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A review by gabbilevy
A Girl Stands at the Door: The Generation of Young Women Who Desegregated America's Schools by Rachel Devlin
5.0
I deeply enjoyed this moving account of the unsung work that these women and girls did to literally open the doors of schools in the face of ugly, insidious racism and two hundred years of institutionalized discrimination. We know Thurgood Marshall, but history has forgotten Ada Sipuel, Lucile Bluford, the Jennings sisters, Margurite Carr, Leona Tate and so many others. They deserve to be celebrated and remembered. My interview with [a:Rachel Devlin|191148|Rachel Devlin|https://s.gr-assets.com/assets/nophoto/user/u_50x66-632230dc9882b4352d753eedf9396530.png]:
BROWN V. BOARD OF Education of Topeka, the landmark 1954 schools desegregation Supreme Court decision, has been called on of the most consequential court rulings in American history.
But aside from a handful of main players – Thurgood Marshall, the founder of the NAACP's Legal Defense Fund, who argued Brown v. Board before the court and eventually became its first black ashociate justice, and perhaps Ruby Bridges, one of the "desegregation firsts" whose integration of a New Orleans school was commemorated in a Norman Rockwell painting – few of those who worked to strike down school segregation are known to the general public.
In her new book, "A Girl Stands at the Door: The Generation of Young Women Who Desegregated America's Schools," historian Rachel Devlin illuminates the largely unknown lives of the girls who made up the vast majority of plaintiffs in desegregation cases, and the women who battled racist school officials, their skeptical neighbors and sometimes even the NAACP to force desegregation into the public consciousness. Devlin recently spoke to U.S. News about the unsung but critical role these young women played in changing the course of American history. Excerpts:
Many people would be surprised to learn that the desegregation of public schools was so largely driven by girls and women. What about this fight made it so attractive to women – or unattractive to men working in other areas of civil rights?
Women and girls showed a stronger commitment to the idea or the ideal of school desegregation. To them it seemed very simple: they said, 'It was just wrong,' 'It had to change.' They were able to articulate their commitment to school desegregation in part because they could envision themselves in white schools.
To them it was a form of radical social optimism to imagine what at that point was unimaginable. Black and white students had never gone to school together before, and most people, including African-Americans, believed that there was too much hostility between the races, and coexistence in the school was a dream. That's why when girls approached these schools and attempted to walk through the front door, such large crowds would gather, because it was truly radical to see a black child attempting to walk into a white school.
People are used to men and boys in general, men and young men, being historical subjects. We're used to thinking of civil rights leadership as being male. Fundamentally, they were not interested in this work and some of it was that they didn't have the skills that they needed. It was really grueling and grinding work. If you've ever spent any time with a lawyer, these are terribly boring meetings, and talking to white school officials, testifying in court, then in the process of desegregating, sitting in classrooms with white students for seven hours of the day, nine months of the year. A lot of black young men, when it came to desegregating the high school, said, I don't think it's worth it, or I'm not interested in that job.
What made girls better suited for the task?
They were taught from an early age to be self possessed, poised, polite, diplomatic, to smile, to always look adults in the eye. Their daily lives were full of insults, surveillance, harassment, sexual harassment, from white men on the streets, from men and boys in the houses where they worked, and from adults in general. Black girls were really never left in peace, and so their parents and ministers and school teachers and relatives constantly instilled in them the necessity of having what they called correct behavior. Girls knew they had these skills, and that gave them the confidence to be able to approach these schools. Black girls were taught to act as if they were socially open, while remaining in fact, somewhat emotionally closed.
Unlike lunch counters or public transportation, which involved fleeting interactions, schools desegregation was only the first step in an arduous process. Describe what it was like for these first girls after they were allowed through the doors?
"Desegregation firsts" often used war analogies. They called themselves soldiers, they called themselves warriors, and it was a state of high alert every single day in the school. Every moment, someone was trying to make you collapse and get you to withdraw: The students would trip these girls, kick these girls, hit these girls. The young men as well, but actually girls received more violence, which is counterintuitive to some people, but it was because they were smaller and easier targets. The worst things that students would do is spit on them and spit in their food, and the sabotage was ongoing.
Many of these white students were being instructed by white Citizens' Councils in the South to harass the black students in an effort to make school desegregation impossible. Teachers encouraged and refused to discipline students who attacked these girls, refused to call on the girls in class. The girls told me about how they would go through the entire school day without speaking and how eerie it was to not talk. Everybody agrees that the worst part was not the violence but the ostracism that hurt the most. Eventually they would fight back physically; when students tampered with their lockers and their books, sometimes they retaliated and tampered with the white kids' books. Girls often started to speak in class whether or not they were called on.
All of these high schools sang "Dixie" or "Old Uncle Joe" and they had confederate flags, rebel flags, that they would wave at pep rallies. You were supposed to stand up and pledge allegiance to that flag and to a person, these girls all refused to stand for that flag, so that was a form of resistance as well.
And all of the ways in which they fought back and spoke back to teachers and to principals helped them survive the experience.
Read the rest of the interview here.
BROWN V. BOARD OF Education of Topeka, the landmark 1954 schools desegregation Supreme Court decision, has been called on of the most consequential court rulings in American history.
But aside from a handful of main players – Thurgood Marshall, the founder of the NAACP's Legal Defense Fund, who argued Brown v. Board before the court and eventually became its first black ashociate justice, and perhaps Ruby Bridges, one of the "desegregation firsts" whose integration of a New Orleans school was commemorated in a Norman Rockwell painting – few of those who worked to strike down school segregation are known to the general public.
In her new book, "A Girl Stands at the Door: The Generation of Young Women Who Desegregated America's Schools," historian Rachel Devlin illuminates the largely unknown lives of the girls who made up the vast majority of plaintiffs in desegregation cases, and the women who battled racist school officials, their skeptical neighbors and sometimes even the NAACP to force desegregation into the public consciousness. Devlin recently spoke to U.S. News about the unsung but critical role these young women played in changing the course of American history. Excerpts:
Many people would be surprised to learn that the desegregation of public schools was so largely driven by girls and women. What about this fight made it so attractive to women – or unattractive to men working in other areas of civil rights?
Women and girls showed a stronger commitment to the idea or the ideal of school desegregation. To them it seemed very simple: they said, 'It was just wrong,' 'It had to change.' They were able to articulate their commitment to school desegregation in part because they could envision themselves in white schools.
To them it was a form of radical social optimism to imagine what at that point was unimaginable. Black and white students had never gone to school together before, and most people, including African-Americans, believed that there was too much hostility between the races, and coexistence in the school was a dream. That's why when girls approached these schools and attempted to walk through the front door, such large crowds would gather, because it was truly radical to see a black child attempting to walk into a white school.
People are used to men and boys in general, men and young men, being historical subjects. We're used to thinking of civil rights leadership as being male. Fundamentally, they were not interested in this work and some of it was that they didn't have the skills that they needed. It was really grueling and grinding work. If you've ever spent any time with a lawyer, these are terribly boring meetings, and talking to white school officials, testifying in court, then in the process of desegregating, sitting in classrooms with white students for seven hours of the day, nine months of the year. A lot of black young men, when it came to desegregating the high school, said, I don't think it's worth it, or I'm not interested in that job.
What made girls better suited for the task?
They were taught from an early age to be self possessed, poised, polite, diplomatic, to smile, to always look adults in the eye. Their daily lives were full of insults, surveillance, harassment, sexual harassment, from white men on the streets, from men and boys in the houses where they worked, and from adults in general. Black girls were really never left in peace, and so their parents and ministers and school teachers and relatives constantly instilled in them the necessity of having what they called correct behavior. Girls knew they had these skills, and that gave them the confidence to be able to approach these schools. Black girls were taught to act as if they were socially open, while remaining in fact, somewhat emotionally closed.
Unlike lunch counters or public transportation, which involved fleeting interactions, schools desegregation was only the first step in an arduous process. Describe what it was like for these first girls after they were allowed through the doors?
"Desegregation firsts" often used war analogies. They called themselves soldiers, they called themselves warriors, and it was a state of high alert every single day in the school. Every moment, someone was trying to make you collapse and get you to withdraw: The students would trip these girls, kick these girls, hit these girls. The young men as well, but actually girls received more violence, which is counterintuitive to some people, but it was because they were smaller and easier targets. The worst things that students would do is spit on them and spit in their food, and the sabotage was ongoing.
Many of these white students were being instructed by white Citizens' Councils in the South to harass the black students in an effort to make school desegregation impossible. Teachers encouraged and refused to discipline students who attacked these girls, refused to call on the girls in class. The girls told me about how they would go through the entire school day without speaking and how eerie it was to not talk. Everybody agrees that the worst part was not the violence but the ostracism that hurt the most. Eventually they would fight back physically; when students tampered with their lockers and their books, sometimes they retaliated and tampered with the white kids' books. Girls often started to speak in class whether or not they were called on.
All of these high schools sang "Dixie" or "Old Uncle Joe" and they had confederate flags, rebel flags, that they would wave at pep rallies. You were supposed to stand up and pledge allegiance to that flag and to a person, these girls all refused to stand for that flag, so that was a form of resistance as well.
And all of the ways in which they fought back and spoke back to teachers and to principals helped them survive the experience.
Read the rest of the interview here.