With a combination of personal experience and scholarly research, Saundra McGuire talked Thursday night about the trials of the 1960s desegregation of Baton Rouge schools.
East Baton Rouge Parish schools were ordered by the Supreme Court to desegregate in 1957. The order was lifted in 2003, a change some attribute to the movement of white students to private schools.
“It really was not about social mixing at all,” said McGuire, director of the Center for Academic Success and adjunct chemistry professor. “It was very much about ending a historical system that resulted in inferior education for blacks.”
McGuire was one of the first black students to integrate in Baton Rouge.
McGuire said desegregation supporters faced massive systemic barriers, even after the Supreme Court ruling against segregation in the 1954 case Brown v. Board of Education.
According to McGuire, Louisiana politicians combated the orders to integrate. Louisiana legislator Willie Rainach engineered legislation to circumvent the Brown decision and helped form a Baton Rouge chapter of the White Citizens’ Council, an anti-integration group.
Then Louisiana Gov. Sammie Davis also blocked integration measures, said McGuire.
One prevalent method of anti-integration legislation described by McGuire involved two separate laws. The first required that all college-bound students receive a “Certificate of Eligibility and Good Moral Character” signed by both their school’s principal and their district’s superintendent before being accepted to a Louisiana college.
The second law, the Teacher Tenure Act, mandated that any teacher or administrator supporting integration be fired.
In essence these two laws prevented many blacks from attending college by firing any faculty who signed their certificates.
McGuire said teachers were also instructed to treat black students differently from white students. The White Citizens’ Council urged teachers to treat blacks as “interlopers.” One memo to teachers read, “Do not call on [a black student] to recite, answer [a black student’s] questions briefly, discourage [black students] from participating in extracurricular activities.”
McGuire also said integrated blacks faced pressure from other students.
McGuire described the environment at Glen Oaks High School, where she first attended school with white students, as one of “constant harassment” with a “necessity for non-stop ‘high-alert’ status.”
In an extreme instance, McGuire described how a white male tried but failed to run down three black students with his car. Despite a confession of his malicious intent, the district attorney refused to prosecute the offender.
Another situation involved white students starting fights with the same black individuals to keep some of the integrated blacks perpetually suspended.
McGuire said a great part of her drive to succeed despite these obstacles was the influence of her family.
“They knew about the need to have a quality education,” she said.
McGuire explained the slow process through which blacks struggled for equality in integration.
In addition to the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People, another group involved with the movement was the Quakers. Led by Wade Mackie, a group of Quakers, a peaceful religious group, traveled to Baton Rouge to campaign for equality.
“The Quakers worked very closely with the NAACP to support students,” McGuire said.
Eventually teachers were integrated. McGuire said this provided another vehicle for discrimination to show itself.
McGuire said when teachers were integrated in the ’70s the school board shifted the most experienced black teachers to white schools and forced the least experienced white teachers to the black schools.
McGuire said today the East Baton Rouge Parish needs support. Over 70 percent of the students in the parish public school system are black, a result of the development of “white-only” private schools. Today the system favors private-school students who are not required to take the same exams as public school students, she said.
“Right now I don’t see us getting to a good place unless we can do things to turn [the system] around,” McGuire said.
Attended by an audience of about 30, the presentation began at 7 p.m. in the French House Grand Salon. It is the sixth presentation in a series organized by the University’s Summer Reading Program. The series aims to continue the dialogue started by this summer’s book, Gregory Williams’ “Life on the Color Line.”
David McCoy, English senior, attended McGuire’s presentation. He said he enjoyed the presentation and thought McGuire’s personal experience enhanced the lecture.
“I thought the most interesting stories were the stories about specific incidents,” he said.
—–Contact Daniel McBride at [email protected]