Teachers make segregation come alive for students

Evelyn Guess's second-graders eagerly gather on the carpet for story time. But before the book is opened, it's time for the word of the day. Students sound out the word on the blackboard slowly: de-seg-re-ga-tion.

The students at Del Roble Elementary School in San Jose are African American, Vietnamese, Mexican, white and biracial. Their teacher is African American. They're wide-eyed when they learn that students and teachers of different colors did not always share classrooms, and that not so long ago students just like them were judged according to the color of their skin.

Guess, a member of the Oak Grove Educators Association, begins reading about Ruby Bridges. After the Supreme Court ordered schools to desegregate in 1954, the six-year-old was the only African American child sent to an all-white neighborhood school in New Orleans. The white students stayed home rather than attend an integrated school. But adults came every day to scream at Ruby as she was escorted to school by gun-toting federal marshals.

Pictures in the book show adults screaming at the little girl with the big bow on her dress. "What do you think they are saying to Ruby?" Guess asks.

"Go home," answer the children. "Get out of the school." "No coloreds allowed."

"Do you think that's fair?" asks Guess.

"Nooooo," they reply loudly in unison.

Guess explains that Ruby and her parents were frightened, but that they were also happy and excited that she would finally be able to attend the "good school" where the books and materials were new, and not scribbled on. She asks her students what they would do if they were in Ruby's shoes. Would they take advantage of this opportunity for a better education - even if they were the only minority student in the entire school? Or would they choose to remain at their old school with their friends? The students sit quietly, pondering such a huge decision.

"Because of people like Ruby Bridges, who was a little itty-bitty girl not much older than you, people of all colors can now go to school together," says Guess. "Isn't it nice that we can all be different and all learn so much from each other? I have been lucky to be able to learn so much from each of you."

"We can't forget our past," says Guess later. "We have to let children know that this happened, and let them ask questions about why it happened. We have to make the lessons age-appropriate."

At Harrison Elementary School in Pomona, Ginger Curry personalizes prejudice for her kindergarten and first-grade students. First she reads The Other Side of the Fence by Jacqueline Woodson, which tells the story of a little white girl who lives on one side of the fence and a little black girl who lives on the other. Both girls are told by their mothers not to climb over the fence because it's "dangerous" on the other side. When they ask their mothers why, they are told, "Because that's the way it's always been." Soon the girls decide to sit on the fence together - without climbing over - and spend most of the summer talking as friends.

Curry, a member of Associated Pomona Teachers, then constructs a cardboard "fence" and puts some of her students on one side and some on the other. The children are told they must stay on their own side. Then she asks the youngsters to speak to those on the other side and tell them why they should come over.

"We're nice. We're gentle. We play nicely. We're all people and we're really not different," say the students to one another. In no time at all, the fence comes down and students of different ethnicities are playing together happily.

During a lesson on Brown v. Board of Education at Dyer Kelly Elementary School in Sacramento, Etta Martin-Lee tells her fourth-graders that only certain students can eat pizza in the school cafeteria, and that others will have to eat plain biscuits outside. "You will be separate and get to eat the same amount of food, so isn't that equal?" she asks.

Her students don't quite see it that way. Those who are told they can't eat in the lunchroom say they feel sad, mad and alone. One girl seems on the verge of tears. Martin-Lee points out that Linda Brown and other African American students experienced those same feelings during the days of segregation. "No one in this room is better than anyone else," she says, giving the girl a hug. "You can all eat lunch together."

"Equality does not always mean the same thing as equity," says Martin-Lee. "For your homework tonight, I'd like you to tell me the difference between the two."

At Luther Burbank High School in Sacramento, social studies teacher Benee Hopson throws his students a curve when he asks them to come up with arguments to support the segregationist point of view.

The seniors, who are mostly students of color, are told to disregard their own feelings. Some of the reasons they list are that it might cause "panic," that students would have to mingle with those different from themselves, and that it would save money for white schools to give their old books to the black schools.

"You have to remember that people felt very strongly about both sides of this issue and that many believed it was up to the individual states to decide this and not up to the courts," says Hopson, a member of the Sacramento City Teachers Association.

Hopson then asks students to imagine how it would feel to be escorted by the National Guard through a screaming mob to the doors of a white school.

"Even though Sacramento is one of the most integrated places on Earth, we still have some issues here today," he says. Some students tell Hopson they still experience "racial profiling" and discrimination on occasion - at school and within the community.

For homework, they are told to write an essay on how they think their lives would be different without the Brown ruling and what issues the Supreme Court should now tackle to achieve true equality.

Meanwhile, at San Dimas High School in Southern California, Jim Himelhoch's senior government class addresses a similar question in a discussion about the Brown decision and how discrimination still exists today.

Students bring up the parallel of gay marriages being performed in San Francisco. Some say that gay people deserve the right to marry, the same as straight people, while others opine that marriage should be between a man and a woman.

The issue could end up being the next Brown v. Board of Education decision, suggests Catherine Sakaue. "Maybe 20 to 30 years from now, prejudice against gays will be viewed as being as ridiculous as racial segregation is viewed today."