The Long Tail of Segregation

Sixty years ago, George Wallace said, “Segregation now.” Six years later, the Supreme Court said, “Integration now.” We’re still assessing the aftermath.

By Chuck Reece

Aug 12, 2023

I was eight years old when the U.S. Supreme Court ordered immediate integration of all public schools in the American South. That ruling—Alexander v. Holmes County Board of Education—had absolutely no effect on me.

That’s because the county that raised me in the Appalachian foothills of northern Georgia had, at the time, not a single African American citizen under the age of fifteen. I was usually in the living room when Walter Cronkite reported the news every night, but when it came to the desegregation of the nation’s school, I was oblivious. White children all over the South were equally out of touch, even if Black people lived in their counties.

“In my Mississippi Delta county, although its population was fifty-eight percent Black at the time, I didn’t know a single Black teenager,” writes Ellen Ann Fentress, the author of Salvation South’s lead story this weekend. “I lived in a completely white world.”

Four years ago, when I was still at the first publication I founded, The Bitter Southerner, Ellen Ann wrote an essay for me about transferring to an all-white private school when Alexander v. Holmes came down. That essay brought other people who had similar experiences out of the woodwork to tell their own stories. Also, it brought out the stories of Black students who were suddenly made to share classrooms with white kids for the first time in their lives.

The reaction to that one essay four years ago gave Ellen Ann a new calling—a desire to create a repository for such stories that would help us all ponder some necessary questions: How do the failures of the past impact schools today? What about the increasing resegregation of schools that is clearly underway?

—“A ‘Completely White World’” by Ellen Ann Fentress
—“Harper Lee’s ‘Tired Old Town’”: The Southern Reader's Travelogue by Rob Rushin-Knopf
—“Old Granny Teaches Magic”: poems by Linda Blaskey

Earlier this year, Ellen Ann and I reconnected to talk about what was going on with her work—now known as The Admissions Project. The result of that conversation is the highly informative essay—“A ‘Completely White World’”—that leads off Salvation South this week. Her work is important, and her words here are important. Do give it a few minutes of your time this week.

We round out the week with the latest installment of our Southern Reader’s Travelogue series, with Rob Rushin-Knopf visiting Monroeville, Alabama, the hometown of the immortal Harper Lee. And Arkansas poet Linda Blaskey joins the Salvation South fold with two poems that are positively redolent of the Ozark Mountains she calls home.

I must also call attention to a new line of Salvation South T-shirts that we’re calling the “Red Letter Collection.” We created them because we were motivated to call out the idiocy and hatred of folks who drape themselves in the garb of the holy while advocating for racism and transphobia.

We believe that loving your neighbor, defending the marginalized, and welcoming every kind of people into your heart are practices that make the world and our region a better place. If you feel the same, you might want to wear something from our Red Letter Collection. All the T-shirts and other gear we make for you help us to keep doing our work, the purpose of which is to tell stories for and about Southerners who believe that the welcoming spirit we are known for has to extend to all people—every color and every gender. If your version of “Southern hospitality” doesn’t welcome all people, we think you ain’t hospitable at all. Not one bit.

Love one another, people. Love all. Serve all.

Chuck Reece

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Chuck Reece is the co-founder and editor-in-chief of Salvation South, the weekly web magazine you're reading right now. He was the founding editor of The Bitter Southerner. He grew up in the north Georgia mountains in a little town called Ellijay.