Socioeconomic dimensions of desegregation's legacy
The kinds of black students attending predominantly white schools are now very similar in educational and economic background to the white students there, Threatt thinks, as opposed to in the 1960s and 1970s, when poor, inner-city blacks were desegregating white schools. He does not elaborate on the significance of this change, but his comments point to the idea that desegregation is not just about race—it is about the galaxy of issues, including socioeconomic status, that orbit race.
Citing this Excerpt
Oral History Interview with Glennon Threatt, June 16, 2005. Interview U-0023. Southern Oral History Program Collection (#4007) in the Southern Oral History Program Collection, Southern Historical Collection, Wilson Library, University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill.
Full Text of the Excerpt
- KIMBERLY HILL:
We could talk some about your experiences while you were attending
Indian Springs, but I have really wanted to ask you about your role on
the alumni board at Indian Springs. Have you been involved in planning
- GLENNON THREATT:
I've been involved in that, I've been involved in recruitment, we talk
about curriculum, we do fundraising of course and for the last year I
have been the only black member of the board for the alumni council.
It's difficult for a school that costs seventeen thousand dollars for
day school, to recruit black students. The black students who can afford
to go there can get in usually and are academically qualified to go
there. That's the other thing, not only do you have to have the money to
go there, but you got to be smart. So if you're a black kid who's smart
enough and your parents have enough money to send you there, then they
can also send you to fine arts, they can send you to Altamont which is
in the city, they can send you to the Alabama High School of Math and
Science-which is free, they can send you to the honors program
at John Carroll which is about half that price. Or you have options to
go out of state to school, so what has happened now is that in the 1960s
and 1970s the white institutions were getting poor blacks from inner
cities to integrate their schools, but now they are getting black kids
that have the same educational background as the white students that go
there. The black students that go to Indian Springs now, usually went to
private school all the way through elementary school. They were not like
me. They're much more like the white students who go to Indian Springs,
the only difference is race. Their background is very, very similar.
Their parents have the same types of jobs, they earn the same income
strata and they live in the same communities.
Typical black student at Indian Springs now, their parents are doctors
or lawyers, they live in Vestavia or Mountain Brook; it's not like it
was. When I went there they were finding black kids from the inner city
and bringing them there because-some of the first black
students that came to Indian Springs were part of the A Better Chance
program. Now they do have some Oprah Winfrey scholars there now, which
is a very, very good thing. I think they have three Oprah Winfrey
scholars who are at Indian Springs. Oprah Winfrey has a scholarship
program that sends inner city kids to boarding schools, and three of the
black students that are at Indian Springs are Oprah Winfrey scholars.