The Segregated Schooling of Blacks in the Southern United States and South Africa

Abstract

Previous articleNext article FreeThe Segregated Schooling of Blacks in the Southern United States and South AfricaVanessa Siddle Walker and Kim Nesta ArchungVanessa Siddle Walker Search for more articles by this author and Kim Nesta Archung Search for more articles by this author PDFPDF PLUSFull Text Add to favoritesDownload CitationTrack CitationsPermissionsReprints Share onFacebookTwitterLinked InRedditEmailQR Code SectionsMoreBoth the United States and South Africa share similarities in the ways in which they have historically used schooling to subjugate southern African Americans and Black South Africans, respectively. After the Civil War in the United States and with the emergence of a public school system in the South, Whites segregated African Americans into separate schools that received less money in state expenditures per child, maintained poorer facilities, had fewer library books and other material educational advantages, and received little or no transportation for students seeking to attend school. These inequalities continued until well after the Brown v. Board of Education decision that declared segregated schools unequal in 1954.1 Likewise, in South Africa, Black South Africans received poorer facilities, fewer expenditures per pupil, more poorly trained teachers, and sometimes a shortage of Black teachers.2 These inequalities continued until the historic public elections in April 1994.3 In both settings, until legally mandated to do otherwise, Whites constructed educational systems designed to maintain the privileges of White students and to prepare African and African American students for the subservient roles they were expected to play within the society.4The historical similarities in the ways in which Blacks in both settings were denied justice in the educational systems has been documented by several researchers.5 Yet, attention has not been given to the parallels potentially inherent in the kind of schooling that occurred within the unjust and inequitable environments. In the United States, a broad‐based conversation has only recently begun that considers the ways in which school leaders within the segregated schools attempted to fight injustice and equip African American children to overcome the evils of segregation. In the United States, school leaders in segregated schools provided countereducation to Whites’ expectations.6 The extent to which a similar type of countereducation may have occurred in South African classrooms among Black teachers and students has not been adequately addressed.In this article, we propose to explore the similarities in the education of African Americans and Black South Africans during the periods of segregation and apartheid, respectively. It upholds the premises that Africans in the United States and South Africa may have had cultural forms of schooling that have not been included in historical accounts of the schools and that these forms of schooling should be considered in compiling a history of schooling in both contexts. As David Hursh has argued, “There is no one historical narrative to be developed and told. Rather, there are numerous and contested histories as different narratives are based on different perspectives.”7 In exploring the cultural forms of schooling in these two oppressed educational environments, the research does not either mitigate or justify the injustice inherent in the educational systems in which both groups were forced to participate, nor does it diminish the accuracy of the historical narrative of oppression. This exploration does consider, however, the ways in which Black teachers and principals constructed education within these oppressive contexts. Specifically, we explore the following questions: (1) What are the ways in which teachers and principals in the apartheid schooling of Black South Africans attempted to teach and motivate students? (2) What, if any, is the relationship between these approaches and those adopted by African Americans in the southern United States during segregation?Results of this exploratory inquiry indicate that the United States and South Africa resembled each other in the nature of the school oppression and that they also resembled one another in the ways in which oppressed people sought to use schools as a mechanism for racial uplift. The available data indicate that oppressed communities valued education for its potential to move the next generation of children beyond the inequities of segregation. Notwithstanding the marked differences in both countries’ languages, school systems, and racial groups, the teachers, principals, and parents in both settings used similar strategies to encourage pupils to move beyond their oppressive contexts.1For a comprehensive discussion of the development of African American schooling and curricular efforts after the Civil War, see James Anderson, The Education of Blacks in the South, 1860–1935 (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 1988). Many scholars have documented the inequalities existing in African American and White schooling throughout the history of segregated schools in the South. See, e.g., Harry S. Ashmore, The Negro and the Schools (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 1954); Liva Baker, The Second Battle of New Orleans: The Hundred‐Year Struggle to Integrate the Schools (New York: HarperCollins, 1996); Richard Kluger, Simple Justice (New York: Random House, 1977); Thomas M. Pierce, James B. Kincheloe, R. Edgar Moore, Galen N. Drewry, and Bennie E. Carmichael, White and Negro Schools in the South: An Analysis of Biracial Education (Englewood Cliffs, N.J.: Prentice‐Hall, 1955).2Numerous scholars have also documented the inequalities in the distribution of resources in South Africa. See, e.g., John Stonier, “Breaking Out of a Separatist Paradigm: Intercultural Education in South Africa,” in International Perspectives on Intercultural Education, ed. Kenneth Cushner (Mahwah, N.J.: Erlbaum, 1998), pp. 210–36; John Pape, “Changing Education for Majority Rule in Zimbabwe and South Africa,” Comparative Education Review 42, no. 3 (1998): 253–66.3Aslam Fataar, “Access to Schooling in a Post‐apartheid South Africa: Linking Concepts to Contexts,” in Education after Apartheid: South African Education in Transition, ed. Peter Kallaway, Glenda Kruss, Aslam Fataar, and Gari Donn (Cape Town: University of Cape Town Press, 1997), pp. 68–85.4Jonathan Jansen, “Curriculum as a Political Phenomenon: Historical Reflections on Black South African Education,” Journal of Negro Education 59, no. 2 (1996): 195–206; John Burns, “‘Equal’ Is Still a Dream in South Africa,” New York Times (January 8, 1978); Stonier, p. 218.5Jansen, pp. 195–99; Stonier, p. 211.6The studies examining the structure of schooling in the segregated Black schools constitute three types. The earliest studies appeared in the 2 decades after desegregation, frequently in Black or lesser‐known presses. See Alvis Adair, Desegregation: The Illusion of Black Progress (Lanham, Md.: University of America Press, 1984); Mary Gibson Hundley, The Dunbar Story (1870–1955) (New York: Vantage, 1965); Russell Irvine and Jackie Irvine, “The Impact of the Desegregation Process on the Education of Black Students: Key Variables,” Journal of Negro Education 52, no. 4 (1983): 410–22; Faustine Jones, A Traditional Model of Educational Excellence: Dunbar High School of Little Rock, Arkansas (Washington, D.C.: Howard University Press, 1981); Frederick Rodgers, The Black High School and Its Community (Lexington, Mass.: Lexington, 1967); Thomas Sowell, “Black Excellence: The Case of Dunbar High School,” Public Interest 35 (Spring 1974): 1–21, and “Patterns of Black Excellence,” Public Interest 43 (Spring 1976): 26–58. More recent scholarship emerged in the 1990s. Generally, it has been more widely disseminated and discussed. See Tamara Beauboeuf‐Lafontant, “A Movement Against and Beyond Boundaries: ‘Politically Relevant Teaching’ among African American Teachers,” Teachers College Record 100, no. 4 (1999): 702–23; David Cecelski, Along Freedom Road: Hyde County, North Carolina and the Fate of Black Schools in the South (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 1994); Michele Foster, “Constancy, Connectedness, and Constraints in the Lives of African American Teachers,” National Women's Studies Journal 3, no. 2 (1990): 233–61, “The Politics of Race: Through the Eyes of African American Teachers,” Journal of Education 172, no. 3 (1990): 123–41, Black Teachers on Teaching (New York: New Press, 1997); Rhonda Jeffries, “The Trickster Figure in African American Teaching: Pre‐ and Post‐desegregation,” Urban Review 26 (1994): 289–304; Alice McCullough‐Garrett, “Reclaiming the African American Vision for Teaching: Toward an Educational Conversation,” Journal of Negro Education 62, no. 4 (1993): 433–40; Vivian Morris and Curtis Morris, Creating Caring and Nurturing Educational Environments for African American Children (Westport, Conn.: Bergin & Garvey, 2000); George Noblit and Van Dempsey, The Social Construction of Virtue: The Moral Life of Schools (Albany, N.Y.: SUNY Press, 1996); Vanessa Siddle Walker, Their Highest Potential: An African American School Community in the Segregated South (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 1996), “Caswell County Training School, 1933–1969: Relationships between Community and School,” Harvard Educational Review 63, no. 2 (1993): 161–82, “Valued Segregated Schools for African American Children in the South, 1935–1969: A Review of Common Themes and Characteristics,” Review of Educational Research 70, no. 3 (Fall 2000): 253–85, and “African American Teachers in Segregated Schools in the South, 1940–1969,” American Educational Research Journal 38, no. 4 (2001). These scholarly descriptions are accompanied by a number of locally published histories that span both time periods. See Lenwood Davis, A History of Queen Street High School, 1928–1968 (Kingston, N.Y.: Tri State Services, 1996); W. Edwards, Preston Royster, and Lazarus Bates, The Education of Black Citizens in Halifax County, 1866–1969 (Springfield, Va.: Banister, 1979); Thelma Cayne Tilford‐Weathers, A History of Louisville Central High School, 1882–1982 (Louisville, Ky.: Central High School Alumni Association, 1996).7David Hursh, “The Struggle for Democracy in South Africa: Race, History and Education,” Theory and Research in Social Education 27 (Winter 1999): 104–10, quote on 109.Historical and Contemporary ContextThe significance of curriculum in achieving the stated purpose of schooling and the similarities in desegregation implementation provide a foundation for interpreting the results of this study. Although some overlap occurs in the analysis, the focus will be centered primarily on the experiences of the indigenous African people within South Africa, or Black South Africans, rather than the experiences of the “Coloured” students or Indian students.Curriculum and the Purpose of SchoolingEducation for Black students in South Africa’s education system can be summarized by referring to five forms over the country’s history. These were (1) traditional African education led by community leaders that integrated education and life experience and that relied on the oral tradition; (2) slave education, brought by European settlers, based on simple Christian religious teaching; (3) mission education, by the early 1800s, that fused Christian principles and European forms of education; (4) Native education, beginning in the 1920s, characterized by the first state‐mandated curriculum and the structural deterioration of Black schools; and (5) Bantu education, the education that apartheid regimented beginning in 1953 and continuing until 1993.8Significantly, the education of Black South Africans was always configured along racial, class, and, sometimes, geographic lines after the arrival of the Europeans. Yet, the curriculum within the schools varied somewhat based on the period of schooling. For example, during the era of the mission schools, Black South Africans able to attend school received an education aimed at converting students to Christianity. In these 5,360 mission‐run schools, Black South Africans also received a basic education in reading and writing that adhered to the basic tenets of the Western tradition. Arguably, this curriculum was designed to dislocate students from valuing their African traditions.9 By contrast, Bantu educational policies introduced an inferior curriculum into Black schools that focused more on nonacademic training.This curricular focus bears some similarity to the experiences of African Americans in the South. After the Civil War, since African Americans were believed to belong to a race that was culturally hundreds of years behind the White race, northern reformers such as Hampton University’s Samuel Armstrong sought to teach African Americans that their position was not a result of oppression but the natural process of cultural evolution. He emphasized manual labor over academic preparation and deliberately sought to infuse African American schools with teachers who would teach this philosophy.10 In addition to seeking deliberately to influence the perspectives of those who would teach African American children, northern philanthropists also actively worked to cultivate the type of curriculum to which they believed African American children should be exposed. This curriculum always included manual labor and education for second‐class citizenship.In both the United States and South Africa, the way in which the curriculum was deliberately used to prepare students for subordinate roles in the society is striking. Summarizing the comments of administrators and educators of Bantu education, Jonathan Jansen concludes: “The fundamental assumptions implicit in such formulations were that the position of Blacks in the social, economic, and political life in South Africa was both fixed and natural; thus, education and, in particular, the curriculum, for Blacks had to be directed toward serving those predetermined ends.”11 South Africa’s former minister of Bantu education, Hendrick Voerwoerd, writes, “Bantu education was designed to produce unskilled and semiskilled laborers among Africans whose access to proper technical and academic training was blocked.”12Education in the southern United States was designed to produce similar outcomes. According to historian James Anderson, both schooling for democracy and schooling for second‐class citizenship were “basic traditions in American education.” His book, The Education of Blacks in the South, chronicles the rise of industrial education as being considered the appropriate education for African Americans because it would “preclude them from pursuing skilled and professional occupations.”13 Among both White southerners and White northern philanthropists, the consistent belief was that Blacks needed a second‐class education to prepare them for the types of second‐class jobs they would assume within the society.Thus, the education of Blacks in both countries was embedded in a system of racial segregation designed to promote Whites into positions of leadership, land ownership, and economic control and to doom Blacks to subservience. The effects of a system deliberately aimed at undermining the educational opportunities of some of its citizens is also documented by research. For example, in South Africa under apartheid, Pape, a teacher, describes the school performance for every 1,000 African pupils. He notes that of the 1,000, only 400 would complete Standard 8, the equivalent of tenth grade in the United States. Of these, 140 would pass the high school exit exams that allowed students to qualify for university admittance. In contrast, for every 1,000 White children, 920 completed Standard 8 and 720 qualified for university admission.14 In the United States, even after decades of desegregation, a similar pattern has been documented in rates of on‐time completion, college going, and educational attainment.158Jansen, pp. 195–96.9Stonier, p. 216; Fataar, pp. 74–75.10Anderson, pp. 32–109.11Jansen, p. 200.12Quoted in Pape (n. 2 above), p. 255.13Anderson (n. 1 above), pp. 1, 91.14Pape.15For a statistical summary of the patterns of African American performance in the United States, see Michael Nettles and Laura Perna, The African American Education Data Book, vol. 3, The Transition from School to College and School to Work (Fairfax, Va.: Frederick D. Patterson Research Institute of the College Fund/UNCF, 1997).The Similarity in Current Desegregation EffectsSimilarities between the experiences of Blacks in the United States and South Africa do not end with historical accounts. A look at the problems inherent in the desegregation process also provides important data for arguing the need of a more comprehensive understanding of the cultural forms of schooling—and resistance—in the segregated systems. For example, in the United States, almost 5 decades after the Supreme Court declared de jure segregation unconstitutional, recent data indicate that the level of school contact between White students and African American students is currently almost at the level it was in the early 1970s before busing solutions were utilized. Even in the southern states, where desegregated schools have been most visible, the number of African American and White children attending school together is declining, and, where it exists, a resegregation of students within the school building has occurred. Indeed, at desegregation’s peak, fewer than 50 percent of African Americans ever attended majority White schools.16The decline in the availability of desegregated schooling is accompanied by increasing alarm at the plight of African American children in de jure desegregated, but de facto segregated, schools in the United States. White students continue to score higher than Black students on tests of academic achievement at the elementary and secondary level, to be more involved in school extracurricular activities, and to attend schools with better trained teachers and more orderly environments. Black students are more likely to be disciplined, suspended, and placed in special education. The schools that they attend are less likely to be comfortable and secure; they are often taught by less experienced teachers.17Leading desegregation scholars correctly blame presidential and congressional politics and federal court judgments for the inequities that occur in the schooling of African American children. Their arguments contend that successful integration cannot occur without policies aimed at achieving racial balance in desegregated settings. Yet, while this approach correctly addresses the injustice issues inherent in the availability of equitable schooling, it does not address the equally important need to explore the kind of experiences African American students have within the school environments. For example, researchers have argued that African American children bring their own unique cultural styles to education and that White teachers often fail to understand and appreciate these traditions. In cultural‐synchronization and cultural‐relevance studies, researchers posit that teachers need the cultural knowledge that allows them to work effectively with children of ethnic groups other than their own.18 These discontinuities have the potential for tremendous impact in all aspects of desegregation as large numbers of White females become the dominant force in urban school districts that are predominately populated by students of color. Yet, the salience of race, power, and lack of cultural knowledge continues to lie at the periphery of conversations about desegregation. Increasingly, scholars have begun to argue that desegregation will only work effectively both when inequitable justice structures are dismantled and when the quality of the environment is viewed as equally important for success.19The irony of the failure to include both equitable structures and quality environments in desegregation conversations is magnified by the historical studies that are increasingly demonstrating that the cultural beliefs and styles documented in contemporary studies in desegregated settings have an historical basis. Southern African American segregated schools held particular beliefs about the value of education and the ways in which teachers, students, and parents should interact. Often these beliefs were in contrast to the beliefs held by the White educators. For example, African American parents valued the teacher and principal as caring educators who would plan educational strategies that would best meet the needs of their children. Recent studies indicate that some of these same behaviors continue to be utilized and valued by African American parents and teachers today, even though they contrast sharply with White views of the ways in which parents, teachers, and students should interact.20 Yet, the ways in which these contradictions impede the successful implementation of desegregation policies has yet to be reconciled.Unlike the United States, South Africa has approached desegregation more recently. As noted earlier, the variance in languages, the number of Black South Africans compared with White South Africans, and the political power structure could be sufficiently different from the United States as to make parallels too problematic to consider. However, recent inquiries into desegregation implementation in South Africa reveal difficulties strikingly similar to those in the United States. Although school matters can no longer be handled solely on the basis of ethnicity—as they could under the previous regime—desegregation has not proceeded smoothly, and many schools remain primarily White and middle‐class Coloured.21 Within the classrooms, as John Stonier chronicles, the majority of White teachers have had no previous experience in dealing with diversity and have been socialized to accept supremacy. He writes that “teachers are not really certain what to do. They do not understand exactly what needs to be done, so it is easier to continue with what is familiar.” He also reports that Black students are being forced to assimilate into the culture of the schools and speaks of the continuing social distance existing between Blacks and Whites.22 Likewise, Crain Soudien recounts some of the difficulties Black and Coloured students have experienced in desegregated schools, including cultural isolation and low expectations that are consistent with U.S. experiences.23Given these parallels in the purposes of education and the similarities in desegregation experiences, a closer look at the history of the cultural traditions out of which Blacks in both countries have emerged may be useful. In effect, this study examines the area that was overlooked and discounted in U.S. desegregation efforts—the influence of the cultural history of African American schooling in the segregated schools—and uses this knowledge to determine the extent to which another closed educational system may have produced similar school contexts. If indeed the segregated school settings have parallels, then some of the difficulties that should have been addressed in the United States 50 years ago to facilitate a more successful desegregation effort may still be viable options for South Africa’s ongoing conversations about the implementation of successful desegregation.16Gary Orfield, Mark Bachmeier, David James, and Tamela Gitle, “Deepening Segregation in American Public Schools: A Special Report from the Harvard Project on School Desegregation,” Equity and Excellence 30, no. 2 (1997): 5–24.17Michael Nettles and Laura Perna, The African American Education Data Book, vol. 2, Preschool through High School Education (Fairfax, Va.: Frederick D. Patterson Research Institute of the College Fund/UNCF, 1997).18Jackie Irvine, Black Students and School Failure (New York: Greenwood, 1990); Gloria Ladson‐Billings, The Dreamkeepers: Successful Teachers of African American Children (San Francisco: Jossey‐Bass, 1994).19Vanessa Siddle Walker and John Snarey, Racing Moral Formation (New York: Teachers College Press, in press).20Franita Ware, “Black Teachers’ Perceptions of Their Professional Roles and Practices,” in In Search of Wholeness: African American Teachers and Their Culturally Specific Classroom Practices, ed. Jackie Jordan Irvine (New York: Palgrave, 2002), pp. 33–54. To explore the possibility that a similar situation may be happening in South Africa, see Stonier (n. 2 above), p. 229.21Pape (n. 2 above), p. 266; Peter Kallaway, “Reconstruction, Reconciliation and Rationalization in South African Politics of Education,” in Kallaway et al., eds. (n. 3 above), p. 47.22Stonier, pp. 221–23.23Crain Soudien, “‘We Know Why We’re Here’: The Experience of African Children in a ‘Coloured’ School in Cape Town, South Africa,” Race, Ethnicity and Education 1, no. 1 (1998): 7–29.MethodologyTo explore the similarities in U.S. segregated schooling for African Americans and the apartheid schooling of Black South Africans, we utilized a two‐stage methodology that relied on qualitative interviewing and surveys. First, Black South Africans currently residing in the United States completed an open‐ended questionnaire about their apartheid schooling. Nine South Africans participated, including three men and six women. All had attended primary and secondary school in South Africa, although the location of the school and the type of schooling received varied. The earliest graduates finished high school in the 1950s; the most recent graduates finished school in the 1990s. Participants have been in the United States from 1 to 18 years.The survey they completed used questions derived primarily from U.S. studies of the segregated schools of African Americans but also included open‐ended questions to account for new perspectives. Participants filled out the three‐page survey individually.In the second stage of the process, participants engaged in a group interview that occurred after the viewing of a film on the segregated schooling in one U.S. school between 1933 and 1969. At the end of the film, participants were asked to discuss what they saw as the similarities and differences between the two systems. The discussion was facilitated by the primary researcher and recorded on audiotape. This segment lasted approximately 2 hours.The open‐ended surveys of U.S. South Africans were coded using a matrix that crossed informants by theme categories. Theme categories were identified and, with the data available, an effort was made to understand the parameters of particular themes, especially as they related to divergence in responses. To assist in validity, the themes presented in this context are themes that were verified in both data points. Comparison data on U.S. schooling rely on a literature review of segregated schooling of African Americans in the South.2424Walker, “Valued Segregated Schools” (n. 6 above).Parallels in the Schooling of U.S. Blacks and Black South AfricansAn analysis of the survey and interview data collected for this study reveals several points of similarity between the segregated schooling of African Americans and the apartheid schooling of Africans in South Africa. Although the consistency of the parallels varies depending on whether the education was obtained prior to the Bantu curriculum or after that curriculum was implemented, the themes noted below were evident in the survey and the oral interviews for the majority of the respondents.Concern about Poor Physical FacilitiesNone of the literature on the segregated schooling of African Americans in the United States minimizes or ignores the poor physical facilities with which teachers and children had to contend. For example, a North Carolina school built in 1925 for a cost of $4,465 was the largest and most expensive building for African American students in one county. However, in 1923, the neighboring White school had been allocated $9,000 for its building, while another comparably sized White school was given a budget of $15,000 for construction. Indeed, the board spent as much as $23,118 on some White schools in the area during this period. Even the cost of a discontinued White school was valued at $200 in 1926, while the cost of discontinued African American schools was $30–$40.25Such inequities are reflected throughout the South during this era. In North Carolina in 1945–46, the value of school property per pupil enrolled was $217 for White students and $70 for African American children. As late as 1954, when the South had already begun accelerating its building efforts as a result of increasing court attention to the importance of the “equal” side of the “separate but equal” clause, wide discrepancies still remained between African American and White education. When African Americans remember these schools, they describe these inequities in detail, including the lack of bus transportation, poor facilities, and secondhand textbooks.26Like their U.S. counterparts, the Black South Africans interviewed were acutely aware of the physical inequalities inherent in their schooling. Interviewees described the need to walk long distances, often several miles, in order to attend schools that were poorly constructed and overcrowded. This lack of transportation made the simple act of attending school very difficult for some children. One student remembered, “As a result, we walked long distances to the school. This was really bad in the winter because many of us were from poor families. [We had] no warm jackets and sometimes no shoes.”27Within the schools, the students also suffered from the effects of poverty and inequality. The poverty inherent in the education was captured by one respondent: “The facilities were there to provide she