UP NORTH, BLACK FAMILIES WALKED OUT: Counternarratives of Jim Crow School Resistance

In the early 1930s, Northerners sought to uphold a pretense that they were distanced from the segregationists of the South and promoted all the children of the said schools of every race and color be accorded the full and equal enjoyment of the accommodations, advantages, facilities and privileges, declared by the Cleveland (OH) Board of Education on July 17, 1934 (Board Bans School Picnics at Euclid Beach 1934). Inferior and inadequate buildings and equipment, a larger teaching load for Race teachers, inferior instruction, great truancy among Race children, a low salary scale for Race teachers, lack of high school facilities and handicaps in efforts on the part of ambitious members of the Race to secure higher and professional training ("Demands Abolishment: International Convention Hears Urban League Head Talk Against Segregation" 1933). Since America with all of its boasts of freedom and justice and equal opportunities for all, segregates and discriminates against a large portion of its population it should at least force every state in the Union to accept its responsibility to educate all of the people living within the state...If members of the Race are to achieve the high standards of American citizenship towards which they are constantly striving, separate schools must go ("Demands Abolishment: International Convention Hears Urban League Head Talk Against Segregation" 1933). In it, the black community describes being subjected to shorter school terms of 8 months resulting in less than 165 days in the academic calendar. In 1931, the Chicago Defender published an article written by Woodson where he outlined racist curriculum taught in our nation's public schools to disparage the Black community ("Dr. Woodson Answers Critics: Defends Stand on Our School Systems" 1931).