Last Monday, Education Secretary Betsy DeVos issued a statement in which she referred to Historically Black Colleges and Universities (HBCUs) as "real pioneers when it comes to school choice." Referring to the circumstances in which the institutions were established, DeVos said, "They saw that the system wasn't working, that there was an absence of opportunity, so they took it upon themselves to provide the solution."
DeVos' invocation of HBCUs like Little Rock's own Philander Smith as products of choice and therefore examples of success that justify dismantling public education constitutes an alarming misuse of history. Created during the system of institutional segregation known as Jim Crow, when no African American student could attend higher educational institutions reserved for white students, HBCUs owe their existence to the absence of choice.
Beginning in the late 19th century, HBCUs provided African Americans access to higher education at a time when states erected statutes to restrict educational choices by race. DeVos is correct in stating that HBCUs "took it upon themselves to provide the solution" to African Americans being denied equal educational opportunities, but in acknowledging the work done by these institutions, we must also acknowledge the odds they were forced to fight against.
We must acknowledge the role played by white Americans in positions of power--DeVos' predecessors at the state and local level--who starved HBCUs to the bone and then pointed to the very existence of these institutions as evidence of educational equality.
If we are to acknowledge HBCUs as "pioneers," let us start by acknowledging the pioneering work of HBCU administrators, who made bricks from straw to bridge the gap between the needs of their students and the chronically insufficient resources available from private philanthropists and public funds. Let us acknowledge the pioneering work of HBCU students, who put their lives on the line during the civil rights movement to end segregation and secure the rights of citizenship.
If Secretary DeVos wishes to illuminate the connection between "school choice" and the history of racism in education, I suggest she start by examining the ways in which the rhetoric of choice was used by white parents, who opposed the Brown v. Board of Education decision and lobbied their state legislatures to allocate public dollars to pay for their children to attend all-white private schools, or "segregation academies."
The Secretary should look at North Carolina's 1956 Pearsall Plan, which provided a number of tools for local school officials to avoid desegregation. By creating an exemption to the state's compulsory attendance law, the Pearsall Plan provided parents with the choice to keep their children home from schools that were undergoing integration. The plan also created an avenue for parents whose children were assigned to integrated schools to apply for publicly funded grants to pay for private-school tuition.
Another useful history lesson comes from Prince Edward County, Va., where white segregationists elected to shut down the public schools rather than desegregate them. While white Virginians used tax dollars to send their children to segregation academies, many black Virginians had no choice but to wait five years for a court order to reopen the public schools.
Virginia's massive resistance campaign was so successful that Arkansas Gov. Orval Faubus sent a delegation of politicians to Richmond to gather ideas for his own strategy. In September 1957, before the eyes of the nation, Faubus' plan was put to the test as he attempted to block the Little Rock Nine from entering Central High School.
Secretary DeVos' attempts to frame the struggle of historically black institutions in the language of "school choice" is a clear example of whitewashed revisionism.
Promoters of this historical narrative also pretend that today's Republican Party is the party of Abraham Lincoln, and that Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. was a colorblind conservative.
When our Secretary of Education, of all people, plays fast and loose with historical facts in order to jeopardize the future of our nation's public schools, she attacks not only historical truth but the institutions that will pass that truth on to the next generation.
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Elizabeth Lundeen of Conway is a Ph.D. candidate in history, and is writing a dissertation on Historically Black Colleges and Universities during the civil rights movement.
Editorial on 03/06/2017