Birmingham's ethnic diversity eases integration
The ethnic diversity of Birmingham helped eased the desegregation process, Brown believes. She describes how neighborhood diversity translated into easy intermingling between Italian, Lebanese, and African American students at John Carroll High School.
Citing this Excerpt
Oral History Interview with Elizabeth Brown, June 17, 2005. Interview U-0019. 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
Maybe that's why we went through integration I think a lot
easier than some of the public schools because there were so
many-. A lot of the Italians had little stores in the city.
The little stores were in black neighborhoods, and they had a sympathy
for them that some of the people that were the nicest in my class before
integration were Italian descent. I think because they, maybe they
remembered what a hard time the prejudice of the grandfathers went and
the Lebanese too were-. They had the same difficulties and
they were succeeding, and they didn't seem to mind that other people
wanted to succeed in it. So but I think with all the different, I think
in many ways I don't know-. We're the most integrated school
in the city. Even before we were totally integrated with the black
students because we had every income. We had kids that were so wealthy
they could've bought us out. They wore uniforms. You don't know what
kind of wealth they have. Then some that were, everything was furnished
down to their pencils and their books in those days. So we had all
classes, and like I say, a big segment of the Lebanese and the Italians
and the other predominantly white groups. They, maybe they were sort of
used to getting along. The other thing, many of these community schools,
they go from their grade school together to their
junior high to their high school. Whereas we attract from about a three
county area, and there's a lot of inner city schools that, grade schools
that come here. They come from all different parishes. So they might
come from a school that maybe they know only five or six freshmen, and
they might not be in their class. So they have to learn all the other
about the other kids and make friends outside their usual group. They
complain that dating's awful hard because one comes from one county and
one, they're trying to find, date someone that's forty miles from them
and to go on a date the guy has to drive eighty miles in order to get
her and take her home. So probably by the time they're a senior they
like all that time together. I'm not sure it's for the right reasons.
But anyway they, there's no dating in their neighborhood in some
instances. So as far as the interracial dating, they, we have had kids,
I don't know, maybe after here five or six or seven years that were
going together to dances. I think it was more of a friendship than
actual interracial dating. There is so many, today here in the South you
see so many interracial couples. I don't mean every fifth couple, but
you see so much of it. You don't, your head doesn't even turn. You just,
you might or may not even notice it. The other thing which is I guess
bad, has a good side as well as a bad side, there are so few kids
available for adoption. You have an awful lot, not a lot, but enough
interracial adoption in this, again that's not that unusual. I don't
know of any graduates that a black married a white. But I know that we
have parents that sort of I don't know. I wouldn't call it even a
surprise. It's definitely not a shock where a black parent comes to see
you for a conference, and you say, oh you're so and so's mother. Okay.
But there's enough of that that you're not even surprised anymore. It's
just when a parent comes I try to look at their face and see if I know
them from another generation something like that and
match them up, but sometimes there's no matching up. We've had some
kids that are, one family we had the boy was white. The girl was black
and the second girl was oriental. They adopted all three of them. So now
there's enough of that that you're not, you do see a lot of that. I
think I mentioned the freshman I think, because maybe their atmosphere
in the Catholic grade schools was so restricted or what or they're not
used to changing classes. Some of the grade schools are so small they
don't have lockers and stuff like that. They're in the same classroom,
and the teacher might come in and change but they don't. It seems like
they have a competition of how many they can hug because now they can
hug, and they, it's indiscriminate. Boys hugging boys. Girls hugging
girls. There's no difference between the races. They're always hugging
each other. By the time they're seniors they're making fun of the
freshmen that do that, and they clutter the halls because they've all
got to have these group hugs and so on. You can't get around them and
the typical Catholic response is, a phone book between you. The distance
of a phone book between you. They look at me like I'm crazy because
that's a whole new generation
[unclear]
. Ah, ah, the distance of a phone book between you and if it gets
too long I'll threaten them with what do you call it-. Petty
something-there's three initials-
- KIMBERLY HILL:
-
PDA.
- ELIZABETH BROWN:
-
PDA.