Anti-blackness and Public Schools in the Border South by Weathersby Claude;Davis Matthew D.;

Author:Weathersby, Claude;Davis, Matthew D.;
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Information Age Publishing
Published: 2019-09-20T15:38:46+00:00

This hearing was the second public hearing authorized by the Board to consider the charges of resegregation in the SLPS district.

In defense of the proposals, Superintendent Hickey insisted the seventh/eighth grade center needed to relieve serious overcrowding in the West End elementary schools. Regarding the relocation of Harris to the Vashon building, Deputy Superintendent Kottmeyer cited a report that criticized the Harris building as deficient in essential facilities for a teachers’ training program. Kottmeyer also noted the declining enrollment at Vashon because of the relocation of families from the Mill Creek urban renewal project as reasonable justification for the Vashon High School closure (Staff Writer, 1963m). With the SLPS administrators’ denial of the charges and their preference to move ahead quickly with the proposals, the resolution of the issues of resegregation rested with the determinations of the biracial CAC which was formed to counsel and aid the Board in the matter of resegregation.

Members of the Black community criticized the CAC. An unsuccessful Black candidate for the Board in 1953 spearheaded the criticism (Staff Writer, 1953). The Rev. Dr. Joseph W. Nicholson (Rev. Nicholson), current member of the St. Louis branch of the NAACP’s education committee, respectfully criticized the CAC and its formation. Rev. Nicholson reasoned the CAC should have been comprised of some individuals who were “vitally concerned” with the issues rather than designating people because of some other relationships in the community. He pointed out, “The delicate and important thing is, the good people selected to form the citizens committee were not recommended by the organizations making the charges on the 1st of April.” Referring to the citizens of the CAC as honorable and good people, Rev. Nicholson called for them to disqualify themselves and that a reconstituted committee to be set up based on the recommendations of the organizations making the allegations (Staff Writer, 1963n). The Board and Schlafly ignored his request.

On April 16, 1963, the Board approved a controversial project involving athletic facilities in the school district. With a 7-to-5 vote, the Board authorized the construction of a football stadium at Soldan High School in the West End, the center of allegations of resegregation in the SLPS district. The stadium, one of three to be developed in the district, would be used by all high schools in the city in the Board’s plan to decentralize its athletic program and dispose of Public Schools Stadium (Staff Writer, 1963p). The Board had utilized Public Schools Stadium (opened in 1927) as its all-district venue for outdoor high school athletic contests and meets until the residential area surrounding the facility began to reflect majority Black residency; consequently, SLPS administrators declared it too expensive to maintain and inconvenient for access from the south side of the district. Further analysis of this action suggests that perhaps the Board decided the area surrounding the stadium, majority-Black residency, contributed to criminal activity that jeopardized the safety of White citizenry. The St. Louis American reported youth criminal activity: purse snatching, robberies of football game spectators, and other criminal behavior (Staff Writer, 1963q).

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