We have fought this fight as long as, and as well as we know how. We have been defeated. For us, as a Christian people, there is now but one course to pursue. We must accept the situation.
MORE than 100 years after Appomattox, Mississippians found General Robert E. Lee's words newly poignant and appropriate. For over a decade they had used every delaying tactic they knew in their battle to maintain their tradition of educational apartheid. Then, last October, the U.S. Supreme Court ordered an immediate end to segregation in 30 of the state's school districts. Last week Mississippians in 27 of the districts accepted, if not defeat, then at least the reality of binding law. As white parents watched in anger, despair or simply resignation, black children entered once segregated schools and took their places beside whites for the first time. For Mississippi, an era had ended.
But for both Mississippi and the rest of the South, a new era is also beginning. Following the example of its Mississippi order, the Supreme Court is expected this week to order the immediate desegregation of public schools serving some 300,000 white and black children in five Southern states. This will bring an end to the federal phase of the school desegregation fight. The battle will now be fought at the local level, as individual Southerners, both white and black, struggle with their own fears and prejudices to decide what kind of school system and, ultimately, what kind of community they are going to have.
Clue to the Future. For those reasons, the rest of the U.S. followed the events in Mississippi closely. Parents in the more than 500 Southern school districts scheduled to desegregate by next fall studied their Mississippi counterparts for a clue to their own future behavior. Parents and officials in Northern cities, several of which are also under pressure to end de facto school segregation (see following story), watched to see if integration could be made to work. For both groups, the auguries were unpromising.
As officials had expected, the transition proceeded in an atmosphere of orderly tension. Heeding appeals from Governor John Bell Williams to "make the best of a bad situation," Mississippians refrained from the acts of violence that had marked earlier attempts to desegregate the state's schools. Nor, with the realization that Mississippi had gone beyond the point of no return, was there more than the expected chorus of protest as legal desegregation became a fact. White parents in the tiny (pop. 8,000) Forrest County community of Petal reacted angrily to a plan for busing their children. When a school official tried to explain the program, they borrowed a line from antiwar protesters and stormed out, chanting, "Hell no, we won't go." In Hattiesburg, 1,000 white parents paraded in a bone-chilling drizzle as schools there desegregated. Almost everywhere else, opening day was quiet.