THESE OLD GYMS: DESEGREGATION, INTEGRATION, & CULTURE

Story originally contributed by Coddy Carter in December 2014

Original images were gathered from Google Maps® Street View and edited.

When I originally set out to write this series I wanted to write a historical piece about top basketball players at the old schools pictured. I planned to talk about how my grandparents had attended and graduated from the school pictured above while my parents, aunts, uncles, and I received our high school diplomas from the school pictured below. I guess I am doing this in a way, but I still could not tell the stories that I hoped to tell for two reasons. First, I was not there to actually experience those days prior to the 1970 desegregation of Jasper County Schools in Monticello, Georgia. Second, it would have required me to do some extensive interviews with old teachers, student-athletes, and others in Monticello, something I have not yet drawn plans to do.

What I will do is tell the history that I actually know without the aid of interviews. Both of these gyms, which corresponded to Monticello’s two former segregated high schools, were established in 1956. The first school pictured, Washington Park Elementary School, was once site the all-black Jasper County Training School and later Washington Park High School. It was a constant fixture of my childhood, my elementary school, and I saw it everyday outside my window. The second school pictured was the former Monticello High School that eventually became Jasper County Comprehensive High School and simply Jasper County High School when I graduated in 2007. An interesting fact is that the building of the two high schools followed the Brown v. Board of Education rulings of 1954 and 1955, which declared segregated schooling to be unconstitutional. These schools were “equalization schools” built uphold the doctrine of “separate, but equal” facilities and circumvent integration. The building of most African American equalization schools in rural areas marked the second round of school buildings following those from the original Rosenwald Fund erected in the 1920s.

There were two underlying social philosophies/methodologies not necessarily legal doctrines that were present during the period when a string of desegregation cases were enacted. Desegregation consisted of the granting of equal resources to black and white schools and granted that public facilities would no longer be segregated. This did not ensure social co-mingling of whites and blacks in schools, and it proliferated in urban areas where segregation of neighborhoods was more significant. As a result, most formerly segregated schools simply became de facto all-black or all-white based as they corresponded to neighborhoods originally formed by de jure segregation. Integration was the belief that white schools were inherently better than black schools, a social belief which warranted the “integration” of former black schools into white school systems. Integration measures were common in rural areas where it was more cost-efficient to create unitary school systems. As a result of the building of equalization schools in the mid-1950s, black schools plants were usually in adequate condition for consolidation. Measures such as building new schools for both black and white students in the mid-1950s in Monticello, Georgia could have been indicative of the social philosophy of desegregation. Brown v. Board of Education I combined five district court cases. In Briggs v. Elliott, a case that originated in South Carolina, the plaintiffs actually sought equal resources for black schools in the district rather than integration into white schools.

Following the Brown rulings, Georgia governor Eugene Talmadge set plans to enact private school amendments to avoid white and black students attending the same public schools. These amendments threatened not only public monies available to black schools but also would have hurt poor white students unable to attend private schools.

The rulings were largely ineffective as an overwhelmingly majority of students that entered kindergarten in 1955 still graduated from segregated high schools by 1968. The year of 1968 was complex for two reasons. First, black students started attending Monticello’s white schools as part of the local “freedom of choice” plan (note that I did not say white students attended black schools). This was due to the aforementioned social philosophy of integration, the belief that white public accommodations were superior to facilities used by blacks. Second, Green v. County School Board of New Kent County, Virginia set the precedent for the dismantling of segregated rural school systems. Green had been the result of the inadequacy of “freedom of choice” plans in a rural district where there were two bus routes and students were travelling farther than the nearest school from home to attend segregated schools. Green stated that school systems would be “unitary” or completely desegregated when the five areas of faculty, transportation routes, student body, athletics, and facilities were not racially separate.

I recently asked an older cousin of mine, a 1972 graduate of Monticello High School, what it was like when they left the old Washington Park High School and went to Jasper County Comprehensive/Monticello High School. He told me that they had protested the forced desegregation by marching through the town. He said that the beautiful stories of how they agreed to adopt the white school mascot and leave their traditions behind were false. Interestingly, he had never heard of the term desegregation. “What the hell is desegregation?It was integration,” he asserted as he dismissed my academic terms for youth naiveté or ignorance. Even in his dismissal of my terminology, he confirmed that schools in Monticello were in fact merged or integrated rather than desegregated.

What he also revealed to me was something that went beyond integration. I thought about the social networks and cultural capital of these all-black neighborhoods, one of which I called home. Cultural capital has often been a defined by white, middle-class values such that communities which lacked those values were thought to lack cultural capital. Tara J. Yosso defined this alternative to cultural capital as social capital, the social networks that people of color had long used to attain education, employment, emotional support, and other services. Tenè Harris also provided a counter to the dominant story such that black students at Burney-Harris High School in Athens, Georgia strongly resisted the possiblility of having to attend Athens High via protest. The students feared that they would lose their mentors and role models at segregated Burney-Harris High when the school system became integrated. Though I will later show that those fears were somewhat alleviated in Monticello, I still wonder about the exact reason for the protests. My cousin did not want to talk about them in detail that particular day.

The Brown and Green rulings had practical applicability for rural districts like that of Jasper County, Georgia where whites and blacks lived in close proximity and schools could be easily consolidated. Unlike urban school systems, these districts did not require extensive busing plans as the former segregated systems had already served overlapping routes. Integration was positive in practicality but negative in the loss of community cultural wealth found in black schools. This is why black students such as my cousin marched in protest at the revelation of the approaching desegregation of the school system. Full desegregation occurred during the 1970-71 school year, and all high school students attended Monticello High School. The former Washington Park High School Indians became Monticello Purple Hurricanes. I often wonder what happened. Were black people accede to the change in fear that everyone would attend the white private school if the Purple Hurricane mascot was changed? Was the legacy of the Monticello Purple Hurricanes mascot more illustrious and valuable to the town that that of the Washington Park Indians? It is no coincidence that Piedmont Academy was established in 1970 in response to the U.S. v. State of Georgia No. 12972, which led to the desegregation of the Jasper County School District. This private school had been established along with many others across the state by private organizations that sought to evade the approaching of school desegregation. “You know what year Piedmont was built?” My cousin quizzed me. “1970,” I responded. “That’s right!” He quipped. Though I knew it, I still appreciated him giving me some context about his experience.

All Things Considered

In examining the 1969-70 Washington Park High School and 1970-71 Monticello High School yearbooks, I noticed that the boys’ basketball team was nearly identical with the exception of a few white players at Monticello High School. Coach Lester Davis, the head basketball coach at Washington Park High School took over as the coach at Monticello High in 1973 and remained there for another 21 years until his retirement.

Back in November, I read an article in USA Today about the changing of the University of Tennessee women’s athletics teams’ nickname from the Lady Vols to the non gender-biased Volunteers. In a Washington Post article covering the same topic, I saw that opposition to the name change came from former player women’s basketball players and a Change.org petition, holding that the Lady Vols (specifically Pat Summitt’s basketball teams) had re-defined the mascot from subordinate to a badge of school pride. The redefinition argument in the case of the Tennessee Lady Vols is similar to the community cultural wealth discussed in terms segregated black schools and neighborhoods, but the argument of tradition regarding Pat Summitt’s legacy is to be cautioned as it was the same reasoning leveled by Dan Snyder against the Washington Redskins name change. It’s not too palatable when put in those terms is it?

Glowing stories have been written about how black high school students chose to keep the Monticello Purple Hurricanes mascot, the “renowned” Hurricane name. It is commendable that the rural setting of Jasper County, Georgia facilitated racial progress in the consolidation of schools, but what about the loss of culture? Keeping the Hurricane mascot maintained the tradition of the formerly all-white school while relegating that of the former all-black high school to Washington Park Elementary School where there would be no more athletic teams or marching bands donning the black and gold.

Would it be have solved the problem to have a neutral mascot? I have no idea. Would it have appeased the white citzens to create a new mascot? I doubt it. Progress is not appeasing. I would challenge those in opposition of the Tennessee Volunteers name change to consider the pre-Title IX societal conditions that created the Lady Vols nickname in the first place. Though the name was transformed into something beautiful, it grew out of an ugly system that discriminated against female athletes. Despite my romanticizing of Washington Park High School, the Hurricane and Indian mascots were both remnants of Jim Crow segregation. It is no coincidence that the Women’s Basketball Hall of Fame is located in Knoxville, Tennessee just minutes away from the University of Tennessee campus. Whether there is a name change or not, the University of Tennessee women’s athletic teams will continue to wear the orange, white, and Columbia blue school colors. Whether there is a name change or not, the 17 conference championships, and 8 national championships will still be displayed in trophy cases. Both Hurricane and Indian mascots should have become local museum artifacts, reminders of progress made by desegregation. Unfortunately, there was never a museum established to display relics of the Washington Park Indians, and the Monticello Hurricane mascot still survives to this day.