Within the qualitative mode of research, a theory may be defined as "an integrated body of propositions, the derivation of which leads to explanation of some social phenomenon . . . [and gives] order and insight to what is, or can be, observed" (Denzin, 1978, p. 6). What follows is an overview of my theory which was grounded in both the historical record and the results of interviews with a sample of the black teachers and students who experienced desegregation in St. Joseph. My theory presents an explanation and insight into the silence which surrounded those experiences and the public account of desegregation. Following the overview, I will elaborate about the various parts of the theory and offer concluding remarks about the research in general. 

    It becomes clear, upon analysis, that the desegregation of the St. Joseph School District was not accomplished independent of its historical and sociological contexts but, instead, offers an opportunity for those settings and experiences to be unpacked and studied. For example, there is sufficient evidence garnered both from official records and reports and from interviews that refutes the message of the official account of desegregation presented in the video tape produced by the school district. Desegregation was effected neither quickly nor smoothly. This contradiction becomes especially clear if the perspective of the black former students who took part in the move from segregated schools to integrated ones is taken into consideration. Furthermore, archival and anecdotal evidence demonstrates a racist history in St. Joseph leading up to the time of desegregation and continuing beyond which belies the reported willingness of St. Joseph whites to fully extend the hand of brotherhood to their black brothers and sisters. Again, the sterilized account of St. Joseph desegregation offered by the video and some newspaper articles does not give a full account of the impact of desegregation upon black students, families and teachers and underlying issues of power and inequality. The emergent theory of my study however, does address these issues. My study revealed that the hegemony perpetuated by employers, businesses, and the school district of St. Joseph remained entrenched within the social structures and consciousness of the black community of St. Joseph until the time of desegregation as the result of two key factors. First, public discourses of accommodation and paternalism obfuscated racism and racist acts and made it difficult for the black community to name and overcome obstacles which impeded their progress. Second, hegemonic control was reinforced by social and economic structures within the black community that perpetuated supporting discourses. When they came together, members of the black community did not create what Greene (1988), referring to Arendt (1988), called a "sphere of freedom" (p. 3). Instead, the discourse shared within the black community reinforced their experiencing themselves as "overwhelmed by external circumstances, victimized, and powerless" (Greene, 1988, p. 3). As a result, they did not envision new social possibilities neither did they create spaces from which they could initiate transformative dialogue with white leaders. The social and economic structures which perpetuated a restrictive discourse originated in three interlocking factors: (a) a small black population in which everyone knew everyone else through work, church, or neighborhoods; (b) a closed community in which families had intermarried for decades, creating common family perspectives and discourses; and (c) dependence upon the good will of well-to-do white families in order to keep jobs that were seen as lucrative by black standards. However, there was a dialectic of freedom situated within desegregation in St. Joseph. 

    In contrast with the massive resistance raised by the south against desegregation (Banks, 1994; Bartley, 1969) and the struggles such as those played out at Central High School in Little Rock (Beals, 1994), the quiet desegregation of St. Joseph opened a space for the assimilation of black students into more of the dominant culture. Rather than continuing hegemonic control over ways of thinking and talking within the black community, desegregation "raised a curtain," as described by Mrs. Jenson in her interview. Black children found they could compete favorably against white children; became aware of more options available to them than they had ever imagined, including access to public facilities and services; and benefited from raised aspirations as they learned to produce within a dominant society driven by meritocracy. These advances were not apprehended without loss, however, as black teachers lost status and rank, the black community lost much of its arts, and past accomplishments were no longer recognized and honored. Furthermore, it is questionable whether any significant battles over racism were won. Desegregation in St. Joseph was smooth since it was implemented, without resistance, as an assimilation of black students into existing white structure rather than a move across a mutual border with whites into a new and hitherto unoccupied integrated space. 
 

    In the spring of 1954, while the St. Joseph newspaper was proclaiming a swift end to desegregation here, other towns and cities were developing into sites of open resistance and even violence. Brown v. the Board of Education (1954) became the focus of newspaper articles, political rallies, and discussions in homes around television sets throughout the South (Bartley, 1969). In Arkansas, Governor Orval Faubus and segregationist leaders made it clear they would not comply (Beals, 1994; Valentine, 1994). Indeed, as stated by McWhirter (1995), "Little Rock, Arkansas, became a symbol for both those who hoped to achieve integration and those who wished to avoid it" (p. 3). Although the black community in St. Joseph was somewhat isolated from other communities, they could not help but be affected by these events. In fact, three interviewees elaborated on how they either listened to the 1956 events in Little Rock on the radio or followed those struggles on television. For instance, Mr. Johnson shared the following: 

    I found the silence of the school board concerning race relations and the desegregation of the black schools to be an expression of hegemonic practices of silence and paternalism. The pervasive nature of hegemony discouraged a will for freedom and supported an ideology which valued the status quo. Before making an application of the concept of hegemony to the results of my study of desegregation in St. Joseph, I will lay a foundation of an understanding of the processes and effects of hegemony in general. 
 

    The mechanism which distributed and reinforced racism and made it difficult for St. Joseph blacks to name obstacles is what critical theorists term hegemony (Apple, 1993; Aronowitz & Giroux, 1993; Fine, 1991; Gore, 1993; Greene, 1988; McLaren, 1994). Hegemony is a term used to describe a mechanism of social, intellectual, and cultural power which implicates the oppressed in their own subjugation. McLaren (1994) defined hegemony as follows: 

    An advertising campaign may proclaim that having the whitest white clothes will insure success in life and claim that only Advance, the special whitener, will deliver. Newspaper ads, billboards, television commercials, and coupons in the mail may all bombard the target population with this most essential of messages. The power of such a campaign is not related to the content of the message. If required to stand on its own, the content would likely be rejected. If the claims were critically examined, the subjects might well ask why it is so important for our clothes to be the whitest of whites, if only Advance can deliver, and if white clothes do indeed contribute to success. Furthermore, they might begin to question what the ad is saying about those who wear slightly dingy clothes. In other words, the message may deliver not only overt proclamations of positive value but also covert judgement of negative value. However, it is not the content but the application of certain techniques which influence us. Once techniques are created that successfully influence the target audience, they are formalized into advertising practices. The resulting link becomes so well established in people’s thinking that the virtual connections are rarely challenged. The target audience may have gotten so used to the advertising practices that they long ago ceased to analyze the content or recognize them; they simply react, to some degree, mindlessly. Companies spend fortunes on such advertising practices because they work. 

    In a similar manner, public voice and official communications may be used as tools of hegemonic influence. Official communications may deliver both overt messages of dominance and covert messages defining inferiority and deviance. Such practices anchor and fix the ideology which flows through them and seek to overpower the subjects’ desire to critically analyze the ideology being supported and carried by the practices. It is specifically this ability of hegemony to attack and suppress the wills of the oppressed which results in silencing and which may make it appear as if the oppressed are unaware of their domination. However, they may be quite aware of such practices. Therefore, McLaren’s (1994) definition assumes a certain lack of insight or sensitivity to abuse on the part of the subordinate group. It is deficient in that it speaks from the dominant social group’s insensitivity to the weights which impinge upon the souls of the oppressed. The practices of hegemony may come as a great surprise to members of the dominant group but not so for the other. By way of illustration, I am reminded of a verbal exchange which took place in a graduate level class I attended a number of years ago. 

    A white teacher made a comment something to the effect that racial stereotypes and slurs which occurred in the media were often very subtle. She posited that people needed to be educated to think critically so as to discern such innuendoes. A young black assistant principal said, "Honey, from where I’m sitting, they’re not so subtle." This is reminiscent of what Fine (1991) referred to when she quoted Althusser (1971) to write, "The invisible is defined by the visible as its invisible" (p. 180). Perhaps the subtle, or unimportant, is defined to be so by the dominant social group but is not unimportant to those on the receiving end of inequity. Thus, the power to ignore and get away with it is the privilege of the ruling class. I prefer to palliate the assumptions of consensual cooperation with hegemony on the part of McLaren by adopting an adjustment to the definition offered by Fine. 

    Fine (1991), in her citing of Dale (1982), found that "the critical project for hegemony is not to instill consent, but merely to distribute justificatory beliefs which will not be rejected" (p. 202). Furthermore, Fine reported that hegemony is not static but changes in response to specific events so as to "assimilate potential alternatives" (p. 202). Fine’s definition of hegemony allows for unknowing consent but also leaves room for insight and understanding on the part of the targets of hegemony. Hegemonic practices may create such a strong system of interlocking beliefs, what Foucault (1980) called a regime of truth, that one does not know how to begin to untangle it and thus, is caught in its clutches despite an awareness of being snared. The lion may understand it is caged but still not know how to undo the latch. Indeed, Apple (1990) quoted William’s (1976) discussion of hegemony when he described hegemony as something that is "truly total, which is not merely secondary or superstructural . . . [it] saturates the society to such an extent . . . [it] constitutes the limit of commonsense for most people under its sway" (pp. 4, 5). Indeed, hegemony so tightly locks together the justifying beliefs that to oppose such a set of structures makes one appear irrational. Freire (1993) illuminated the way in which the oppressed may have, on one level, a submerged consciousness awareness of oppression yet be swayed by a conflicting consciousness of all that has been defined as normal and reinforced continually by members of the dominant social group. Since the oppressed carry around within them the dual consciousness of the oppressed and of the oppressor, any tendency to question and resist the status quo is internally perceived as deviant. However, to concede that the oppressed are aware of the domesticating messages being sent them is not to infer that they fully understand the interlocking aspects of hegemony which form the lock on the cage. To escape the cage, the oppressed need to rise above the submerged consciousness and turn on it by naming the practices, structures, and beliefs which hold them captive. In St. Joseph, blacks found this difficult to do since the school board maintained a silence which discouraged a critical discourse. 
 

    I found the two practices primarily used by the St. Joseph School Board in order to maintain a hegemonic influence over the black population were those of silence and accommodation. Both mechanisms effectively removed the board’s actions and attitudes from the public forum where they could have been critiqued and challenged. The school board rarely commented on issues of race or desegregation and thus, did not present a clear target for critique. It is more difficult to challenge that which is not said than what was said. In particular, the board managed official communications regarding race relations and desegregation by practicing a silence which mystified the processes of both segregation and desegregation and sent a message of power that threatened black teachers in particular. Jaworski (1993) referred to this kind of silence as "a major political tool for control and imposing the status quo" (p. 110). The silence of the school board was certainly evident in its minutes and its public dealings with the black community. 

    The St. Joseph School Board has a history of eschewing direct conflict with the black community over issues of race and segregated schooling by remaining silent. For example, an exhaustive search through all of the St. Joseph School Board minutes revealed a surprisingly few number of references to the "colored" schools for which they were responsible. From the first reference to the black schools in 1865 until the end of the desegregation of most of the schools in 1959, there are only five references of any substance to the black schools, teachers, or students, whereas references to white schools and personnel are common. It stretches one’s imagination to think there were no more than five issues related to the black schools that had to be addressed by the board over a span of close to a century. However, either that is the case or the board chose not to record their conversations and conclusions relevant to the black schools, teachers, and students. In the two accounts in school board minutes of representatives of the black community asking for a teacher to be fired; a principal disciplined; or for needed repairs to school buildings, the board made unilateral decisions without comment or elaboration. As another example, consider that black teachers and, as far as was known by the interviewees, black principals were not invited into the decision making processes of the board and were told only the very little that the board wanted them to know. In fact, the school board left only the slightest of trails concerning decisions made by them of political and social natures. The school board’s silence, maintained through the lack of formal pronouncements, position statements, or press releases effectively prevented the formation of critical dialogue. This silence served them well over many decades since, as stated by Freire (1993), "No oppressive order could permit the oppressed to begin to question: Why?" (p 67). However, hegemonic practices often work in consort with, and are supported by, structures that equally inhibit the freedom of the marginalized. 

    By law, segregation sorted white and black children into separate physical structures. Accordingly, there was a separation of teachers and administrators which supported hegemonic practices of silence and exclusion. The physical separation created a social barrier that required some degree of effort to surmount. Thus, from a privileged point of view, it made sense to list the "colored" schools not only separately in the yearly personnel directory, but last. This structure of separation was also used as a hegemonic structure to fix black administrators, students, and teachers in their difference (Pignatelli, 1993). Thus, for many decades each yearly bound report of the school district included a detailed report from the principal of the "colored" school but did not include any reports from white principals. In a similar fashion, the structure of separation supported a practice of difference that allowed white school administrators and teachers to largely dismiss the talents and achievements of black children and educators unless the difference served their purposes, as it did in sports. With the end of segregation, the structure of physical separation of black and white students ostensibly came to an end. However, as powerful as they were as tools of hegemony, silence and physical separation were not the only mechanism used by the school board to retain control over black students. The real coup de grâce used to protect school board interests and ensure a non-eventful desegregation was a technique of accommodation. 

    The school board did not resist desegregation, but instead, appropriated it and absorbed it into their purposes as elaborated upon more fully in chapter two. Desegregation in St. Joseph was smooth and immediate by decree, not in actuality. By quickly announcing that the schools would be immediately integrated, the school board used a technique of accommodation in order to remove obstacles against which the black community could exercise independence and critique. In actuality, as addressed earlier, St. Joseph desegregation spanned as many as ten years in its implementation, was violent in the way in which it discarded the achievements and culture of the black schools, and was demeaning and abusive in its treatment of black teachers. A specific example of the way in which accommodation was used as a technique of hegemony can be found by examining the way in which the school board bought the silence of the black teachers. The school board did not invite discussion from the black community regarding the disposition of the black instructors, but effectively blocked criticism from this educated segment of the black community by retaining the teachers on the payroll. Mrs. Stanton critically connected these two practices when she stated the following: 

    However, the fact that Mrs. Stanton was able to connect the management style of the school board with a possible loss of jobs, does not imply a holistic understanding of the mechanisms of hegemony so as to "emerge from it and turn upon it" (Freire, 1993, p. 33) for the submerged consciousness tends to see only fragments of the reality within which they are immersed (Freire, 1993, p. 85). In order to truly transcend the mind numbing power of hegemony a people must engage in a critical exercise of naming the obstacles which stand between themselves and "the vocation of becoming more human" (Freire, 1993, p. 26). The silence of the school board made it difficult to name obstacles while the accommodations of the school board made it difficult for the black community to speak out for fear of being labeled as ungrateful. One of my interviewees demonstrated the power of being able to name an obstacle as a result of my synthesized use of the hermeneutical approach of grounded theory and the transformative aims of critical theory. By adopting a recursive interview style, as explained in my methodology section, I was able to share critical information with Mr. Henderson that enabled him to name and elaborate upon the obstacle with which he was grappling. After my sharing with him the concept of hegemony, he was able to make new connections and create new meanings from his experiences and thus, produce a new knowledge that I would never have discovered on my own without this kind of dialogue. This interchange with Mr. Henderson served to illustrate the way in which hegemony not only resists penetration (Willis, 1977) but contributes to a stealing away of the voices of the oppressed. Thus, the silence of the school board regarding desegregation had its counterpart in the silence of the black community. 
 
 

    Several factors contributed to and supported the silence of the black community with respect to the way in which desegregation was accomplished in St. Joseph. An imbedded ideology of inferiority and silence supported a shared set of discourses which acted to further entrench the ideology. The discourses were reinforced and remained largely unquestioned due to three factors: (a) the small numbers of the black community threw them together often and enabled a common discourse to evolve, (b) members of the black community had intermarried within the community to such a degree that the discourses became family discourses, and (c) economic and social dependence upon powerful whites made it dangerous to question the status quo or to initiate a new set of challenging discourses. In the sections that follow, I will discuss each of these factors and tie them back to earlier results of the study. 
 

    McLaren (1994) described ideology as " the production and representation of ideas, values, and beliefs and the manner in which they are expressed and lived out by both individuals and groups. . . . the production of sense and meaning" (p. 184). Fine (1991) stated that ideology "pervades what happens and what doesn't, what is said and not, what is noticed and obscured" (p. 180) and cited Belsey's description of ideology by way of drawing out both the real and imaginary components of ideology: 

    The tight management of discourse which emanated from white administrators and the school board, and the discourses which circulated within the black community up to and including desegregation as an event from 1953 through 1959 reinforced a regime of truth which located all the power in the school board. Furthermore, the discourses which circulated among the black community supported this regime of truth by being historically situated in social structures shaped by slavery, the way in which the black community was closed, and economic factors. What follows is a closer look at the discourses among the black community that supported an ideology of inferiority and silence regarding schooling. 
 

    In a manner similar to the way in which power cannot be claimed as the exclusive property of any one agency but may circulate from one to another (Foucault, 1980), hopelessness and the impediments to praxis may also circulate throughout a community, spread and supported by discourses which disempower and stifle possibilities. My study revealed such discourses that circulated throughout the black community during the time preceding and immediately following desegregation. These were expressions of a deep-seated ideology and not only originated from the ideology but operated in support of that ideology in such a way as to form a strong regime of truth which resisted penetration (MacLeod, 1987). These discourses operated in such a way as to discourage border approaches and border crossings. They served to reinforce a central tendency, a movement away from the conflict that is typical of borders and into the heart of segregation. In particular, these discourses supported hegemonic maintenance of the borders by denying clear knowledge of ground which could have been contested, what Foucault (1980) termed, "the power of the knowledge of the truth" (p. 34) and by exercising control over bodies through "strategies of space" (Foucault, 1980, p. 63). Discourses of this kind that originated within the black community, as illuminated by my study, included the following: (a) "That is just not done," (b) "It is not our place to question," (c) "Look how much better we have it here," and (d) "Thank goodness they saved our jobs." What follows is a deeper look at each of these discourses. 
 
 

A Discipline of Bodies/A Strategy of Space: "That is just not done"
 

    The discourse of, "That is just not done." operated so as to discipline bodies, primarily through "forms of domination designated by such notions as field, region and territory" (Foucault, 1980, p. 69). For example, many of the interviewees related the way in which they knew as children where they could and could not go simply by following the examples of their parents and that of older adults. Most revealing is the fact that they were never clearly told why things were that way, and what they may be able to do about those things. If they raised a question about restrictive practices, they were told, "That is just not done." This discourse was not liberatory knowledge of the borders, the kind of knowledge that might invite movement and critique, but was a normalizing statement backed up by a child’s acceptance of parental wisdom and authority. As such, this discourse strongly supported a regime of truth of restricted knowledge and border avoidance which contributed to silence from the black community. As elaborated by Mr. Johnson, "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." A few of the examples of behavior supported by this discourse given in interviews included: (a) what theaters they could attend, where they had to sit, and what movement was allowed inside the theater; (b) where to sit on the bus; (c) which restaurants would allow them to order takeout, which would allow sitting on stools, and the ones they should never enter; (d) where and the degree to which they could demonstrate friendship with whites; and (e) what drug stores and other public places needed to be avoided and which ones could be patronized. Most revealing of all the interviews on this account was that of Mrs. Stanton who verbalized the way in which these geographical restrictions on their bodies had a dampening and demoralizing effect upon blacks so that they often did not test the borders but withdrew from conflict. As Mrs. Stanton said, "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." However, there are spaces other than those which were geographical; there were also public spaces which should have been open to question but were not. The next discourse which supported black silence has to do with questioning. 
 
 

A Language of Acceptance: "It is not our place to question"
 

    In a similar fashion to the way in which the first discourse contributed to disciplinary power over bodies in order to move them back from the borders, the discourse of, "It is not our place to question," served to prohibit a language of critique and perpetuate a "discourse of domination" (Aronowitz & Giroux, 1993, p. 17 ). Again, both through the application of this discourse and the supporting modeling of their parents, the younger black community learned to accept the status quo. For example, many interviewed gave examples of the way in which this discourse normalized for them the following: (a) that they had to accept racist acts and not complain but act as if it did not hurt or bother them; (b) that white or black school authorities could not be questioned, and (c) that a dearth of information of events which directly impacted their lives was normal. Since their discourse did not break through to a language of critique, they were kept from exercising a language of possibilities (Aronowitz & Giroux, 1993). In addition to a language which accepted the status quo, discourse also centered around a fear of risk, as addressed in the next discourse which circulated through the black community. 
 
 

A Language of Fear: "Look how much better we have it here"
 

    The opposite of "The grass is greener on the other side." this discourse encouraged fear of loss should one test the border. Green grass discourse encourages one to investigate the other side of the border, to be willing to risk something for a better life. However, "Look how much better we have it here" is a silencing discourse which encourages movement, again, to the center of segregation so as to protect the status quo. Mr. Johnson related how this discourse was used to inform the attitudes and responses of the St. Joseph black community as they reacted to viewing desegregation efforts elsewhere on television. An alternative discourse could have been something to the effect that "In comparison, we have it pretty good here but it can be better." If this discourse tends to encourage dependency upon the dominant social group, the next one does so to an even greater degree for it assumes the economic well being of the black community is solely in the hands of whites. 
 
 

A Language of Dependency: "Thank goodness they saved our jobs"
 
 

    A discourse very related to the one above was that of, "Thank goodness they saved our jobs." Implied in this discourse is the normalcy of dependency. Although this discourse could be broadened to include many of the black community who were working for the more wealthy white business and civic leaders, it was especially tied to the black teachers by the interviewees. It is certainly understandable that the black teachers would not have wanted to lose their jobs. It is also understandable that they were happy that they did not lose their jobs, although most were demoted as reported by Mrs. Stanton and Mr. Henderson. However, the discourse could have been one of critique and of future possibilities. That was unlikely in St. Joseph because these discourses had been circulating among the black community virtually unchallenged for some time. Three interrelated factors contributed to the ways in which these negative discourses freely circulated and exerted influence within the black community: (a) a small black population in which everyone knew everyone else through work, church, or neighborhoods; (b) a closed community in which families had intermarried for decades, creating common family perspectives and discourses; and (c) dependence upon the good will of well-to-do white families in order to keep jobs that were seen as lucrative by black standards. 
 

    During the time period of my study, 1953 through 1959, the black community numbered only about 4 percent of the entire population of St. Joseph; 3,120 out of a total population of 78,588 were reported at the 1950 census. Most of the members of that community were located in three clearly defined neighborhoods in which they had contact with each other as neighbors and, quite often, fellow church members. Furthermore, many were employed in the packing houses and knew each other at the workplace. Therefore, discourses within the black community were not limited by great numbers or great distances. Moreover, their small numbers did little to embolden members of the black community. Many of those interviewed, when commenting about how they tolerated racism, volunteered the way in which they felt disempowered by their small numbers. One interviewee told of how it was a constant reminder to him of his minority status to be in a theater or a restaurant and find that he and his wife were the only blacks in attendance. Recall also how Mr. Watkins commented on how much it encouraged him whenever he saw another black student in the halls at high school. Thus, the small black population, along with the corresponding small numbers of black students, may have encouraged the white administration to continue practices of silencing and ignoring as one of two means of managing the merging of black students into previously all-white schools so that the transition would be smooth and not threaten existing power structures. Small numbers meant students could be distributed to several schools, then to several grades and finally, several classrooms. And it is easier to ignore a small number of students without it being obvious or blatantly racist. Ignoring not only removes the subject from the center stage of attention and power, but also sends a strong message of inferiority. Both Mrs. Stanton and Mrs. Onstett commented greatly upon the way in which black school culture that had flourished in the segregated schools was ignored in the desegregated setting. For example, students who had participated in major roles in plays, bands, and operettas were relegated to stage hand positions and lesser roles in cultural events in desegregated schools. Mrs. Onstett was especially appalled that all of the black schools’ accomplishments were discarded as if they had never been. She also told of cherished band instruments that disappeared and was perplexed at what might have happened to them. I cannot prove it but suspect that they would never been sent directly to a local, predominantly white school because of the anathema of the intimate contact of the black children with those instruments. 

    The other means by which school administrators used the small numbers of the black students in order to manage desegregation by silencing was alluded to above. In addition to distributing black students to many schools, certainly an arrangement which also can be argued to have merit, school administrators "time-released" the black students to desegregated settings. During the 1953-54 school year, 328 black males and 288 black females were enrolled in the segregated schools for a total of 616 black students. Of these students, the smaller number of black high school students were immediately distributed to the three white high schools beginning with summer school and the Fall of 1954. However, black elementary students were not sent to white schools at the same time. I have in my possession a copy of a letter from Assistant Superintendent in Charge of Instruction Coleman (personal communication, July 5, 1955) to the Superintendent of the St. Joseph School District. The letter is a five page plan for relocation of the black students enrolled at Lincoln and Douglass schools for the 1955-56 school year. By 1964, black students had been distributed from their segregated schools to 25 of the 35 elementary schools and to all three of the high schools, except for Horace Mann which was still all black ("Negro Students Now Enrolled," 1964). This information certainly belies claims of a quick desegregation of schools but also strongly suggests the district administrators attempted to continue hegemonic control over black students through silencing by ignoring them and by controlling their concentrations in the previously white schools. Although a small population was one factor that supported restrictive discourses among the black students and the larger black community, I will show later how desegregation overcame these discourses and offered a language of hope and possibilities (Aronowitz & Giroux, 1993). Ways in which members of the black community were related and shared family traditions and values was another factor that supported negative discourses that restricted the black community, as I demonstrate in the next section. 

    As I began my interviews, I was not surprised that all of those I interviewed stated that they knew most every other black family in the city. I knew that was the case from my childhood experiences but had never thought much about it. What did surprise me was to find that most all of the St. Joseph black families of the time period of my study were related by marriages. Therefore, they not only lived in close proximity to each other, but also were tied together as families and through the discourses which circulate through families. All black interviewees confirmed Mr. Henderson’s observation regarding the inter-marrying which spanned several generations within the St. Joseph black community. Mr. Brown, for instance, related how he began genealogical research as an adult only to find that one of the girls he had grown up with in his neighborhood was related to him as a distant cousin. Mr. Henderson’s observation that many black families in surrounding towns moved into St. Joseph either as a result of more overt racism or for job opportunities was also supported by those I interviewed in the final stages of my research as I confirmed the theory which had emerged. Therefore, even if blacks had chosen spouses from neighboring towns, the families often ended up together in St. Joseph, continuing to intermarry. Before my theory emerged and before I learned of the way in which blacks in St. Joseph are interrelated, I had dropped my survey from my research. The survey did little to inform my research because almost all of the interviewees answered the items the same. It was only later that I realized that a common set of family, neighborhood, and work discourses contributed strongly to these results. 

    Another piece of supporting evidence that a common discourse circulated among these families emerged from a study of newspaper interviews about racism. Newspaper interviews of 1989, 1994, and 1998 revealed that blacks that were interviewed used very similar terminology and examples to describe racism in St. Joseph. For instance, all three series of articles quoted interviewees as using the word subtle to describe racist acts and attitudes. In addition, in all three reports those interviewed used similar phrases in describing examples of surveillance, being followed by store clerks and unfair practices in schools. Such consistency over time suggested a supporting ideology and set of discourses which maintained both the circulation and the content of that which was reported. It makes sense to think that the kind of discourse discussed earlier in this study could circulate and be maintained in a small black community in which many, if not most, are related by marriage. The one outsider that I interviewed stated that the black community here thought and acted alike, characteristics she saw as having contributed directly to the silence among the black community about their struggles against racism. A counterexample to my proposal that the degree of relatedness of the black community was a factor which supported an ideology of silence and maintenance of the status quo is also available for scrutiny. There was one member of the black community who has been unquestionably the local leader for civil rights. She challenged unfair laws and practices and truly made a difference for all blacks in St. Joseph. However, she was not a native of St. Joseph; she accompanied her husband, a very successful professional, when he moved his practice to St. Joseph many years ago. Her status as an outsider with perspectives which differed from local blacks was a fact noted in the St. Joseph newspaper as significant (Newton, 1998). However, in addition to the small population and the degree to which they interrelated and intermarried, economic dependence within a debilitating social structure contributed to a discourse which was domesticated and well behaved. 
 

    In the window of time of my study, namely 1953 through 1959, St. Joseph was blessed with a thriving economy that was firmly grounded on two economic pillars. From the frontier days of Missouri until the late 1960s, St. Joseph was a bustling center of wholesale houses and factories. As companies headquartered in St. Joseph sent their goods to all parts of the United States and abroad, they generated great wealth, the kind of wealth that begs for maids, gardeners, and handy men. These positions were, for the most part, filled by members of the black community at merely adequate wages. Almost every single interviewee had at least one family member who had worked as a domestic in a wealthy white person’s home. Most were maids or did laundry. Thus, the economic foundations for most black families were tied to historical roots with slavery. Wells and Crain (1997) quoted Hochschild (1984) when they wrote of how, "American society as we know it exists only because of its foundation in racially-based slavery" (p. 7). However, it was the meat packing industry which provided well for many black men and women for the window of time following World War II through the middle 60s. Three major meat packing companies in St. Joseph hired blacks on an equal basis with whites. For this reason, black workers in St. Joseph during the time frame noted above experienced a low unemployment rate and were well paid in comparison to blacks in many other communities. Therefore, they had something to lose. Most black families were highly dependent economically upon the good will of their white employers. Whether working closely with white families as a domestic worker or working in the packing houses, blacks in St. Joseph enjoyed an economic security that made it difficult for them to challenge the status quo and risk good incomes. Taken together, the three factors stated above supported a set of discourses and the underlying ideology of inferiority and place which implicated the black community, in part, in the hegemony practiced by the school board and its white leadership. The ideology and supporting discourses stifled the imagination for freedom for, as stated by Aronowitz and Giroux (1993), "We invent a language of possibility that proposes extensive philosophic and programmatic changes . . . only if we can imagine a public sphere within which alternatives are seriously considered" (p. 24). The history of the black community’s dependence upon the perceived beneficence of the white community made it difficult for them to imagine democratic spaces beyond positions of service and servitude and to generate a language of possibility. Even though the black community did not engage in an aggressive challenge to the white school board leadership over the issue of desegregation, they were able to move into more democratic spaces as the result of desegregation. My next section explores the dialectics of freedom surrounding desegregation in St. Joseph and points to contradictory outcomes to those which might have been initially envisioned by the school board. 
 

    I found that, although desegregation was addressed immediately by the local white leadership and was presented to the public as an event that was executed quickly and fairly, it was accomplished in a manner consistent with the St. Joseph School Board’s history of hegemonic influence over the black community. Representatives from the black community were not invited into planning sessions and were not even informed of plans to integrate. Instead, parents were sent notices of registration locations for the next school year and black principals were left with the task of passing on scant information to their staffs. Black teachers and principals, with the exception of four elementary teachers, were reassigned or held until retirement in segregated schools, a practice common in other parts of the state as well (Wells & Crain, 1997). The full integration of the public schools was not accomplished until after 1964, and even then, schools in poor neighborhoods were attended by the majority of the black children whereas some of the more nicely appointed schools remained all white. The black community had been conditioned to second-class citizenry and did not demand a voice in the process of desegregation but accepted domination as a given. Maxine Greene (1988) wrote the following about the blinding effect that comes from such acquiescence: 

    However, there was another side to what seems to be a one-sided exercise of power on the part of the school board. For instance, Sawicki (1991) quoted Foucault as having stated, "Where there is power, there is resistance. . . . as soon as there’s a relation of power there’s a possibility of resistance. We’re never trapped by power: it’s always possible to modify its hold" (pp. 24, 25). So it was with the hegemony practiced by the school board. Although the school board practiced a silencing which precluded a democratic dialogue with the black community, and there also existed a discourse within the black community which supported their domination, there were also the beginnings of a discourse of hope and possibilities (Aronowitz & Giroux, 1993). Discourse can loosen the grip of a prevailing ideology and dismantle power relationships as addressed by Sawicki (1991) when she quoted Foucault (1978) as having written, "It is in discourse that power and knowledge come together. . . . Discourse transmits and produces power; it reinforces it, but also undermines and exposes it, renders it fragile and makes it possible to thwart it" (p. 56). Thus, rather than a continuation of the silencing that both preceded desegregation and that extended into its implementation, the integration of black students and white students "raised a curtain" for black students and parents. As a result of desegregation, black students and parents had their eyes opened to a new set of possibilities and the givens of their earlier social status were challenged. Desegregation allowed blacks to see both the larger school world in St. Joseph and themselves in a new light. Although examples were many throughout my interviews, I will choose a few to illustrate my point. 

    Mr. Johnson spoke eloquently of the dramatic effect it had upon him to compete with white students academically and athletically and to find that he was not only not inferior but often superior to them: 

    Mrs. Jenson also commented on the revelatory nature of competing with white children. This competition broke the bonds of inferiority she felt prior to attending an integrated school. She shared the following insight: 

    It seems to me that the blacks in St. Joseph, taken as a community, lost much through desegregation. As I pointed out earlier, black students were absorbed as a group and much of their distinct cultural forms were devalued and discarded. The distinctiveness of their plays, music recitals, and band performances were lost and subsumed into a white culture. Accomplishments of their black teachers and the close relationships between the black teachers and parents were lost. As indicated above, the mindset of black students was also affected to embrace the achievement ideology and the importance of material production over other human products such as relationships. However, when I look at the black individuals that participated in my study, it seems that each of them won and that at least some of the intents of hegemonic control were subverted. My subjects were strongly influenced by desegregation. They came to see themselves as equals to whites and discovered new democratic and public spaces that were open to them as a result of desegregation. Although I did not select my interviewees based upon their personal success, all of them are successful, confident individuals who are well able to understand and articulate where they were in their thinking prior to desegregation and how their thinking and self-concepts have changed since that time. Most of those I interviewed hold degrees, with one possessing a Ph.D. Indeed, Wells and Crain (1997) cite research studies that have concluded that blacks who attended desegregated schools have raised aspirations and higher rates of achievement than those who did not. Greene (1988) wrote that people do not "reach out for fulfillment if they do not feel impeded somehow" (p. 5). The St. Joseph school board did not allow desegregation to be an obstacle to the black community as a whole, so the community was not able to name desegregation as an obstacle and grow accordingly as a community. However, the obstacles of socially embedded racism still existed in the schools for individual black students and thus, they grew as they named the various manifestations of this obstacle and engaged in a discourse with family and friends about ways to manage and overcome personal threats. Furthermore, since the school district managed both the public perception of desegregation and the rate of distribution of black students into previously white schools, black students were peacefully integrated into the system. However, there are two operational definitions of what it means to be integrated. 

    The popular definition of integration makes little or no distinction between desegregation and integration. This definition certainly includes the kind of desegregation experienced by the blacks in St. Joseph namely, an absorption of black culture, talent, and interests into the larger dominant culture. This is not the kind of integration envisioned by psychologist Dr. Kenneth Clark whose testimony was a pivotal part of the Supreme Court’s Brown v. the Board of Education (1954). For instance, Clark (1992) reported how Thurgood Marshall and other colleagues were overjoyed about the decision reached at Brown and how they all felt it was a turning point, not only for blacks but also for whites. Clark felt that whites suffered from a moral schizophrenia that damaged them as well as blacks and that desegregation would heal wounds on both sides. Clark came to see that "what we didn’t take into account was that there was a point beyond which whites were not going to take this" (p. 336). Bennett (1992) spoke to this deficient model of integration when he wrote the following: 

    One area of research which drew my attention but which I had to forego was that of gender differences related to the success of black students in newly integrated schools in St. Joseph. Black males typically pointed to athletics as a mitigating factor that helped them to find a place and become integrated with white students. However, girls’ sports were not developed in the middle to late 1950s so there did not seem to exist a similar point of entry for young black females. In addition, Mrs. Jenson said that black females tended to leave school early anyway. She would not comment further on that matter. 

    Another avenue of research which could be pursued is related to the aspirations and achievements of black students in St. Joseph from the time of desegregation to the present. It appears that the raising of the curtain of segregation, described in different words by some of the participants of my study, may have provided a special impetus for some of the blacks that moved from segregated to integrated schools. Although they faced many challenges in making such a move, some of them pressed through to become highly successful individuals. It would be interesting to investigate if the students who followed, lacking such a clear set of both challenges and opportunities, achieved comparable levels of success. 

    Grounded theory is intimidating. For much of the study I was plagued with the question of whether a theory would really emerge or not. Many is the time I wished I had chosen a more traditional quantitative study in which the theory is known and provides direction for the research. There is comfort in the surety that if one has chosen the theory wisely and proceeds along proven quantitative paths, there will be reportable results. However, there is a lasting satisfaction that comes from writing a qualitative report; it is the joy of having made new friends and acquaintances and of having gone through a major project together. I have visited with many doctors who successfully completed their dissertations but who were so burned out over the process that they did not wish to discuss their results or revisit their dissertations. I purposed from the beginning that I did not want that to happen to me; I wanted my dissertation to be about people. I wanted to know my subjects and to feel a close bond with them so that rereading my dissertation could be a way to renew acquaintances and see their faces once again. I got what I wanted. The black participants that were the focus of this study are dear to me as co-participators in a social critique of desegregation in St. Joseph. I would not have it any other way.