Divided we Fail Read Online Free PDF

and that the desegregation system should stay intact. Steve Porter sent subpoenas to the members of CEASE, and on February 18, the fourth day of the trial, he called Deborah Stallworth, Fran Thomas, Robert Douglas, and Carman Weathers to the stand. Gordon complained that they were “harassment witnesses,” but the judge ignored him.
    Stallworth, a middle-aged woman with soft features, was first up. Porter asked if there were other problems besides the quotas at Central for African American children in the school system.
    â€œThere’s a lot of problems in the treatment of African American students in the Jefferson County Public School system,” she replied. “The suspension rates are there, the high drop-out rates. The achievement gap that you have been talking quite a bit about here.”
    But she didn’t have a problem with Central becoming 100 percent black?
    â€œWhat I send my child to school for . . . is to get an education. I do not send him to be socialized.”
    Fran Thomas was called next. Her hair was white and short-cropped, but with her smooth skin and bright eyes she looked much younger than her seventy-two years.
    â€œWould it bother you if Central High School were a hundred percent black?” Porter asked her.
    â€œMr. Porter, I have no qualms about being black, being with blacks, associating with blacks,” she replied. “I have no qualms.”
    â€œWould it be good for the black community?” he asked.
    â€œI think it would present a positive force in the African American community,” she replied.
    He asked her about her perceptions of the top-performing high schools in the county, Male, Ballard, and Manual, which had the fewest numbers of African Americans.
    They are “elitist,” she said. “You have to already be where you are in order to get there.” Fairdale, in contrast, the high school in the South End where some of the worst violence had occurred during the days of busing, was still “racially-motivated against African Americans,” she said.
    â€œThere’s a history there, isn’t there?”
    â€œThere is a history there,” she replied.
    â€œWhy can’t you forget?”
    â€œI think I could forget if somehow or another that the Jefferson County public school system could erase race from their minds and take on the dream of Martin Luther King that one day we will be accepted for the contents of our minds and not by the color of our skin.”
    Did she believe racism still existed?
    â€œYes I do,” Fran said. She stood up, and returned to her seat in the audience.
    Carman stood up next. He still looked the part of a coach, with his rounded-out linebacker physique and bushy mustache.
    When Porter asked why he didn’t mind if Central became an all-black school, he was blunt. “One of the stresses that impacts on the cognitive ability of black children is racism. More black kids in a school, less racism. You don’t have to be a brain surgeon to figure that one out,” he said.
    â€œYou think white children are already taken care of—”
    â€œAlways,” Carman said.
    â€œâ€”because the system is white-controlled, white dominated?”
    â€œAlways in this country,” he said.
    â€œAnd white racism pretty much controls it?”
    â€œAlways in this country,” he said.
    â€œIn the Jefferson County public school system?”
    â€œI think white racism is a predominant factor anywhere you see white people,” Carman replied.
    Teddy stood up to try to salvage the day: “As far as you are aware, is the system unitary under the rulings of the court?”
    â€œIf by unitary, you mean Jefferson county has gotten rid of all its policies that lend themselves to a dual system, yes,” Carman replied.
    â€œDo you see any vestiges of by-law segregated schools?”
    â€œNo.”

Chapter 22
    Judge Heyburn was not interested in