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THE JACKSON HERALD
WEDNESDAY, OCTOBER 5, 2011
Opinions
“Private opinion is weak, but public opinion is almost omnipotent. ”
- Henry Ward Beecher -
Mike Buffington, editor • Email: Mike@mainstreetnews.com
our views
Part 3: School integration tangles local school systems in the courts
CThis is Part 3 of a multi-part series on the history
of the three school systems in Jackson County and
how the school merger issue shaped those school
systems.)
B Y THE early 1960s, the three school systems
in Jackson County were set into a firm struc
ture. The Jackson County School System
had contracts with both Jefferson and Commerce city
school systems dating to 1952 under which the two
city systems educated white county high school stu
dents and some elementary school students on the
east (Commerce) side of the county and the central
(Jefferson) area. And the county system provided bus
transportation for those county students to attend the
two city school systems.
For its part, the county system ran the white high
school in Braselton and the black high school and
black elementary school in Jefferson, in addition to
five white elementary schools scattered throughout
the county.
The issue of integrating the black and white schools
became stronger in the late 1950s and 1960s, sparked
by the landmark Brown vs. Board of Education deci
sion of 1954. A local anti-integration States Rights
Council was formed to protest school integration in the
mid-1950s, but for all its noise and fury (it framed the
integration issue as “communism vs. Americanism”),
the group had little impact in Jackson County or in the
school integration issue here. By the time integration
came in 1969-1970, such groups no longer existed.
That was in large part due to the leadership of
Jefferson Mills, which at the time controlled Jefferson’s
school system and dominated overall city and county
politics. Mill leaders apparently made it clear behind
the scenes that there was to be no violence with inte
gration, and there wasn’t.
But integration did inject the federal courts into the
local school systems, a move that had a lot of unin
tended consequences regarding what would happen
in the coming years in the school merger issue.
In 1969, and unrelated to the integration issue,
Commerce citizens were asked to vote on a referen
dum to merge that city school system with the county
school system. Technically Commerce voters were
asked to abolish the city system, a move that would
automatically have merged it with the county system.
(County school systems have to exist by state law;
independent city school systems are optional.)
In the end, the move was defeated. It was a very
emotional issue and Commerce’s school superinten
dent fought strongly against the idea, saying that the
county system might not fund Commerce schools fair
ly. Commerce voters agreed with him and that chance
at merger died at the ballot box in Commerce.
Meanwhile that year, the fed
eral court was crafting school
integration plans for Jackson
County. The court split the all
black Bryan High School and
elementary school by sending
West Jackson area black stu
dents to Jackson County High
School in Braselton; Jefferson
area black students to the
Jefferson system; and East
Jackson area black students to
Commerce schools. The same
rules of transportation from the
1952-54 contracts applied and the county system
bussed black students to the respective schools just
as it had county white students for the previous 15
years.
In 1970, the federal court took an action that had
huge ramifications for the future of the county schools
and merger. Because Jefferson was taking in a number
of black students, it needed to build new classrooms.
To get state funding for that, the federal judge ordered
Jefferson and the County school systems to enter into
another 20-year contract to extend the old 1952 con
tract providing for transportation of county students to
the city school system from the “Jefferson attendance
area.” The contract was to be extended to 1990.
But that 1970 contract extension was never done,
although all parties involved thought it had been. A
1981 investigation by this newspaper found that no
1970 contract was ever executed by the two systems.
The county school superintendent had, in the back
ground after the judge’s order, found a way to use
the old 1952 contract to get the state funding Jefferson
needed without doing a new contract. He told the
judge, but apparently neither Jefferson nor other
county school leaders knew about it; if they did, they
didn’t acknowledge it.
By 1981 when all of that came to light in the newspa
per, so many things had happened that it was essen
tially a moot point. Only later did the courts address
the mix-up.
Still, the mistaken belief that the Jefferson-Jackson
contract had been extended guided school decisions
from 1970-1986 and greatly complicated the merger
issue in the political sphere. Even bigger was the fact
that the courts were in a long-term oversight position
in the local schools, a position that played a major
part of what happened later.
Meanwhile, other forces began to shape and push
renewed discussion about merging the county’s three
school systems.
First, during the 1970s, parents of county students
being bussed into the two city school systems began
to feel disenfranchised. Their children were being
forced to attend a school system where they didn’t
pay taxes and where they had no legal voice.
Making that even worse was the overbearing atti
tude of the city school systems’ leaders, especially
in Jefferson. The Jefferson Board of Education was a
secretive group, seldom holding public meetings and
booting out reporters who dared try to attend their
infrequent conclaves. Jefferson Mill leaders ran the
school system as if it were a private organization, not a
public school. Even parents living inside the city limits
of Jefferson had little voice in their child’s school due
to its secretive leadership.
In reality, however, many Jefferson citizens didn’t
care so long as the Mill was putting its money into
the system and the schools were successful. A lot of
Jefferson citizens were happy to cede their voice in
return for the private funding. Those who questioned
that system were frowned upon. The one Jefferson
BOE member who dared ask questions and push for
more system openness in the 1970s was booted off in
1978.
The second force pushing the merger issue in the
1970s was the lack of education quality at Jackson
County High School in Braselton. The two city high
schools in Jefferson and Commerce were the domi
nant local high schools and JCHS in Braselton was
considered an academic backwater. Nobody least of
all its own board of education, seemed to care about
it.
That’s because the county school board was weak
at the time, populated by elderly men who were
largely subservient to the political interests of the two
city school systems. (The Grand Jury appointed the
county school board and the grand jury was largely
dominated by Jefferson and Commerce citizens. In
effect, citizens from the two cities appointed county
school board members.)
A lot of county parents began to complain about that
lack of education equality among the county’s high
schools, believing that JCHS was being kept weak on
purpose to maintain the dominance of the two city
high schools.
In addition to those dynamics, the state began
pushing strongly for school merger during this time.
A massive 1971 study in Jackson County by the state
recommended school merger of the three systems.
Nothing was done, but that study planted the seed of
school merger in a new way.
Because of all these factors, the issue of merging the
county’s three school systems became the dominant
political debate between 1970-1995.
Next week: School merger issue explodes
Mike Buffington is co-publisher of Mainstreet
Newspapers and editor of The Jackson Herald. He
can be reached at mike@mainstreetnews.com.
mike
buffington
Saying good-bye to Andy Rooney
ANOTHER codger retired this week from the
trade. Though he promised audiences he’ll die
a writer.
Andy Rooney signed off after 34 years of pro
viding the last word on the CBS program “60
Minutes.”
In his gruff way, the old man with bushy
eyebrows and a back arched, no doubt, from
decades of hunching over his typewriter, stiff
ened as he delivered his final essay.
He sat at his desk, which seemed a bit neater
than usual, devoid of the clutter built up by
someone tasked with finding a message in the
unpleasant heap of world events.
Rooney claimed his partisanship never pen
etrated his ability to think objectively. He apolo
gized for ticking people off with views that
angered and once landed him a suspension.
And he thanked fans before asking them to bug
off.
But most important of all, this is how Rooney
defended his approach: “A writer’s job is to
tell the truth. I believe that if all the truths were
known about everything it the world, it would be
a better place to live.”
Before the segment, Morley Safer profiled
the 92-year-old, a feature more interesting than
Rooney’s essay itself.
The man’s life and life’s work, as with so many
other news veterans of his generation, provides a
true modern history of American journalism that
a mundane communications survey class in col
lege simply can’t match.
In an era when news
organizations of all kinds
are under attack, journal
ism schools today would
be wise to present deep
analyses of such 20th-cen
tury practitioners.
More than any theory,
principle or AP Style
minutia, men and women
such as Ben Bradlee,
Katharine Graham,
Edward R. Murrow, Ernie
Pyle, Seymour Hersh,
Helen Thomas, Jimmy Breslin, Don Hewitt,
Mike Royko and countless others, supplied us
with a far more comprehensive foundation to
news reporting and editorializing than any Diane
Sawyer or Glenn Beck. None of them claimed to
be perfect, either.
In fact, every community harbors such rare
voices whose clear approach to facts and views
demonstrate just how difficult reality can be
when shoveled day-to-day, week-to-week and
now hour-to-hour - in the trenches.
These people should be cultivated, studied and
debated not slammed, as is the trend today.
As for ideals, they remain largely unchanged
one generation to the next. Rooney’s final “60
Minutes” episode set them up well.
Rooney used his essay as a sword, one last
time, to stab us in the gut with the truth.
Another feature showcased unyielding hope
in despair, something all reporters harbor some
where inside when they plow through conflict.
This was illustrated through a story about the
sustaining relationship between sister cities in
the wake of the Japanese tsunami.
Then there was a profile of rock climber
Alex Honnold. Lara Logan, a woman sexually
assaulted during her reporting of the Egyptian
revolution, followed a bold young man who
scales impossibly steep cliffs without any safety
measures. The segment made my palms sweat.
He’ll probably die doing what he loves.
In a similar way, men and women such as
Rooney free climb stories, not knowing what
kind of reward, if any, exists at the summits.
Logan’s first question to Honnold when he
reached the top of a daring Yosemite National
Park challenge: “How’s the view?”
I wish Rooney would have tackled that ques
tion, too.
There aren’t many perks to reporting, journal
ism or whatever you want to call it. But, at the
end of a life wrapped up in such writing, the best
we can hope for at the edge of the cliff is this
simple answer: “Worth the climb.”
Erin Rossiter is a reporter for Mainstreet
Newspapers. She can be reached at erin@main-
streetnews.com.
The Jackson Herald
Founded 1875 • The Official Legal
Organ of Jackson County, Ga.
Mike Buffington Co-Publisher & Editor
Scott Buffington Co-Publisher &
Advertising Manager
News Department
Angela Gary Associate Editor
Jana Adams Mitcham Features Editor
Ben Munro Sports Editor
Kerri Testement Reporter
Sharon Hogan Reporter
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