A00283 - The Demise of Dunbar and Black Rednecks and White Liberals Revisited: Miss Buchanan's Period of Adjustment

In response to my "The Demise of Dunbar" post, an Amherst College classmate sent me the Malcolm Gladwell podcast entitled "Miss Buchanan's Period of Adjustment" set forth below. Listening to this podcast provides a starkly different perspective on Brown v. Board of Education and the impact that it had on the black educational experience.


Sometimes, what appears to be a step forward, may actually be two steps backward. 

I do not know ... but it is depressing as Hell.

Peace,
 
Everett "Skip" Jenkins 
Fairfield, California
June 18, 2024

----- Forwarded Message -----
From: 
To: "skipjen2865@aol.com" <skipjen2865@aol.com>
Sent: Tuesday, June 18, 2024 at 03:17:14 AM PDT
Subject: Re: The Demise of Dunbar and Black Rednecks and White Liberals Revisited


On Jun 17, 2024, at 11:12 PM, skipjen2865@aol.com wrote:




While watching the US Open Golf Championship and seeing the Pinehurst No. 2 golf course torture the best golfers in the world for a full four hours, I added two more biographies to my Amherst College Biographies blog.  The two names that were added were Charles Hamilton Houston, Class of 1915, and Frances Morse Dent, Class of 1916.

By now, most folks know that Charles Hamilton Houston was the legal architect of the effort to dismantle Jim Crow and to desegregate the public schools in the United States. 


Houston would not live long enough to see Brown v. Board of Education be decided, but his protege, Thurgood Marshall, was the lawyer who won the case and who would one day serve on the United States Supreme Court.


As for, Frances Morse Dent, he is little known, but he too was a lawyer. 


noted for his legal work in the case of Sipes v. McGhee


which was the companion case to the Shelley v. Kraemer case


in which the United States Supreme Court held that racially restrictive housing covenants cannot legally be enforced. 

As a lawyer, for me, this was interesting stuff.  But what intrigued me more was the fact that both Charles Hamilton Houston and Francis Morse Dent came from the same high school, Dunbar High School.  And in reading about these two Dunbar alumni, I came across this article

Remembering Dunbar: Amherst College and African American Education in Washington, DC Amherst College and African American Education in Washington, DC from Amherst in the World on JSTOR


I encourage you to take a look at the article and look at the Dunbar alumni who became Amherst College alumni and who actually went on to change the world.

And then I encourage you to read about how the success of the Dunbar alumni in desegregating public schools in the United States appears to have led to the demise of Dunbar High School as a premiere educational institution


and to pay particular attention to the remarks made by Thomas Sowell

"According to economist Thomas Sowell's 2015 appraisal, this all changed after the landmark United States Supreme Court Case Brown v. Board of Education that ruled for integration of public schools:

"For Washington, the end of racial segregation led to a political compromise, in which all schools became neighborhood schools. Dunbar, which had been accepting outstanding black students from anywhere in the city, could now accept only students from the rough ghetto neighborhood in which it was located. Virtually overnight, Dunbar became a typical ghetto school. As unmotivated, unruly and disruptive students flooded in, Dunbar teachers began moving out and many retired. More than 80 years of academic excellence simply vanished into thin air."[10]

In recent weeks, I have revisited Thomas Sowell's Black Rednecks and White Liberals.  Despite my reservations about the motivations for much of what he writes, I find that I cannot simply dismiss all that Thomas Sowell says.  Accordingly, for the Month of July, Black Rednecks and White Liberals will be my Book of the Month.

Peace,

Everett "Skip" Jenkins 

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