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Vol. 8 No. 45…Dedicated to the Dialogue on Race…November 11, 2005
Intuit’s Vibe
The Chicago Defender Sends a Man to Little Rock
By Gwendolyn Brooks
In Little Rock the people bear
Babes, and comb and part their hair
And watch the want ads, put repair
To roof and latch. While wheat toast burns
A woman waters multiferns.
Time upholds, or overturns,
The many, tight, and small concerns.
In Little Rock the people sing
Sunday hymns like anything,
Through Sunday pomp and polishing.
And after testament and tunes,
Some soften Sunday afternoons
With lemon tea and Lorna Doones.
I forecast...And I believe
Come Christmas Little Rock will cleave
To Christmas tree and trifle, weave,
From laugh and tinsel, texture fast.
In Little Rock is baseball; Barcarolle.
That hotness in July . . .
the uniformed figures raw and implacable
And not intellectual,
Batting the hotness or clawing the suffering dust.
The Open Air Concert,
on the special twilight green.
When Beethoven is brutal
or whispers to lady-like air.
Blanket-sitters are solemn,
as Johann troubles to lean
To tell them what to mean. . . .
There is love, too, in Little Rock.
Soft women softly
Opening themselves in kindness,
Or, pitying one's blindness,
Awaiting one's pleasure...In azure
Glory with anguished rose at the root. . . .
To wash away old semi-discomfitures.
They re-teach purple and unsullen blue.
The wispy soils go. And uncertain
Half-havings have they clarified to sures.
In Little Rock they know
Not answering the telephone is
a way of rejecting life,
That it is our business to be bothered, is our business
To cherish bores or boredom, be polite
To lies and love and many-faceted fuzziness.
I scratch my head, massage the hate-I-had.
I blink across my prim and pencilled pad.
The saga I was sent for is not down.
Because there is a puzzle in this town.
The biggest News I do not dare
Telegraph to the Editor's chair:
"They are like people everywhere."
The angry Editor would reply
In hundred harryings of Why.
And true, they are hurling spittle, rock,
Garbage and fruit in Little Rock.
And I saw coiling storm a-writhe
On bright madonnas. And a scythe
Of men harassing brownish girls.
(The bows and barrettes in the curls
And braids declined away from joy.)
I saw a bleeding brownish boy. . . .
The lariat lynch-wish I deplored.
The loveliest lynchee was our Lord.
Bit of History
Daisy Lee Gatson Bates (1912-1999)
Born on November 12, 1912 in Huttig, a tiny Arkansas mill-town, Daisy Lee Gatson never knew her biological parents. Three white men brutally assaulted and murdered her mother. Gatson’s father fled fearing reprisals from angry whites that did not want him to seek justice for his murdered wife. Friends of her parents, Orlee and Susie Smith, adopted Gatson; her mother’s murderers were never prosecuted. Her parents’ fate and the racism she experienced growing up helped shape Gatson’s life, which was devoted to the pursuit of equal opportunity and better conditions for black people.
In 1941, Gatson married Lucius Christopher Bates. The couple moved to Little Rock, Arkansas, where they began the Arkansas State Press. To improve her journalism and business skills, Bates attended classes at nearby Shorter College and Philander Smith College. Arkansas State Press, which became an avid voice of the civil rights struggle, regularly ran articles on police brutality, labor rights issues and the plight of black World War II veterans. On returning home after fighting for freedom abroad, black veterans were often harassed and subjected to violence and discrimination.
An active National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP) member, Bates was elected president of the Arkansas chapter. As leader of the NAACP state conference (1952), she participated in litigation to force the Little Rock School Board to proceed with an integration program after the Supreme Court's ruling in Brown v. Board of Education (1954). The resultant "Blossom Plan" called for integrating the high school.
Bates and other activists were constantly threatened. Crosses were burned on her front lawn; rocks and bombs were thrown at her home. She was arrested several times. Her convictions for violation of a city ordinance for failure to provide records of NAACP members and for criticizing a local judge in a newspaper article were reversed on appeal.
On September 23, 1957, the Little Rock Nine, as the black students that integrated Central High School became known, were prevented from entering the building. Arkansas Governor Orval Faubus posted National Guard troops to bar the entrance. Bates sent President Dwight D. Eisenhower a telegram requesting support. Two days later, federal troops escorted black students into Central High School.
Hundreds of photographers and reporters recorded the historic event, as white mobs verbally abused and spat at the black students. The nine teens walked proudly into the school, where they encountered more abuse from white students and teachers. Bates served as their mentor and advisor long after federal troops were withdrawn and reporters moved on. The nine teens were often referred to as “Daisy Bates' children;” Bates had no children of her own.
The first measure of success came on May 27, 1958; Ernest Green became the first black to graduate from Central High. The reprisals for this milestone came in the form of a bomb, which exploded in front of the Bates’ home on July 7, 1958. A boycott of Arkansas State Press advertisers forced the paper to shut down in 1959. In 1962, Bates published her memoir, The Long Shadow of Little Rock. For several decades, Bates worked for the Democratic National Committee on voter registration. She was the only woman to speak at the 1963 March on Washington.
Although incapacitated by a 1965 stroke, Bates was appointed (1968) as director of the Mitchellville, Arkansas OEO Self-Help Project. Her tireless work led to the installation of new water and sewer systems, roads were paved, and a community center built. Budget cuts during the Nixon administration threatened the project. Bates protested to no avail; she retired two years later.
In 1984, Bates received an honorary Doctor of Laws degree from the University of Arkansas. The University of Arkansas Press republished The Long Shadow of Little Rock; it became the first reprinted edition ever to earn an American Book Award (1986). In 1996, a wheelchair-bound Bates carried the Olympic torch in Atlanta, Georgia. Daisy Lee Gatson Bates died on November 4, 1999. (Sources: , , and )
Comments from the Bat Cave
The Dark Knight-Batman/White Ninja/Zorro is finding it increasingly difficult to be the good guy. At home, his good nature, which demands some solitude, is sorely tested. Pesky siblings invade his space. And, his grandma’s high expectation is a force to be reckoned; it spells exhaustion. At school, bullies and mean-spirited “good” kids look and sometimes act alike. In commenting on his situation and recognizing good and evil, the Dark One/Ninja/Zorro said, “Sometimes, it is hard to tell who the good guy is. ”
Hood Notes
School Discipline and Dropout Rates
Zero tolerance discipline policies, ostensibly introduced to address campus security issues such as weapons and bomb threats, have increasingly been used to punish lesser offenses, such as school ground fights, truancy and other disruptive behaviors, which were typically handled in school. Now, rather than identifying and addressing the underlying cause of misbehavior, school administrators are suspending students and subjecting them to criminal charges. For some school districts, especially those with large minority student populations, this has proven to be the easiest way to deal with disciplinary problems.
Research studies and antidotal evidence suggest a positive correlation exists between harsh school discipline and dropout rates. The more often a child is kicked out of school, the greater his chances of dropping out, ending up in poverty, incarcerated and/or a target for military recruiters.
According to , the national school dropout rate for ages 16 to 24 in the non-institutionalized civilian population gradually declined between 1972 and 2004 from 15 percent to a low 10 percent in 2004. While the dropout rate fell in all demographic groups over this period, the rate for blacks remains twice that of whites. Unfortunately, the decline in the black dropout rate to an historic low 11 percent in 2001 was due in part to dramatic increases in incarceration rates among black high school dropouts. Imprisoned young people and those serving in the military are not included in dropout statistics.
In keeping with a long-running pattern of racial disparity, discipline is not meted out equally. Regardless of their socioeconomic status, black students are far more likely to be suspended than whites for similar offenses. Earlier this year, the NAACP held a series of public hearings in Florida on school discipline in which parents complained about harsh school disciplinary policies aimed primarily at black students. In addition to emphasizing statistics that show black children are suspended, expelled and arrested much more frequently than white children, the meeting focused public attention on the “unforgiving, overly harsh disciplinary practices that remove children from school and brand them as criminals.” Once branded, young people tend to dropout to meet society’s low expectations for them: lives defined by poverty, crime and incarceration.
Research shows there are a number of effective alternatives to harsh discipline from alternative schools for students with serious disciplinary problems to in-school detention for minor infractions of the code of conduct. These alternatives keep kids in school and actively engaged in the learning process. While kicking kids out of school may be the easiest way to address discipline problems in the short-run, keeping kids in school is best for everyone in the long-run, because dropouts are a drain on society.
News You Use
College Bound?
Widely used by US colleges and universities, the American College Testing Program (ACT) is a national college admission and placement examination. It assesses high school students’ general educational development and their ability to complete college-level work. First administered in the fall of 1959, students in all fifty states annually take the ACT. More than 2.1 million ACT tests were administered during the 2004-2005 school year.
The ACT test contains 215 multiple choice questions, which cover English, mathematics, reading comprehension and science. An optional writing test, which gauges the student’s ability to plan and write an essay, is also available. ACT test questions are based on what is supposedly taught in the high school curriculum. In general, students that take rigorous high school mathematics and science courses do well on the college entrance examination; these students also tend to be better prepared for college courses. The recommended core curriculum for college-bound students is four years of English and three years each of social studies, science and math at the level of algebra or higher.
According to the ACT annual report for 2005, only about half of this year’s high school graduates possesses the reading skills needed to succeed in college. An even smaller percentage is prepared for college-level science and math courses. Fewer than twenty-five percent of the 2005 test takers meet the college-readiness benchmarks in reading comprehension, English, math and science.
Students that do not do well on the ACT, tend to be ill-prepared for college-level courses. Many dropout and/or must take remedial courses prior to successfully pursuing college work. For more about the ACT program and its annual report, visit .
Blah! Blah!
Center for Equal Opportunity (CEO)? Not!
Litigation was successfully used to delay and frustrate public school desegregation. While communities across the nation awaited court rulings, which are only swift when the Supreme Court selects a president, whites took flight to newly built public schools in suburbia or registered their children in private institutions to avoid integration. Equally successful, litigation has been employed to minimize the impact of affirmation action as a tool to address past and on-going discrimination in awarding public contracts and admitting blacks into previously segregated public institutions for higher education. While once blacks were barred from attending these tax-funded institutions based solely on skin color, now to use race in any form for admissions amounts to a “quota,” which presumably hurts whites.
According to the 2004 US Census Bureau estimates, North Carolina’s population is 72 percent white and 22 percent black. The 2005 freshman class at North Carolina State University is 80 percent white and 9.5 percent black. In any real sense, blacks are obviously under-represented in the state’s flagship university’s freshman class. Yet, according to a recent complaint filed by the Center for Equal Opportunity (CEO)– a conservative organization– North Carolina State employs admissions guidelines that unfairly favor blacks.
To bolster its allegation against NC State’s admission guidelines, CEO’s complaint uses the politically explosive term-- quota-- in referring to the university’s admissions process. CEO describes itself as “uniquely positioned to counter the divisive impact of race-conscious public policies.” Like earlier groups that litigated against public school desegregation, CEO is not interested in equal opportunity. Its aim is to ensure even fewer blacks attend NC state. Blah on CEO’s thinly veiled hate and hypocrisy that know no bounds!
Disgruntled says: Fellows at the Manhattan Institute for Policy Research conducted a study on the impact of high school exit exams on dropout rates. Their findings dispute claims by opponents of these exams that they boost dropout rates, particularly among minority students. Students in twenty-four states must past an exit exam to receive their high school diplomas. In many ways, exit exams are like college entrance tests. Students that take the more rigorous classes do better in both situations, because they have been exposed to the test material. Clearly, students that take a less rigorous curriculum fare worse, if for no other reason than a lack of exposure to the test material. Generally, in racially mixed public schools, white students fill the advanced placement classes, where the test material is taught. While the Manhattan study does not show a positive correlation between the use of exit exams and dropout rates, intuitively, students that fail exit exams are unlikely to want to continue studying in order to graduate.
Disgruntled feels: Tenacious! The visceral hate directed at blacks attempting to dismantle Jim Crow segregation did not simply dissipate. One can hear it today expressed in conservative views on everything from abortion and education to war and judicial appointments. Its tenacity is reflected in socioeconomic stats that show the United States is still two distinctly unequal nations -- one white and the other black. The unemployment gap is a testament to its longevity. When the Little Rock Nine integrated Central High School in 1957, black and white unemployment rates were 7.9 and 3.8 percent, respectively. This gap in unemployment rates and the resulting chasm in income continue today unaffected by superficial social changes, such as blacks being allowed to sit in the front of the bus and the removal of black and white only signs. Today, it hides its ugly face in codes like “traditional family values” and “strict construction of the constitution.” But, make no mistake; it is no less visceral and tenacious.
Disgruntled wants to know: Like former presidents in trouble at home, George W. Bush ventured to South and Central America to discuss a hemispheric free trade zone. Since the nations he went to woo did not sign on the dotted line, his mission was a failure too. Mobbed by protestors, Bush looked uncomfortably out of his element. Telling in all this was the necessity of the US press to comment on the protests. At home, Bush is protected from the disgruntled by “free speech” zones, a euphemism for how the world’s greatest “democracy” fence protestors in areas far away from wherever Bush happen to be appearing. He never sees domestic protestors and the press, like a lap dog following close on its master’s heels, feels no need to cover them. With his approval rating so low, how does the press justify showing no one publicly expressing venom?
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