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Ex-Teachers: Remember Desegregation Era They Want to Make Sure Kids Know Nassau's Past.

Posted on: Tuesday, 7 March 2006, 18:00 CST

By KEVIN TURNER

In the mid-1960s, when Freddie Johnson and Eugene Grant began teaching in Nassau County, they were black educators teaching black students in a racially segregated school district.

But that all changed during the 1969-70 school year, the year local schools were desegregated.

That era is a time in American history that needs to be remembered, Johnson says.

"I think it's very important," Johnson said. "A lot of things aren't being taught in the schools today. Kids today don't know how they're enjoying things now because of those changes. They take for granted they can go places and do things without worrying about it. When we were growing up, that wasn't the case. I went to Peck [High School]. When Fernandina Beach High School got new textbooks and football uniforms, we got the old stuff. That was the way it was."

Johnson and his wife, Nancy, both started teaching in Nassau County in 1967 at Bryant Academy, now Yulee Elementary School. The academy was for black first- through ninth-graders.

Grant came to Nassau County in 1966 to teach at Southside Elementary School, where he taught fourth, fifth and sixth grades, with an emphasis on sixth-grade science, he said.

"That was when we had two new schools on the island -- Emma Love Hardee was kindergarten through sixth grade for whites and Southside Elementary was kindergarten through sixth grade for blacks," Grant said.

Although the Nassau County schools were overwhelmingly segregated when the two men started teaching here, the district at the time was operating under a "Freedom of Choice" desegregation policy that had been instituted in response to the 1964 Civil Rights Act, Johnson and Grant said.

"At that point, you could attend any school in your district," Johnson said. "But at that point the [black] kids from here were going to Peck. The kids from Sandhill, Lessie and Gross were all going past Yulee High School on their way there."

Grant said only a handful of students voluntarily chose desegregation under "Freedom of Choice."

"They had a few students sprinkled throughout the schools," Grant said. "Very few."

Courts struck down several versions of Nassau County's "Freedom of Choice" policy as noncompliant with the Civil Rights Act. The U. S. Department of Health Education and Welfare's Office of Education finally gave the Nassau County School District a report in February 1969 detailing how the district was to desegregate county schools, starting during the 1969-70 school year.

The report forbade arbitrary firing or demoting of any district staff on the basis of race, meaning black teachers would soon instruct white students. There were staff meetings to prepare black staff before the 1969-70 school year began, Grant said.

"I remember the year before we left to go to the [Fernandina Beach] junior high school, we had meetings and talked about different subject areas. We had white teachers tell us there were some things that we had to prepare for, because the white youngsters weren't prepared for black teachers," he said.

During one meeting, they explained terminology differences between black and white students, Grant said.

"They said things like, 'What you all call a stove, white kids call a range. You all say bucket; white kids call it a pail," Grant said. "I had heard both bucket and pail. But, honestly, I think they were trying to do us a favor."

Johnson said most students took desegregation much better than some parents.

"I think, overall, it went pretty well. There were some who didn't want to mix, and they went in with the wrong attitudes," he said.

There was one time during the first year of desegregation when strains from the sudden change showed, Johnson said.

"I remember one incident when this [white] young lady whom I was teaching in a sixth-grade math class went to the board to do a problem and she wasn't doing it properly. I corrected her, and she went home and told her parents. The next day, her daddy was at the school with an ax handle that had an iron rod in it," Johnson said.

There was no violence, but Johnson didn't back down, either. The incident ended in a civil conversation between teacher and parent, he said.

"I see her now and she says, 'How are you doing, Mr. Johnson?' We talk and there's no problem. It wasn't the kids, it was the parents," Johnson said.

Everything wasn't always equal in the transition to desegregation, Grant said.

"They always made the principal from the black school the assistant principal at the integrated school," he said.

Sometimes people's problems with desegregation were expressed anonymously, Johnson said. Bryant Academy was named for its first principal, James B. Bryant, who was black.

"After they desegregated it, someone went up there one night and hooked a rope to our sign and pulled it down. I guess they wanted to get rid of Bryant Academy," Johnson said.

The sign wasn't replaced, he said.

The transition to desegregation could be rough for some black students, Grant said.

"I don't think there was ever normalcy, because some of the black students felt out of place," Grant said. "They lost their school. In the black communities, the schools were a focus point. When these changes came about, it was totally unreal for some of them. Some were very happy, some unhappy."

At first, desegregation meant the closure of Peck High School, which had been the black high school in Fernandina Beach. Later, as a pressure valve to check overcrowding at Southside Elementary, Peck was reopened and housed only third-grade students. In the mid- 1970s, Grant became that school's principal. Later, he was named Fernandina Beach Junior High School's first black principal. Grant retired from district service in 1997.

Johnson later became dean of students at West Nassau High School, where he served from the 1974-75 school year until he retired in 2000. kevin.turner@jacksonville.com, (904) 261-7606 extension 105.

Source: Florida Times Union

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