Winston W. Wiley: Black History Month and recognizing Black pioneers not in history books

When the segregated high school in Abilene, Texas, was being closed in the 1960s to fold its Black students into the white high schools, the Black community’s response was a lawsuit.

The action was notable because it happened during the turbulent era that followed the U.S. Supreme Court’s landmark 1954 ruling in Brown v. Board of Education. The case deemed “separate, but equal” schools unconstitutional and ignited a firestorm in districts across the country as formerly all-white schools were forced to accept Black students.

Some districts resorted to extreme measures to keep Black students out. Prince Edward County in Virginia shutdown its entire public school system for five years, rather than comply with the ruling. Whites in other districts threatened violence, prompting deployment of the National Guard to keep the peace. Arkansas’ governor used the guard to block Black students from entering a white high school in Little Rock.

Abilene school officials took a different tact. President Harry Truman had ordered the armed forces desegregated in 1948. Figuring it probably wouldn’t be long before the schools were targeted the school administration proposed renovating the overcrowded Black school which had 13 teachers for 440 students in grades 1-12. The Black community rejected the plan as inadequate and the city agreed to build a new Black high school.

Besides the stated goal of an educational facility “equal to that offered to Abilene’s white pupils,” the board conceded the new school “might prevent future efforts by the Negro community to abolish segregation in Abilene’s schools, or at least delay it for a decade or so,” according to a 1994 study of Abilene’s desegregation process.

Carter G. Woodson Junior Senior High School opened to an elated Black community in 1953, the year before the court’s unanimous Brown decision. The school included a library, auditorium, cafeteria, gymnasium, building trades shop, band and music rooms, science laboratory, athletic fields and tennis courts. The new high school enabled the elementary school to occupy the entire 14-classroom old complex that would become Carter G. Woodson Elementary School.

Woodson Elementary expanded to include Head Start in 1965, the year I enrolled.

The Black community felt Black students shouldn’t shoulder the entire burden of integration. They asked to have white students attend their new school. The district refused and the local NAACP filed its unsuccessful suit to keep Woodson High open. Despite the Black community’s contentment with its schools, Brown was a pivotal decision for Black families in districts across Texas and the nation. At that time, 854 Texas school districts out of 1,952 were providing no educational facilities for Black students.

Woodson High closed in 1968 and the elementary in 1969. I would start sixth grade at Valley View Elementary where I discovered kids are basically the same; they just want to have fun (apologies to Cyndi Lauper). My experiences at Lincoln Junior High and Abilene High were also mostly positive. That’s not to say there weren’t problems – Black and white students reportedly fought at Abilene High for several years immediately after integration and Latino students staged a nine-day walkout.

Perhaps the elementary-level racism was at Abilene’s Jackson, Johnston, Lee or Reagan elementaries. Those schools were named after Confederate Generals Thomas “Stonewall” Jackson, Albert Sidney Johnston and Robert E. Lee and Confederate Postmaster General John Reagan, and, not coincidentally, at the height of desegregation efforts between 1957 and 1962.

Attending an all-Black elementary during my formative years had its advantages. Teachers taught like their destinies were inextricably tied to ours. It shielded my generation from much of the racial strife of the mid-20th century. And it gave Black children the space to discover who they were and could aspire to be before white supremacy could devalue them.

That was a lesson Carter Woodson, an author and historian, sought to spread. He popularized Negro History Week in 1926 as a celebration of Black culture and achievement. It was expanded to a month in 1976.

The week was marked at Woodson with lessons and programs on distinguished Black figures. Stories of Black leaders such as W.E.B. DuBois, Ida B. Wells Barnett, Mary McLeod Bethune, Frederick Douglass, Harriet Tubman and Booker T. Washington were highlights, as well as Black excellence in the arts, science, sports and business. Carter Woodson believed Black history was essential to the “psychological health” of Black people.

As we observe this Black History Month, I also want to recognize Black pioneers not in history books – the parents, pastors, teachers and civic leaders who never shied away from demanding better schools for Black children, whether through improved facilities, more teachers and resources or admission to white schools.

And a nod to the Abilene school board for last year renaming the schools tied to the Confederacy after a diverse group of four former local educators that all children can emulate.

Winston W. Wiley is a former news editor for the Telegram & Gazette. His column appears in the Sunday Telegram.

This article originally appeared on Telegram & Gazette: Black History Month and recognizing Black pioneers not in history books