September 10, 1963, twenty black students were able to attend Alabama public schools for the first time. This is not the Little Rock, Arkansas that we are most familiar with but this is one of the milestones of the civil rights movement.
During the time of the 1954 Brown Vs. Board of Education of Topeka, Kansas 17 states were segregated as well as the District of Columbia. These states were Delaware, Maryland, Missouri, Kentucky, Virginia, West Virginia, Oklahoma, Texas, Florida, Georgia, Alabama, Massachusetts, North Carolina, South Carolina, Indiana, Louisiana, and Arkansas. The decision overturned the separate but equal ruling and declared that it violated equal protection of the 14th amendment. In short, blacks and whites should be taught at the same school.
As with all government actions things don't happen as quickly as they should. 1963 was the year John F. Kennedy pushed to desegregate the south. Eleven states and 144 school districts desegregated with out any problems. Birmingham, Alabama resisted as much as they could. Even the governor George C. Wallace was fighting to keep the schools segregated. Kennedy told Wallace that he was willing to use any armed forces necessary to desegregate the schools. Eventually Wallace backed down. Four days later on September 15, 1963 the 16th Street Baptist Church was bombed killing 4 young ladies. The violence in the south would get worse before it would get better. This was a dark time in America's history.
Could you image the feeling of these 20 students must of felt attending school at these institutions for the first time? They must of felt so alone and scared. But this needed to be done to help our nation unite. These children were picked out to lead others into becoming one school. It wasn't easy for them. They had to be guarded with our own military to attend class. Think about that for a moment. Today we take for granted of students of any race coming in and out of the doorways of the school without a second thought. But it was paved on the tears and fears of those students 50 years ago.
I am reminded of a lesson a teacher taught us back in my early elementary years of segregation. We had a boys drinking fountain and a girls drinking fountain. She had the boys line up at the girls fountain and us girls had to line up at the boys drinking fountain for all of us to drink from. We giggled and jested as we took a drink from the other fountain. Obviously the water is piped in to the fountains by the same pipe but the only difference was they were a short distance from each other. None of us liked it. We preferred our own drinking fountain. It wasn't easy to do. After that experiment we still went back to our regular drinking fountain without a second thought.
I realize now that our teacher was trying to tell us that it doesn't matter which drinking fountain we drink from. They are one and the same. The color of our skin may be different but our pipes, or our inner organs are all the same. There isn't a difference.
There is a part of Martian Luther King jr.'s August 28th, 1963 speech of "I have a Dream" where he says, "...little black boys and black girls will be able to join hands with little white boys and white girls as sisters and brothers..." Have we achieved that dream yet? Although the schools are now as one but there is still a separation of races within the schools. Take a look at any major school cafeteria at lunch time or a shopping mall. Generally you will find colored groups flocked around together whether it be yellow, white, red or black. Now there may be the occasional black person or two with a group of white people or visa versa but majority stick to their own race. That is not being as one as Martin Luther King Jr. dreamed of.
We have come a long way from 50 short years ago. It was just a short time in our nation's history that blacks couldn't share our drinking fountain or ride in front of the bus. Now look around at the change that has taken place. What will happen in the next 50 years?
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