Documenting the American South Logo
Excerpt from Oral History Interview with Robert Logan, December 28, 1990. Interview M-0027. Southern Oral History Program Collection (#4007) See Entire Interview >>

Rejected for jobs on the basis of race

Despite his many accomplishments, which he lists here, Logan has been rejected for jobs "on the basis of race." He is offered turnaround jobs while his white counterparts take pretigious positions. He seems to imply as well that the failure of desegregation has made schools into laboratories for socialization rather than education.

Citing this Excerpt

Oral History Interview with Robert Logan, December 28, 1990. Interview M-0027. 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

ROBERT LOGAN:
It is going to come to pass in education that they are going to continue to put… I have been in and I can say this with all honesty, each principalship that I have gone into I have walked on board a sinking ship. Two situations I knew the doggone ship was listed in two of the situations. I can honestly say in one I thought it was in pretty good shape but I have yet the opportunity to come into a flagship school yet and still I think I have the skills, I have the know how and I have the expertise now in the background that I can run one just as well as anybody else. This conversation I have a lot with my wife. And that is why after this principalship my wife and I have discussed our career option, if I'll stay with it or if it is back to school for further education maybe even a change in profession. I feel I'm at a crossroads. I'm thirty-six, this will conclude my fourteenth year in the business. I think I have been relatively successful. I have received national awards for programs that we have done in the schools. I have turned three of the four schools around that I went in. This school is in pretty good shape except for the discipline. Things run real well here. Mr. Freeman had done an excellent job here and this is an excellent school. I'm not pleased with my SAT results and I'm not pleased with my overall achievement test results but then again those scores are a reflection of your society not of your school in a population that we are serving. We may never be able to get our SAT's up to an average of 900 at this school. I don't know but again, back to my point. Four schools--I have been in all portions of the state, I have been point blank declined for two principalships I feel on the basis of race--they wanted Whites rather than Blacks for the school, either because the school was predominantly White or it was perceived as an ideal situation or the jobs that I have been offered have all been a challenge and a dog fight all the way. Even Bedingfield even though it was a rural school--that school is predominantly White but it still has the behavior problems of the school it takes on a real challenge or dimension to handle the discipline at this school. That is why we are doing the recognition program. That junior high school I walked into. It was predominantly White and it had the Country Clubs, both Country Clubs, the kids out of those neighborhoods attended that school yet what they had done they took the Country Club kids and bused them over with the kids out of the projects. We had a time orientating those kids, it took us two years to mesh those kids to where they would work with one another. We're not educating, we are socializing.