A look back at school integration in Leland years later. See the impact
By the time I arrived in Leland in early 1978 to operate the local weekly newspaper, the desegregation of the town’s public schools almost a decade earlier had largely settled into an orderly routine.
The transition in the small Mississippi Delta town was smoother in comparison to most other school districts in a state that was never going to accept integration without argument.
The onset of the Leland schools’ desegregation is being told in eloquent form by the Public Broadcasting System. The story is written by Doug Blackmon, a Pulitzer Prize-winning reporter who was a member of the first integrated Leland High School graduating class, that of 1982.
Blackmon made repeated trips to Leland in the years since, eventually interviewing former classmates to draw contemplations of how desegregation had affected them and the overall town, a place whose economic rhythms are steered by a thriving farm industry and a top-rated state and federal agricultural experiment station.
His “American Experience” documentary on PBS has likely been received and regarded higher by a national audience than the local one. Mississippi never has been thrilled over investigations into its vexatious ways of life, even when the interrogator is a hometown product.
The Leland School District’s order to desegregate came amid a
U.S. Supreme Court ruling on Oct. 29, 1969, when the high court demanded all public schools in the nation to desegregate “immediately,” rather than its previous edict of “with all deliberate speed.”
In the decade that followed, the Leland school district’s assigned task of educating students flourished, as I saw things from my editor’s perch. I visited the schools regularly to cover and photograph special events including a profusion of cultural arts presentations in all grades across the district. High schoolers were publishing one of the best student newspapers in the state.
Black and white students had become friendlier, if not close friends in many cases, and remained thus long years after graduation. A respected faculty of Black and white teachers comprised the Leland public school teaching ranks, considered among the finest in the area.
The percentage of white students whose parents had decided they would keep their children in the public institution had remained steady. On Friday nights in the fall, the home side of the Leland High football stadium was mostly filled.
In almost 13 years at the Leland Progress newspaper, I covered about 120 consecutive Leland Cubs football games. A spirited contingent of fans followed the always-competitive team to “Delta Valley Conference” road games.
Despite two-thirds of the city’s population and the school enrollment being Black, percentages mattered not to the white families who had stuck with the public schools. They believed their children were receiving a quality secondary education. I believed that, too.
The all-or-mostly white Leland Academy of my era was on the verge of closure and parents of white students leaving the public schools had begun sending their children to private schools elsewhere in Washington County. My daughter attended the public schools for the first six grades and I wanted her to finish at Leland High School. That’s a fight I lost in a clash with other concerned parties.
Leland’s halcyon period of peaceful school integration in my years of residing and working in the picturesque Delta town was atypical of most places across Mississippi. The alliances formed and momentous experiences felt among Blackmon’s classmates prove that notion.
However, as the 21st Century turned, the white enrollment in the Leland district had fallen sharply. Today, there’s a distinct feeling that resegregation has somehow occurred — an additional story told in Doug Blackmon’s weighty observations.
— Mac Gordon is a native of McComb. He is a retired newspaperman. He can be reached at macmarygordon@gmail.com.
This article originally appeared on Mississippi Clarion Ledger: Leland MS desegregation of schools left positive impact
