Participation Type
Paper
Session Title
Session 6.06 History
Presentation #1 Title
"Not to transform a culture, but to perpetuate it": The Role of Whiteness in the Desegregation of Schools in Chattooga County, Georgia
Presentation #1 Abstract or Summary
In the summer of 1965, eleven years following the U.S. Supreme Court decision declaring segregated schooling unconstitutional, Chattooga County School Board voted to desegregate its public schools through a freedom of choice plan. The story of this southern Appalachian county’s path to school desegregation through the eyes of the white community provides insight into the role of white privilege and white racial identity in both the initial uneventful phases of school desegregation and in the eventual resegregation of the school system some twenty years later. Through the use of personal interviews, newspaper articles, school board minutes, and school publications, the study uncovers the unspoken role of whiteness in this community both before and after school desegregation. Although desegregation was accomplished with little perceived disruption to the white community, some twenty years following the desegregation of its schools, growing numbers of white parents in the county removed their children from the more economically and racially more diverse county school system to place them in the largely segregated schools of the independent Trion City School System. Through the voices of local residents, the study examines the role of whiteness in the continued resegregation of schools in Chattooga County with implications on the increasing resegregatin of schools in Appalachian communities throughout the region.
At-A-Glance Bio- Presenter #1
After teaching high school social studies in Georgia public schools for twenty years, Dr. Sarah Widincamp recently took a position as an assistant professor of Education in the Department of Middle Grades and Social Studies Education at the University of North Georgia. She received her PhD in Social Studies Education from the University of Georgia in December 2012.
"Not to transform a culture, but to perpetuate it": The Role of Whiteness in the Desegregation of Schools in Chattooga County, Georgia
Harris Hall 234
In the summer of 1965, eleven years following the U.S. Supreme Court decision declaring segregated schooling unconstitutional, Chattooga County School Board voted to desegregate its public schools through a freedom of choice plan. The story of this southern Appalachian county’s path to school desegregation through the eyes of the white community provides insight into the role of white privilege and white racial identity in both the initial uneventful phases of school desegregation and in the eventual resegregation of the school system some twenty years later. Through the use of personal interviews, newspaper articles, school board minutes, and school publications, the study uncovers the unspoken role of whiteness in this community both before and after school desegregation. Although desegregation was accomplished with little perceived disruption to the white community, some twenty years following the desegregation of its schools, growing numbers of white parents in the county removed their children from the more economically and racially more diverse county school system to place them in the largely segregated schools of the independent Trion City School System. Through the voices of local residents, the study examines the role of whiteness in the continued resegregation of schools in Chattooga County with implications on the increasing resegregatin of schools in Appalachian communities throughout the region.
