ustxtxb_obs_1993_09_17_50_00001-00000_000.pdf

SCHOOLS UNDER AlTIACK Pg. 10 A JOURNAL OF FREE VOICES SEPTEMBER 17, 1993 $1.75 TRACKING RESEGREGATION THE COLOR LINE IN TEXAS SCHOOLS BY CAROL COUNTRYMAN WHEN I WAS IN THE THIRD GRADE, to escape desegregation, my family moved from Dallas to a tiny East Texas town. Like many other towns across America, a line of demarcation divided our town, black and white. Blacks lived north of town, in the community of “Little Egypt,” across the rail road tracks and behind abandoned railroad cars. Invisible, sort of. Though I started school some 14 years after the U.S. Supreme Court’s Brown v. Board of Education decision, I proceeded through public school and into my adulthood without ever knowing a black person. The schools I attended were integrated; but black students were never enrolled in any of my classes. What I most often saw of them was their backs as they trudged across the grassy field that separated the school from the portable building that housed the special education classes. Continued on pg. 6