CHAPTER IV

THE DESEGREGATION EXPERIENCE

Introduction

The purpose of my study has been, first, to uncover the nature of St. Joseph black students’ experiences with desegregation and the meanings they attached to their experiences and, second, to explain the silence which surrounded those experiences and the public account of desegregation. My study, therefore, has been designed to extend knowledge about the effects of desegregation in a setting which has been considered by many to be both successful and uneventful.

In this chapter I offer a demographic portrait of the participants as a group plus biographical descriptions of each of the participants. However, due to the small black population and the closeness of that community, information which could reveal participants’ identities has been excluded. The final section of this chapter presents the dominant categories addressed by the participants with excerpts from their interviews so their voices may be experienced as purely as possible by the reader. To protect their identities from being revealed, each of the interviewees was assigned a pseudonym that was used in the writing of my study. Late in the study, in response to requests from many of those I interviewed, I offered each the choice of using their real names. Contrary to the common practice of referring to participants by their first names, I have chosen to use a more formal way of addressing each. For instance, Virginia Yaeger will not be referred to as Virginia, but Mrs. Yaeger. I want to avoid a historically racist way of relating in which a white might address a black by his or her first name, regardless of their age or status, as a way of emphasizing a self-perceived superiority. Mr. Henderson addressed this kind of offense during the course of his interview:

A friend of mine . . . I introduced him to my Uncle (_____). We were going to play tennis. . . . "(_____), this is my uncle, Mr. (_____)." "Hi, [uncle’s first name], how are you?" That just really ticked me off. Because here was a white kid that was my age, 17 or 18 years old, referring to my uncle, who was 40, whatever, as [uncle’s first name], which was that attitude that whites didn’t have to give us that respect. And that ruined my whole tennis day. And even to this day, I just think of that and think, you know, even yet I can remember what they weren’t willing to give my uncle, who was an adult. Although the focus of my interviewing was upon blacks who at one time attended segregated black schools, others were invited to be a part of this study, including white former school administrators.

A Demographic Composite of the Participants

My informal pilot study involved four white administrators and one former black student. These results were then incorporated into the larger formal study with the one black student revisited for a more exhaustive interview. Altogether, eight black former students were interviewed, along with two black teachers, one black outsider, and one white local historian for a total of sixteen interviewees. The participants in my study ranged in age from 37 to 80 and represented both professional and semi-professional areas of work. Both of the black former teachers are retired while many of the black teachers who were teaching at the time of desegregation in St. Joseph are deceased. Table 1 summarizes the race, school role, number of years attended for segregated schools, and number of years attended for integrated schools for each of my interviewees.

Table 1

Interviewee Roles and School Attendances

Participant	Race	Role	Segregated (yrs.)	Integrated (yrs.)

Harold Benson	White	Administrator	All	0
Jim Denton	White	Administrator	All	0
Norman Edwards	White	Administrator	All	0
John Restin	White	Administrator	All	0
George Setter	Black	Teacher	All	0
Elizabeth Stanton	Black	Teacher	All	0
Henry Watkins	Black	Student	8	4
Hamilton Henderson	Black	Student	6	6
Pat Onstott	Black	Student	8	4
Virginia Yeager	Black	Student	8	0
Mike Morris	Black	Student	10	0
Leslie Brown	Black	Student	0	All
Barbara Jenson	Black	Student	8	4
Mitch Johnson	Black	Student	7	5
Charlotte Tilson	Black	Outsider	All	0
Robert Goll	White	Historian	0	All

Dominant Categories

During the selective coding phase of analysis I gave special attention to categories which seemed to have strong explanatory power. These became my dominant categories which interrelated in such a way as to form the core category, the emergent grounded theory. Dominant categories were: (a) a different guidebook, (b) transitions, (c) unwritten rules, (d) racist acts, and (e) black families. What follows is an elaboration of each of these categories, along with interview excerpts so that, as much as it is possible, the voices of my study’s participants may be heard.

The first category, which I choose to think of as a gallery that was often visited by my interviewees, offers a discussion about the ways in which oppression marks a people so as to be sensitized to a different set of perceptions from those of the dominant social group. I say that, but at the same time realize that no group of people are monolithic in any characteristic on which we would care to focus. However, generalities exist because they often possess some degree of truth value.

A Different Guidebook

This gallery serves as the introduction to all the others for, lacking the insights available here, one might easily misinterpret the frames of the other galleries. The theme of this gallery is that of differing perceptions of desegregation. Imagine frames stretching from one side of the gallery to the other, representing a continuum of perceptions regarding desegregation. The first frame reveals white school administrators’ perceptions of desegregation.

It was during the pilot study that it became strikingly clear that the four white administrators that I interviewed had almost no recollection of desegregation as a set of experiences that were endured by black students. Instead, they remembered desegregation as the execution of rules and legislation. Each dutifully attempted to recall details and descriptions of what happened and how desegregation affected their schools, students, families, and staffs but were to a person unable to remember anything of any significance. For instance, one who had been a principal in an elementary school which received black children through desegregation, could only recall that the children were poor and were lacking many of the necessities, such as adequate clothing and school supplies. When asked, he could not recall anything he or the downtown administration did to communicate with parents in order to either include them in a discussion about the transition to an integrated school or to make them feel welcome. Each of the white administrators I interviewed acted shocked to realize that they had never considered such basic amenities which they had at times offered to white students and parents. I asked Mr. Benson [a pseudonym] if he found that unusual, to think that he did not talk with the parents to inform them of the process or to speak with his staff on ways to make the black students feel welcome and he replied, "Yes. I find that highly unusual now." When I interviewed blacks about desegregation, I found many rich memories of the experiences of desegregation.

All the black teachers and black students remembered many details surrounding desegregation. Their responses came as stories as they spoke elaborately of event after event of how desegregation intersected and interdicted their lives. As they told their stories, it was plain to see they were, in part, reliving something which had imprinted itself indelibly upon their memories and emotions. As I listened, I was often reminded of what bell hooks (1990) wrote: "When you hear the broken voice, you also hear the pain contained within that brokenness----a speech of suffering; often it’s that sound nobody wants to hear" (p.146). There may be some who do not want to hear, but I found those who had passed through desegregation wanted to tell their stories. Before I turn the focus of my study upon the black former teachers and students, I want to highlight a peculiar piece of evidence my research uncovered, related to the ways in which blacks and whites in St. Joseph lived lives of differing perceptions related to desegregation.

A frame inside of this gallery of differing perceptions is the following occurrence that I offered for critique to the four white school administrators I interviewed. One of the black elementary schools was named after a famous black historical character, Frederick Douglass. As I traced school records from the founding of this school at the turn of the century to its demise in 1955, I found the name of the school misspelled in approximately half of its occurrences in school records and newspaper articles. I shared this with the white administrators I interviewed as a part of the informal pilot study. The misspelling seemed insignificant to all of them, as it did to most all of the whites I informally interviewed prior to the pilot study. The white administrators dismissed this as a typographical error or simply an oversight. When asked if they would see any significance in a Washington or a Roosevelt school name being misspelled they could not answer because they could not imagine such a thing happening. My hypothetical question moved an act of cultural violence (Freire, 1993) from the battlefields in the margins, across the border, and into a comfortable suburban backyard where it could not be accommodated. This frame demonstrates the concept of habitus, as defined by MacLeod (1987) in his citing of Bourdieu (1977):

[Habitus is] a system of lasting, transportable dispositions which, integrating past experiences, functions at every moment as a matrix of perceptions, appreciations, and actions . . . [and] could be considered as a subjective but not individual system of internalized structures, schemes of perception, conception, and action common to all members of the same group or class. (p. 13) The habitus of the administrators I interviewed did not contain a space which could conceive of this as a racist act. However, each black participant in the study nodded their heads and said they were used to such things and that the meaning they attached to such "oversights" was that of being second class citizens. The next frame within this gallery is very similar in that it reveals another area of differing perceptions between white administrators and black participants in this study.

White administrators that I interviewed saw desegregation in terms of gain for black students: they were afforded access to a better education by way of more up-to-date curriculum and supplies and better school facilities. Black students, their parents, and their teachers agreed with the above but, in addition to some gains, experienced desegregation as loss. Mrs. Onstott shared the following perception of desegregation:

I think all of the sacrifice was from the black families, and even when it came to the busing . . . aspect of it, it wasn’t busing white kids into black neighborhoods, it was black children into white neighborhoods. . . . no white children into black schools. Mrs. Jenson commented on how culture was lost as prize-winning bands and choirs were absorbed into the white district: Looking back, black children lost their identity. We lost our identity. . . . if you were good at football or baseball, then you were with that crowd. But generally, you weren’t in the school plays and have lead parts. Generally, you took care of the props, to see that the curtain came down on time, you set up chairs, things like that. . . . every stride . . . every thing the black school had mastered, was destroyed or just done away with. It was like it never existed. It was, you know, what we accomplished at Bartlett, it was like it never existed. It was just wiped away. When asked to elaborate, Mrs Jenson gave specific examples of things lost that were highly prized by the black community: We had a beautiful marching band, and we did have equipment, we had instruments at Bartlett. They belonged to the school board. I can’t tell you today where those instruments went. We had, they were old, tubas and saxophones and clarinets, kettle drums. And it was like they locked the school up, they put chains on the doors. . . . It was like they took a big eraser and erased it all. And it was no more and it never was. . . . I never thought much about it until we tried to get records for Bartlett and they told us they couldn’t, they didn’t know where they were. They were nonexistent. Mrs. Stanton also lamented the loss of the tight-knit community which once bound blacks in St. Joseph together: Desegregation has done a lot, I feel like, to split the black community. . . . for instance, Bartlett had a band, a good band. . . . I was told that they wouldn’t let them compete after awhile because they took so many honors. . . . We had operattas and plays and things like that that we did that would bring out the talent we had. . . . We had our little performances and our children got to perform, you know? There are a lot of things like that that we lost because of integration. Mrs. Stanton and Mrs. Jenson felt that black culture and talent was either discarded or absorbed into the white culture. For instance, Mrs. Jenson said, "They sucked all our talent from us and used it for their glory. But the people that instilled in us what we could be back when we were quite small received no recognition for our talents."

This theme was mirrored by hooks (1990) in her recounting of the effects of desegregation upon her life:

That black world of my growing up began to fundamentally change when the schools were desegregated. What I remember most about this time is a deep sense of loss. It hurt to leave behind memories, schools that were ‘ours,’ places we loved and cherished, places that honored us. It was one of the first great tragedies of growing up. I mourned for that experience. I sat in classes in the integrated white high school where there was mostly contempt for us, a long tradition of hatred, and I wept. (p. 34) Another aspect of this theme focused on the price extracted from black teachers by desegregation.

Although the official account presented on the video proudly stated that black teachers did not lose their jobs, interviewees told stories of great loss. Mrs. Stanton stated, "The black students were integrated but the black teachers were not." She shared how the St. Joseph desegregation plan kept all three of the black elementary schools open for the 1954-55 school year with no change in staff or students. The next school year, two of the schools were closed and their black teachers were moved to the last remaining black school. Since many of the black teachers were close to retiring, this scheme allowed the district to keep the black teachers until their retirement. In fact, Mrs. Stanton, Mr. Henderson, and Mr. Setter recalled that only four black teachers were ever assigned to an integrated elementary school and then only schools in poor neighborhoods where many of the school children were black. So, did the secondary black teachers fare any better? No, because they were reassigned to a black elementary school or given non-teaching positions. Mrs. Stanton, for instance, was a secondary math, science, and social studies teacher at the time of desegregation but was reassigned to Bartlett Elementary as a teacher in the lower grades. Another teacher, Mrs. (_____), was assigned as an administrative assistant in the downtown offices, as were a few other teachers. I asked Mrs. Stanton if the secondary teachers saw these changes as a demotion:

Yes and no. Because I thought we should have been integrated too. And we weren’t and we were told . . . be happy because you didn’t lose your jobs. . . . this was just said in the talking, like "Well, you know you still have your jobs." That indicated to me, that, you know, "Be thankful." You know? It also meant that the teachers in the high school had to be recertified as elementary. . . . had to go back to school. . . . I went to Lincoln University. I took some junior college classes and a correspondence course. Another respondent, Mr. Setter, revealed that one of the black elementary principals was reassigned to a non-teaching job in a white high school. This assignment was especially painful to the black community for, as Mrs. Jenson shared, the black community was proud of the fact that this educator had gained some of his education studying in a prestigious university overseas. Neither Mr. Setter nor Mrs. Stanton recalled a single black secondary teacher who was ever assigned to a classroom teaching position in an integrated high school. It is certainly true for the black secondary teachers and the black principals that, while each kept a job, each also lost the jobs for which they were originally trained and hired. In addition, Mr. Henderson stated, and further research on my part confirmed, that the black high school was never accredited. Mr. Henderson exclaimed: I didn’t find this out until later, that my mom and every black person who attended Bartlett High School prior to the desegregation ruling, that diploma was just like having a salad without any condiments. It had no official backing . . . when they graduated from Bartlett High School and went on to college, many of them had to take remedial work to be certified to enter into college. White school administrators I interviewed were not aware of the these kinds of losses for the black community and only viewed desegregation as a time of gain for black students. Another indication of two exclusionary knowledges or insights is apparent in two different readings, on the part of those I interviewed, of the Brown v. the Board of Education (1954) decision.

In listening to the way in which many of the blacks I interviewed interpreted Brown v. the Board of Education (1954), and in reading black authors’ critiques of desegregation, I have come to believe that they interpreted the Brown ruling differently than many whites, a view shared by other researchers and authors (Gates & West, 1996; Marable, 1995). What many of the black community read into the decision was a message of hope and possibilities. For instance, consider the following excerpts from the Brown decision, offered in its entirety as Appendix J. The Supreme Court, in Brown versus the Board of Education of Topeka (1954), asked the question, "Does segregation of children in public schools solely on the basis of race, even though the physical facilities and other ‘tangible’ factors may be equal, deprive the children of the minority group of equal educational opportunities?" The court answered their own question, "We believe that it does." The justices then referred to Sweatt v. Painter (1950) in which the Court found that a segregated school could not offer equal educational opportunities because of the lack of certain "qualities which are incapable of objective measurements but which make for greatness . . ." The Court then referenced McLaurin v. Board of Regents (1950) supra, and gave examples of "intangible considerations" such as ". . . ability to study, to engage in discussions and exchange views with other students, and, in general, to learn his profession." In addition, the Brown ruling concluded that for black children, "To separate them from others of similar age and qualifications solely because of their race generates a feeling of inferiority as to their status in the community that may affect their hearts and minds in a way unlikely ever to be undone."

The language used in the excerpts above may not jump out to a representative of the dominant social class in the same way it might to a black in my study. For instance, the intangibles listed above were accepted as normal for a white parent. If their children had access to school, then they also had access to these intangibles. However, for those I interviewed, the language above offered some measure of hope for access to intangibles that had previously been outside their reach. What the white parent considered normal, the black parent considered inaccessible as a part of the privileges of the dominant social class. Allow me to pull out the following words for analysis from the excerpts above: "ability," "engage," "learn," "feeling of inferiority," and "status." These words are strong words that promised a fundamental change in both opportunities and outcomes for black students. The hope on the part of black parents was that their children would have equal access to these intangibles, not just to buildings, classrooms, and white teachers. Although many participants touched upon this theme, Mrs. Stanton summarized many of the sentiments expressed when she stated, regarding desegregation, "All they really cared about was just following the rules; that’s all desegregation meant to them. . . . We were left out of quite a few things. Just, here it is, you do this, here it is and you do that." Mrs. Onstett voiced a similar judgement:

I think---this is my personal opinion---I think that it [desegregation] was not designed to benefit black people. It was designed to meet whatever requirement they sent down from Washington. . . . All it said was, okay, yes, we did this and this and this. This is the statistics that we show to tell you that we did it. I don’t think they had any desire to know whether we succeeded or not. You know? Although the wording of Brown offered hope, the past experiences of the black community made them fearful of this difficult adjustment for their children for they realized their children would be entering a culture with little sensitivity to their history or context. As an example, Mr. Henderson pointed out how differently name calling affects a black child: Black people, we call whites peckerwoods, snowball, Charlie, Mr. Charlie, oh gosh, all kinds of names. Now if you get mad at me and call me "nigger" and I call you "peckerwood," you laugh it off because it has no historical context. . . . But "nigger" has such an historical connotation, and so I, you know, when my Dad called that guy "peckerwood," . . . it didn’t affect him. In order to effect this transition from the segregated setting to the integrated one, students were given advice, warnings about what to expect and how to behave. The next gallery addresses the warnings black students received from parents, older brothers and sisters, teachers, and from white administrators concerning their new place in an integrated setting.

Transitions

Arranged together in this gallery are those factors that emerged from the study which contributed to the transition of black students from the segregated setting to the integrated one. Some mechanisms mediated on behalf of the black students in order to make their transition to integrated schools less painful. Other mechanisms were intended for good but may have been counterproductive in some cases. One such factor was discourses that served as warnings to the black students either from the black community or from white school workers.

Warnings from the Black Community

Warnings which emanated from parents, teachers, principals and older students and siblings included general advice of how to relate in a racially-mixed world. Some warnings were used to prepare black students for discrimination and disappointment while others reinforced the idea of the proper place for a black in a white society. In retrospect, many of the interviewees noted that it was difficult for their parents to prepare their children for challenges they had not experienced in their segregated schools. Only one participant in this study could recall either parent preparing them in any specific way for the integrated school experience.

Parents

Mr. Watkins commented, "I think my mom and dad talked to my older brothers and sisters about going to a white school and we believed after a while that if you could just get past the first part you'd be okay." The remaining participants responded similarly as Mrs. Onstott when she recalled that "It wasn't discussed like that we would have to be ready for anything, you know what I mean?" Mr. Johnson believed that there were few specific warnings from parents because the parents themselves did not live in an integrated world and had no knowledge base from which to draw advice for their children. What those interviewed did remember were more general charges about how to deal with racism in any setting, as related in this example by Mrs. Onstott:

My daddy always, you know, told us to, you know, that to overcome obstacles you had to meet them face on rather than running from them. . . . my parents just told us to, uh, you know, we'd only work it for our benefit, we had to overcome certain obstacles, and we were called out by name and, uh, subjected, I thought, to things that we never had been before. . . . My daddy always said, "Don't ever feel inferior because of your skin. If someone tells you something to the contrary. They are the ones that have the problem." Mr. Henderson also remarked that many parents of black children worked to counteract racist images that were harmful: I’m thinking that most of the families that I knew taught their kids, and taught us, you know, the caricatures of Buckwheat in the Little Rascals, the characters of Step ‘n Fetch It, like Amos and Andy are bad. We are not like that. Mr. Henderson elaborated on the pains to which his mother went to ensure that he would not act out such caricatures: I can remember the middle of Kresge’s, I was four or five years old, and I got away from my Mother. Well, Kresge’s is set up, but you, you could, you know, I had several instances, but the counter, the lunch counter was on the south, no, northeast corner. . . . uh, the toy counter, the hotdog corner still had still had the flag over it when you entered the door. And the toy counter was right there and I had gotten away from my Mother, and she was saying, "Hamilton, Hamilton, where are you?" And I said "Heeah I is." And she whipped my butt right there. She said, "You’ll never embarrass yourself, your heritage and race, and your family again. You’ll never. And you’ll always remember that." So, if getting your butt whacked is proactive, it worked, you know? But I mean parents did that. And we could watch the Little Rascals and we could laugh at them but we were taught this isn’t you. Some warnings were not so encouraging and did nothing to prepare students for integration. As an extreme example, Mr. Henderson told of his grandfather’s explanation for the plight of black people: "My granddad said, we were the weaker of the species that's why we were captured." Mr. Henderson also shared about how a friend of his was severely chastised for using his light skin color to pass as white and was warned that he must always remember he is black: There was a man in the north end by name of (_____), his son was, he had a son and a daughter. (_____) would have been, oh I’m guessing, he would have been 16 or 17 and I was 13 or 14. He and his white buddies decided to go to a movie at the Corral Theatre. Now if you saw (_____) on the street today, you would not know he is a black man. You would not know it. And so (_____) was very light too. Very light, You wouldn’t know (_____) was a black man. And I can remember (_____) and his dad were walking and caught (_____) coming out of the Trail Theatre. I can remember the owner of the Trail saying as long as he had the Trail, niggers, spicks and Jews would not be allowed in his theatre. And (_____) said, "Where were you today?" . . . And at that day, you know, this is north end Pendleton, who had air conditioning? You had fans, so your windows were up, and even in the corner, on the corner of 8^th and Pendleton, and we heard (_____) say, "Where were you today?" "Oh, I was just running around and stuff." "Don’t lie to me." And you could hear the strap. He says, "As long as you live, I don’t care how light you think you are, you are a black man. And the white society will always treat you way once they find out. Don’t you ever, whack, whack, whack, don’t you ever do this to us again." . . . families were telling their kids, you know, this is what you do, this is how you behave. Mr. Henderson felt that this kind of message to black children was in actuality meant to be a form of protection by acting as a hedge against disappointment. Mrs. Jenson stated that "you go out there and kids are hit from peer pressure, you walk back into that home environment, they counteract all that garbage that you have been hit with out there. So, . . . it was a balance." Overall, the participants in this study felt that family and neighbors created safe spaces where they could retreat from the pressures associated with making the transition to integrated schools. Black teachers were often seen as being a part of this kind of social support, as demonstrated in my next section.

Black Teachers. Another source of preparation for black students came from their black principals and teachers. Mr. Johnson recalled that the principal of Bartlett called the students and teachers of the school together for a special assembly to announce desegregation:

The principal, he called us to a special assembly and he explained to us that segregation was over in St. Joseph, state of Missouri. And it was going to be immediate and he told us that, this was like early in the spring of ’54. And he told us we were going to Central and the other schools. . . . and he impressed on us that we could succeed at the other schools because we had the mental capacities to do it. He never once hit on the fact that we were ill prepared but he really gave us confidence that you can do and you can do it. Participants in this study who attended Lincoln and Douglass schools could not recall their principals making any kind of a formal announcement such as that which occurred at Bartlett. However, Mr. Watkins related how Mr. Setter, one of his black teachers in the segregated school, addressed a class of students who would be moving to an integrated school the next year and said, "‘You guys probably won't make it. I don't think you'll make it; you don't try hard.’" Mr. Watkins’ reaction was, "I made up my mind that I was going to get decent grades, you know?" Later in life, Mr. Watkins reflected back on that episode and recognized that Mr. Setter had used reverse psychology on them, a stratagem that had worked particularly well in his case. Mr. Watkins disclosed that "Maybe if that teacher had not told me that I was not going to make it that I wouldn’t have buckled down and said, ‘I’ve got to do this.’" None of the other participants of the study could recall their black teachers specifically addressing the challenges they were to face, although Mrs. Stanton, a retired teacher of some 30 years, clearly recalled how black teachers felt responsible for their students: There was a closeness between the black teachers and the students that, because we felt that if they didn’t make it, if we didn’t give it to them, they wouldn’t make it. And so there was always a concern about the children, how they behaved, how they responded. Mr. Watkins acknowledged a close relationship with black teachers that may have helped prepare students for the transitions of desegregation in ways they never fully recognized: The relationship in the black schools was a lot more cohesive to me. They knew your parents and nine times out of ten they was from your neighborhood. So you didn’t dare mess up or get silly because you knew that just a phone call or a walk across the way would get you handled, you know. It seemed like you always had, it was more one on one. Mr. Henderson also praised the black teachers from the segregated school and spoke of their high standards for learning the basics and the support they engendered from the parents: These were competent teachers. I mean, Mrs. (_____) taught us phonetics way back. She had a big old tablet and we spelled phonetically and it wasn’t "kat." She taught you the sounds but you learned "cat." And to this day, when I’m teaching, it’s like, "Can you kids read?" I mean, I have kids who can’t read. But I guarantee that, I can almost guarantee, to a student that left Bartlett . . . under Mrs. (_____) knew how to read and write. And there was no such thing as social promotion. And if one of these teachers said "Jessica was not ready to be promoted.", there wasn’t a parent that challenged that. And those kids were retained. And there was a, parents attended their children’s conferences and all. And I can remember, I don’t think I was a bad kid but evidently (_____) thought I had done something improper. Mom came out for the conferences. I can remember to this day, walking down the hill to 18th and Messanie and she saying, "Oh, so you want to show your butt at school. We will deal with that at home." And that was the message all the way back down to 18th and Messanie. And we got home, everybody knew that Hamilton wasn’t doing what he was supposed to at school. And it was dealt with. And the teacher could be assured that when it got home it was dealt with. . . . These old girls were tough. They were tough. My Lord. Other participants commented on how strict the teachers and principals were in the segregated schools. Mrs. Onstott recalled that her principal at Bartlett used to "walk down the hall with a switch, hitting it against his leg" and commented that the teachers "were definitely corporally required to punish you." Although the black schools in town held students to high standards in some areas, they fell short in other areas.

Mr. Morris shared about how old the curriculum was in a black segregated school which served as a feeder school to Bartlett High School from 35 miles away. His comments follow:

And you know, Richard, the bad thing about it, I remember in my freshman year, they had a, we used to get all the books from the white school, they was outdated and they sent them up to us, and we had a guy come from Jeff City and he said, he took all them books away from us. He said, "If they’re outdated for the whites they’s outdated for us." So finally we got books like they did. I’ll never forget that. I was a freshman in high school. Mr. Morris returned to this topic of outdated curriculum several times during his interview and indicated that that was the first time it really hit him that they were not being treated to the same education as white children. Mrs. Jenson also spoke of outdated curriculum and sparse resources at Bartlett and was emphatic about the point that she received a much broader education in the integrated setting. She stated the following regarding how unprepared she was to compete easily in the integrated school to which she moved: I always felt mentally superior and educationally inferior to my white brothers and sisters. I had a teacher tell me in my junior year of English that I would never make an "e" because I didn’t have the proper vowel sound. I had not been taught, it wasn’t that I couldn’t learn, the fact that I wasn’t prepared to learn, . . . he really felt justified in what he was saying. But I sat there and listened, I didn’t take issue with it, but you really don’t know what’s in my mind. You really don’t. But he was absolutely right. . . . I didn’t know how to diagram a sentence because I never had to do it. I mean we were probably learning out of books that were 40 years old. I don’t think they even diagramed sentences when the books I learned out of were written. Mr. Johnson addressed the same issue by stating that he never felt he would not succeed but had no idea so many options were available until he was exposed to the comparatively rich resources of the desegregated high school he attended after 1954. Connected to this frame was another which spoke to lowered aspirations of black teachers for their charges.

Mrs. Jenson stated that her black teachers did not do much to raise her expectations for life after the segregated school:

They set our sights low. . . . the sad part of that is that our teachers were severely handicapped. . . . but you see they were reading our environment and reading what we had to do to survive. They were not raising doctors and lawyers. . . . maybe they had the mind set of , "Let’s don’t lift the hopes up too high because they will just be dashed." She also commented that these teachers were quite old and that only the band teachers seemed to be right out of college and were replaced every two years. Another frame which was negative concerning the social structure within the segregated schools of St. Joseph focused on favoritism.

Mrs. Jenson confided on the ways in which favoritism based upon socio-economic status and skin color affected how students were treated within the segregated schools:

I’m gonna tell you this, that in the favoritism aspect that was present in desegregation, was done away with in integration. And I’m talking about the black culture. Our teachers had favorites and it wasn’t on your ability, it was, and I’m not saying this is 100%, there was elements that, in the black schools that just reeked of favoritism. They didn’t look beyond, they didn’t always look beyond the external in the black schools. Mrs. Jenson acknowledged what Mr. Johnson called a pecking order within the black community which bled over into school relations. Mr. Johnson extensively addressed this in the following segment: Within the black community, and again, I don’t know if you knew how, but there is a real pecking order that is a class distinction that breaks down in terms of people who worked at the packing houses, you know, the professionals, the teachers, further delineation in terms of, what are now beginning to call the, it breaks along color lines. And so, all those kinds of dynamics were going on within that community when from the outside the majority they would look at it and they would see it "mono, and everybody is the same." But within that culture of overriding . . .it was "he that worked for whom" became a status thing. Mr. Henderson revealed the same layering within the black community when he stated the following: Even in our community there was discrimination because we were so imbued with the idea that "light was right," that lighter skinned blacks got better treatment in our educational system than the darker skinned black Americans did. And the teachers catered to those families of the lighter skin. All that I interviewed felt much if not all of this was done away with by moving to the integrated schools. For instance, Mrs. Onstott recalled how she and her brothers and sisters were singled out and picked on in the black school and how an integrated school offered hope of escape: Black kids, I think there was a fight every week. But it wasn't like we were fighting to hurt one another, it was like pecking order or, you know, establishing dominance, be it if it was only for a week. You know what I mean? And then, we were, like I said, we was poor kids, there was a bunch of us, we didn't maybe have the best of clothes, shoes. . . . the black kids that were only one or two parents would send a little extra home, or a cute little book bag, lunch bucket, you know what I mean? So we were ridiculed too. The black schools, now don't get me wrong, we had our problems there too. So, my parents might have even said this will be a good thing if they do go to a different school, maybe they won't be subjected to the same thing that they have in their own school. The next frame within this large gallery of transitions reveals one of the principal sources of information to many black students about what to expect in making their transition to an integrated school. Older students and siblings who were slightly ahead in school were sources of inspiration to younger black students by their presence within the white schools but not necessarily by the stories they told.

Older Students and Siblings. Warnings that were less inspiring often came from older students and siblings who were first to experience desegregation. Mr. Watkins related how he first heard about desegregation:

I heard it from my older sisters and brothers who were already in the grades where I’d be going. . . . it was something they was just apprehensive about. I mean they was scared, actually scared of all the stuff that had happened in the south, you know you didn’t know how’s this going to work. How’s this going to work? You going to an all white school. How you going to, where you going to fit in, you know. And, uh, as a result, both of them had trouble in school and neither one of them finished. . . . They just didn’t know how, that "n word" was just prevalent. I mean it was, you know, back then, they get in your face like that, and you’re not going to fight with everybody, you know. So they would, rather than go through that, they quit. So, that’s what happened. I remember they would come home and tell those experiences, and I would think, Gee whiz. In a few years I’ll have to go through that. So, I got scared. But at the same time, I told myself that I’m going to make it. I went to work on that. . . . I was going to go over there expecting the worst so couldn’t nothing get me. I don’t know how to explain it but I was expecting to be rebuffed at every corner, you know. Mr. Johnson collaborated this experience with one of his own: "We heard a lot in the neighborhood from, you know, just what the difficulties they were having, you know, the fights they were having, the name calling. But . . . they were isolated cases." The most important transition role for older black students and siblings was addressed by Mr. Watkins as he recalled seeing some of the older black students in the halls when he first began attending an integrated school: One thing I thought helped was that (______) went over there about a year before me, and that helped. . . . It really did me good and I knew that they were there and that they made it through a year and they’re still alive. Mrs. Onstott remarked similarly that her transition to an integrated high school was made easier because older brothers and sisters were there ahead of her. She commented: I didn't see too much of them but I knew they were there and that was a little comforting because we could at least, if I have problems, I would tell. And if it was bad enough, you know, I knew that I had backup, you know what I mean? And in most cases, participants revealed that white teachers treated them fairly and made the transition easier.

White Teachers. With but two exceptions, all of the accounts related by participants about white teachers in the integrated schools were very favorable. Instead of an emphasis upon status and differences in skin color, those I interviewed remembered a focus on production. Mrs. Jenson, whose comments on favoritism within the black schools are recorded above, stated, "In the white schools, you had to produce . . . and if you produced . . . you were recognized and you were moved." And if you didn’t produce, you were not catered to as illustrated by Mr. Watkins’ account of a friend of his:

I can remember when (_____) was playing ball after me, and he was all city and all state. He was screwing up in his grades and he wasn’t taking care of business but as long as he was playing ball for us and running track he was doing just fine. Just as soon as that was over they kicked him and (_____) finished up in the military. He’d be the first to tell you. I told him, those people don’t worry about you; you got to take care of business. As soon as his grades went down, they booted him. And I can’t blame that on him. He should have taken care of business. This greater emphasis upon personal responsibility was seen as a positive attribute of the integrated schools by those I interviewed. For instance, Mrs. Jenson stated that We went from teachers who were disciplinarians, you will do this, you will get that, and they struggled with us until we got it, and if we didn’t get it, they followed us home and they told our parents. It was a real nurturing. But doing that weakened us in initiative. In the integrated setting with its emphasis upon what each student produced, those I interviewed found that they could compete well against white children. Mr. Johnson maintained: I always knew I was going to be a success, that was never in question. But when I moved to the integrated school I found that there were many more options available to me than I had ever dreamed of. I also found that I could compete against white students and win in any area. That did a lot for my confidence and helped me reach out for more. In a similar vein, Mrs. Jenson commented on the revelatory nature of competing with white children: One thing desegregation did for me was show me that I could excel and be anything I wanted to be if I wanted it bad enough. It took away the "can’t do that because you’re black." . . . When you get there, you’re really keyed up, I’m really inferior and you find out that you’re not. And you find out that these people are just like you, they might live in better houses, but they’re just like you. However, not all those interviewed had pleasant experiences

Mrs. Onstott recalled how she and two other black students were seated in the very rear of the sixth grade class at the beginning of her first year in an integrated school, even though she had a documented and quite visible vision impediment. She stated that she was made to feel retarded the way she was pushed off into the back of the room and the way in which she was never called upon. Mr. Watkins was humiliated by the showing of a film in a history class.

Mr. Watkins told a story of a time he maintained his self respect and made it through a very painful experience:

In Mr. (_____)’s history class, we had a movie. And it showed people in this big mansion and these blacks serving them their meals. And the kids were snickering and everything and pointing at me and everything, you know. And I’m just sitting there, just trying to deal with it, just trying to get through and move on, you know. So Mr. (_____) took me outside after the film and said, "Henry, do those kind of films bother you?" It wasn’t the film that bothered me, it was the kids putting me in the film. I said, "I’m here to get an education, that’s all I want." He said, "As long as it doesn’t bother you." I said, "No, it doesn’t bother me." But it was tearing me up on the inside. Just because of that film, because they had to associate themselves with them up there and me down here. That’s what it was like going to an integrated school. That’s one of the things I expected it to be. An even more painful experience that occurred as a part of Mr. Watkins’ initiation into an integrated setting happened as he was following the instructions of his art teacher.

The following interview sample tells of the way in which Mr. Watkins was informed that he was expected to behave in a segregated manner within an integrated school:

Researcher: You had the most problem with the administration?

Interviewee: Yes, uh, for the most part, the teachers at that level didn’t care who you were. But (_____) was just a pain in my side. I had one, one experience that really, really bothered me. Uh, when I went to, uh, me and (_____), a girl a classmate---we were ‘bout in every class together from my Freshman year to my Senior year---we was in an advanced art class together and we was taking a display to put down the main hall. I was really walking back from there, and as soon as I got back up to the third floor, Mrs. (_____) class, he called for me to report to the office. And I got down there and he told me, ‘You know that doesn’t look very good.’ And I said, ‘What doesn’t?’ ‘You walkin’ with that girl and havin’ fun.’ You know, I didn’t have any idea what he was talking about. I explained to him I was on an assignment, you know. He said, ‘You know [____] High’s been good to you, they’ve been real good to you.’ I said, ‘Did [_____] give me my grades or did I earn them?’

Researcher: Good point.

Interviewee: . . . and I said, ‘I want you to leave me alone.’ And I cussed him. And then I got immediately scared cause I knew if I got home, my Dad was gonna tear me apart. I mean, that bothered me big time. But he was just, just always watchin’. Like I say, for the most part all the teachers I got along great with.

Researcher: Well, you know, at that time especially for you to cuss him and then how did he react to that? What did he do?

Interviewee: He just looked at me. I was afraid he would call my Dad. And told me to go on back to class. I just knew he was gonna call me and tell me I was kicked out of school

Researcher: Yeah

Interviewee: And call my parents. But he didn’t do it.

Researcher: Do you think he was surprised at your reaction?

Interviewee: Yes, because I was. Definitely. I was surprised at how it hit me.

Researcher: What he did, did that kind of blind side you? Was that quite a surprise that you. . . .

Interviewee: I didn’t expect to say that. I didn’t expect him to call to the office either. I didn’t know I was doing anything wrong, you know.

Researcher: You know, that’s a funny, kind of episode because. . . . how do you think he knew about it?

Interviewee: He saw us walkin’ in the hall.

Researcher: He did?

Interviewee: He stepped out of his office, he stepped out, he was in the hall when we went down. He just watched. He didn’t say anything. He didn’t say a word ‘til I got back in class and sent down one of them little office assistants with a pass for me. I didn’t know what it was for or anything. I walked down and he brought me in his little office and closed the door. Then he laid that on me.

Mr. Watkins stated that this encounter, in spite of his refusal to accept the way in which he was being defined, affected him by making him more careful about whom he formed relationships with and how he acted out those relationships publicly. Speaking of his white friends from high school, Mr. Watkins stated, "I had some good friends there in the high school. I mean, people that I really liked, but you had to be very careful when and where to say hi." One space within the integrated school setting offered black males an opportunity to be accepted and appreciated. High School athletics was a mitigating factor which aided black males in making the transition to the integrated high schools.

Sports

Black males who participated in city wide sports outside of the schools had already formed relationships with coaches and many white athletes prior to desegregation. When these same black males began attending integrated schools, they were already known and accepted as successes within the sphere of athletics. Mr. Johnson, who was himself a star high school athlete, attested to the importance of sports to the black male in the following transcription:

Athletics played a very, very important role because, I didn’t realize, like (_____), I don’t know if you remember him. . . . there was another coach (_____), they had been working, you know, . . ., basketball league, volunteer service, and a lot of the black students would show up to those kind of programs. And these guys were coaching them and the kids were known to them, so the (_____) were known and the (_____) were known, the (_____) were known, those families, . . . [Coach] (____) took a fancy to them. So they all started going to Lafayette, Benton, Central [high schools]. So when those guys showed up there, I mean, it was automatically assumed that . . . they were going to be playing some ball, and that they were going to be on track. And those coaches took them in and there was a beat not even skipped, you know, a beat not even lost. Sure enough, if you go back to those old yearbooks, and I’m sure you’ve looked at them. You will see all the (_____), the (_____), the (_____) moving on, already going to state and they were winning. When I came along in ’58, (____) and (_____) were already there talking about me. My destiny was already set. Not much at all [was happening] with the females. You know very, and again, if you look at the yearbooks, a few of them showed up in choir and things like that but nowhere near star status of the black males. For Mr. Watkins, as was true of several of the male interviewees, athletics is what made the transition to an integrated school bearable. The following account demonstrates the role sports played in helping him make the transition to an integrated school: My savior was sports. I think if I hadn’t have had basketball and track, I think I probably wouldn’t have made it. I don’t know. It helped me because I played a lot better than a lot of guys, you know, that went out there. So, I knew that I could make teams and everything, you know, and it made all the difference in the world. It was something to do and it was a way of interacting with the white guys at the same level, you know. It wasn’t something that I had to, I mean I had to work as hard as the next guy to make the team, whatever, but it was just good knowing that you could, you know. And a major achievement for me. It made my going to classes and everything else. If I hadn’t had basketball, I would have been lost. I asked Mr. Watkins to speak to relationships with the white team members and also what happened when they went on the road and played small towns with all-white teams: Interviewee: The guys on the team, bless their hearts. . . . I had guys who wouldn’t sit next to me when I first started playing basketball.

Researcher: You mean on the bench.

Interviewee: On the bench. They would sit away from me. Of course, a couple of guys I’d beat out of the positions so I could understand that, you know. One was about six two and one was about six five and I beat them out of a center position because I could out jump them, you know. But, uh, it good for me. And Coach (_____) was a no-nonsense coach. I never saw him show any kind of bad thing as far as the race thing goes. He’s always been just the same. I talked to him in here yesterday. He was just a good guy. And I never had any classes with him. I think he was the best in this town.

Researcher: The guys that wouldn’t sit next to you, did they change in their way of relating to you after a while?

Interviewee: After a while they did.

Researcher: So they sat next to you then? Did that carry on over into class work, in the classroom?

Interviewee: We got along. We got along. I can remember going up into Savannah and Maryville [towns within about 40 miles of Border Town] and I’d hear all kinds of the "n word." I mean, every time I’d make a shot or go out of bounds, I’d get kicked and hit and everything like that. I remember one place we was out of town and after the game we’d eat and we went to this one place and this lady didn’t want me to come inside. I was the first black player to start varsity. You just shake until that buzzer and then you forget all about it and go to work. But I never did not want to go to school. I always wanted to go.

Mr. Johnson called athletic success "a dynamic that all the rest of us, particularly black males, fell into." This dynamic, as testified to by Mr. Watkins above, helped black males to be accepted by white males and to learn under the direction of strict coaches what was acceptable and unacceptable social behavior.

The next gallery, or category, addresses the difficulty blacks faced in knowing when and where to be careful; the expectations that the dominant social group held of black social behavior were not clearly spelled out. The next gallery is one which was visited by all black participants in this study and focuses on the ways in which unwritten rules are embedded within the discourse and consciousness of members of a subordinate social group.

Unwritten Rules

A dominant theme which emerged from the interviews was that of the unwritten rules of behavior which influenced the St. Joseph black community and were informally taught to their children. Mr. Henderson spoke eloquently to this when he related the following:

The day of that Saturday morning [during the protest marches] she said to me, "Hamilton, do we really treat you colored people that badly?" And so you had to reflect and think. Well, as a kid, going up town to Kresge's and standing at the lunch counter, because you couldn't sit down . . . but as a kid, when you're four or five years old going up town or down town to get a hotdog is as exciting when you are eight or nine as going to the Mall. And when you were standing at the counter and you saw all these black women with their children eating lunch, or eating a hotdog, and you look down the row and you saw all vacant seats and I would say, "Why don't we sit down?" "Oh, no, honey, we'll just stand here." You know, at that point, I didn't understand. Now I realize that black people in St. Joseph were responding to this but we didn't have written rules. They were unwritten behaviors. One of those unwritten rules that all those I interviewed mentioned was that they were allowed to attend only one movie theatre in town and were only allowed to sit in the second balcony. Here is Mr. Henderson’s example of an unwritten behavior: There were two balconies. And that first balcony which today is called the loge wasn’t for us. And they had ushers that ushered you out. They had two bathrooms at the top of the balcony. On either side one for male, one for female. And I remember, oh you know how little kids are, especially boys, going downstairs and uh, I was going to buy some candy and I opened the door to main floor of the theatre and an usher said "Oh, no, you can’t look in here, you have to go back upstairs." So, as I tell my students, my mom, like most women, carried this huge purse in and my dad was a choir director at the (_____) in (_____), she popped corn, made bologna and cheese or meatloaf, or whatever, sandwiches, and cans of soda and she put it in her purse. And I can remember one time ever going down there and buying something down there because I guess someone gave me fifty cents and that was when the usher said, "No, you can’t be here." So her form of protest was, as I explain to students, was very mild but if we can’t do anything we won’t buy your food. William Washington also recalled restricted seating and called the black portion of the theatre the buzzard’s roost (Mason, 1989). Mr. Watkins spoke of the same theatre and told of his feeling like a second class citizen when he and his friends would look in the paper and see all the shows but realize they could only attend the one movie house. He said, "You can maintain my house, but you can’t eat from my plates. You couldn’t sit down at many of these places yet they had black cooks in the back cooking the food." Many other common public accommodations were restricted to blacks prior to desegregation. Blacks rode in the rear of the bus in St. Joseph and could only order take out food in many restaurants. In each of these instances, there were no written instructions, no laws that restricted blacks, but a strongly reinforced set of behaviors which were passed on to children by modeling. Mr. Johnson called this a "shared common experience" of blacks prior to desegregation.

Mr. Johnson explained this phenomenon of unwritten rules that were obeyed with very little questioning in St. Joseph:

I don’t remember anyone telling me at any given time all those stores in that neighborhood that you couldn’t go into. Restaurants, you know, you could name as you go down King Hill [avenue]. Nobody, I don’t remember anybody ever saying not to go in there. But nobody, nobody ever did. And that was something like, how did that get, how did they get past the law? And there is something in that, you know, in that subconscious thing, that happened to us. . . . These things that were going on without them telling us. You don’t have to have a courtroom to put out a sign that says black and white, or colored and white, in restrooms and all that kind of stuff. There was still the thing that got passed along, in some way or another. And those are powerful kind of messages. . . . you know those cues that really get passed on in ways that we’re not even aware that messages are being delivered. They clearly were being delivered. Mr. Henderson spoke of his surprise to find as a very young man that he had been following a set of rules about riding in the back of the bus without being aware of them: When that lady asked me, I can remember getting on the bus thinking as a kid that we rode the back of the bus because all the kids were back there. And you know you would see older people sitting down but the idea that they were riding the back of the bus because that’s where the kids were playing. And so one day I got on the bus, and everyone has an old lady that is a friend of the family that pays you fifty cents to sweep the steps or a quarter to take out the trash.

I got on the bus she said, . . . "Oh, Hamilton, we don’t have to sit in the back of the bus anymore. Come on up here." You mean we had to? So when people started saying the things to me, the realization that the things I was doing wasn’t because they were the fun things to do but it was because they were to be done.

Mr. Henderson also had the perplexing experience of speaking to white audiences about racial concerns and having them show surprise at his stories of the ways in which blacks’ behaviors were restricted in St. Joseph: I did a thing at the (_____) and, uh, (____) I think is her name, and I was telling these things, these folks went, their mouths were wide open. Like, "You’re kidding?" It’s like to me, "What were you doing?" You know, what I mean? "Didn’t you notice black people standing at the counter, even when you were sitting down? It didn’t register with you?" . . . Where were they in the middle of this? You know, because I read (_____), . . .and I think, well, you were a newspaper man, what was your perception, what was your real perception of what you were seeing? Mrs. Jenson clearly recalled going into stores and restaurants where unwritten rules dictated where blacks could stand or sit. She shared the following: We went in, we went into them, but, like we knew not to sit down at the lunch counter. Why? . . . We followed our parents in and that was just the way it was. You just didn’t do it. Some things you just didn’t do. And this is the reason I really have to admire those people that have the audacity to test the boundaries and challenge the system. We didn’t think about it because, I guess we were brought up to be docile and to expect the status quo. Mrs. Stanton, 80 years old at the time of this writing, is now amazed at the degree to which she and her fellow blacks complied with these unwritten rules of behavior. She terms it brainwashing: That’s one thing bad, too, about segregation, the various locations. One place you could do one thing and the next place you couldn’t. And you never knew when you could and when you couldn’t. So, you just didn’t do it. . . . We were brainwashed into thinking that we wouldn’t be able to do it anyway, so why bother to ask? You might be rejected. . . . You’re not going to bump your head against a stone. It is disheartening. Second class citizens, we became what they said we were. However, it was precisely desegregation that brought an end to these kinds of segregation in St. Joseph. Reflecting on that time of transition, Mrs. Jenson said, "Now today I wouldn’t because it was like somebody raised a curtain and said, ‘Hey, you don’t have to take this. It shouldn’t be that way.’" Mrs. Jenson believes desegregation is what raised the curtain. Mrs. Jenson, who moved to an integrated high school for her freshman year in 1954, recalled the dramatic way in which things changed: What was amazing to me was, we never thought about going places like Shanin’s pharmacy and sitting down and having a coke, we never thought about up to that point. But we were in class with these people now, with their children, and it was nothing, we would just go with them after school and we would sit down and we would have our cherry cokes. We were accepted. And I don’t think it was so much on, on, on our talents, that might have had something to do with, but I don’t think so. I just feel that we were accepted. As related earlier in the historical context section of this study, desegregation surely did raise the curtain in St. Joseph for immediately following the desegregation ruling, blacks were allowed full access to theatres, the swimming pools, and most restaurants. The very last holdouts were, of course forced to surrender when the Fair Accommodations Ordinance was passed in 1963. Black Families

Black families in St. Joseph are certainly not monolithic in any characteristic one would use to describe them. However, there is a certain overall sense of black families here that comes from my experience which agrees strongly with the representation of his family offered by Mr. Henderson. I begin this gallery by drawing attention to the specific frame of Mr. Henderson and the family in which he was raised and will expand this gallery to include other frames.

Mr. Henderson and His Family

I made an appointment for ten o’clock and arrived on time at his house on the appointed day. After having confirmed the house number, I took some time looking at all the beautiful flowers which filled his yard and overflowed onto his front porch. He greeted me at the front door and invited me into his front room and offered me a place on a couch while he sat nearby in a loveseat. I complemented him on the beautiful woodwork, he thanked me and spoke some of how he was restoring various parts of the house. Then he asked, "How did you feel when you walked in? Did you feel welcome? Did the foyer and this room invite you in and make you feel comfortable?" I replied quite honestly that they did; I felt very comfortable and at home. We began work shortly on the interview but each took a short restroom break in the middle. To get to Mr. Henderson’s restroom, I passed through a formal dining room with a table set with service for eight. Mr. Henderson said that he was taught that you should always be prepared in case the minister or other company dropped by. He also told of how he and his brothers and sisters were up at seven o’clock on Saturday mornings to buff and polish the hardwood floors of their home. He spoke of how that home was open to neighbors when he was a kid growing up and how his folks raised all of their children to be self-reliant:

I’m sure that a lot of what we were taught was to protect us and to give us some kind of armor that when we get out in the real world, this is what you’re going to need for survival. Uh, we were taught, you know, to be self reliant. My dad, me and my brothers and sisters were required to cook a complete meal, from salad to desert, because Mom and Dad aren’t going to be here forever and you need to learn to do this. I remember making biscuits from scratch, pie dough from scratch. I mean they made everyone of us do that, to prepare us. The way my folks were, my granddad and everyone, and the neighborhoods we grew up in, and white families, we shared. I mean, . . . maybe it was because they were your neighbor, your backyards touched each other, but no one thought, "Well, (_____) is white, we don’t want him in our house." Mr. Henderson also related the strong influence his grandmother had upon his family: My grandmother was one of eight kids and she dropped out of school in the third grade. . . . But she dropped out in the third grade to take care of her brothers and sisters. She did ironing and laundry. But I can tell you that her requirements of her grandchildren were to speak standardized English, never in slang, and have good teeth. And she harped on that for ever and ever. I can also say, and, this is fallen by the way side I think, with many black families today, or at least the younger kids. Education was very important. You must be successful, you must get an education, you must do this, you must do this. So, maybe there wasn’t a conscious effort to discuss the political issues of desegregation. There was constant reminder, you must get an education to be successful. I can remember like, also, the thought just hit me, I remember one day I was sick. And I must have been in the third grade and a friend of Mom’s called and said, "Why are you home from school." And I said, you know, "I’m sick." I remember she said, "But you can’t be President of the United States if you don’t go to school." So, there were expectations placed on us to be successful, to get grades, to do this. It has been my experience that Mr. Henderson’s example is fairly typical of many black families in St. Joseph.

Employment

Mr. Henderson shared that the most common jobs for blacks in St. Joseph were in the service industry working, for well-to-do white people. He stated, "My dad and mom had to work. The good jobs for men and women in the ‘40s and ‘50s , you were a cook, a porter, a Pullman, or you were a maid. You were always a service industry for someone else." Mr. Johnson recalled how many of the black community worked as domestics but also how the beef and pork packing houses offered above average wages for many black families. Mr. Henderson agreed with this and said,

There were a lot of jobs at businesses in this city where a person with whatever high school diploma they had could come in there and work and make good money, and look at the homes, most of those families have nice homes. Because of good paying jobs, many of which were positions working closely for influential families as domestics, blacks in St. Joseph had much to lose if they spoke out. Mr. Henderson confided the kinds of things he overheard as a child as his parents talked about abuses that were suffered in silence: There is a, a thing growing up black communities as a kid, if adults were talking, you were dismissed. Uh, and there was none of this whining, "Mommy. Daddy." No, no. "Mom and Dad are doing this. You go play." Uh, I can hear, you can hear, in conversations, they would talk about "Old Miss So and So doing this; Miss So and So doing that." And they had to take it because that was their livelihood. I think even though we were taught not to take anything and to stand up for, I think there has probably been an element of black families that said, "Oh, we better, no, no we can't have that here." Although many blacks in St. Joseph worked as domestics, Mr. Goll, a local historian, reported that wealthy whites in St. Joseph always used to say their best colored help came from a small town about 35 miles from here. Mr. Goll reported, "It was generally known, or at least thought so by the more well to do whites, that the ‘best niggers’ came from Plattsburg. And the colored people of Plattsburg were proud of it too. They were hired as maids, cooks, chauffeurs and the like and were considered to be well-mannered harder workers than coloreds in St. Joseph." A Closed Community

A significant insight which emerged during the course of this study was that of the St. Joseph black community as a closed community in the years prior to and including 1953. Three distinct aspects of the black community contributed to a close knit society that shared common discourses: (a) the black population was very small; (b) many worked together in the packing houses or lived close to each other and thus, knew each other by name; and (c) the few black families in St. Joseph had intermarried for several generations and were interrelated families.

Mr. Watkins remarked that before about fifteen years ago, he could identify any black person he met as being a part of one specific family or another. To a person, all other interviewees agreed with this observation. With only four percent of the total population in 1950, members of the black community knew each other from church, work, and from living in three small and distinct parts of the town. In addition, blacks in St. Joseph married other blacks in St. Joseph. Mr. Henderson shared in an interview how this discovery was powerfully demonstrated during a visit with his family doctor:

When I was 10, I was hospitalized in old Sister’s Hospital because I was anemic and they ran tests on me. And I wondered about sickle cell anemia. So I asked the doctor. Because the black families in St. Joseph married other black families in St. Joseph there were no occurrences of sickle cell anemia here. Now, if there was anyone marrying outside, it would have been Plattsburg. You take that 40 mile radius and that would explain why black families, uh. There were black families in Maryville until the lynching. I mean, I’m amazed when people die and I read where they were born. Avenue City, Dekalb, wherever but when racial tensions got hot and heated, they moved into St. Joseph. So they all married each other. So what I guess I’m saying is this, I don’t see an accommodation attitude, but the black families were all church related, family related, so they were all supportive of each other. And there were also no outsiders to bring something different. You know, if you look at St. Louis, the great stopping off point for black families moving out of the South. So they brought in a lot of these animosities. Uh, my Granddad was third generation out of slavery, but how many of those families in Little Rock were descendents of direct slaves. You know, that grew up there now. We know St. Joseph and Buchanan County and Dekalb [a small town about 20 miles to the southwest] had slaves here. Now I’m just thinking that it was maybe a smooth transition because of the kinds of family people here, uh, that helped that. . . . I think that would help explain because, and he said as long as St. Joseph blacks had intermarried so much within families then that would explain. . . . So it would be like my sister marrying you but I would marry your cousin. . . . So what happened was brothers and sisters married other brothers and sisters or cousins, because I asked a doctor this, and this is real interesting. It was this insight which caused me to analyze the discourse which circulated among the members of this, for all intent and purposes, closed community and became the basis of the theory which emerged from the research.

Summary of the Interview Results

Before summarizing the experiences of my interviewees and the meanings attached to those experiences, I offer a review of the principal galleries visited by those I interviewed, along with a brief description of each. Whereas Table 2 summarizes the broad categories within which the responses of those interviewed seem to clump together, Table 3 summarizes the various experiences related by the interviewees and the meanings they attached to those experiences.

Table 2

Galleries with Descriptions

Gallery Name	Description

A Different Guidebook	ways in which the black participants viewed desegregation differently from members of the dominant people group
Transitions	factors that emerged from the study which contributed to the transition of black students from the segregated setting to the integrated one
Unwritten Rules	the unwritten rules of behavior which influenced the St. Joseph black community and were informally taught to their children
Black Families	the culture of the black families and factors which influenced the local black community’s response to desegregation

Table 3

Experiences and Meanings

Experience	Meaning

Bands & choirs absorbed into white schools	Lost culture, lost identity, lost prominence, lost cohesiveness, black talent used for white glory
Black older students and siblings	Advanced information, horror stories, encouragement from their presence
Black teacher input	Encouragement, nurturing, basics mastered, lowered aspirations, favoritism, communications with parents
Black teachers not integrated	Demoted, devalued, jobs saved
Brown court decision	Possibilities denied, rules and procedures only, token compliance
Bussing to white neighborhoods	One-sided suffering
Curriculum	Inadequately prepared, second class citizens
Desegregation	A raised curtain, access to public facilities, access to more options, a better education
Employment	Good income, communication with other blacks, silence required, comparison with other blacks
High school not accredited	Defrauded, not valued, not backed
Home/family	A safe place, protection, acceptance, pride, self-reliance
Experience	Meaning Attached to Experience
Instruments disappeared	Lost possessions, accomplishments diminished
Integrated school	Expanded options, production emphasis, beliefs of inferiority disproved
Lost school records	Forgotten and not valued
Name calling	Ties to historical context of inferiority
Parental advice	Overcome obstacles, resist racist definitions, be ready for disappointment, value education
School name misspelled	Second class citizens, culture not valued
Sports [males]	A place of retreat, a space already prepared, acceptance, a smooth transition, star status, camaraderie with white males, access to some previously restricted public facilities
Ways of behaving	Modeled by parents, unwritten, unspoken, not explicit, docile, kept off balance, not willing to risk, maintaining the status quo
White administrator input	Surveillance, place messages, restricted relationships with whites
White teacher input	Emphasis on production, personal responsibility, insensitivity, fairness

In the final chapter I develop the theory which emerged from both the results of the interviews and the historical research grounded in documents and records. True to the way in which a qualitative study is able to identify and relate those things which are unique to the people and place under investigation, my study revealed a set of interlocking ideologies, practices, and social and economic forces which contributed to both sides of the silence concerning desegregation in St. Joseph.