Darker Aspects

 

"Wit & Wisdom," an English language arts curriculum, has been widely criticized in recent weeks by Williamson County parents.... Arguments against the curriculum fall into two buckets. The first being the belief that "Wit & Wisdom" content isn't appropriate for younger students, and the second being that the curriculum teaches concepts of critical race theory.

Community members and local advocacy organizations have come forward in disapproval of books like "Ruby Bridges Goes to School," "Separate is Never Equal," and "George vs. George," their argument being that teaching about the darker aspects of racism in United States history isn't appropriate in elementary grades. 

One of the most vocal groups has been the Williamson County chapter of Moms for Liberty started earlier this year. The group includes members with children in and outside of Williamson County Schools. [Moms for Liberty head Robin Steenman] said she disapproves of guidance for teachers to teach words like "injustice," "unequal," "inequality," "protest," "marching" and "segregation" in grammar lessons.

—Anika Exum, Nashville Tennesseean, 11 June 2021

Long, long ago, there was a kindly, Republican chief justice called Earl Warren, and one day he heard that some people in Topeka were not judging children by the content of their character. Not in Tennessee! Topeka is in Kansas.

It was true. In those days there were schools in America where there were no African American children! This is hard for you to imagine, since schools in America are not like that now, except if your Mom for Liberty schools you at home or a special religious liberty school or if you don't have a lot of African American people in your neighborhood for some reason. Some people have a shortage of African American children in their neighborhood! That has nothing to do with your parents or their mortgage broker!

But in Topeka there were enough African American children, and yet things just weren't working out. One African American third grader, Linda Brown, had to walk six blocks every morning to catch a school bus to a school a mile away even though there was a good school right there in their own neighborhood, with no African American children at all! Nobody knows why, but it certainly wasn't very convenient for those children. 

Fortunately Chief Justice Warren saw this was a problem, and quickly fixed it, just four short years later, when Linda was in seventh grade, in a case called Brown v. Board of Education. Which just goes to show how great America is.  There's no problem too tough for us to solve!

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But only a few short years after that, there was a high school, Central High School in Little Rock, that some African American students wanted to go to. Not in Tennessee! Little Rock is in Arkansas. And Democrat governor Orville Faubus was worried.

You see, he wasn't very sure about the content of their character. And lots of parents from the high school were concerned about it too! Character content is a delicate thing. Their own children might get their character content spoiled if they had too much contact with the wrong sort of people. In fact, the more they thought about it the more concerned they were, and finally they decided  that when school opened up for the fall that September they would mosey over to Central High and explain to the African American students that it would be better for them to choose a different high school more appropriate to their own character.

Governor Faubus mostly cared about peace. Even though he was a Democrat, he hated conflict. He feared that if there was too much moseying around the high school, with African American teenagers wanting to study there and townsfolk concerned with the content of their character, there could be shouting, and other kinds of bad behavior, and people might say things they would regret and feel bad about. But the law said the African Americans had to be allowed to go to Central High if they wanted to, ever since that Brown vs. Board of Education! What was he to do?

So he decided that the African American students should probably go to some different high school and called up 289 Arkansas National Guardsmen to stop them from entering the Central High building because of the imminent danger of tumult, riot, and breach of peace and the doing of violence to persons and property. It seemed like the only reasonable possibility.

And at first it seemed to work out fine, the nine African American students were successfully kept outside, and the tumult, riot, and breach of peace were held at bay, and every day fewer and fewer National Guardsmen seemed necessary, but at last, after about three weeks, when the school was only being guarded by some local cops, the nine managed to get in and had to be escorted out while a crowd of a thousand townsfolk gathered.

By this point even Republican President Eisenhower was concerned. So he decided to try something completely different! He called up 1000 Arkansas National Guardsmen into federal service along with members of the 101st Airborne Division to let the nine African American students into the building instead of keeping them out. Strangely enough, this eccentric approach seemed to do the trick, after only about eight months of constant vigilance. And time heals all wounds!

[editorial interpolation:

As Alana Semuels wrote for The Atlantic in 2016, the fight over segregation in Little Rock’s public-school system looks different now than it did in 1957. It’s not a question of whether students of different races can go to school with one another, but whether they ever will. “What’s stunning about today’s methods of avoiding integration is that they are, by and large, legal, but they nevertheless leave black students stuck in schools that are separate and unequal,” Semuels wrote. The students south of I-630 are still left with less. (Adam Harris, Atlantic, 22 October 2019)

We now return to our regularly scheduled program.]

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And only another three years after that, Ruby Bridges became the first African American to join a first-grade class in her school in New Orleans, which is also not in Tennessee. Newspaper reporters and photographers followed her and crowds of happy people lined the streets, shouting,  "Go for it, Ruby!" or words to that effect, probably. I'm not sure what they actually said. She wore the most beautiful white dress! The people were so proud of her that four tall U.S. marshals walked by her side!

It was an unforgettable moment of pride for all Americans as we learned once again the power of compromise, when people of good will come together to make things right.