Karida L. Brown is a professor of sociology at Emory University and the author of “Gone Home: Race and Roots Through Appalachia.”
As we commemorate the 70th anniversary of Brown v. Board of Education this month, let us not forget: It was Black children who did the work of desegregating our schools. Like soldiers conscripted onto a battlefield, these kids were thrust onto the front lines of the American struggle to live up to our nation’s founding creed.
It was not until I was in my late 20s that my parents shared their experiences as children of desegregation. They attended the Lynch Colored Public School, a K-12 school in a company coal town in Harlan County, Ky. They grew up in a time of industrial boom and economic prosperity. But they were still subject to the racist architecture of Jim Crow, including legally mandated separate and unequal education.
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The narratives in this piece come from oral histories I conducted from 2013 to 2016 with African Americans who, like my parents, remember the “colored schools” of Harlan County, particularly those in two small Appalachian coal towns, Lynch and Benham. Their experiences — revisited from the vantage point of their 60s, 70s and 80s — give texture to a complex transition from a pre- to post-civil rights era.
Herein lies a story of painful losses and immeasurable gains. It is a crucial part of our history that must not be forgotten.
‘You better learn something’
Segregation was a fact of life in Harlan County. The close-knit African American community was bound by the strength of its large families, church gatherings and schools filled with dedicated Black teachers.
“These are two things they hammered into my head,” Victor Prinkleton recalled of his teachers at the Lynch Colored School. “You get an education because ... you are not going to be able to get no job in no coal mine, so you better get your education so you [can] get something to do.” As mechanization advanced in the mining industry, Black teachers encouraged their students to aspire to livelihoods different from those of their parents.
“Second was, you better learn something ... and learn how to compete in an integrated society, because segregation is going to end. ... From first grade all the way through high school I heard that, I don’t know how many times.”
Lee Arthur Jackson, a 1968 graduate of Lynch High School, the White school that would be desegregated, reflected on this nurturing environment: “They took an interest in what you were doing education-wise, and they saw to it that you were prepared.
“You know, when I came down to University of Kentucky, I was not afraid that I could not compete or anything like that,” Jackson said. “I mean, that just was not in my nature. And so I can do the same thing you’re doing. And that’s the way they prepared us: to be as good — better than — anybody else.”
Black educators were well aware of the changing tides, though change was slow to reach the county. Despite the thunderclap of Brown v. Board in 1954, resistance persisted. White school boards and communities across the South, including in Harlan, balked at the federal mandate, with many calling it “tyranny.” Desegregation did not arrive in Lynch and Benham until 1963.
Cheryl Baskin Brack remembers the moment she and her classmates learned that their world would change. John V. Coleman, the last principal of the Lynch Colored School, broke the news: “When Professor Coleman announced in the gym that that would be our last year, it felt like something stabbed me in my heart. Because I didn’t want to leave.”
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Desegregation went forward under a cloud of caution and reluctance. Older students, grades 10 to 12, would go first. Meant to ease the concerns of White Harlanites, this gradual desegregation nonetheless met with resistance from White faculty, and generated profound hurt and anger among Black students.
“Sometimes I try to go back to that, and I’m not sure if I can remember — and that may be one of those kinds of things that you try to put out of your mind,” said Porter G. Peeples, who was sent to the White school in Lynch for his senior year of 1964. “Because it was something that I didn’t want to happen. All the way through high school, you look forward to the day when you’re the big dog, that you’re the senior. And they took that away from us, just flat took it away from us.
"I looked through one of the yearbooks, and I looked at a lot of the awards. ... They were all White kids in our senior year.”
“We were mad because they closed our school down and we had the newer building,” said Albert Harris, who had until then attended Benham Colored School. “So we were forced to go to their building and stuff, you know. So that part angered us, too.
“All the stuff, it just got thrown away. I remember I was with some of my boys, and we went and broke into the old colored school, and we took some of the trophies and the basketball warm-up pants. There were four of us, and we stole those and we would sport them [the pants] around and wear them. But yeah, they just did away with our stuff. So that was our anger in that.”
Crosscurrents of race and class
Harris, who would graduate from Cumberland High School, the White school in the next town over, also noted the economic impact of integration on the Black community: “You got to realize that we had our own school, so you had from principal, assistant principal, math, biology, science, all the way down to the janitors. So the majority of them lost their jobs, and it was the same way with Lynch: It was just a few teachers that maintained their jobs. The rest of them had to leave the area.”
“The teachers that I had all my life,” said Harriett Callaway Hillie, a 1959 graduate of Benham Colored School, “they no longer had a job there.”
The Black segregated schools were anchored by a profound dedication and tenacity among educators — a legacy deeply etched into the community fabric. In contrast, upon desegregation, Black students felt indifference from their White teachers.
Jack French, who desegregated Lynch High School his senior year as a part of the experimental cohort of Black students, observed: “Their mentality was, ‘These Black kids are here, we got to accept the fact that they are here, but I am not going to deal with it to the extent to which it is beneficial to the school.’ To me, that was their mentality. And I watched and observed a great deal of the teachers, because when I came in, it was nothing but all White teachers — that’s all.”
“To me, when we integrated it seemed like the teachers, the White teachers, they didn’t care whether we learned or not,” said Brack. “They were just there, and that was it.”
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Ravern Whitt, who integrated the White school in Cumberland in sixth grade, discovered resilience and unexpected revelations about racial and class dynamics: “We had a background from the Black school. I honestly say this with all my heart: They gave us a foundation that learning was everything. So it didn’t matter if I was in school with White people talking about me. I didn’t care. But I wanted to know … what they meant. What made them so different to everybody else? …
“We all thought White people, all of them were well-to-do, all better off than we were. Well, as time went on, we started running into people that didn’t mind telling you how poor they were and the different things they had to deal with and their environment, you know. And I began to see a different class of people among themselves — White people — as we went through school, especially freshmen in high school. There were people in there that didn’t have it like the rest of the White people, and they seemed to be attracted to the Black people, for some reason. ... But that was an eye-opening moment for me because before, I wondered why White people didn’t want to play with us.”
In time, Brack’s fears about academic preparedness gave way to a surprising realization: “And I tell you, the funny thing about that, when we integrated, I was kind of afraid because, see, we always got the books that they had. They had sent us the leftovers. And when we integrated, I was kind of nervous because I thought that we were not going to be prepared like the Whites. But when I got out there, it was totally different. I was surprised: We know more than some of them!”
‘As good as and better than’
Clara Clements, a graduate of Lynch Colored School who went on to teach at Black and White schools in the town — before and after desegregation — remembers the initial optimism: “When they were talking about their integration, there were many people who were excited about it: ‘Our children can get a better education.’ I remember this vividly. ‘They can take chemistry so they can be nurses and doctors,’ and when they got an opportunity to take chemistry, I went down there and took chemistry voluntarily.
“But we lost [the Black teachers who] had interest in children.”
Vergie Mason, a former teacher at Lynch Colored School, shared a mixed reflection on the tangible improvements that came with integration: “I know in Lynch we got hand-me-down books. The White school used the books, and then we got them and we paid for all of our supplies — the teachers paid for them. When we integrated, we got new books. … I got all the paper I wanted for typing — you know, the reams of paper you print your exams and things on. Everything was paid for. …
“But I think really that in the Black school, Black teachers understood the Black kids, and I think that made a difference with the Black kids. When they integrated, some of those White teachers didn’t know anything about the life and livelihood of Black people. And I don’t think they were as patient with them as the Black teachers were.”
Rosie Ivory Pettygrue, who taught third grade at the Lynch Colored School until its closing, captured the poignant revelations of self-worth and equality that emerged from the integration experience. “We lost and we gained,” she said. “This is how we gained: I think that some of our children thought that they were inferior to Whites, and they found out that they knew more than a lot of them did. And then some of the Whites thought that we were inferior, and they found out that we knew more than what a lot of them did.”
Charles Price, a former teacher and the last principal at Benham Colored School, points to the broader cultural costs and psychological benefits of Brown: “The cost, I think, was the community. … It dissolved, and there was sort of an acclimation to the people, and we sort of lost our identity. The benefits were, I think, more psychological than anything. We learned that we were as good as and better than.”
All archival materials featured here can be found in the Eastern Kentucky African American Migration Project Collection No. 5585, Southern Historical Collection, Wilson Special Collections Library, University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill.
