Vox Populi
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Video: Cookie & Zo’e | Segregation 60 years apart
A Georgia Family Wrestles With School Choice 60 Years After Desegregation.
In 1964, Samaria “Cookie” Mitcham Bailey was among the first Black students to desegregate public schools in Macon, Georgia. Sixty years later, her 13-year old great-granddaughter, Zo’e Johnson, attends First Presbyterian Day, a predominantly white private school that opened as white families fled desegregation.
Researchers call schools like these “segregation academies” and say they have diverted funds from public education, perpetuating poverty and inequality.
Cookie hoped that her work desegregating schools would lead to more equal educational opportunities for future generations. Yet, when Zo’e began to have problems at her local public middle school, her family searched for options. Almost all were schools that remain largely segregated.
With the help of a state voucher-like tuition grant, Cookie has paid for Zo’e’s seventh grade year at the school. But she’s not sure she can continue to afford it.
This short documentary explores the challenge the family now faces.
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Running time: 12 minutes
Produced by ProPublica
License: Attribution Non-Commercial No Derivatives
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Thanks so much for Cookie and Zo’e. More connections across generations need to be shared. They’re powerful. Sometimes, it’s hard to “get it” unless one breaks it down with images to which a varied cross-section of people can relate. We are mistaken when we presume that people have a foundation of experience, knowledge, empathy, and curiosity from which to make their own connections. Most people don’t think much about the way anybody else lives. You know, solipsism. If it doesn’t happen to me, it doesn’t exist.
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Solipsism. Narcissism. Selfishness. They all spring from the same root.
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I moved from white Altadena, Ca to Washington DC ( Arlington Va) and back to Pasadena, South Pasadena. La Canada, and La Crescenta Ca in my junior high and high school years. My first year in an Arlington high school, they cancelled the PTA and started a private parents’ group so they could exclude the two black students from school dances. I also danced on the Milt Grant show on “white days” until my white boyfriend threw the shoes of a tired Black woman off the bus and I gave him back the heavy turquoise ring I wore around my neck. Back in California I introduced my black chemistry teacher from Muir high school to my white drama teacher at Crescenta Valley. The white teacher refused to shake hands. I think these experiences were part of why I went to Mississippi in college to help get folks to the federal registrars.
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OMG, Barbara. Why are white people so mean?
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3/29 Thought you might like this. SGT
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Today is a good day to post this movie.
Yesterday included the executive order beginning the attempted destruction of museums or their displays that do not support the whitewashed view of American History and culture, starting with the Smithsonians, but we know where that decision will eventually lead.
My father was raised in rural Georgia, near Thomson, and started school when he was 11, in a private school run by Martha Berry, a pioneer of rural education. My dad was a white boy, and lived with the cultural prejudices of his time, and our own before his death. But he would be thankful for this film, for what it shows of perseverance, but also it would remind him of how important education was and is. It pierces the heart to see the obstacles faced by the poor, and especially racial minorities, the scapegoats for so many systemic evils, not their doing. This film is a great form of witness to many things, including love within a family.
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Thanks, Jim. I grew up in Texas during the 50’s and 60’s with segregated schools, bathrooms, water fountains, and seating in restaurants and movie theaters. This is the America Trump wants us to return to. What an evil evil man. We cannot go back.
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When I was a young boy in Houston, TX back in late 50s, the water fountains by the grocery store restrooms had two labels: White and Colored. I caused a ruckus when I demanded to use the colored fountain, saying I wanted to drink a rainbow. An African American worker in the store witnessed this, and cried. He called me honey, and I never knew why.
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I was there, Jim. Our paths may have crossed in Houston.
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I lived off of Long Point Road in Houston from 1954-1966. Used to watch the Salt Grass Trail riders in their covered wagons come into town for the rodeo. We might have seen that together. cheers
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I remember Long Point Road, north of I-10. We used to get off school for the Fat Stock Show, an old tradition in what used to be ranching country.
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Thank you for posting both of these today. I found myself wanting to repost the comment from the first one on the second. ( and will) I fear so much of our history and growing is being erased.
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“and watched the brains of the country bring us all the way back to damn near where we started”
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Thanks, Barbara. I too fear for our nation.
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