“…WITH LIBERTY AND JUSTICE FOR ALL”
May 16, 2004 The Reverend Anne Felton Hines
Up until high school, I had attended public schools that were all-white – not because my parents had chosen that, but because the Altadena neighborhoods in which we lived were all white – though I suppose one might argue that the choices my parents made as to where we lived involved issues of race; I’ve never asked them.
By the time I was to enter high school, we had moved from West Altadena to East Altadena, into a larger house to accommodate our expanding family. By that time, I think West Altadena had become more diverse ethnically, but East Altadena remained very white.
I entered John Muir High School – located on the west side of Pasadena – in the fall of 1959 – four years after the United States Supreme Court, under the leadership of Chief Justice Earl Warren, issued its unanimous decision in Brown vs. Board of Education, ending government-sponsored racial segregation in public schools. Tomorrow – May 17th – marks the 50th anniversary of that judgment, in which the Justices concluded that, “in the field of public education, the doctrine of ‘separate but equal’ has no place. Separate education facilities are inherently unequal.”
By all accounts, this was an incredible moment for African Americans. According to Brian Willoughby, co-editor of the magazine, Teaching Tolerance, even though fear of reprisal curtailed much public expression of their joy, particularly in the South, still, news of the decision engendered strong emotions among Black Americans.
Sara Lightfoot, an African American 10-year-old at the time, has said that she “could see the veil of oppression lift from her parents’ shoulders” when word of the decision reached their home. “They seemed to be standing taller,” she recalls. For the first time in her young life, she saw tears in her father’s eyes.
But of course, the decision also engendered outrage with Southern – and some Northern -- Whites. I am sure that an editorial in the Jackson, Mississippi Daily News spoke for many white Americans when it said: “White and Negro children in the same schools will lead to miscegenation. Miscegenation leads to mixed marriages, and mixed marriages lead to the mongrelization of the human race.”
But all of this felt pretty distant from my life in Altadena. I’m sure we spoke about it in my home; all of us would have thought the Brown decision an important sign of progress. But we probably believed that it was a decision affecting only the South; after all, none of our public accommodations mandated the segregation of the races. It was true that most of the schools we attended were primarily White, with an occasional Asian sprinkled in here and there. But that was because Altadena itself was primarily White – except for West Altadena, the lower-income area, to which more and more African Americans were now moving.
And indeed, by 1959 when I was ready for high school, John Muir – which took students from all of Altadena – was very integrated with both white and black students – again, with a few Asians as well. I can recall no Latinos living in the area in those days.
I remember being warned by other white students at my junior high school that terrible things happened at Muir; that it was a dangerous place to be. But that wasn’t true; some of my fondest memories from my youth are from my days at John Muir – partly due to the rich experience of attending school with a greater diversity of people, during such exciting times.
And because of the way the boundaries had been set years earlier, I was in fact bused from my home in East Altadena every day all the way to Muir, just as my older sister and brother had been four years earlier. We weren’t bused for the sake of integration, but simply because it was on the other side of town.
But within a few years after I graduated in 1962, things began to change. La Canada parents had already pulled their children out of Muir, opting to build their own high school that could be all-white. Pasadena High School moved from its site on the community college campus, to one in northeast Pasadena, right on the border of east Altadena. And a third high school, Blair, was built in South Pasadena. All these changes required new boundaries, and by the time my two younger siblings reached high school, students in east Altadena were attending PHS, which, because of the demographics, was largely white. And Muir became more and more African American. Any attempts the community made to keep the schools integrated were undermined by a very conservative and powerful Board of Education.
As a result, in 1970 Pasadena became the first city outside of the deep South ordered to integrate its schools because, ruled the Court, Pasadena had intentionally created a segregated school system. And so, what became known as the “Pasadena Plan” was created, which included a strategy to bus students to schools across town.
But the plan ultimately failed – partly because of the lack of support by the school board, which poured huge amounts of money into appealing the Court decision. And eventually mandatory busing was ended throughout California.
By the time my son entered John Muir High School in the late ‘80s, he estimates that its student body was approximately 60-70% African American. Garrett tells me that it was by then considered the worst high school in Pasadena – not because of the racial make-up, but because it had so few resources.
This past Thursday evening I attended a forum at Muir, at which several graduates of the mandated busing program spoke. Each of them deplored the attempts by the school board back then to resist the court order, insisting that the community as a whole had been supportive of busing to achieve integration. Each of them – black and white – told the audience how important it had been to them to go to school in an integrated student body. And each of them expressed great concern, and even anger, at the situation in which our public schools find themselves today. (This forum will be aired tomorrow morning on Larry Mantel’s show, “Talk of the City,” on KPCC – I think at 10:00.)
For what’s happened in Pasadena is no different than what’s happened throughout our nation. Today, public schools are more segregated than before the 1970 Supreme Court orders to achieve integration through busing. Only 14% of white students in America attend multiracial schools, making white the most segregated group in our nation’s schools. They miss out on the rich experience I had at John Muir. And according to an article by Gary Orfield and Erica Frankenberg, of Harvard’s Graduate School of Education, African American students are the most likely group to attend what’s called “apartheid schools” – schools with virtually only non-white students, where poverty, limited resources, social strife and health problems abound.
And not surprisingly, nearly 90% of these intensely segregated schools for blacks and Latinos are also schools in which at least half of the student body is poor. Yet while their lives and their schools have the fewest resources, these students are subjected to the same increasingly vigorous testing that has begun under the Bush Administration’s “Leave No Child Behind” program – a program almost guaranteed for failure for these particular students.
Fifty years later, the vision of Brown v. Board of Education has been abandoned. It was consciously abandoned in the 1980s when more conservative court judges reversed orders for integration. It was consciously abandoned by voters here in California who passed a ballot measure ending mandatory busing. And it was unconsciously abandoned by those who could afford to either move to areas with superior public schools, or to take their children out of public schools altogether. Now, not only do we have resegregation by race, but also segregation by economic class.
No longer do we hope for integration: Now all we seem to be able to hope for is to fund urban and rural schools adequately so that their children can be given the same educational advantages as those in middle and upper-income neighborhoods, and we are far from that goal. The schools in low income areas have crumbling buildings, lack of textbooks and supplies, and often uncertified teachers. We are back at the notion of “separate but equal,” but it is far from equal.
Nevertheless, no one has suggested that we downplay the importance of Brown v. Board of Education. It is, if not the most important, certainly one of the most important decisions ever handed down by the Supreme Court – not just for African Americans, but for all Americans. As Senator Barbara Boxer wrote in a recent letter: “This decision announced a new birth of freedom in America. It helped to touch off the modern Civil Rights movement and an epoch of tremendous progress in civil rights, racial equality, and educational reform. And it inspired further struggles for human rights all around the world.”
One of those struggles for human rights will be dramatically manifested tomorrow. On the same day marking the Brown vs. Board of Education decision, Massachusetts will, for the first time in this country, give gay and lesbian couples the legal right – as declared by that state’s Supreme Court – to obtain marriage licenses. It is a huge day in the history of the movement for gay and lesbian civil liberties. And just as the struggle for racial equality suffered intense opposition, so will the struggle for marriage equality. There are powerful forces against it, including the President of the United States; but I believe that eventually freedom will prevail.
And I am proud to tell you that in the midst of at least eight religious traditions that have publicly declared their opposition to gay marriage, our Unitarian Universalist Association has publicly welcomed gay and lesbian couples to be married this week in our churches in Massachusetts. Two of the lead plaintiffs in the case that resulted in the Massachusetts Supreme Court decision, Julie and Hilary Goodridge, are Unitarian Universalists, and will be married at the UUA headquarters by UUA president William Sinkford tomorrow afternoon. And on tomorrow’s “Nightline” – if you can stay up until 11:30! – you can watch the Rev. Kim Crawford Harvie, Senior Minister at the Arlington Street UU Church, officiate at another same sex wedding. Indeed, her church has scheduled weddings at 20-minute intervals, beginning at 8:00 a.m. on Thursday – the first day most couples will be able to marry after receiving their license.
When I remember that in 1965 – the year I married, there were still states that would not have allowed my marriage to an African American man, but that now it would be unthinkable to prevent such marriages – I know that the day will come when it will be unthinkable to forbid same sex couples from marrying. I have faith that one day, these couples will be able to tell their children and grandchildren: “You know, when we got married, some states wouldn’t allow two men or two women to marry; imagine that!”
Tomorrow is a big day, not only for African Americans and for same sex couples, but for all Unitarian Universalists, for we passionately believe in the “worth and dignity of every person.” It is out of that profound faith that we have committed ourselves for decades to the struggle for racial equality, for affectional equality, and for equality in education. We have been at the center of these great causes, and we must not abandon them. It is in large part why we come together as a religious community.
So, I want to bring this all a bit closer to home. For one of the reasons I accepted your call as minister was because I heard from you that you wanted to be a “beacon of liberal religion in the West Valley” – you wanted to carry on the work to end racism; to welcome and promote the rights of gay, lesbian, bisexual and transgender people; to ensure access for every child to all the benefits of a free society, including a good education; and to create a world where “war is studied no more.” And I heard from you that you felt it important to pass these values on to our children and our grandchildren. In the year-and-a-half since my arrival, I have not seen anything to suggest that I heard incorrectly.
But we cannot do this work, you and I – we cannot become a beacon of hope to others, or a profound model for the children – if we do not grow at Emerson, both in membership and in financial strength. I cannot emphasize strongly enough the absolute necessity to increase our budget and our staff if we are going to grow and move substantially forward to our visions for this church.
We are at a crossroads: We can turn away from those visions and go backwards; we can remain in the safety of where we are now and do nothing – which I would suggest is the same as moving backwards; or we can choose to take some risks – individually and collectively, and go forward toward our visions. I know what choice I’m making, and I hope you will stay after the service for the special congregational forum, and reflect on what choice you might make as well.
And then let tomorrow be a day when we reflect on our dreams for our beloved country, and for all our people – no matter their color, no matter their gender, no matter their sexuality. May we remain committed to them, especially to the children, and to the struggle which some day will finally bring “liberty and justice for all.” On that day will we “hew out of the mountain of despair, a stone of hope.”
© 2004 Anne Felton Hines. All rights reserved.
