Current school system criticized for the losses wrought by desegregation
Jackson expresses her feelings about the closing of all-black Lincoln High are shrouded in favorable memories of segregated schooling. Retrospectively, she acknowledges that integration was the inevitable panacea for racial inequities; however, Jackson insists that desegregation, rather than integration, occurred.
Citing this Excerpt
Oral History Interview with Fran Jackson, March 23, 2001. Interview K-0208. Southern Oral History Program Collection (#4007) in the Southern Oral History Program Collection, Southern Historical Collection, Wilson Library, University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill.
Full Text of the Excerpt
- CHRISTA BROADNAX:
-
Let's see. How did you and your community and your parents
feel about the closing of Lincoln?
- FRAN JACKSON:
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Umm. I think that there was a sense of sadness, but I also think that
there was a sense of this is something that is inevitable,
it's going to happen, it's got to happen. This is
change we're making for-. At that time you know for
progress. You've got to remember the context.
You've got Dr. King talking about you've got to
integrate, integrate, integrate. And I in retrospect, I think that we
are all thinking about what did we lose in this whole process of
integrating. And it's no doubt I think we did lose something.
I think that if the integration had been-. What we did was to
desegregate and as African Americans we merged in, in terms of our major
social institutions. But we did not integrate. Integrate implies that
there is, there are policies in place to insure positive intercultural
interactions. And, and that did not happen. And I think today that
schools are still quote "desegregated."
- CHRISTA BROADNAX:
-
That's interesting. That's very interesting.
[Laughter]
