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Divernan

(15,480 posts)
6. The ripples from her brave actions have spread through the years and generations.
Fri Feb 13, 2015, 07:39 AM
Feb 2015

Last edited Fri Feb 13, 2015, 08:11 AM - Edit history (1)

The benefits to the people whom she encouraged to join - not only the actual participation in swimming/tennis, but the personal confidence and participation in community that doubtless influenced other aspects of their lives - and then the example this set to their friends and relatives, and to the white members of the club -----the ripples don't stop. A butterfly flaps its wings, etc.

Back in the early 60's, I was a stay-at-home Mom in Brevard County, FL (husband working 60 hours a week on Project Apollo at Cape Kennedy). I volunteered to be a Brownie leader for my 7 year old daughter's troop - actually, I was supposed to be the assistant leader, but ended up as the only volunteer. With no training and no experience other than my own years as a Girl Scout, and with my other two kids (ages 4 yrs. and 3 months) in tow, I was in charge. There were 2 black girls and one Cuban refugee girl in my daughter's 2nd grade class when I distributed an announcement of the troop's first meeting. (Because this was a Catholic school taught by Irish nuns, there was no racial segregation as in Florida's public schools.) We'd had a few meetings, and I guess the little black and Cuban girls heard some enthusiastic feedback from their classmates, so asked their parents if they could join. At the 2nd meeting of my troop of chattering and giggling little girls, one very serious black mother walked in with the 2 black girls. She stayed for the whole meeting and watched me like a hawk the entire time. I evidently passed muster, because those girls joined, and the next week the little Cuban girl came and joined. When I called the Florida Girl Scout administrator who was my phone contact to report 3 new members - she was shocked - told me this was the first integrated Brownie troop she'd heard of.

Keep in mind that Florida fiercely opposed school integration despite Brown vs. Board of Education. It took a decade and a half - Dec. 31, 1969 - for Florida to give up on maintaining segregated public schools. And since Brownie troops were traditionally composed of little girls in the same grade school class, the troops were de facto segregated as well. I don't even know if there were actually black Brownie troops in Florida back in the 60's. And I didn't know I was doing something out of the usual to mix races. I wasn't making a political statement I was just a liberal Northerner transplanted to Florida by my then-husband's job. I had been raised to treat all people with the same degree of courtesy and respect, until and unless they individually showed themselves not to be deserving of courtesy and respect. When I looked at little girls, I saw individual children - not members of a different race.

Once during that part of the meeting when we'd sit in a circle to talk, I introduced the idea of differences- and how boring life would be if everything was the same. Asked the girls what flavor ice cream was their favorite - and then said what if the only flavor we could have was vanilla? Well, no one was in favor of that. Other topics: What if everybody's dad looked exactly alike? What kind of pets did they have? Well, what if only one breed of dog was allowed? What if every family had to drive the exact same car (as in when parents showed up to pick up their kids after the meetings); or everyone had to wear the same color clothes? I urged them not to be frightened by differences, because differences were what made our lives interesting.

But the best thing I did as a Brownie leader was help a little girl whose Mom had taken her and run away to Florida from a physically abusive husband/father in another state. I didn't know anything about the girl's background at first. But I noticed this little girl was very quiet and shy, so made a special effort to put her at ease and bring her out of her shell. One of the games we played involved sitting in a circle. Each girl was assigned a word in a story I would read aloud. Whenever I read their word, they were to jump to their feet, spin around and sit down again. The main character in the story was a fictional girl, whose name I assigned to Kathleen as her word. So she was basically the star of the game. She just opened up and blossomed in that game. First there were a few self-conscious giggles, and then laughs and then she just glowed with excitement. A few weeks later her Mom, whom I had never met, called to fill me in on Kathleen's background and to thank me. She credited the Brownie experience with a major change in her daughter - from a quiet, frightened little girl who never laughed to a child who was now happy again, and chattering in class so much, that her teacher had called her Mom (also a teacher) to talk about it.

Years later, I went back to college and got a psych degree, then a NIMH research fellowship, then a law degree. But back then I was just someone who had never experienced an abusive husband or father or even heard of such things; I was someone raised by loving parents who never uttered a racially derogatory term or statement. I was just a mom who liked kids whether they were white, black or polka dotted.

My long-winded point is that the good or evil we do lives after us, and we'll never know how far those ripples reach, for good or for bad.

Here's a link to an article about school segregation in The Sunshine State:
http://fch.fiu.edu/FCH-2006/Winsboro-An%20Historical%20Perspective%20on%20Public%20School%20Desegregation%20in%20Florida.htm


The Board filed a motion to amend the court’s findings, but was denied the appeal on 9 June, 1969.[24] The Board then considered appealing the case to higher courts, but its attorney counseled that such an appeal would prove futile. Moreover, the Board’s attorneys determined that the county could face penalties for an unsuccessful appeal.[25] It had finally become apparent to the Board and its counsel that the state could not provide further justification for delay and that the power of the Federal government could not be circumvented. The local board now submitted a plan for total integration on 31 December, 1969.[26] After a decade and a half the Lee County School Board had accepted, however, unwillingly, the High Court’s decision in Brown.

The eradication of dual school systems in Lee County, Florida came only after constant pressure applied by local citizens, the NAACP, the Federal Courts, and the US Department of Justice. For a decade, historical and newly-promulgated measures had worked to prevent desegregation in Lee County Schools. It took the Civil Rights Act of 1964 and the Blalock case to move a recalcitrant board away from those state guidelines on segregation towards compliance with federal law and Court orders. It also took these Federally-supported measures to move Lee County to finally eschew the segregationist lessons of the past, which had so steadily trickled out of Tallahassee, to move into a modern era of compliance with the dictates of Brown. Viewed as a case study, the experience of Lee County, Florida reflects all too poignantly what it took to move Florida from a segregationist past to an integrationist present.


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