Apparently, BlackAmericaWeb.com is doing a five-part series on the 50th anniversary of the Little Rock Central High School history. Here is Part 1:



50 Years After Little Rock, Part One: Retelling, Revisiting and Reliving the Crisis at Central High

Date: Monday, September 24, 2007
By: Jackie Jones, BlackAmericaWeb.com

Fifty years after nine black students broke the color barrier at Little Rock Central High School, there remain two schools in the building, separate and unequal. The black students, for the most part, are underperforming, have little hope beyond finishing high school and are in largely segregated classes while the white students largely populate advanced placement (AP) classes, live in nicer sections of town with more affluent parents, and, if they feel any pressure at all, it is to see how far they can succeed, not whether they will.

The school is the subject of a documentary, “Little Rock Central: 50 Years Later,” that will air Tuesday on HBO at 8 p.m. There are a few bright spots in the story. The student body president is a black male. Unlike most of the black students at the school, however, he is growing up in a mostly white, affluent community. There are a couple of black females in AP classes, one of them from a more economically depressed part of town, who looks at education as her ticket to a better life.

For three weeks in September 1957, Little Rock was the focus of a showdown over integration as Gov. Orval Faubus blocked nine black students from enrolling at a high school with about 2,000 white students. Although the U.S. Supreme Court had declared segregated classrooms unconstitutional in 1954 -- and the Little Rock School Board had voted to integrate -- Faubus said he feared violence if the races mixed in a public school.

The showdown soon became a test for then-President Dwight D. Eisenhower, who sent members of the Army's 101st Airborne Division in to control the angry crowds.

This week, the Little Rock Nine will help the city observe the 50th anniversary of Central High School's integration with a series of events culminating with a ceremony featuring former President Bill Clinton, who declared the school a historical landmark during his presidency. Central is now the only school in the country designated as a landmark and under the jurisdiction of the National Park Service.

A federal judge ruled this year that Little ROck's 27,000-student district was unitary, or substantially integrated, and ordered the end of federal desegregation monitoring. The school now has a nearby museum for the Little Rock crisis, and statues of the nine brave students stand on the grounds of the state Capitol.

Still, there is a great deal of division and turmoil at the school, which essentially operates as two separate institutions.

The school has received a lot of money and resources over the years because of its place in history. In fact, many of the white students attend because Little Rock Central is among the top 20 schools in the country with strong advance placement programs. Students who do well at the school go on to Ivy League universities and other prestigious colleges. But “Little Rock Central: 50 Years Later" revealed that students tend to segregate themselves in groups of black and white, and each group sees its members’ lives as very separate from the other group. Some of the white students said many of the black students were indifferent to education, while some of the black students said white students don’t appreciate the challenges black children face and that white children are guaranteed a big head start in life on the basis of race.

“We didn’t know exactly what this film would be about,” said Brent Renaud, who with his brother Craig, filmed the documentary.

The brothers, who are white, were raised in Little Rock. Craig attended Little Rock Central, while Brent went to another high school in the city. In the 1990s, they began working with award-winning documentary filmmaker Jon Alpert and were part of a number of programs for HBO, Discovery, CNN, PBS, MTV and ESPN. Their groundbreaking specials about college football rivalries for ESPN became the series, “The Season.”

They also won critical acclaim for “Dope Sick Love,” a film about two drug-addicted couples they followed on the streets of New York for 18 months, and for “Off To War,” which followed a single unit of soldiers throughout its entire deployment.

The Renauds are known for their “cinema verite” style, meaning they let the story unfold as it goes along, rather than trying to steer the story in the direction in which they hope it would go.

Brent Renaud said he and his brother spent two to three months hanging out at Little Rock Central before they began filming, to get a sense of what was happening at the school.

“A couple of things emerged,” Renaud told BlackAmericaWeb.com. “First, the teachers wanted to talk about how great a school it is: 'It is in the Top 20 of AP programs,' 'The teachers are dedicated,' and all. After a while, a number of the teachers began taking us aside, and the way they did it, they wanted us to see there were two schools in one here. Rather than take one of these positions, we took a cross-section of these people who are actually living it.”

Asked if Little Rock Central was significantly different since they were in high school, Renaud said he actually found the situation little changed from what brother Craig experienced.

“Basically, all the wealthiest folks in Little Rock want to send their children there” because of the AP program. The division of students, not just by race, but by wealth and access to resources beyond school actually intensified the differences over the years, Renaud said.

Only one of the original Little Rock Nine is seen in the video. Minniejean Brown, now Minniejean Brown Trickey, is seen in the documentary. She was the only one not to graduate from the school. She was expelled for "verbal retaliation" toward white students who were harassing her. Trickey’s daughter, Spirit, is now a Park Service ranger who gives tours of the school.

Renaud said Trickey, who works as a gender and social justice consultant, was perfect for the film because she understood the students’ frustration, has worked to overcome it and still has a visceral reaction to what she sees as a lack of significant change over the years.

“She has made this work, and the legacy of the Little Rock Nine her life’s work. She was the perfect link to the past,” Renaud said.

“It’s the sense of hopelessness (in the black students) that she finds so frustrating,” Renaud said. “She is upset by the notion that black kids who excel have internalized this thing that they are the exception.”

At the beginning of the film, Trickey stands outside, emotions welling up, shakes her head and says, “It’s not supposed to be like this.” She says she should be past such a strong reaction 50 years later. Near the end of the documentary, she tells the students she is disappointed that they see themselves as victims, unable to transcend challenges thrown their way.

“On any given day, I can walk into Central High with little emotional reaction. Yet, on another day, especially if I am asked to describe the first day, all of the emotions flood back -- the feelings of fear and rejection. I have spent a lifetime working to resolve the emotional turmoil,” Trickey said in a Q&A with HBO. “I guess the strong feelings I experienced on that day were about how my reaction comes, unbidden, without my permission. It just happens. I meant that my feelings should not be so haunting after such a long time, but they are. The other part of my reaction is about knowing too much about how segregation prevails in this country. And being disappointed and saddened about that.”

In 1957, Trickey, Terrence Roberts, Carlotta Walls LaNier, Melba Patillo Beals, Elizabeth Eckford, Ernest Green, Gloria Ray Karlmark, Jefferson Thomas and Thelma Mothershed Wair were determined to get a good education.

"I really didn't understand at 14 we were helping change the educational landscape here in America," LaNier recalls. "All we wanted to do is go to school."

Green, the first black person to graduate from Central, said he had studied the history of other black trailblazers at the time but didn't think he would join their ranks.

"We saw ourselves as groundbreakers in breaking tradition," said Green, who served as an assistant Secretary of Housing and Urban Affairs under President Jimmy Carter. "But I don't see that any of us thought we would be part of the civil rights legacy."

When Faubus pulled Arkansas National Guard members from blocking nine students from entering the school, an inflamed crowd gathered to keep the black students out.

Relman Morin, an Associated Press reporter standing outside the school at the time, described the chaos as a "human explosion" when the nine students were slipped inside during a melee.

Eisenhower was shocked at the outbreak of violence.

"Cruel mob force had frustrated the execution of an order of a United States court, and the governor of the state was sitting by, refusing to lift a finger to support the local authorities," Eisenhower later wrote, according to David A. Nichols, author of "A Matter of Justice: Eisenhower and the Beginning of the Civil Rights Revolution."

Eisenhower signed a proclamation approving the use of federal troops to enforce U.S. District Judge Ronald Davies' desegregation order and the students entered Central High under armed escort Sept. 25, 1957.

"That was a turning point in history because it said that, when push comes to shove, two of the three branches of American government will respond on behalf of integration as part of the fundamental American heritage," said historian Taylor Branch, Pulitzer-Prize winning author of "Parting the Waters" and other books about the civil rights movement. "It said that segregation is not compatible with American ideals."

Even with the 101st Army Airborne escorts, however, the harassment continued, though some students and teachers did make efforts to reach out to them. LaNier said a chemistry teacher flat out told her classmates he didn't want black students in his class. The school later dismissed the teacher, LaNier said.

Asked how she feels about Central 50 years later, Trickey told HBO, “The entire nation exists as a segregated society: housing, employment, recreation, schools. Fifty years ago, I thought, with my teenage mind, that all we needed was to get to know each other, and things would even out. I, too, had the problem with the ‘freedom’ rhetoric that was so powerful, against the reality of unequal funding, unequal opportunity, etc. The rhetoric blinds us all from the truth.”

Renaud said he and his brother planned to attend a series of viewings of the film at schools around the country. HBO has created an education packet, which includes a DVD of the documentary, for teachers.

“The 50th anniversary has really forced discussion in Little Rock, talking openly in a way they usually don’t talk,” Renaud said. “Hopefully all these things (including the situation in Jena, Louisiana) will come together in a way that will spur more understanding.”

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Associated Press contributed to this article.

50 Years After Little Rock, Part Two: Where are They Now? How the Little Rock Nine Have Fared

Date: Tuesday, September 25, 2007
By: Monica Lewis, BlackAmericaWeb.comp



Their names might not be as well known as Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. or Rosa Parks, but their actions were just as valiant.

They were teenagers -- six girls and three boys -- who would become faces of a movement. They are the Little Rock Nine, and the 50th anniversary of their refusal to let the Jim Crow status quo go continue is being celebrated this week.

The pictures of white students spewing racial epithets at them are forever etched in American history, yet the Little Rock Nine -- like so many brave, unlikely heroes -- did indeed survive that torment, eventually growing up to become successful career men and women, parents and role models for generations to follow.

Today, many of those whose hateful words and evil actions made it necessary for those fateful black students to need National Guard escorts to attend Central High School have expressed regret for their ignorance and consider the Little Rock Nine to be heroes -- even celebrities.

“Everywhere we go and pretty much across the board, people do treat us pretty nicely,” Terrence Roberts told BlackAmericaWeb.com. “Let’s just say we don’t have to buy lunch when we come back (to Little Rock).”

Roberts, now 65, was a junior in September 1957 when he and eight other students volunteered to help the NAACP desegregate Little Rock’s Central High School. His emotions ranged from scared of what may happen to excited about the possibility of receiving a quality education. While the all-black schooling he had up until 1957 was a great experience, Roberts said everyone knew there was no such thing as “separate, but equal.”

“(My education) was a situation that was intolerable because of the enforced racial segregation,” Roberts said, scoffing at those who still wonder if segregation would a good thing to return to. “Those types of suggestions come from misinformation. How can you be totally happy when your life chances are so totally truncated?”

Roberts, like four other members of the Little Rock Nine who were juniors that year, did not graduate from Central High School because the school board decided to shut down the schools in 1958 rather than allow desegregation to continue.

He finished his senior year in Los Angeles, where he had family. He stayed out west, earning degrees from California State at Los Angeles and UCLA. A psychologist, he earned his Ph.D. at Southern Illinois. Married with two daughters and two grandchildren, Roberts now lives in Pasadena and understands that there’s an entire generation of children who may not grasp the significance of the Little Rock Nine’s stand.

“The truth is there are many, many people whose awareness is very low level about anything,” said Roberts, who is joining the other eight members of the Little Rock Nine in Little Rock for a week-long commemoration of the historic act. “America is typically a throw-away society, and people who are interested in learning will find a way to make that knowledge available to them. But I don’t push anybody to take an interest in our story.”

What the Nine have done is work to provide young people with opportunities greater than the ones they had a half-century ago. They are all involved with the Little Rock Nine Foundation, a non-profit dedicated to principles of excellence in education for young students of color. This week, nine students received $10,000 scholarships during a black-tie event featuring former president and Little Rock native Bill Clinton and PBS anchor Gwen Ifill.

The foundation, Roberts said, is the main source of communication for the Nine. In addition to the scholarships, they all offer advice to school districts throughout the nation on how to implement diversity programs for children of all ages.

Ernest Green, the eldest of the Nine and the first black to graduate from Central High, said the foundation is the Nine’s way of giving back. Plans for the nine winners include a mentoring relationship with the "original" Nine.

“I’m going to roll up my sleeves, be available and have face to face meetings (with the students),” said Green, who now lives in Washington, D.C. A former assistant secretary of Housing and Urban Affairs during the Jimmy Carter administration, Green is now an executive with Lehman Brothers, a Washington, D.C.-based financial services company.

A graduate of Michigan State University, Green, now 66, had faced the possibility of missing his history-making commencement exercises when school administrators told him to stay home and receive his diploma via mail. However, the young man was just as headstrong at the end of that tumultuous school year as he was when it started. He refused to stay home, and, when his name was called during the ceremony, the only applause came from his family and their special guest -- a young preacher named Martin Luther King, Jr.

Like Roberts and Green, all of the Nine went on to college and developed successful careers. Gloria Ray Karlmark, 65, graduated from the Illinois Institute of Technology with a bachelor’s degree in chemistry and mathematics. She has worked as an executive officer for a Dutch company and publisher of a European computer magazine and now resides in Sweden.

Three of the Little Rock Nine live in the city where they changed the course of civil rights history: Minnijean Brown Trickey, Thelma Mothershed Wair and Elizabeth Eckford, who recently received an honor from the National Constitution Center in Philadelphia.

During a ceremony commemorating the 220th anniversary of the signing of the U.S. Constitution, Eckford recalled those harrowing days in 1957 as she was inducted into the American National Tree.

“We were assaulted in school everyday,” Eckford said as she described feeling “totally alone,” despite having National Guardsmen trailing 11 paces behind her. “The principal told us to report to the vice principal, but would not act on anything unless a teacher was involved.”

Of the Nine, Eckford is probably one of the more reclusive. While Melba Patillo Beals is an author and journalism professor in northern California, Eckford appears almost uncomfortable before large crowds, despite the fact that she does find time to make public speeches about her ordeal and the need to have justice for one and all.

The Jena Six controversy is further proof to Eckford, now 65, that things are not necessarily much better than when she and eight other young people fought to knock down prejudicial behavior.

"True reconciliation cannot happen until we honestly acknowledge our painful but shared past," said Eckford, who is a probation officer in Little Rock.

Jefferson Thomas, the third male member of the group, also graduated from Central High in 1960, after the schools reopened after the failed attempt to boycott desegregation efforts. After retiring as an accountant for the United States Department of Defense, Thomas now lives in Columbus, Ohio.

Carlotta Walls LaNier, one of the Little Rock Nine Foundation, said she didn't know any of the other students when they integrated the school in 1957 but said they are now her lifelong friends.

"Many have called our actions courageous, but we simply wanted to go to school," LaNier said.

After graduating from Central High, LaNier attended Michigan State University for two years before moving with her family to Denver. In 1968, she earned a bachelor’s degree from Colorado State College. In 1977, she founded LaNier and Company, a real estate brokerage firm.

For Roberts, returning to the scene of his unforgettable moment is something he can’t fully summarize. However, he considers the actions of he and his eight fellow trailblazers something that can enlighten people of all races and backgrounds for years to come.

“It’s definitely an lesson,” Roberts told BlackAmericaWeb.com. “In the moment, we felt like we had to take a stand. And for anyone in that position, you do what you must to take that stand, or otherwise, you will regret it.”

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Associated Press and BlackAmericaWeb.com's Jackie Jones contributed to this story.

50 Years After Little Rock, Part Three: Are Efforts to Integrate America’s Schools for Naught?

Date: Wednesday, September 26, 2007
By: BlackAmericaWeb.com and Associated Press


Fifty years after nine black students broke through the color barrier at Little Rock Central High School, many of America’s classrooms are now testaments to multi-culturalism. But questions about whether public school integration has ultimately served black interests still persist.

Today at Little Rock Central High School, black students, for the most part, are underperforming, have little hope beyond finishing high school and are in largely segregated classes, while the white students largely populate advanced placement classes.

But will efforts to diversify America's public schools ever reach their intended goals, however well-intentioned? In a pair of cases involving challenges to voluntary desegregation plans in Seattle and Louisville school districts, the Supreme Court declared in June that school board plans in each district were unconstitutional, further restricting how far public school systems may attain racial diversity and putting into peril similar plans in school districts nationwide.

A spokeswoman for the D.C. public schools told BlackAmericaWeb.com at the time that since the District’s black student population is about 83 percent black, the Supreme Court’s decision was not likely to impact D.C. students.

However, there are an estimated 1,000 school districts -- or one in 15 nationwide -- that have comprehensive racial integration programs and use race to make assignments like the ones ruled unconstitutional, said Amy Stuart Wells, a professor of sociology and education at Columbia University.

For three weeks in September 1957, Little Rock was the focus of a showdown over integration as Gov. Orval Faubus blocked the black students -- who came to be known as the Little Rock Nine -- from enrolling at a high school with about 2,000 white students. Although the U.S. Supreme Court had declared segregated classrooms unconstitutional in 1954 -- and the Little Rock School Board had voted to integrate -- Faubus said he feared violence if the races mixed in a public school.

The showdown soon became a test for then-President Dwight D. Eisenhower, who sent members of the Army's 101st Airborne Division in to control the angry crowds.

This week, the Little Rock Nine is helping the city observe the 50th anniversary of Central High School's integration with a series of events culminating with a ceremony featuring former President Bill Clinton, who declared the school a historical landmark during his presidency. Central is now the only school in the country designated as a landmark and under the jurisdiction of the National Park Service.

Several black educators said Tuesday that America’s school systems have a long way to go.

"If you go into a D.C. public school, you may see one or two white students," Shanie Stoddard, a third-year public school teacher in Washington, D.C., told BlackAmericaWeb.com. "The kids are not shown other cultures because the community is segregated. The children are not going to be able to relate to other cultures when they grow up."

"When the school had Hispanic Heritage Month, they did not understand what an Hispanic was," Stoddard added. "We only have one white staff member in the building, and the kids think she is a light-skinned black woman. In social studies, they don't understand where they are in the world, so they don't understand that there are other countries and cultures. Some of my students have not traveled to other quadrants of the city."

Some, however, decry efforts to maintain racial balance in schools as pure folly, maintaining -- as BlackAmericaWeb.com commentator Gregory Kane extolled in a December 2006 editorial titled "The Unspoken Racism in Diversity Plans Suggests that Majority-Black Schools Must Be Bad" -- that they help propagate stereotypes of chronic black underachievement.

"Baltimore Polytechnic Institute, in my hometown, is 69 percent black," Kane wrote. "Students there regularly outperform most of the predominantly white schools in Maryland, even those in ritzy Montgomery and Howard counties.

"The KIPP Ujima Village Academy is a Baltimore charter elementary/middle school with one white and one Native American student. All the other students are black. On recent state assessment tests, KIPP students beat their suburban counterparts at predominantly black AND predominantly white schools in reading and math."

"How did the KIPP students do it?" Kane asked. "Not by concentrating on the shibboleth of diversity, but by concentrating on some fundamentals. Nearly all of KIPP’s students come from a demographic that is black and poor."

Some black teachers in Maryland said this week that school integration is as important today as ever before.

"[It's] definitely still necessary," Charmaine Banks, an elementary school teacher in Landover, Maryland, told BlackAmericaWeb.com. "Our neighborhoods are still segregated, so our schools are still segregated. So until our neighborhoods are desegregated, we will still have segregated schools."

Juan Williams, a political analyst for National Public Radio and Fox News and the author of "Eyes on the Prize: America's Civil Rights Years, 1954-1965" and "Enough: The Phony Leaders, Dead-End Movements and Culture of Failure That Are Undermining Black America," wrote in The Washington Post Tuesday, that school integration has resulted in large numbers of poor black children.

"The movement away from school integration is glaring," Williams wrote. "The Civil Rights Project found in 2003 that the nation's 27 biggest school districts were "overwhelmingly" segregated with black and Latino students."

Williams said nationwide, almost half of black and Latino children are in schools where less than 10 percent of the students are white.

"This trend toward isolation of poor and minority students has consequences -- half of black and Latino students now drop out of high school," Williams wrote in the Post.

"Integrated schools benefit students, especially minorities," Williams wrote. "Research on the long-term outcomes of black and Latino students attending integrated schools indicates that those students "complete more years of education, earn higher degrees and major in more varied occupations than graduates of all-black schools."

In June, after the high court's ruling, Williams wrote in The New York Times that "the argument that school reform should provide equal opportunity for children or prepare them to live in a pluralistic society is spent. The winning argument is that better schools are needed for all children -- black, white, brown and every other hue -- in order to foster a competitive workforce in a global economy."

"Dealing with racism and the bitter fruit of slavery and 'separate but equal' legal segregation was at the heart of the court’s brave decision 53 years ago," Williams wrote. "With Brown officially relegated to the past, the challenge for brave leaders now is to deliver on the promise of a good education for every child."

President George W. Bush weighed in about Little Rock on Tuesday, saying the 2007 Nation’s Report Card, also known as the National Assessment of Educational Progress, showed that eighth graders achieved their highest scores ever in math, while fourth graders set records in both reading and math.

African-American and Hispanic students posted all-time highs in a number of categories, which Bush said represents progress toward closing the achievement gap.

"These scores confirm that No Child Left Behind is working and producing positive results for students across the country," Bush said in a statement. "As we commemorate the integration 50 years ago of Central High School in Little Rock, Arkansas, we are reminded of the sacrifices students and their families have made in pursuit of a better education."

"Today’s results demonstrate America’s progress in making their dreams a reality, but we have more work to do," the president said. "Now is not the time to turn back the clock on educational accountability and real options for parents, which No Child Left Behind provides."

But 50 years after federal troops escorted Terrence Roberts and eight fellow black students into an all-white high school, he says the struggles over race and segregation still are unresolved.

"This country has demonstrated over time that it is not prepared to operate as an integrated society," said Roberts, who is a faculty member at Antioch University's psychology program.

He and the other students known as the Little Rock Nine will help the city observe Central High School's 50th anniversary this week with a series of events culminating with a ceremony featuring former President Bill Clinton.

His wife, New York Sen. Hillary Clinton, a candidate for president in 2008, said what happened in Little Rock was shocking.

"What we saw here in Little Rock in the Fall of 1957 shocked us and changed us," Sen. Clinton said in a statement. "Mothers and fathers across America saw in those nine children the vulnerability and promise of their own children. They saw in that hateful mob the ugliness of their own prejudices and fears."

Sen. Barack Obama, a Democrat from Illinois who is also running for the White House in 2008, said the Little Rock students should be proud.

"Despite slurs, taunts and all kinds of indignities, these nine students kept their heads high and their backs straight, integrating Little Rock Central High School and helping realize our founding promise of justice and equality for all," Obama said in a statement. "[It was] the beginning of the end of Jim Crow, and making a life of hope and opportunity possible for someone like me."

"And yet a half-century later, much work remains," Obama said. "Too many of our schools are crumbling. Disparities have widened. And our Supreme Court has argued that voluntary integration is the same as Jim Crow segregation ... But I’m hopeful. Because 50 years ago, nine young men and women showed the world that in the face of impossible odds, ordinary people could do extraordinary things."

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Associated Press and BlackAmericaWeb.com reporter Tiffany Bolden contributed to this story.

50 Years After Little Rock, Part Four: The Devaluing of Education – and Us – Reflected in Myriad Ways

Date: Thursday, September 27, 2007
By: Jackie Jones, BlackAmericaWeb.com, and Associated Press


When nine black students made history by integrating Little Rock Central High School in 1957, they knew they were doing something significant, but primarily they just wanted a good education.

While many black families today still harbor the same hope for their children, those goals don't appear to reflect in the numbers, since the percentage of black students who graduate from high school, much less college, is stunningly low when placed against the promise that desegregated schools seemed to offer more than a generation ago.

Education experts, parents and students blame a range of things -- everything from mediocre public schools, a lack of parental involvement and the distractions of television and video games to an uncertain future children see amid high black unemployment rates and the sting of racism, both covert and overt, the way they are treated by teachers and stories of major conflict, like the Jena Six case in Louisiana.

More than three times as many black people live in prison cells as in college dorms, the government said in a report to be released Thursday.

The ratio is only slightly better for Hispanics, at 2.7 inmates for every Latino in college housing. Among non-Hispanic whites, more than twice as many live in college housing as in prison or jail.

The numbers, driven by men, do not include college students who live off campus. Previously released census data show that black and Hispanic college students -- commuters and those in dorms -- far outnumber black and Hispanic prison inmates.

Nevertheless, civil rights advocates said it is startling that blacks and Hispanics are more likely to live in prison cells than in college dorms.

"It's one of the great social and economic tragedies of our time," said Marc Morial, president and CEO of the Urban League. "It points to the signature failure in our education system and how we've been raising our children."

The data showS that big increases in black and Hispanic inmates occurred since 1980. In 1980, the number of blacks living in college dorms was roughly equal to the number in prison. Among Hispanics, those in college dorms outnumbered those in prison in 1980.

There are a lot of reasons why black students do not reach college at the same rate as whites, said Amy Stuart Wells, a professor of sociology and education at Columbia University's Teachers College.

Black students are more likely to attend segregated schools with high concentrations of poverty, less qualified teachers, lower expectations and a less demanding curriculum, she said.

"And they are perceived by society as terrible schools, so it is hard to get accepted into college," Wells said. "Even if you are a high-achieving kid who beats the odds, you are less likely to have access to the kinds of courses that colleges are looking for."

Students who don't graduate high school are much more likely to go to prison, said Gary Orfield, co-director of the Civil Rights Project at UCLA. Nearly 40 percent of inmates lack a high school diploma or the equivalent, according to the census data.

"The criminal economy is one of the only alternatives in some of these places," Orfield said. "You basically have the criminalization of a whole community, particularly in some inner cities."

Blacks made up 41 percent of the nation's 2 million prison and jail inmates in 2006. Non-Hispanic whites made up 37 percent and Hispanics made up 19 percent.

Morial, who is a former mayor of New Orleans, said the political debate over high incarceration rates for minorities hasn't yielded results. He said conservatives blame a lack of family values while liberals blame a lack of government programs, with neither side seeing the whole picture.

"We do, in the African-American community, need to instill a stronger value on education," Morial said.

But, he added, minority students also need more early childhood education, longer school days, longer school years and more meaningful summer job opportunities.

"We need to get serious about true investment on the front end," Morial said.

But once they get to college, according to the Journal of Blacks in Higher Education, the black student college graduate rate is 42 percent, compared with 62 percent for white students.

The Journal attributes that to a range of issues, including poor schools, geographic isolation, the lack of a strong and relatively large core of black students on campus, poor K-12 preparation and financial aid, or more precisely, the lack of it.

Curriculum differences play a role, too.

“It continues to be true that at many high-powered schools, black students in the sciences often have been made to feel uncomfortable by white faculty and administrators who persist in beliefs that blacks do not have the intellectual capacity to succeed in these disciplines,” according to the Journal.

“Clearly, the racial climate at some colleges and universities is more favorable toward African-Americans than at other campuses. A nurturing environment for black students is almost certain to have a positive impact on black student retention and graduation rates,” the Journal said.

Nurturing has its place, but it can also become a barrier, according to Jeffrey Mazique, a civilian physician at Walter Reed Army Medical Hospital in Washington, D.C.

Mazique, who volunteers extensively with black students from the lower grades through graduate and professional school to help them take the best advantage of academic opportunities, has studied the admissions process at colleges and universities. He sees a trend among American-born black students, across income levels, that may contribute to lower achievement levels.

U.S.-born blacks, he said, “focus more on racism. Africans and West Indians take that as a given, but don’t let it get in the way of getting an education. I see a lot of energy being burned up fighting racism or perceived racism,” Mazique told BlackAmericaWeb.com.

As a result, Mazique said, he is seeing more African- and West Indian-born black students going to Ivy League universities and attending graduate or professional schools than U.S.-born black students.

“I see the children of black professionals not doing as well as their parents,” Mazique said. “I think a lot of professionals move to the suburbs, buy an expensive house and think their kids will just figure it out.”

Race aside, Mazique said, the world is competitive, and many black students and their parents haven’t learned that lesson.

“They don’t realize how it works. Your kid is a commodity, basically. The thinking is, 'Why should I pick you over the other kid?'” Mazique said. “I don’t think black professionals realize how competitive things are.”

He said he urges students to recognize challenges for what they are, but to have a plan to overcome them.

“At times, I feel parents are not cold-blooded enough,” Mazique said.

Baby Boomers, particularly, often recall how their parents pushed them to attend college or to have a plan for the future, even if those parents did not attend college, or even finish high school.

“What would have happened if you or I came home and said, ‘I don’t know if I’m cut out for college?’” Mazique asked. “The response would have been, ‘How do you plan on supporting yourself? Whatever you want, your plan is not going to be living in my house.’”

Sometimes, though, the odds can appear overwhelming. Just ask young students from the Gulf Coast, many of whom are still trying to regain their academic footing two years after Hurricanes Katrina and Rita hit the region.

According to a report by the Southern Education Foundation, which was introduced at a workshop on education issues at the Congressional Black Caucus Foundation’s Annual Legislative conference on Wednesday, schools in 49 states received displaced students after the hurricanes.

“In states where the majority of displaced students reentered school, there were often insufficient numbers of classrooms, supplies and school personnel (including counselors and administrative staff). Schools failed to serve displaced students’ needs due to a lack of funds,” the report said.

“After Katrina, schools with displaced students reported an increase in disciplinary problems and a greater need for mental health counseling,” according to the report. “Displaced children had some especially serious health problems that were not always addressed and exhibited very poor academic performance on state tests, especially in Texas.”

In a video, “Education in Exile,” shown during the workshop, displaced students described mean-spirited, demeaning and dismissive treatment at their new schools.

They described New Orleans students being herded into an assembly at which they were told that at their new schools they would be required to behave, as if that wasn’t an expectation they had previously experienced.

“We were thought of as terrible children. We couldn’t sit together at the lunch tables. We were were known as the NOLA gang,” said Dominque Townsend.

Rogers Youngblood said New Orleans students relocated to a school in Baton Rouge were treated as if they were incapable of learning.

“I may not be smart in explaining the way Christopher Columbus discovered America, but I can tell you how to survive off this $5.15 an hour you’re paying me. ... I can show you how to be a man for your family, but you can’t learn that in school,” Youngblood said.

There are certain lessons about how black students, especially those from New Orleans, are viewed that are easily absorbed, Youngblood said. It is quite plain that their education is not highly valued by some school administrators.

“We understand that a bank has only one security guard, but our school has 30. We understand all that, but they don’t understand that we do understand all that," he said.

“What’s happening (there) is only an exacerbation of what happens in every other urban system in America,” said Bill Rouselle, of Bright Moments, a public relations firm in New Orleans, who moderated the panel.

Experts say fixing the education problem for black students requires effort on the part of parents, lawmakers, business and concerned citizens.

It is important, Mazique said, that those who are critical of where things stand for black students be part of the solution. That’s why he is an active volunteer.

“I can give you a thousand ideas,” he said, “but if I’m not doing anything, you can say I’m not backing it up.”

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Associated Press contributed to this story.

50 Years After Little Rock, Part Five: What To Do to Improve Our Schools -- and Your Child's Education

Date: Friday, September 28, 2007
By: Michael H. Cottman and Tiffany Bolden, BlackAmericaWeb.com


Thousands of black parents, frustrated over a myriad of concerns about the state of public schools across the nation, want solutions to an entrenched and emotional issue: How to improve the quality of education in America’s classrooms.

Fifty years after nine black students broke the color barrier at Little Rock Central High School, black educators, parents, congressional leaders and presidential candidates are grappling with inadequate public school education -- a national problem that will immeasurably impact the lives of generations of black children.

This week, the Little Rock Nine is helping the city observe the 50th anniversary of Central High School's integration with a series of events culminating with a ceremony featuring former President Bill Clinton, who declared the school a historical landmark during his presidency. Central is now the only school in the country designated as a landmark and under the jurisdiction of the National Park Service.

Today, after Supreme Court hearings, PTA meetings, town hall gatherings from coast to coast, black educators and parents are not only asking questions about the perceived failure of public school education, but they are also offering suggestions.

"The primary issue is lack of parental involvement and teaching children to value education, and there is a lack of Work ethic being instilled in the children," Eric Henderson, a sixth-grade teacher at Fort Foote Elementary in Maryland, told BlackAmericaWeb.com.

"Essentially, because the children do not need to work outside the classroom, they don't feel that they have to work inside the classroom," Henderson said. "The parents are bombarding them with luxuries such as electronic gadgets without requiring that they earn these luxuries."

In a lengthy investigation by The Washington Post this summer, the newspaper’s series started with this sentence: "Can D.C. schools be fixed?"

"The system is among the highest-spending and worst-performing in the nation," the Post reported. "Tests show that in reading and math, the District's public school students score at the bottom among 11 major city school systems, even when poor children are compared only with other poor children."

"Thirty-three percent of poor fourth-graders across the nation lacked basic skills in math, but in the District, the figure was 62 percent," the newspaper said. "It was 74 percent for D.C. eighth-graders, compared with 49 percent nationally."

"Readers emailed us with more than 100 'top fixes,' demanding that school buildings and technology be upgraded, incompetent and uncertified teachers be fired, and accountability for D.C.'s children be extended to parents, school faculty and central administration immediately," according to the Post.

D.C. Public Schools -- a predominantly black school system -- has a history of problems. Parents have complained for years about crowded classrooms, substandard education, school security and the quality of teachers.

"We have a crisis on our hands," Mayor Adrian Fenty declared on the District’s Web site. "Over the past two decades, study after study has spelled out the same problems and made nearly the same recommendations. My proposal changes one critical piece of the puzzle—increased accountability and action. I am asking for that responsibility to be placed squarely on my shoulders."

But the D.C. school system is not alone. Public schools in large urban areas like Chicago, New York, Detroit, Los Angeles and Baltimore all have many challenges and have been criticized over the years by parents and community groups for failing to properly educate black children.

Some blame teachers.

In D.C., the Post reported: "Citywide, fewer than half of core courses are taught by teachers who are considered 'highly qualified' in their subject, which requires that they have earned a degree or passed a competency test in that subject. In most states, the figure was over 90 percent. Within the District, teachers are less likely to meet this 'highly qualified' standard at schools with poorer students."

Parents like Manuella Rojas-Stevens, a parent of a third grader in Los Angeles, said he feels left out of the educational process.

"I could volunteer at my child’s school and write letters to give my ideas and input to the school district," Rojas-Stevens told BlackAmericaWeb.com.

"As a parent, I feel like I don’t know what is going on at the school," she said. "I don’t receive letters about PTA meetings or anything. I don’t even know if they still go on at my child’s school. I have not contacted the school regarding this because as long as my son is happy and safe and has good grades, I’m not going to take that extra step."

Democratic presidential candidate John Edwards has developed a platform on education reform.

"More than 50 years after Brown v. Board of Education, we still have two school systems that are separate and unequal. Children enrolled in high-poverty schools often do not receive the same opportunities as their peers in more affluent schools," Edwards said on his Web site. "There are nearly 1,000 high schools where more than half of the students won't graduate. Low-income 12th-graders are three years behind their peers, reading at the same level as middle-class ninth-graders."

Edwards’ plan to improve public school education includes investing in teachers; expanding access to pre-school programs; creating a second-chance for high school drop-outs and expanding Head Start programs.

Presidential candidate Sen. Hillary Clinton (D-NY) has listed several educational reforms in her platform: Reforming the No Child Left Behind Act; giving new parents support and training to promote healthy development for their children; increasing access to high-quality early education and helping to create Early Head Start.

Senator Barack Obama (D-IL), who is Clinton’s closest rival for the White House, also offered suggestions to improve America’s educational system: Expand early childhood education; innovation to improve teacher quality; pay teachers more and give more high school students access to rigorous college-level courses.

But while politicians push their plans for improving education, Andrew Woods, a sixth-grade teacher at Fort Foote Elementary in Maryland, said the issue of integration after Little Rock deserves more discussion.

For three weeks in September 1957, Little Rock was the focus of a showdown over integration as Gov. Orval Faubus blocked nine black students from enrolling at a high school with about 2,000 white students. Although the U.S. Supreme Court had declared segregated classrooms unconstitutional in 1954 -- and the Little Rock School Board had voted to integrate -- Faubus said he feared violence if the races mixed in a public school.

"Maybe we need to reevaluate integration because right now, the nation is polarized," Woods told BlackAmericaWeb.com. "Maybe we need to take it a step further and have gender-based schools. This will help because it will remove some of the distractions from our children so the focus can be on academics instead of style of dress on the opposite sex."

A brief survey by BlackAmericaWeb.com with several black parents and teachers from Washington, D.C., to California yielded the following suggestions to improve the quality of education in public schools.

* Parents have to get involved and stay abreast in their child’s academic life, making sure their child is doing all the teacher expects of them.

* Have an open line of communication with the teacher, administration and PTA.

* Be politically active in your school and community. Parents need to know who the decision-makers are, and they need to hold those decision-makers accountable.

* Segregation should be reinstated, they maintain, "because when you look at it, the schools are already segregated," one said.

* Smaller classrooms.

* More consistent student updates from teachers and counselors.

* There should be gender-based schools for grades K-8 because "if you can keep a child focused in school those nine years, their potential would be unlimited," Woods said. "They would be more inclined to excel."

In the Post series, the newspaper reported that "many students and teachers spend their days in an environment hostile to learning. Just over half of teenage students attend schools that meet the District's definition of 'persistently dangerous' because of the number of violent crimes, according to an analysis of school reports."

The problems in D.C. schools are shared by parents across the country who are experiencing similar challenges in public education.

Dana Hood, a parent of a ninth grader and an 11th grader in Los Angeles, has several suggestions for improving schools -- starting at home.

"Parents need to get more involved in their child’s academic life, myself included," Hood told BlackAmericaWeb.com.

"In high school, parent teacher conferences aren’t done anymore unless your child is in special education," Hood said. "At the beginning of the year, the school has a Parent Night where parents meet each of their child’s teachers. After that, it’s up to the parent to take the initiative to find out how their child is doing academically."

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Associated Press contributed to this story.