Link to article in the Omaha World Herald.
Quote:
LINCOLN - Racism continues to pervade U.S. education 50 years after the U.S. Supreme Court's landmark school desegregation decision, Brown v. Board of Education, one of the "Little Rock Nine" said Monday.
Terrence Roberts, who in September 1957 was a 15-year-old high school junior, was one of nine black students who braved white mobs to attend Little Rock Central High School. Roberts and the others volunteered to become the first black students to attend the school following the court's 1954 decision.
"We were there to go to school," Roberts said Monday. "We weren't there to integrate; we weren't there to desegregate; we weren't there to provide black bodies to sit in desks next to white bodies. We were there to educate ourselves."
Roberts spoke at the Law Day luncheon hosted by the Nebraska State Bar Foundation and the Nebraska Supreme Court. His appearance was underwritten by the Robert J. Kutak Foundation.
Speaking before an audience of about 150, including six teenage winners of the Law Day essay contest, Roberts told of a horrific year. He said white students put him in fear of his life as they tried to drive him and the other black students from the school.
"I learned about fear that year," he said.
Roberts now holds a doctorate in psychology and is co-chairman of the master's in psychology program at Antioch University. He speaks with pride and bleak humor about his experiences at Central High School.
Nebraska Chief Justice John Hendry asked Roberts to grade racial equality in the schools today.
"An F, without hesitation," he said. "We have failed miserably. We have lacked the will and the commitment to bring about real change."
Roberts said courts have been unwilling to take up educational access cases, unless they are brought by white men claiming reverse discrimination. Meanwhile, he said, well-to-do white families enroll their children in private schools or move to all-white enclaves, while public schools increasingly become dominated by minority children.
Roberts said Little Rock Central High's enrollment now is more than 90 percent black and Hispanic.
"We are a country that believes in mythology," he said. "The myth is that the issue has been settled because Brown versus Board of Education was passed."
President Eisenhower had to call out 1,000 troops from the 101st Airborne Division to get the students into school after Arkansas Gov. Orval Faubus summoned the Arkansas National Guard to keep them out.
Roberts said one white boy - his personal tormentor - followed him around, hitting, kicking and cursing him. Roberts said he was threatened with a baseball bat and beaned with a padlock in a locker room. He said he was afraid to call his mother; he knew she lived in fear of getting a phone call telling her that he'd been killed.
A few years ago, Roberts said, he ran into a former schoolmate at an airport. The man tearfully told him that he'd always regretted not coming to the assistance of the black students.
"'I did nothing, I sat on my hands,'" Roberts quoted the man as saying.
In that way, that man suffered more pain and agony than if he had helped, Roberts said.
"It would've hurt - they would have beaten him up," Roberts said. "But he wouldn't still be feeling the pain all these years later."
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When I first read this, this morning, I wanted to call bullshit. However, after thinking about it for a minute, I began to see that Mr. Roberts may have a very valid point. Although we have made some tremendous strides in race relations, and make no mistake, we have come a long way since Selma and Birmingham, we still have a hell of a long way to go. As I sit here, contemplating Terrence Roberts' remarks regarding the "all-white enclaves", and the private schools, I have no choice but to concede that the man has a very valid point. Even here in the heartland of the good ol' US of A, Omaha, we have pseudo-affluent white families flocking to the western suburbs, with their gated communities, as Muslims to Meca.
We are only two, maybe three, generations removed from segregation. Since most of you are...*ahem*...younger...I'm interested in hearing your take on racial equality
as it applies to education. If this discussion deviates far from that point, I'll kill the thread where it is. I don't want this devolving into another "African-American" thread. (mine also, by the way) So, with that in mind, let's discuss racial equality in education over the past...what...50 years, where we are now, where we are going, and where we
need to go, in the future.