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The book has no illustrations or index. Purchasers are entitled to a free trial membership in the General Books Club where they can select from more than a million books without charge. Subjects: North Carolina; History / United States / State ... Read more

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In 1987, when veteran school administrator Thomas E. Truitt took the post of district superintendent in Florence, South Carolina, he assumed leadership of a public school system indenial of its racial disharmony. More than three decades after Brown v. Board of Education, Florence District One had never implemented an integration plan that met federal approval; rather the district had skirted the intent of the federal mandate by employing "freedom of choice" and traditional attendance zones. In the 1990s a single issue—the need to replace an aging, predominantly black elementary school—brought to the fore the local population’s anguished attitudes about race and education. Brick Walls recounts in wrenching detail how legacies of discrimination and injustice combined to divide a community along racial lines.

Truitt takes readers into the complex inner workings of a modern school system, detailing the relationships between school boards and professional administrators to which few parents or citizens are privy. He describes a two-year struggle that included heated public meetings, an NAACP lawsuit, a federal court hearing, and a court-mandated change in the election of school board members. Shedding light on the intractability of racial problems in South Carolina, Truitt stresses that the story of what happened in Florence cannot be understood in isolation but must be viewed as a tale that exposes much about the current state of public education in the South and across the United States. ... Read more

Customer Reviews (1)

Wonderful Read!
I'm pleased to write the first review for this wonderful book that reveals the idiosyncrasies of Southern race relations and the politics behind running a school district.

While he is very close to the topic, Tom does a remarkable job of giving factual accounts without raising a hint of defensiveness. Tom relays the events of his years in FSD 1 fairly, which must have been extremely difficult given the attacks inflicted on him during that period.

It is unfortunate that there is similar conflict in many Southern school systems. However, we are indeed fortunate that Tom's book raises consciousness on such an issue.

I recommend this book to anyone who is interested in discovering some of the real reasons our public school systems are rarely able to focus on the bigger picture of educating our children to their fullest potential. ... Read more

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In 1911, the Charleston Colored Industrial School opened its doors to 375 African American boys and girls, making it the first public high school for

African Americans in the city of Charleston. Throughout the years, there have been several public high schools in the city that educated African

American students. However, they all have closed, and Burke High School (formerly the Charleston Colored Industrial School) is the only public high school in the city that provides an education for children living on the Peninsula. This book explores the rich and unique history of the school from 1894 to 2006 and provides another perspective on the subject of education and African Americans in Charleston during 19th, 20th, and 21st centuries. ... Read more

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African American schools in the segregated South faced enormous obstacles in educating their students. But some of these schools succeeded in providing nurturing educational environments in spite of the injustices of segregation. Vanessa Siddle Walker tells the story of one such school in rural North Carolina, the Caswell County Training School, which operated from 1934 to 1969. She focuses especially on the importance of dedicated teachers and the principal, who believed their jobs extended well beyond the classroom, and on the community's parents, who worked hard to support the school.

According to Walker, the relationship between school and community was mutually dependent. Parents sacrificed financially to meet the school's needs, and teachers and administrators put in extra time for professional development, specialized student assistance, and home visits. The result was a school that placed the needs of African American students at the center of its mission, which was in turn shared by the community. Walker concludes that the experience of CCTS captures a segment of the history of African Americans in segregated schools that has been overlooked and that provides important context for the ongoing debate about how best to educate African American children. ... Read more

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Two thumbs up
This is a marvelously well-written book, easy to read, compelling personal accounts, providing an in-depth look at the socio-cultural dynamics of a segregated community from an empowering African American POV.As a yankee and a layperson, this was an introduction to the subject matter for me, and it provided a great perspective on the interplay between local politics and wider legislative actions at the national level.It tended to be a little redundant at times, but the story is so compelling, and the voices so authentic, I really did not mind.

The book focuses during the period of legalized segregation
Their Highest Potential, written by Vanessa Siddle Walker,is an extensively researched book specifically covering a southern African American school community in Caswell County, North Carolina until its lastyear of segregated operation ending in 1969.The book focuses during theperiod of legalized segregation of public schools and how African Americanstudents were not equally as funded compared to that of white schools. Regardless ofthe unequal funding and the poorer facilities, Walker goesfurther in detail about how the untold story of this school system inCaswell County was able to provide the means necessary for their studentsto succeed to their highest potential.Walker states, to remembersegregated schools largely by recalling only their poor resources presentsa historically incomplete picture (p. 3). Through a series of interviews,Walker incorporates vivid memories of the past to help bring to life theexistence and development of Caswell County High School. The bookbegins explaining how the environment and atmosphere of segregated schoolswas actually a good thing for black children.In segregated schools therewas no conflict of racism nor did black children recognize themselves as aminority.Within the segregated school theywere not treated like secondrate citizens, but they received the attention and education they deserved,despite the lack of resources.Through out the years the school boardreluctantly provided any materials necessary for satisfactory operation. Yet, the black community continuously in the dilemma of not havingresources and room for the growing number of people, still managed toenlighten students. Determined parents time after time lobbied for a newschool with the help from N. Longworth Dillard, the principal.Eventually,the overcrowded Rosenwald School moved to the newly built Caswell CountyTraining School in March of 1951. After years of prying,the peoplefinally had the newest and largest school in the county (p 61). Duringits time,the school became the only accredited school in the county bythe Southern Association of Schools and Colleges in 1955 and remained thatway until after desegregation (p. 8).The forming of Caswell CountyTraining School was dedicated to Dillard's perseverance but could not have been accomplished if it was not for the parental advocates.Advocates inwhich Walker calls them, were adults who took an active role in seeking thematerials needed for the children.These advocates positioned themselvesbetween the needs of the school and the lack of response from the schoolboard (p 65).Whether it was from parents donating lumber to teachersstaying after to help a student, the community made an environment thatproduced achievement.With this unified effort, black children receivedthe education they deserved despite the hardships of having less thanadequate supplies.In particular,this school system was the ideallearning institution where the principal, teachers, parents, and studentsall worked together to achieve common goals ... Read more

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Schooling the New South deftly combines social and political history, gender studies, and African American history into a story of educational reform. James Leloudis recreates North Carolina's classrooms as they existed at the turn of the century and explores the wide-ranging social and psychological implications of the transition from old-fashioned common schools to modern graded schools. He argues that this critical change in methods of instruction both reflected and guided the transformation of the American South. According to Leloudis, architects of the New South embraced the public school as an institution capable of remodeling their world according to the principles of free labor and market exchange. By altering habits of learning, they hoped to instill in students a vision of life that valued individual ambition and enterprise above the familiar relations of family, church, and community. Their efforts eventually created both a social and a pedagogical revolution, says Leloudis. Public schools became what they are today--the primary institution responsible for the socialization of children and therefore the principal battleground for society's conflicts over race, class, and gender. ... Read more

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In this provocative appraisal of desegregation in South Carolina, R. Scott Baker contends that half a century after the Brown decision we still know surprisingly little about the new system of public education that replaced segregated caste arrangements in the South. Much has been written about the most dramatic battles for black access to southern schools, but Baker examines the rational and durable evasions that authorities institutionalized in response to African American demands for educational opportunity.

A case study of southern evasions, Paradoxes of Desegregation: African American Struggles for Educational Equity in Charleston, South Carolina, 1926–1972 documents the new educational order that grew out of decades of conflict between African American civil rights activists and South Carolina’s political leadership. Baker expands the conventional scholarly perspective, which has focused almost exclusively on the NAACP, and explores activism on a local level to desegregate schools, colleges, and universities. During the 1940s, Baker shows, a combination of black activism and NAACP litigation forced state officials to increase funding for black education. This early phase of the struggle in turn accelerated the development of institutions that cultivated a new generation of grass roots leaders.

Challenging Michael J. Klarman’s backlash thesis, Baker demonstrates that white resistance to integration did not commence or crystallize after Brown. Instead, beginning in the 1940s, authorities in South Carolina institutionalized an exclusionary system of standardized testing that, according to Baker, exploited African Americans’ educational disadvantages, limited access to white schools, and confined black South Carolinians to separate institutions. As massive resistance to desegregation collapsed in the late 1950s, officials in other southern states followed South Carolina’s lead, adopting testing policies that continue to govern the region’s educational system.

Paradoxes of Desegregation brings much needed historical perspective to contemporary debates about the landmark federal education law, No Child Left Behind. Baker analyzes decades of historical evidence related to high-stakes testing and concludes that desegregation, while a triumph for advantaged blacks, has paradoxically been a tragedy for most African Americans. ... Read more

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Inspirational and deeply troubling
The title and seemingly narrow focus (and, indeed, the introduction) of this book might make it seem like a study suited only for academics. However, it most clearly is not.What is most remarkable about this book is how Baker paints portraits of the many, many ordinary (yet extraordinary) African-American individuals who were truly the prime movers in the struggle for educational opportunity in Charleston. The stories of these individuals and the durable obstacles they faced in gaining access to the most basic educational rights are both inspirational and deeply troubling.

In the course of the book, Baker also lays bare the way in which the white establishment of Charleston fought in every manner possible to insure that blacks would not be educated with whites and then, when it lost that battle, did everything in its power to insure that few blacks would "enjoy" that right. Baker rightly raises, but does not answer, the question of whether a strategy of dispensing with the hope for integration and instead creating well-funded black institutions might have, in the long run, better served the African-American community of Charleston.

Equally interesting and equally disturbing is the book's argument that the genesis and use of standardized testing--so much a part of the educational landscape today--was rooted in an a conscious attempt on the part of the white establishment to deny access to equal pay for black teachers and equal educational opportunity for African American students.

Anyone interested in issues related to the history of African-American education, equity in education, or testing--be it of teachers or students--would be wise to read this book. ... Read more

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Using Charlotte, North Carolina, as a case study of the dynamics of racial change in the 'moderate' South, Davison Douglas analyzes the desegregation of the city's public schools from the Supreme Court's 1954 Brown v. Board of Education decision through the early 1970s, when the city embarked upon the most ambitious school busing plan in the nation. In charting the path of racial change, Douglas considers the relative efficacy of the black community's use of public demonstrations and litigation to force desegregation. He also evaluates the role of the city's white business community, which was concerned with preserving Charlotte's image as a racially moderate city, in facilitating racial gains.

Charlotte's white leadership, anxious to avoid economically damaging racial conflict, engaged in early but decidedly token integration in the late 1950s and early 1960s in response to the black community's public protest and litigation efforts. The insistence in the late 1960s on widespread busing, however, posed integration demands of an entirely different magnitude. As Douglas shows, the city's white leaders initially resisted the call for busing but eventually relented because they recognized the importance of a stable school system to the city's continued prosperity. ... Read more

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The Dream Long Deferred tells the fifty-year story of the landmark struggle for desegregation in Charlotte, North Carolina, and the present state of the city's public school system. Award-winning writer Frye Gaillard, who covered school integration for the Charlotte Observer, updates his earlier 1988 and 1999 editions of this work to examine the difficult circumstances of the present day.

When the struggle to desegregate Charlotte began in the 1950s, the city was much like many other New South cities. But unlike peer communities that would resist federal rulings, Charlotte chose to begin voluntary desegregation of its schools in 1957. Over the next decade it made consistent, if slow, progress toward greater integration.

The glacial pace of change frustrated Charlotte's black citizens, prompting them to file lawsuits in federal court to seek nothing less than complete integration. When the U.S. District Court in 1969, and subsequently the U.S. Supreme Court in 1971, upheld that demand in the landmark Swann v. Charlotte-Mecklenburg decision, Charlotte became the national test case for busing. Though the transition was not always peaceful, within five years Charlotte was a model of successful integration. North Carolinians of all races joined in public and private initiatives to make desegregation work and garnered national recognition for their achievement. Based on the favorable results, a powerful consensus developed in Charlotte that desegregation was morally right and educational beneficial. But that opinion was not to last.

Charlotte's population grew rapidly in the 1990s, and many new arrivals were weary of the status of the public school system. In 1999 a group of white citizens reopened the case to push for a return to neighborhood schools. A federal judge sided with them, finding that the plans initiated in the 1971 ruling were both unnecessary and unconstitutional because they were race-based. Charlotte's journey had come full circle.

Today, Gaillard explains, Charlotte's schools are becoming segregated once more--this time along both economic and racial lines. A growing number of white students are either leaving the public school system for private institutions or converging on a few exceptional schools in affluent communities. This exodus from neighborhood schools has put the future of the city's public school system in jeopardy once more.

In this new edition of The Dream Long Deferred, Gaillard chronicles the span of Charlotte's five-decade struggle with race in education to remind us that the national dilemma of equal educational opportunity remains unsettled. Balanced in his treatment of all sides, Gaillard gives the issue a human face so that historians, educators, and ordinary citizens can better glean understanding from the triumph and tragedy of one American community.

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Maybe it's because his mother was a teacher. Or maybe it's because he has spent most of his life in classrooms as a wide-eyed first grader, a naA_ve college student, a seminarian, and now as a visiting writer in residencies across the country. But there's something about school that infuses the work of Donald Davis. Collected here are Davis's all-time favorite school stories. Whether we're traveling around the world with Miss Daisy, the fourth grade teacher who was integrating arithmetic, geography, .... ... Read more

Customer Reviews (2)

Disappointing bus ride!
All of the chapters in this book have already been published in See Rock City and Listening for the Crack of Dawn.I enjoyed those works.I was disappointed when I discovered that Ride the Butterflies did not contain any new material.

Ride The ButterfliesBack to School with Donald Davis
This was an exceptional book that covers a school boy's memories of teachers and fellow students that left impact on his life. These memories are vivid with the tall, but true, tales that we can call relate to in our childhoods. ... Read more

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United States Capitol Cities Fact Files

US,States,Capital,money,income,population,race,white,black,Hispanic,homeownership,geography,book reports,high school, middle school



Too many people? Look it up here.
Average income, look here.
Poverty rate? It is here.
And so much more……

What do you need to know???


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