia, and West Virginia. Kansas and New Mexico practiced segregation, so these states also had officially organized Colored Congresses. Overall, however, by the time of the Brown decision, segregation was practiced in thirty-two states. Jones, Lewis W., “Two Years of Desegregation in Alabama,” Journal of Negro Education 25, no. 3 (1956): 205, 207; Jones, Leon, “Desegregation and Social Reform Since 1954,” Journal of Negro Education 43, no. 2 (1974): 155–171; and John Hope, II, “Trends in Patterns of Race Relations in the South Since May 17, 1954,” Phylon 17, no. 2 (1956): 103–18.Google Scholar
13 National Parent-Teacher Magazine (February 1951): 16 and National Congress of Parents and Teachers, “Statement of Policy on U.S. Supreme Court Decision Regarding Segregation in Public Schools,” 22 May 1954, folder 26, box 16, ACPT Collection.Google Scholar
14 Sellers, Mary N. to Brown, Mrs. Rollin, 1 March 1956, folder 26, box 16, ACPT Collection and Mrs. Rollin Brown to Mrs. Sellers, 27 March 1956, folder 6, box 14, ACPT Collection.Google Scholar
15 “ACPT to Executive Committee of the National Congress of Parents and Teachers,” 14 September 1956, folder 6, box 14, ACPT Collection, emphasis added and ACPT, “For Your Information,” 14 September 1956, folder 6, box 14, ACPT Collection.Google Scholar
16 As quoted in ACPT, “For Your Information,” 14 September 1956 emphasis in original; Kluger, Simple Justice, especially chap. 24; and Jones, “Two Years of Desegregation in Alabama,” 208. Black PTA workers, on the other hand, did support the NAACP, but were cautious about being public in their activities with the association. See Narvie J. Harris interview by Kathryn Nasstrom, 11 June 1992, Georgia Government Documentation Project (Georgia State University, Atlanta) and Baker, Paradoxes of Desegregation. Google Scholar
17 McLaurine, Betty Baldwin, “Letter of Resignation,” 24 July 1956 in folder 26, box 16 ACPT Collection and “PTA Leader Resigns Post in Race Row,” Montgomery Advertiser, 25 July 1956, folder 26, box 16, ACPT Collection.Google Scholar
18 White, E. L. to Nelson, Fanny, 30 July 1956, folder 26, box 16, ACPT Collection and Mrs. Harry Nelson to White, Mr. E. L., 1 August 1956, folder 26, box 16, ACPT Collection.Google Scholar
19 Rutledge, Mrs. J. H. to Dear Council President, 1 August 1956, folder 26, box 16, ACPT Collection.Google Scholar
20 “P-TA Chapters to Get Letter on National Group's Stand,” Alabama Journal, 2 August 1956, folder 26, box 16, ACPT Collection.Google Scholar
21 Simpkin, Mrs. G. J. to “Gentlemen,” 27 August 1956, folder 26, box 6 ACPT Collection and Mary to Martha [Rutledge], 25 August 1956, folder 26, box 6, ACPT Collection.Google Scholar
22 Lawrence, R. J. to Hepburn, Mrs. James, 9 August 1956, folder 26, box 6, ACPT Collection.Google Scholar
23 Rutledge, Mrs. J. H. to “Dear PTA Member,” n.d. August 1956, folder 26, box 6, ACPT Collection.Google Scholar
24 “To Break Original County Unit,” Montgomery Advertiser, 11 October 1956, folder 26, box 16 ACPT Collection and “Cloverdale P-TA Group Votes to Stay with National Group,” The Montgomery Advertiser, 28 August 1956, folder 26, box 16, ACPT Collection.Google Scholar
25 “State Not Bound By National PTA Integration Moves, Chief Asserts,” The Anniston Star, 29 August 1956, folder 26, box 16 ACPT Collection and “Alabama PTA Head Cites Separate School Stand,” The Birmingham News, 31 August 1956, folder 26, box 16, ACPT Collection.Google Scholar
26 As quoted in “Integration Stand Revised by P-TA,” Alabama Journal, 28 September 1956, folder 26, box 16, ACPT Collection. The NEA crafted similar resolutions on integrating with the American Teachers’ Association during the same time. See Carol F. Karpinski, “A Visible Company of Professionals”: African Americans and the National Education Association during the Civil Rights Movement (New York: Peter Lang, 2008), 102 and Wayne J. Urban, Gender, Race, and the National Education Association (New York: RoutledgeFalmer, 2000), 216–17.Google Scholar
27 Membership in Alabama's white PTA in 1956 was 212, 923 and in 1957 it was 190,450. This is the first decrease since the depression. Data are from CEP, under the direction of Theda Skocpol and Marshall Ganz, Harvard University (in author's possession). Owing to the scant availability of membership data on the black PTA, the figures given are for the years 1954–1958. See National Congress of Colored Parents and Teachers, Coral Anniversary: History of the National Congress of Colored Parents and Teachers (Dover, DE: NCCPT, 1961) and Our National Family, the publication of the National Congress of Colored Parents and Teachers.Google Scholar
28 Fairclough, Adam, “State of the Art,” 390–91; Jones, , “Desegregation and Social Reform Since 1954,” 160–63; James E. Haney, “The Effects of the Brawn Decision on Black Educators,” Journal of Negro Education 47, no. 1 (1978): 89, 92; Hope II, “Trends in Patterns of Race Relations in the South Since May 17, 1954,” 106, 109; W. Jones Lewis, “Two Years of Desegregation in Alabama,” Journal of Negro Education 25, no. 3 (1956): 205–11: and Flynt, Alabama in the Twentieth Century. Google Scholar
29 Franklin, V.P., “Introduction: Brown v. Board of Education: Fifty Years of Educational Change in the United States,” Journal of African American History 90, no. 1–2 (2005), 1–8, and Simon Wendt, “God, Ghandi, and Guns: The African American Struggle in Tuscaloosa, Alabama, 1964–1965,” Journal of African American History 89, no. 1 (2004): 36–56.Google Scholar
30 Kluger, , Simple Justice, 751; National Congress of Colored Parents and Teachers, Coral Anniversary, 60; and Fairclough, Adam, Teaching Equality: Black Schools in the Age of Jim Crow (Athens, GA: University of Georgia Press, 2001), 9. As Fairclough explains, African Americans believed that “education for second-class citizenship was… no education at all” (p. 21). American Teachers’ Association members, by contrast, were not eager to merge with the NEA in some southern states. See Urban, Gender, Race, and the National Education Association, 228–29.Google Scholar
31 See ACPT [white], Executive Committee Minutes, 1965. The outgoing president listed information to be passed on to her successor, Mrs. John Lathram, R., as “Committees considered but not to be announced or listed” in her notes for the meeting that year. The Group Relations committee was listed with the white members Mrs. Wright, H. C., McKee, Mr. W. T., and Dr. Kermit Johnson, A., the superintendent of the Jefferson County Public Schools. See folder 1, box 4, ACPT Collection. As a result of the secretive nature of these meetings, the minutes—if there were any—are not archived with the rest of the ACPT Collection.Google Scholar
32 Nelson, Mrs. Harry to Thomas, Mr., 22 January 1968, folder 47, box 12, ACPT Collection. Ethel Bell, president of the Alabama Colored Congress, assured Lathram that she did not expect her to “get on the spot, or wave out into controversial issues of our times.” Mrs. Ethel L. Bell to Mrs. John R. Lathram, 10 March 1966, folder 47, box 12, ACPT Collection.Google Scholar
33 Crawford and Levitt, “Social Change and Civic Engagement,” 276; Mrs. Irvin Hendryson, R. to “Presidents of the Following [white] State Congresses…” 1 May 1969, folder 47, box 12, ACPT Collection; Mrs. John Lathram, R. to Moorhead, Mrs. Jennelle, ca. 6 February 1967, folder 47, box 12, ACPT Collection; and Bell, Ethel L. to Mrs. John Lathram, R., 6 February 1967, folder 47, box 12, ACPT Collection.Google Scholar
34 Bell explained that they invited officers from the National Congress of Colored PTA “because we felt there were [sic] some information that would have been pertinent to our thinking. That made the committee larger than we wanted it to be. I sincerely hope that [white state president] Mrs. Nelson can understand that it was not an intention to ‘over do’ the thing.” Ethel L. Bell to Mrs. John R. Lathram, 9 March 1967, folder 47, box 12, ACPT Collection. Forte, Mrs., Minutes of the Intergroup Relations Committee Meeting, 8 March 1967, folder 47, box 12, ACPT Collection; and “Questionnaire on Intergroup Relations Committee,” ca. March 1967, folder 47, box 12, ACPT Collection.Google Scholar
35 Mrs. William Jones, O. to Mrs. John Lathram, R., 25 September 1969, folder 47, box 12, ACPT Collection; Rev. Hope, R. L. to All Principals, Presidents, and Principals of PTA Council, White, 1 October 1969, folder 47, box 12, ACPT Collection; and Dot to Fan, 25 September 1969, folder 47, box 12, ACPT Collection, emphasis in the original. The same terms—unification, merger—were used by members of the National Education Association and the all-black American Teachers’ Association during these years as they worked toward desegregation. See Karpinski, “A Visible Company of Professionals,” 138–40 and Urban, Gender, Race, and the National Education Association, 218.Google Scholar
36 Rev. Hope, R. L. to All Principals, Presidents, and Principals of PTA Council, White, 1 October 1969, folder 47, box 12, ACPT Collection. On the losses of the black teaching force, see Rosenthal, Jonas O., “Negro Teachers’ Attitudes Toward Desegregation,” The Journal of Negro Education 26, no. 1 (1957): 63–71; Detweiler, John S., “The Negro Teacher and the Fourteenth Amendment,” The Journal of Negro Education 36, no. 4 (1967): 403–09; Fultz, Michael, “The Displacement of Black Educators Post-Brown: An Overview and Analysis,” History of Education Quarterly 44, no. 1 (2004): 11–45; and Fairclough, Adam, “The Costs of Brown: Black Teachers and School Integration,” The Journal of American History 91, no. 1 (2004): 43–55. On a similar discussion among ATA members in South Carolina wanting a new name for their organization, see Urban, Gender, Race, and the National Education Association, 223.Google Scholar
37 Mrs. H. Eugene Gibbons to Dr. Cranford Burns, H., n.d., October 1969, folder 47, box 12, ACPT Collection.Google Scholar
38 Dot to Fan, n.d., folder 47, box 12, ACPT Collection.Google Scholar
39 National Congress of Parents and Teachers, “Plan for Unification of the National Congress of Colored Parents and Teachers with the National Congress of Parents and Teachers,” 1970, folder 47, box 12, ACPT Collection.Google Scholar
40 National PTA News Release, 22 June 1970, folder 47, box 12, ACPT Collection and National PTA, “Convention Resolutions,” National PTA Bulletin (Summer 1970): 2.Google Scholar
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42 Alabama Congress of Colored Parents and Teachers, Proposed Resolutions, 4 April 1970, folder 47, box 12, ACPT Collection.Google Scholar
43 Bullock, Charles S. III and Stewart, Joseph Jr., “The Justice Department and School Desegregation: The Importance of Developing Trust,” The Journal of Politics 39, no. 4 (1977): 1036–43; ACPT, Minutes, Pre-Convention Board of Managers’ Meeting, 22 April 1970, folder 48, box 12, ACPT Collection, emphasis in the original; and ACPT, “A Statement of Position,” 24 April 1970, folder 48, box 12, ACPT Collection.Google Scholar
44 Gill, L. M. to Mrs. Leon Price, S., 28 August 1970, folder 47, box 12, ACPT Collection; Victoria Radaviche to L. M. Gill, 4 September 1970, folder 47, box 12, ACPT Collection; and Mrs. Wm. Jones, O. to Gill, Mrs. L. M., 5 September 1970, folder 47, box 12, ACPT Collection.Google Scholar
45 Gill, L. M. to Jones, Mrs. W. O., 21 September 1970, folder 47, box 12, ACPT Collection; Gill, L. M. to District Presidents of the Alabama Congress of Colored Parents and Teachers, 26 September 1970, folder 47, box 12, ACPT Collection; and Mrs. William Jones, O. to Gill, Mrs., 7 October 1970, folder 47, box 12, ACPT Collection.Google Scholar
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50 Mrs. Leon Price, S. to Mrs. William Jones, O., 5 April 1971, folder 47, box 12, ACPT Collection.Google Scholar
51 Gill, L. M. to Jones, Mrs. W. O., 19 April 1971, folder 48, box 12, ACPT Collection; Urban, Gender, Race, and the National Education Association, 222.Google Scholar
52 National Congress of Parents and Teachers, The PTA Story: A Century of Commitment to Children (Chicago, IL: NCPT, 1997), 117; Crawford and Levitt, “Social Change and Civic Engagement,”; Bullock and Stewart, “The Justice Department and School Desegregation,” 1036; CEP data (in author's possession); and Georgia Congress of Colored Parents and Teachers, Our Georgia Family (Fall 1970), 4.Google Scholar