Meanwhile, the slow speed of the Justice Department case before Judge Mize confirmed our judgment in opening this second legal front through the state courts. Judge Mize did not bring the Justice Department case to trial until December 14, 1964, over four and a half years after the Civil Rights Division of the Justice Department had filed suit. By this time, the 1964 Civil Rights Act had mandated the desegregation of public accommodations in businesses, restaurants, and hotels, but the state of Mississippi continued to spend money to defend an all-white status for its beaches. Judge Mize died, further slowing things down. His replacement, Judge Harold Cox, did not get around to handing down the expected negative ruling against the Justice Department until the spring of 1967.33 The Justice Department appealed to the Fifth Circuit Court of Appeals.
On August 16, 1968, after over eight years of litigation, we finally got the affirmation that we had sought. Ironically, it was Judge J. P. Coleman who wrote the opinion which opened the beach to us. In 1959, when I undertook my first wade-in, Coleman was the governor of Mississippi. Now, sitting on the Fifth Circuit Court of Appeals, Judge Coleman ruled that in 1948, the state legislature had required that all necessary lands for the construction of the beach be provided to assure “perpetual public ownership of the beach and its administration for public use only.” Judge Coleman found that this act of the state legislature effected a grant directly from the owners of beach property to the state.34 The beach was now open to all citizens. The U.S. Supreme Court confirmed Judge Coleman’s ruling by refusing to hear further arguments. It took until 1970 for the federal courts to reverse our trespassing convictions that had arisen from the 1963 wade-in. Direct action on the sandy beaches, along with a determined litigation strategy, finally delivered to us a hard-won piece of the new Jerusalem. Freedom for every citizen to enjoy the sunsets along a twenty-six-mile beach finally came to the Mississippi Gulf Coast.
EIGHT
Desegregation Now!
I believe in Pride of race and lineage and self: in pride of self so deep as to scorn injustice to other selves; in pride of lineage so great as to despise no man’s father; in pride of race so chivalrous as neither to offer bastardy to the weak nor beg wedlock of the strong, knowing that men may be brothers in Christ, even though they be not brothers-in-law. …
I believe in the Training of Children, black even as white; the leading out of little souls into the green pastures and beside the still waters, not for pelf or peace, but for life lit by some large vision of beauty and goodness and truth; lest we forget, and the sons of the fathers, like Esau, for mere meat barter their birthright in a mighty nation….
—W. E. B. Du Bois, from “Credo”
SOMEONE ONCE ASKED CHARLES EVERS, “WHAT DO YOU black folks want?” Charles answered, “Well, what have you got? We want what you’ve got without any strings attached.” We wanted segregation destroyed so that black folks might enjoy the same opportunities that were available to other Americans. Most of us in the civil rights movement used the word desegregation to describe our goals rather than the word integration. We wanted to remove those barriers, de facto and de jure, which denied African Americans their full birthright as citizens of these United States. Access to the best that the public schools had to offer became an important part of the struggle for our full birthright in Mississippi. Personally, from the time of the 1954 Brown decision, I was determined to gain for my child and for every child an opportunity for the best possible public education to prepare them for successful living in this world. That meant gaining the opportunity for a true college preparatory curriculum and the right to go where the most money was being spent to create a quality environment for learning. In Mississippi’s Jim Crow school systems, black students had access to wonderful, caring, and devoted teachers, but the money, sometimes at as much as a five-or ten-to-one ratio, went to the white schools, leaving black children shut out of access to the best facilities, equipment, and courses of study.
Aaron Henry used to tell about being born on the Flowers plantation in the Delta. When Aaron began attending school and noticed differences between provisions for black and white children under Mississippi’s separate but unequal system, he asked his mother, “Why don’t I go to school nine months a year like the white kids?” His mother said, “Well, you’re smarter than a lot of those white folks. You don’t need nine months. You can learn as much in four months as they can in nine.” Aaron Henry took great pride in remembering his childhood belief that this was true. It may have been true for an extraordinarily gifted individual such as Aaron Henry. Unfortunately, this kind of overt educational deprivation left the vast majority of black kids in Mississippi undereducated and greatly restricted in opportunities for the development of their skills and talents. As I grew up in Jackson, at least we had nine months of school like the white kids, even if our equipment and facilities were inferior. Like any parent, I wanted my child to have the opportunity to develop his abilities to the fullest. This demanded desegregation. Nevertheless, there were those in the black community who did not want to be bothered with desegregation as a remedy to the problem. There was a natural fear of the unknown associated with desegregation. Some preferred to remain isolated and protected from the unknown risks attendant with sending children into the white world for education. Others feared economic reprisals if they lifted their voices to demand change. As for me and my household and those who joined with us in Mississippi’s first desegregation suits, by 1960 we were demanding our freedom and demanding it now!
Paradoxically, by the time my child was gaining the long-sought opportunity to attend the school of his choice, frustration with lengthy court battles and disappointment with the seemingly tenuous fruits of the black political alliance with white liberalism was leading new and angry black voices to raise the cry of black separatism. As I saw it then, and still see it now, separatism in America has always relegated minorities, whether black, native American, or Hispanic, to a second-class status at the back of the bus. I despised this and long ago rejected any second-class status in anything. I wanted and still want the whole cup of America, not half a cup. I wanted for all children the right and opportunity under the law to the full benefits of the best education that our taxes made available. Little by little, and through hard work and suffering, the promise of the Brown decision became a reality first in Biloxi, then in Carthage and Jackson, and eventually in all of Mississippi.
The Biloxi branch of the NAACP was essential in providing the organizational structure needed to sustain our local effort for school desegregation. In 1961, just a few months after its organization, and while it carried on vigorous voter registration efforts and carried forward the beach desegregation case, the Biloxi branch began petitioning the local school board to desegregate the schools. A good part of my job as president of a local branch involved dissemination of information to members to keep them informed of relevant national and local developments. Another part of my duty in those early days was to work with the branch executive committee to define local problems and devise means by which these problems might be overcome. From the very beginning, we sought to develop a large cadre of capable local leaders within the local branch to oversee in detail the many programs which we undertook. The Biloxi branch always sent plenty of folks to NAACP leadership conferences to learn about issues and strategies for problem solving. By 1965, as I told one interviewer, another group of generals had come forward in our branch, so that no one man dominated, and a number of persons were qualified and capable of taking over the leadership at any time.1 Only through broad leadership development were we able to attack on so many fronts at once. If a problem arose, we communicated and we complained—to employers, to school authorities, to government officials, and to any other appropriate persons. If the problem could not be resolved through negotiation, we were prepared to go to court, and by the mid-1960s, everyone knew this. Beach desegregation, school desegregation, political action, open public accommodations, fair employment practices, voter
registration, youth activities, public health, and public housing all became objects of organized and concerted action from our branch. Because we became predictable players in every arena, and because we were untiring in our efforts, we gained the respect, if not the accolades, of our adversaries.
The schools presented us with a special object of concern. Embodying as they do the hopes we have for our children, schools are especially dear to the hearts of all parents. Almost from the beginning of our life in Biloxi, and long before Gilbert, Jr., started to school, Natalie and I became involved in the PTA at Nichols, the all-black high school, and Perkins, the all-black elementary school, in Biloxi. I was the team physician for the Nichols tigers and president of the boosters club. We saw firsthand the material deficiencies that black children continued to endure in a segregated school system. On the athletic field, Nichols teams wore old and tattered uniforms. The band instruments were old and not in as good condition as they should have been. The lab equipment for teaching science at Nichols was handed down or salvaged from the discards at the white high school. Textbooks in Mississippi were made freely available to the students, but the textbooks at Nichols were noticeably older and more tattered than those at the white schools. Of course, I had seen this very type of discrimination in the Jackson schools as I grew up, but I found it impossible to accept such treatment for my own child once the 1954 Brown decision was on the books. I will be the first to tell you that we loved and valued the teachers at Nichols, and we loved and respected the work of Mrs. Fannie Nichols, the principal. Mrs. Nichols and her dedicated staff made valiant efforts to compensate for substandard physical conditions through cultivating close personal relationships with students not only at school but at the churches and in their homes.
No school can be any better than the board or the community power brokers will allow it to be. In Biloxi, the all-white school board physically neglected Nichols and limited its curriculum. The school board placed the emphasis at Nichols on training in the manual arts. Thus many courses in the sciences, foreign languages, and higher math which were available at the all-white Biloxi High School were not available at Nichols. In mathematics, for example, Nichols students were limited to one year of algebra and one course in geometry. Moreover, until the employment of Mrs. Clare Rhodeman, the board failed to provide college-capable students at Nichols with adequate academic counseling to help them prepare a course of study for the professions. Even though the emphasis at Nichols was on the manual arts, courses in office skills and basic typing and certain industrial trades that were regularly available in the white schools were seldom, if ever, offered at Nichols. Such neglect on the part of the Biloxi school board resulted in a far smaller percentage of Negro students entering college than was the norm for graduates of the white high school.
Until our son started to school, we had no legal standing for filing a complaint in court. Once he enrolled in the all-black school, we encountered several practices on the part of the superintendent and the board that infuriated us. We discovered, for example, that one means by which the superintendent and the board covered up a deficient curriculum was to order that our son and every other child at Nichols and Perkins be given grades on their report cards for courses not even taught at the black schools. Our first awareness of this came when our son brought home a grade of “C” or “S” for music, art, and gym. Now, Gilbert, Jr., had shown an early aptitude for music and art. I think he has perfect pitch. He can pick up almost any song and play it by ear or sing it in a short time. We noticed this natural talent and got him into private music lessons with Mrs. Pettus. So he read music, knew the notes, sang well, and was learning to play the piano. He was also gifted in drawing. When that report card came home showing a grade of “C” (satisfactory) in music, art, and gym, Mrs. Natalie Mason wanted to know the reason why. Come to find out, no music, no art, and no gym classes were being taught at all at Perkins Elementary School. These courses were taught at the white elementary schools, and, because the schools shared a common report card form, the central office instructed the black teachers to just put a grade of “C” on black kids’ report cards even though the courses were not being taught to them. We were disgusted. This practice was unfair to the child. If the child either excelled or needed improvement in these subjects the parent would never know. Moreover, this administrative grading decree left the false impression with parents that the children were being taught courses that were actually unavailable to them in the black schools. As a PTA officer Natalie raised a vigorous protest and was incensed to find that even some of the black teachers failed to see the wrong in such a practice.
Something similar happened with the teaching of typing at Nichols High School. To impress parents at a PTA meeting at the beginning of one school year, the district central office set up typewriters in one of the Nichols classrooms. This created the clear impression that the students at Nichols would be offered new courses in typing. The impression was misleading. The typewriters were there, but courses in typing were not being taught. The Biloxi school superintendent, Mr. Robert D. Brown, promised black parents that other courses would be added to the Nichols curriculum, but those promised courses were never scheduled. These incidents suggested that the administration was putting in a window dressing of showpieces and promises to cover up for its own unwillingness to invest in teachers and broader course offerings for Nichols students. Some wanted to let the issue die, but Natalie protested vehemently. There was some new construction on the campus at Nichols in the late 1950s and early 1960s as part of the state of Mississippi’s effort to placate black complaints with buildings and thus put off the day when someone would file that first desegregation suit. We needed the classrooms that were built in 1957, and the black community needed the new gymnasium built in 1963. Nonetheless, new buildings could not cover up the board’s basic failure to provide equal opportunity at the black schools. With the Masons and the Biloxi branch on their case, this school board might run from their lawful duty to all of the children, but they couldn’t hide.
For me, however, desegregation was about more than substandard facilities or the type of curriculum that the board made available in the black schools. Education is more than what’s in a book. A good education should provide the opportunity for students to learn from interpersonal relationships and personal interactions with people from all backgrounds, religions, cultures, and races. We live in a multicultural society in a multicultural world. I wanted my son to know little white children, and I strongly believed that it would be good for the white kids to know my child and other black children. To deprive children of the firsthand learning experiences that could help them become more proficient in navigating this multiracial, multicultural America seemed unforgivable to me as a parent. I believed that sound educational principles demanded that the school reflect the society in which we live. I still believe this. I held strongly the dream of one America. My personal philosophy that we are all God’s children demanded that we all—red and yellow, black and white—learn to understand and tolerate one another. I abhorred segregation and all that it stood for. The law of the land said Jim Crow had to go. I for one was ready to invoke the law on behalf of my son and others similarly situated to see that they got their lawful opportunity, as the courts had said, “with all deliberate speed.” So it was that in 1960, soon after our son started to the first grade in Biloxi’s all-black Perkins Elementary School, we began the long process of petitioning and negotiating with the board for our rights under the Fourteenth Amendment as interpreted in the 1954 Brown decision. Three years later, the Biloxi Municipal School System became the first school system in Mississippi to send black and white children to school together.
Gilbert Rutledge Mason, Jr., my son and the lead plaintiff in the Biloxi school desegregation suit, actually started to the first grade in the fall of 1959, when he was only five years old. Mrs. Fannie Nichols personally recruited him out of kindergarten because she thought he was near enough to his sixth birt
hday, to come in January of 1960, to handle the first grade. She had seen him recite Lincoln’s Gettysburg Address in front of a PTA meeting that year. Mrs. Nichols was also concerned about the transfer of a large number of families of black airmen away from Keesler Air Force Base, which might leave the all-black Perkins Elementary School short of first-grade pupils that year. Mrs. Nichols may well have been concerned about the need to justify enough teacher units to keep her faculty together that year. Two or three other older five-year-olds were also taken into the first grade that year.
Gilbert, Jr., thrived in school. He got a great deal of encouragement at home. He understood at an early age that his mother and I believed in striving for excellence in everything that is worthwhile. His standardized test scores were high enough that Mrs. Nichols had him skip one of the lower elementary grades. They recommended later that he skip an upper elementary grade or two, but we would not allow that, because we were concerned that he was already one and a half to two years younger than everyone else in his class. By the time he was in the fifth grade, the teachers put him to work on the high school annual staff. In everyone’s estimate, Gilbert, Jr., was a bright child who could obviously benefit from the advanced college preparatory science and math courses that were available at Biloxi High School but not at Nichols.
Beaches, Blood, and Ballots Page 21