0:15

Pushkin. On

0:18

the campus of the University of Michigan, there's

0:21

a gorgeous building called the Rackham Auditorium,

0:24

built in the nineteen thirties in the Classical

0:26

Renaissance style. And in January

0:28

of two thousand and four, on one of those

0:30

cold Michigan days, a woman

0:32

takes the stage in front of a big crowd.

0:35

She's in her sixties. Her name is

0:37

missus Thompson. Good

0:40

evening, It's

0:43

indeed a pleasure to be with you this evening

0:45

here on the campus of the University

0:48

of Michigan, the home of the Wolverines. Is

0:50

that right? And

0:54

I heard you had a game last night you only

0:56

lost it by two points. Huh.

1:01

She tells a funny story about how she was once

1:03

invited to speak at Nassau and thought

1:05

she was going to the Bahamas, only

1:07

to discover that it was now County Long Island.

1:11

She talks a little bit about her childhood and

1:13

her family. Then right

1:15

in the middle of her talk, she starts reading

1:17

a notice of termination sent many years

1:19

ago to a teacher named Darla Buchanan.

1:22

Dear Miss Buchanan, due

1:25

to the present uncertainty about enrollment

1:27

next year, it is necessary

1:29

for me to notify you now that

1:31

your services will not be needed for next

1:34

year. The students

1:36

in the auditorium are wrapped. This

1:38

is not what they expected. But Missus

1:40

Thompson goes on and reads

1:42

all the way to the end. I think I understand

1:45

that all of you must be under considerable strength,

1:48

and I sympathize with the uncertainties

1:51

and inconvenience which you must be experiencing

1:54

during this period of adjustment. This

1:57

period of adjustment, remember

1:59

that line. It's a nice bit of condescension

2:02

and understatement. My

2:07

name is Malcolm Gladwell. You're listening

2:10

to Revisionist History, my podcast

2:12

about things overlooked and misunderstood.

2:17

This episode is about that youth

2:20

missim in the letter read by Missus Thompson.

2:22

This period of adjustment.

2:30

Not that long ago. Americans

2:32

set out to do something revolutionary

2:35

to change the world. But

2:37

we botched it, and we didn't want

2:39

to admit that fact. So we swept

2:41

the whole episode under the rug and

2:44

wrote letters to everyone concerned to

2:46

try and absolve ourselves of the whole

2:48

business. I believe that whatever

2:50

happens will ultimately

2:53

turn out to be the best for everyone

2:56

concern Yeah.

3:03

Right. The

3:06

letter of termination to Darla Buchanan, was

3:08

written by the superintendent of schools

3:10

in Topeka, Kansas, the capital of Kansas,

3:13

a medium sized city in the upper right hand

3:15

corner of the state. Like a lot

3:17

of cities and towns in the United States, particularly

3:20

those in the South, Tepeka had segregated

3:23

public elementary schools. In the Jim Crow era,

3:26

White children went to neighborhood schools.

3:28

Black children went to a separate system

3:30

of schools scattered around the city with

3:33

their own black teachers and black principles.

3:36

In the years after the Second World War, the

3:38

leading civil rights group of the day, the

3:40

n w ACP, decided to

3:42

start challenging segregation. Topeka

3:45

was one of their test cases. They

3:48

found thirteen black families and asked

3:50

them to go down to their neighborhood white school and

3:52

try and enroll their children. One

3:54

of the couples they asked was Oliver and

3:56

Leo L. Brown. Oliver

3:59

Brown worked for the Santa Fe Railroad. Later

4:01

he was a pastor. This is Leola

4:04

Brown from an interview she gave in nineteen

4:06

ninety one to the Kansas State Historical

4:08

Society. My husband, Oliver Brown,

4:11

he was a heavyweight fighter, used

4:13

to fight Golden Bloods. The

4:15

Browns had a seven year old named Linda. The

4:18

black elementary school she was supposed

4:20

to go to was called Monroe. To

4:22

get there, she had to walk seven blocks,

4:24

often in freezing weather, and cross

4:26

a busy road, then get on a bus. The

4:29

local white elementary school was Sumner,

4:32

just four blocks on the Browns. Linda's

4:35

playmates from the neighborhood all went there. So

4:38

one day, as instructed by the NAACP,

4:41

Oliver Brown took his daughter by the hand

4:44

and walked her over to enroll at Sumner

4:46

Elementary. As Linda say it, when they got

4:48

over there and that building looked so bigger, being

4:50

a little kid going upsteps. And

4:52

then when they got ready to talk, they had

4:55

her sit on the outside of the office. Dad

4:57

went in was talking to the principal. You

4:59

could imagine how uncomfortable the conversation

5:01

was. Oliver Brown was not supposed

5:03

to be there, and the principal

5:06

would have had no idea what to say to him other

5:08

than I'm sorry, this is the way

5:10

it is in Topeka. With little Linda

5:12

waiting out in the hall, if she said, you

5:14

could hear the voice of scanning getting loud

5:17

to me, said It wasn't him, it was the school

5:19

board. That was a policy

5:22

of the school board. You can do nothing about it, you

5:24

know. So he could no way because he

5:26

could not in Rowland in that school without

5:28

their appeas All the

5:30

black families got the same answer, your

5:33

child is not welcome. So

5:35

the local NAACP chapter sued

5:38

the school board. Oliver Brown's name

5:40

was put first Brown Verses to Peaka

5:42

Board of Education. It was bundled

5:45

with a number of other desegregation cases

5:47

from all around the country, more than two

5:49

hundred plaintiffs in all, when

5:51

all the way to the Supreme Court, and

5:53

on May seventeenth, nineteen fifty

5:55

four, in one of the most famous legal

5:57

decisions in American history, the

5:59

Court ruled in Oliver Brown's favor.

6:03

The practice of educating black and white

6:05

school children separately was ruled

6:08

unconstantutional. It

6:11

was a unanimous decision and

6:14

had the broadest possible language,

6:16

which should set for rest, once and

6:19

for all the problem as to

6:21

whether or not a second

6:23

class citizenship segregation

6:26

could be consistent any longer with

6:28

the law of the country. I'm

6:31

guessing you were taught about the Brown decision in school,

6:33

or have watched a documentary on it.

6:36

It's a milestone, but at

6:38

the same time it's a strange case.

6:41

You could fill an auditorium with all the scholars

6:43

who have a quarrel with Brown. I mean, just

6:46

go back and read it. It's supposed to be

6:48

a ruling in favor of Oliver and Leola

6:50

Brown and the families of Topeka,

6:52

but the court actually says something entirely

6:55

different from what the black people of Topeka were

6:57

saying. I went to mineral

6:59

school. You're in Topeka from

7:01

grade to one through eight. Listen

7:04

again to Leola Brown's interview with the Kansas State

7:06

Historical Society on several

7:08

occasions, and Leola is asked about

7:10

Monroe, the black school that her daughter

7:12

had been attending. Leola grew up

7:15

in Topeka, she went to Monroe as

7:17

well, and Leolah Brown makes it very

7:19

clear that she loved Monroe. Oh

7:22

it was wonderful. I tell you, it was

7:24

wonderful. And had it not been

7:26

through this boking,

7:28

you know, school and going to a part to school with

7:31

possibly every wild do you know then

7:34

what we did. Later in the interview

7:36

the issue comes up again. The interviewer

7:39

asked Leola specifically, you

7:41

didn't want your daughter to go to the white school

7:43

because the white school was better than the black school.

7:46

And Leola is adamant. Oh No, that

7:48

never came up. We were getting

7:50

a quality education at Monroe. We didn't

7:52

have any bowing

7:55

to pick with our schools for his educationalscsser

7:57

and nod the teachers because they were qualified

8:00

and they die, but they were supposed to do for

8:02

Leola and Oliver Brown. The lawsuit

8:05

was a matter of principle. They

8:07

didn't think there was anything wrong with the lality

8:09

of education at Monroe, the all black school.

8:12

They just thought that the Topeka school Board

8:14

shouldn't be telling them where they could or couldn't

8:16

send Linda to school, particularly

8:19

if the only reason the school board could come up

8:21

with was the color of Linda's skin. Now,

8:27

listen to the argument the Supreme Court

8:29

makes in the Brown decision. They

8:31

agree that the Browns ought to be able to

8:33

send Linda to Sumner, but their

8:35

reasoning is different. I'm quoting

8:39

segregation of white and colored children

8:41

in public schools has a detrimental

8:44

effect upon the colored children. The

8:47

Court's conclusion was that segregation

8:50

was de facto unequal. That simply

8:52

the act of educating black children

8:54

separately from white children caused

8:56

harm, serious harm.

8:59

The court goes on, segregation

9:01

with the sanction of law has a tendency

9:03

to retard the educational and

9:05

mental development of Negro children.

9:09

This was light years away from

9:11

Leola Brown's position. Leola

9:14

Brown said that black run schools like Monroe

9:16

were good schools, but as a matter

9:18

of principle, she ought to be able to enrolled

9:21

into a sumner. The Court

9:23

said, actually, Monroe

9:25

was not a good school at all. It can't

9:28

be a good school because segregation

9:30

makes it inherently inferior. Leola

9:33

Brown said, we're fine. We just want

9:36

some control over our lives. The

9:38

Court said, you're not fine at all.

9:40

Your educational and mental

9:42

development has been retarded

9:45

by your inferior schooling.

9:53

Now, the Court could have said something much more

9:55

straightforward. How about this. Schools

9:58

are where people make the connections that allow

10:00

them to get ahead in the world. You cannot

10:02

lock black people out of the place where social

10:05

power and opportunity reside. That

10:07

argument would have done the job right, but

10:10

the court doesn't say that. In

10:12

order to condemn the discrimination in the Brown's

10:14

face. The court instead makes the case

10:16

that black people are psychologically crippled.

10:21

The historian Darryl Scott wrote a brilliant

10:24

book a while back called Contempt and

10:26

Pity, in which he points out that

10:28

there's been a long history behind this talk

10:30

of psychological damage. It goes

10:32

back to the days of slavery. It's

10:34

always been incredibly useful for white

10:37

people to explain the problems of black

10:39

people as the result of something personal

10:42

internal. It makes their problems

10:44

their fault. If you go even back

10:46

to an Antebellum period, you

10:48

would see planners who would talk about

10:50

how they have no sense of family. Now,

10:53

of course, these are the very people who are selling

10:55

people's families at the auction block. I

10:58

regular they destroying families, but they

11:00

were justified in their minds by saying

11:02

they have no sense of families. Another

11:05

historian, Charles Payne, makes

11:07

a very similar argument in his essay

11:09

The Whole United States Is Southern, which

11:12

you should read, by the way, if you ever want

11:14

to be grabbed by the lapels. Pain

11:17

argues that in the decades after the Civil

11:19

War, Southern whites attempt to sell

11:21

the rest of America on this way of thinking

11:24

about race. They've basically imposed

11:26

apartheid on the South through brute

11:28

political and economic force. But

11:30

they want, and I'm quoting Pain, to

11:33

frame the issue in a language of separation.

11:36

Customs are a way of life and social

11:38

equality. Language that constructed

11:41

race in interpersonal and not structural

11:43

terms. They want

11:45

to pretend that racial conflict is just

11:47

a psychological problem.

11:50

So what does the US Supreme Court do

11:52

in nineteen fifty four in the Brown decision?

11:55

It buys into the Southern way of thinking

11:57

about race. Leo

12:00

le Brown and the other plaintiffs say, we

12:03

have a structural problem.

12:05

We don't have the power to send Linda to the school

12:07

down the street. The court says,

12:10

no, no, no, it's a psychological

12:12

problem. Little Linda has been damaged

12:15

in her heart. That

12:17

may seem like a small distinction. Believe

12:20

me, it's not. We're still

12:22

dealing with the consequences. This

12:26

is a little bit of a tangent, but I think

12:29

it helps to explain why personalizing

12:31

racial discussions is so problematic.

12:34

It's about a wonderful bit of research done by

12:36

two political scientists at Vanderbilt University

12:38

in Nashville, Jason Grissom

12:41

and Christopher Reading. Grissom

12:43

and Reading start with a well known fact

12:46

White students are far more likely to being gifted

12:48

and talented programs than black students.

12:51

If your kid isn't a gifted in talented program, you've

12:53

probably observed this. Where are the black

12:55

kids right now? You might say, well,

12:58

that's simply a reflection of the fact that white kids,

13:00

for whatever reasons, have higher test scores

13:03

on average than black kids. So Grissom

13:05

and Reading, look at a large national sample

13:07

of elementary school kids and let's

13:09

equalize for test course. In other words,

13:12

let's compare two students, one black

13:14

and one white, but they both are

13:16

very high achieving. This is Chrism. Would

13:18

that difference in probability that

13:21

they are identified by the system

13:23

as gifted? Would that persist? And the answer is that

13:25

it does. In fact, you know, it's

13:27

still the case that even when you look at two students

13:29

who are similar on math and reading

13:32

achievement in elementary school, a

13:34

white student and a black student, that white student

13:36

is still more than two times as likely

13:39

to be receiving gifted services as

13:41

that black student is. Gifted. Programs

13:43

are supposed to be meritocracies, places

13:46

where the brightest children are given a chance to shine.

13:49

Chrism's saying that's not the way things work.

13:51

In practice, and you can go

13:53

a little further because you can throw other things

13:55

into the equation that aren't just achievement.

13:57

You can look at differences in income, the data

13:59

have, how healthy the parents

14:01

says that child is. We know what age

14:04

that child entered kindergarten. On

14:07

average, white students and black students enter

14:09

garden at different ages. Because of the phenomenon

14:11

of red shirting, white parents are more likely to

14:13

hold their kids back at the

14:15

start of schooling than black students are. That

14:17

doesn't explain the gifted gap. In

14:19

other words, you match up bright black kids

14:22

with equally bright white kids, then

14:24

you make sure the two groups are similar in age,

14:26

class, and the health of their parents, and

14:29

you still find that the white kids are

14:31

far more likely to be admitted to gifted and talented

14:33

programs. Kind of a puzzle,

14:36

right. Finally, Grissom

14:38

and Readings say, look, in

14:40

many cases, teachers play a big role

14:42

in which students get into gifted programs.

14:45

They encourage them, they recommend them. So

14:48

they think maybe the answer here lies

14:50

with not who the child is, but

14:53

who the child's teacher is. In

14:55

the overwhelming majority of school districts

14:57

in the United States, the way that a kid

14:59

ever, gets to be identified as gifted is

15:02

if someone in the school, usually

15:04

a classroom teacher, has to look at that kid

15:06

and say, I think this kid might be

15:08

gifted. So Grissom does something

15:10

really simple. He looks at

15:12

the race of the teacher, and what

15:14

he finds is that for white kids, there's

15:16

no effect, it doesn't matter, but

15:19

not for black students. For a black

15:21

student, the world looks different. So

15:23

if I'm a black student and I have

15:25

a black classroom teacher, the probability

15:28

that I'm assigned to giftedness in the

15:30

next year it looks very much

15:32

like the probability for a white student.

15:35

But if I am a Black student

15:37

and I have a white classroom

15:39

teacher, my probability

15:41

of being identified as gifted is substantially

15:44

lower. How much lower? Okay,

15:46

So for very high achieving black

15:49

students, the probability of being assigned

15:51

to gifted services under a

15:53

white teacher is about

15:55

half the probability as

15:58

an observably similar black

16:00

student taught by a black teacher. If

16:02

you're black, having a black teacher

16:04

makes a difference, and not just for

16:07

getting into gifted programs. How having

16:09

a black teacher raises the test scores of black

16:11

students, It changes the way black students

16:13

behave, and it dramatically decreases

16:16

the chances a black male student would

16:18

be suspended. A

16:22

group of social scientists recently went over the

16:24

records of one hundred thousand black students in North

16:26

Carolina over a five year period.

16:29

They found that having even one black teacher

16:31

between the third and fifth grade reduced

16:34

the chance that an African American boy would later

16:36

drop out of high school by how much?

16:39

By thirty nine percent one

16:41

black teacher. Now,

16:44

does this mean that white teachers are diabolical

16:47

racists trying to hold down black students.

16:49

No, this isn't conscious discrimination.

16:52

The point is that teachers have power, the

16:55

gatekeepers. They control the classroom.

16:58

They decide who gets recommended for prizes

17:00

like gift to programs and who doesn't. They

17:02

decide who stays and who gets suspended. By

17:05

directing their attention to a child, a teacher

17:07

can inspire by ignoring

17:09

another or sending him more often to the principal's

17:12

office. Teachers can discourage.

17:16

Listen to Leola Brown again about why

17:18

she liked her elementary school Monroe so

17:21

much. I loved it. I

17:23

loved it. The teachers who are fantastic.

17:26

We got a fantastic educationary.

17:28

It wasn't, as I say, this case wasn't based

17:30

on that, because we had fantastic

17:32

teachers and we learned, We learned a lot,

17:35

and they were good to us, more like an extended

17:37

family like matters and so forth. Because they

17:39

took an interest in you, you know, and they

17:43

took an interest in you. That's

17:45

what all the research on blacks and whites and gifted

17:47

programs comes down to. You

17:50

need to have someone who takes an

17:52

interest in you if you want education

17:54

to work and be fair. They

17:57

made one serious mistake. I

18:00

will have to hold them responsible.

18:03

Fall I came across another archive

18:05

of interviews from the Brown era Duke

18:07

Universities behind the Ail Oral History

18:10

Project. The interview you're hearing

18:12

is from Richmond, Virginia. It's with an

18:14

African American teacher named Celestine

18:16

Porter, and she says that once

18:18

you grant this idea that a teacher

18:21

is a gatekeeper and that a child needs

18:23

someone to take an interest in them, then

18:25

that means integration should have been pursued

18:27

very differently. They made students

18:30

through the integration. They should

18:32

have had teachers verse and

18:35

they didn't do that and

18:38

every one of those white schools at

18:40

every one of the black schools. If they

18:42

were gonna send white children to the black school

18:44

they should have had white teachers. If

18:47

they were gonna send black childremen to the white schools,

18:49

they should have had some black teachers there.

18:52

Now, the first people that should

18:54

have been integrated should have been teachers

18:56

and administrations first. But

18:59

they didn't do that. They moved the choke.

19:02

She's absolutely right. Read

19:04

the Brown Decision for yourself. The

19:06

court goes on and on about kids,

19:09

but they have virtually nothing to say about teachers.

19:12

The word teacher comes up once in the main text

19:15

and a few times in the footnotes. That's

19:17

it. How on earth can you

19:19

undertake the greatest transformation of public

19:21

education in American history and barely

19:23

mentioned teachers. Young people

19:26

didn't know business being moved

19:28

first to have borne the

19:31

brunt oh the

19:33

segregation process. And

19:36

it did something to the Austins. It

19:39

did something to him, It made him

19:41

hey, It

19:43

gave them a sense of nobody's

19:45

share. For me and

19:47

most of the students that had moved from the

19:49

black schools into the white situation,

19:52

we as teachers had been that to nurture

19:54

there to help them along, to recognize

19:57

their difficulties, to work

19:59

with them when they moved

20:01

into the white situation. Teachers

20:03

didn't know. They didn't know teachers, and

20:05

teachers were fraid of them. The

20:08

Brown Decision was all about children.

20:11

The signature memories of the Brown era are

20:13

all about black children being escorted

20:15

into previously all white schools. We

20:18

should have been talking about teachers. About

20:24

three and a half hours due east of Topeka

20:27

on Ice seventy, there is a little town

20:29

called Moberly. Morberly

20:31

is in the area of Missouri called Little Dixie

20:34

because it was settled by migrants from the South before

20:36

the Civil War. There was a lot of

20:38

slave owning in Little Dixie compared with the rest

20:40

of Missouri, a lot of racial hostility

20:43

in that part of the state. And I don't think

20:45

you can understand what happened after the Brown Decision

20:47

without first understanding what happened in Marburly.

20:51

In the early nineteen fifties, Morberly

20:54

had a school system employing around a hundred

20:56

teachers across eight schools. One

20:59

of those schools was black. It

21:01

was called Lincoln. Lincoln

21:03

had eleven teachers. The

21:05

year after the Brown Decision, Mobilely

21:07

integrates. They do that by closing

21:09

the one black school, Lincoln. I'm

21:12

bussing all the black students there to

21:14

white schools. After

21:16

closing Lincoln, the Mobile school system

21:18

then says, wait, if we combine all

21:20

the students in Moberly into one school system,

21:23

we don't think we need as many teachers as we had

21:25

before. So they say, let's

21:27

evaluate all the teachers from the two

21:29

newly combined systems. Keep

21:31

the best ones, let the mediocre

21:34

ones go. I think you can

21:36

see what's coming. They

21:38

decide to fire every one of the eleven black

21:40

teachers who used to work at Lincoln. So

21:43

the black teachers sue and they

21:45

lose. They appeal, they lose again. In

21:47

nineteen fifty nine, they ask the Supreme Court

21:50

to consider the case. The Supreme Court

21:52

says, no, Brown is the

21:54

great victory, Mobilely is the great

21:56

defeat, and they're connected. Let

22:01

me give you a flavor of the case. The

22:04

black teachers say, you can't

22:06

possibly say that we were the absolute worst

22:08

of all teachers in the combined system. We've

22:11

been evaluated for years by our superintendent

22:14

and have been given high marks. The

22:16

white school board counters with, sure,

22:19

but you are being compared to other black

22:21

teachers. You need to be compared

22:23

to white teachers. So the black

22:25

teachers say, yeah, but we stack

22:28

up really well against white teachers. And

22:30

by the way, this was not a stretch. Virtually

22:33

every profession except teaching was closed

22:35

to educated African Americans in those years.

22:38

If you were smart and liked learning in that era,

22:40

you became a teacher. The court

22:43

then says, so what I'm

22:45

quoting human capabilities

22:48

cannot be reduced to a mathematical formula.

22:51

Intangible factors such as personality,

22:54

character, disposition, industry,

22:56

and adaptability vitally affect

22:58

the work of any teacher. I

23:01

think there's one intangible factor missing in

23:03

that list, don't you what

23:05

could it be? Dispose? It begins with

23:07

an R. Forgive

23:13

me for going on and on about this one obscure

23:15

case, but you have to get the flavor

23:17

of it. The plaintiffs

23:19

say, wait, one of us is

23:21

a superstar graduate degrees

23:23

qualifications ratings to the roof.

23:26

Her name is Mary Allah Timmany. And

23:28

the white superintendent agrees she's

23:31

a star, But he says, I'm

23:33

still not hiring her because and

23:36

I quoting here from the judge's decision, because

23:39

she gave the impression that she considered

23:41

herself superior to other teachers

23:44

and was resentful towards authority.

23:48

Resentful towards authority.

23:50

You think she just got fired. The

23:53

judge simply can't get Mary Alla Timoney

23:56

out of his head. I'm quoting again.

23:58

It is unfortunate when teachers

24:01

have an attitude such as this teacher

24:03

has. And I do not mean to say

24:05

that such attitude is limited to any race or color,

24:08

but when it does exist, it vitally

24:10

affects the teaching ability of the

24:12

individual. She's appity,

24:15

an appity negro. Of course, they

24:17

don't want to keep her because they understand

24:20

the same thing that Leo L. Brown understands,

24:22

and all the many academics who have studied what

24:24

actually happens to black kids in the classroom

24:27

understand, which is that educational

24:29

equality is a function of who

24:31

holds the power in the classroom. So

24:35

mobilely misery gets rid of its Black

24:37

teachers, and by the way, so

24:40

does almost everybody else across

24:43

the entire South. Black teachers

24:45

just get fired left and right. It

24:48

wasn't something done secretly, It

24:50

was done right out in the open. There

24:52

was something like eighty two thousand African

24:55

American teachers in the South before the Brown

24:57

Decision. Within a decade, as

24:59

the decision was slowly implemented across

25:02

the country, about half have been fired.

25:05

What surprises me is the kind of historical

25:07

amnesia there is surrounding

25:09

that issue that many many people today

25:12

who are searching for black teachers have no understanding

25:15

of the fact that many of them lost their jobs.

25:18

One of the few scholars who has paid any attention

25:20

to what happened is Michelle Foster,

25:23

an education professor at the University of

25:25

Louisville. Twenty years ago,

25:27

Foster tracked as many black teachers from

25:29

that era as she could find. When, well,

25:31

what role did teachers did black

25:33

women play in the South relative

25:36

to children? They were nursemaids, they were housekeepers,

25:39

they were domestics. That's what the role they

25:41

played. You know, every Southern or I

25:43

meet a lot of stuff they said, I had a black somebody who took

25:45

care of them. But that's a mother. You know, that's

25:47

a little different position. When you're a

25:49

teacher. You're evaluating, you're judging.

25:52

Even those who got to keep their jobs told one

25:54

story after another of humiliation.

25:57

It was too much. One of the

25:59

teachers Foster interviewed, went

26:01

for a meeting with the superintendent with

26:03

all of the other black teachers who were being kept

26:05

on. I'm quoting. They were fifteen

26:07

of us, and not a single one of them in

26:10

there as dark as I am. Not one

26:12

that ought to tell you something. By

26:15

the way, the remaining black teachers couldn't

26:17

use the teacher's bathroom. They had to

26:19

use the children's bathroom.

26:28

To this day, the ranks of black teachers

26:30

in the United States have not recovered

26:32

from the humiliations and mass firings

26:34

of the nineteen fifties and sixties. As

26:37

a percentage, there are far fewer

26:39

black teachers than there are black students. And

26:42

when you think back to studies on how important

26:44

black teachers are for the performance of black

26:47

students, that's a tragedy.

26:50

Georgia, South Carolina, Florida,

26:52

Alabama, one classroom

26:55

after another was purged of its black

26:57

teachers and Tipeka,

27:00

Kansas. Of course, Topeka

27:02

made a show of it. They assigned a black

27:04

teacher to a halftime position at

27:06

the formerly all white Randolph School,

27:08

and then the principle, a man named

27:10

Stanley Stalter, had the task of

27:12

calling up white parents to see if they objected

27:15

to this one halftime

27:17

black teacher, and of course

27:19

they did. Some were adamant.

27:21

Nope, some of

27:23

them had a very peculiar

27:28

reasons for not wanting

27:30

this child in the black teacher's room.

27:33

That's the principle. Stalter interviewed

27:35

by the Kansas Historical Society. Another

27:37

one said, my child is

27:39

now at twelve years of age, and

27:43

it is beginning her natural period, and

27:47

this is not the time of her life

27:49

to be put in here with a black teacher, a

27:51

male. Hey,

27:57

that one talk everything. There's

28:01

a limit to how many times a school board is

28:03

going to try and talk white tax paying parents

28:05

out of their fear of placing a menstruating

28:08

adolescent in class with a black

28:10

teacher. Far easier just not

28:12

to hire any black teachers at all, Dear

28:16

Miss Buchanan, due

28:18

to the present uncertainty about enrollment

28:20

next year in schools for Negro

28:23

children, it is not possible

28:25

at this time to offer you employment

28:28

for next year. If

28:31

the court should rule that segregation in the elementary

28:33

grades is unconstitutional, our

28:36

board will proceed on the assumption that

28:39

the majority of people in Topeka will not want

28:41

to employ Negro teachers

28:43

next year. For white children. I

28:50

said at the beginning that the woman reading that letter

28:52

at the conference of the University of Michigan was

28:55

a Missus Thompson. That's

28:57

her married name. Her first name

28:59

is Linda. Her maiden name is Brown,

29:02

Linda Brown, the Brown of Brown v. Topeka

29:04

Board of Education. This

29:07

is a little girl Oliver tried and

29:09

failed to enroll at Sumner Elementary School.

29:12

She was invited to Michigan to speak

29:14

in celebration of the fiftieth anniversary of

29:16

the Supreme Court decision. And

29:19

what does Linda Brown Thompson do. In

29:22

the middle of her talk, she interrupts

29:24

her eyewitness account to remind

29:26

her audience who bore the cost

29:28

of integration, not white

29:31

people, black people. I

29:35

think I understand that all of you must be under

29:37

considerable strength, and I

29:39

sympathize with the uncertainties and

29:42

inconvenience which you must be experiencing

29:45

during the spirit of adjustment. I

29:48

believe that whatever happens will

29:51

ultimately turn out to be the best for

29:54

everyone. Concern Sincerely,

29:57

Yours, Wendell Godwin, Superintendent

30:01

of Schools. Revisionist

30:13

History is produced by Mail LaBelle and

30:15

Jacob Smith, with Camille Baptista

30:17

Stephanie Daniel and Ciomara Martinez

30:20

White. Our editor is Julia

30:22

Barton. Flawn Williams is our

30:24

engineer. Original music by Luis

30:26

Guera. Special thanks to Andy

30:28

Bowers and Jacob Weisberger Panoply. I'm

30:31

Malcolm Gladwell