Fictions of Integration

American Children's Literature and the Legacies of Brown v. Board of Education

Naomi Lesley

• Publisher: Routledge
• Year: 2017
• ISBN:
  9781315472270
• Edition: 1
• Topic: Literature
• Subtopic: Literary Criticism
• Index: Literature

This book examines how children's and young adult literature addresses and interrogates the legacies of American school desegregation. Such literature narrates not only the famous battles to implement desegregation in the South, in places like Little Rock, Arkansas, but also more insidious and less visible legacies, such as re-segregation within schools through the mechanism of disability diagnosis. Novelizations of children's experiences with school desegregation comment upon the politics of getting African-American children access to white schools; but more than this, as school stories, they also comment upon how structural racism operates in the classroom and mutates, over the course of decades, through the pedagogical practices depicted in literature for young readers. Lesley combines approaches from critical race theory, disability studies, and educational philosophy in order to investigate how the educational market simultaneously constrains how racism in schools can be presented to young readers and also provides channels for radical critiques of pedagogy and visions of alternative systems. The volume examines a range of titles, from novels that directly engage the Brown v. Board of Education decision, such as Sharon Draper's Fire From the Rock and Dorothy Sterling's Mary Jane, to novels that engage less obvious legacies of desegregation, such as Cynthia Voigt's Dicey's Song, Sharon Flake's Pinned, Virginia Hamilton's The Planet of Junior Brown, and Louis Sachar's Holes. This book will be of interest to scholars of American studies, children's literature, and educational philosophy and history.

1 Scripting History and the Genre of Desegregation Stories¹

School Stories and Consensus Memory

Children’s books about the legacies of Brown v. Board of Education encompass all of the varied effects of that decision, including movements toward black separatism and trends toward re-segregation. Nevertheless, when most adults hear “Brown v. Board of Education,” the stories they probably think of are a specific type of narrative I call “desegregation school stories.” These are stories of a specific historic moment shortly after the Brown decision, when Southern white schools reluctantly, with varying degrees of violence and publicity, allowed small numbers of black students in under court order. Fictionalized accounts of school desegregation were published for children even before the historic decision (Jesse Jackson’s 1945 Call Me Charley reflected residential segregation and token desegregation in a Northern town), though most did not appear until the late 1950s. James Miller observes in reading three of the earliest examples, which range in publication date from 1945 to 1965, that the novels tend to follow a predictable pattern: a black boy or girl enters a predominantly white school, makes a white friend who helps him or her to succeed in an extracurricular activity, faces down one or two bigoted bullies (who do not represent the majority of the white school population), and eventually achieves success and acceptance, which is contingent upon reform within the white community and an attitude of virtuous patience and hard work within the black community.² Later works of historical fiction, such as Jeri Watts’s Kizzy Ann Stamps (2012) and Patricia McKissack’s A Friendship, for Today (2007), follow a similar pattern.

Some of these plot elements are based at least in part on historical constraints. The NAACP often deliberately selected middle-class black students as test cases for desegregation, and standardized test scores were frequently used as excuses for white administrators to resist desegregation, so that only very highly performing black students were allowed to enter.³ Narratives loosely based on these events can therefore be expected to reflect these patterns. More recent historical novels in particular, in aiming to teach history through fiction, emphasize the complex selection process as part of the history lesson about Brown. Nevertheless, in popular films like Remember the Titans and books like Kizzy Ann Stamps, desegregation tends to mean a unidirectional movement of black students into “superior” white schools, access to white institutions is conflated with racial justice, and achievement in an extracurricular activity is central both to interracial friendship and to the black characters’ acceptance within a white institution.

In other words, the ritualized plot arc tends to support what Renee Romano and Leigh Raiford call a “consensus memory” of the Civil Rights movement, in which narratives of school struggle and temporary triumph are honored as a substitute for the accomplishment of broader racial equality and meaningful integration.⁴ Moreover, fictional desegregation stories have historically been more prevalent, and more often recommended for child reading, than nonfiction about the Brown decision. One 1972 article for teachers recommended desegregation novels of contemporary and immediate interest to students, including Dorothy Sterling’s Mary Jane and Natalie Savage Carlson’s The Empty Schoolhouse.⁵ The reviewer included no nonfiction titles. Indeed, though several memoirs and nonfiction titles were published from the mid-1990s on, I found no references to nonfiction texts published before that time. Students’ reading about desegregation prior to the 1990s may well have been dominated by desegregation novels. In nonfiction texts of the last two decades (outside of memoirs), information about school desegregation tends to be placed in one chapter about the broader Civil Rights movement, placing the focus upon the Civil Rights movement rather than upon school desegregation specifically.⁶ Memoirs such as Melba Patillo Beals’ are critical of consensus memory, and are widely disseminated, but they have not stemmed the tide of fictionalized (and less violent) narratives such as Andrea Davis Pinkney’s With the Might of Angels.

Nonfiction picture books for younger readers are popular, but they tend to emphasize a triumphant story arc even when they do not follow the detailed generic pattern of longer desegregation novels. For example, Toni Morrison’s Remember: The Journey to Integration narrates historical photographs of classrooms with fictionalized captions, rather than with nonfictional accounts of the photographs’ context, and it constructs an organizational framework of progress through sections entitled “The Narrow Path,” “The Open Gate,” and finally “The Wide Road” that all may walk into the happier present. The story of Ruby Bridges is another widely used nonfictional narrative for younger readers, but it is somewhat different from the experiences of the Little Rock Nine or of other desegregation pioneers like the Carter family. At the center of Ruby’s story is an exceptionally warm relationship with a kind white Northern teacher. This relationship makes her narrative resonate with fictional desegregation novels, which also tend to revolve around a meaningful interracial relationship. Such a relationship also seems to support a comforting Civil Rights consensus memory; this may be one reason why Ruby’s narrative has become more iconic and widely taught than nonfiction picture books that do not include a central interracial relationship, such as Doreen Rappaport’s The School Is Not White.⁷

Nevertheless, the “typical” desegregation school story is not merely a container for consensus memory of the Civil Rights movement. It also draws upon the literary tradition of the school story and constitutes a sub-genre that extends, revises, and comments upon the existing school story tradition. As in most school stories, the desegregation story is meant to pay homage to the institution of school. Therefore, while the authors of desegregation stories do gesture to some of the more disturbing effects of Brown’s implementation, these moments are contained and tamed, not only by the pressure of a celebratory Civil Rights narrative, but also by the structure of the school story genre. At the same time, the school story tradition also allows for critical portrayals of classroom pedagogy and for representations of queer interracial friendship. To the extent that desegregation stories are able to critique Brown’s failure to achieve racial justice, they do so by working within and commenting upon school story tropes.

This chapter focuses primarily on three desegregation stories as examples that demonstrate the ways in which the genre of the school story imposes a common framework on representations of the Brown legacy: Mary Jane by Dorothy Sterling (1959), Lions of Little Rock by Kristen Levine (2012), and With the Might of Angels by Andrea Davis Pinkney (2011). Despite the wide variations in their publication dates and in the backgrounds of their authors, the three novels share a similar plot line, indicating the influential reach of the desegregation story genre. In each one, a pre-teenaged black girl serves as a pioneer of desegregation, copes with racist bullies, flourishes academically, and befriends a sympathetic white girl. All three incorporate even more specific tropes, which suggest a ritualized way to narrate a consensus interpretation of desegregation history. These include a depiction of pedagogical anxieties and changes prompted by the Cold War, a romantic friendship as the key to the utopian vision of desegregation, and an emphasis on a resistant racial identity that depends upon academic performance in the classroom.

These three particular novels are useful for study in part because they seem to have had some influence with young readers, although this is hard to gauge for certain. Dorothy Sterling’s Mary Jane has been mentioned fondly by many readers who discovered it through the Scholastic Book Club flyers, and online lesson plans and teacher packs abound for Kristen Levine’s Lions of Little Rock and Andrea Davis Pinkney’s With the Might of Angels (in fact, Google offers to autocomplete these titles with the term ‘lesson plans’).⁸ Furthermore, while they demonstrate the generic power of the desegregation story genre, these three novels also demonstrate the range and variety of the desegregation novel, offering examples of how differently authors may negotiate the more troubling aspects of desegregation history, even within a single genre. These differences provide insight into the degree to which direct portrayals of Brown v. Board of Education are managed and shaped by the publishing industry, and they also demonstrate that the school story format allows for some flexibility in telling a relatively contained consensus narrative of court-ordered desegregation.

Dorothy Sterling’s Mary Jane was published in 1959 as the highly contentious work of court-ordered desegregation was in process. It represents a popular example of how desegregation was handled in contemporary novels. While it has much in common with other contemporary novels, such as Lorenz Graham’s Town series and Natalie Savage Carlson’s The Empty Schoolhouse, its publication history more clearly helps to illuminate how desegregation stories were shaped during the Cold War. Mary Jane is based on a compilation of student interviews Sterling had published with a photographer the year before; however, in the novel, Sterling hews much more closely to traditional school story plots. Mary Jane, the granddaughter of a prominent black biologist, elects to attend the local white junior high school so that she can gain access to their science labs. She is hounded by hostile students and hurt by the quieter racism of many teachers; but when she rescues a squirrel being tortured by some of her classmates, she befriends Sally, a lonely white girl with a similar interest in science. The two girls are unable to pursue their friendship (or to keep their new pet squirrel Furry) outside of school grounds, so they sneak off to the empty backstage dressing rooms of the school. After this hideout is discovered, they are finally allowed to form a science club that authorizes them to spend time together and to expand their circle of science-loving friends.

Kristin Levine’s historical fiction novel Lions of Little Rock, published in 2012, offers an example of a desegregation story that veers from some of the usual elements of the genre. It follows a white protagonist, and also highlights an historical moment that runs counter to consensus memory, when the town of Little Rock closed its high schools rather than desegregate them. The protagonist Marlee is a desperately shy math whiz whose parents passively support integration but fear to speak out. As a junior high student, she attends school while her older sister is sent away to continue her education. Marlee generally does not speak to anyone outside her own family, but she is charmed by a new girl at school, who wins her trust and then is removed from school when she is revealed to be a light-skinned black girl passing as white. Marlee’s desire to be with Liz leads to her increasing activism. This simultaneous battle against social anxiety and racism does not result in Liz’s return, but it does result in Marlee’s character development and ultimate success within the school system.

Andrea Davis Pinkney’s With the Might of Angels, published in 2011 as part of the “Dear America” historical fiction series for girls, is an example of mainstream historical fiction about the Civil Rights era. Pinkney has authored several nonfiction books about the Civil Rights era and has both responded to and helped to create the publishing context for Civil Rights narratives in recent decades. She is also a black author whose handling of the desegregation story complicates the common trope of the interracial friendship.⁹ The diary of Dawnie Ray Jones begins in 1954 with the Brown decision. Immediately after the decision is published, outspoken tomboy Dawnie Rae is one of three students chosen based on test results to integrate the white junior high school; she is the only one whose parents allow her to attend. From the beginning, her driving ambition is to gain the job of Bell Ringer for the school, a post that must be earned through academic achievement. She suffers through an entire semester of antagonism from teachers and students before Gertie, a Jewish girl from New York who is blissfully (and improbably) unacquainted with residential segregation or racism, moves to town and befriends her. The two girls study together for the end-of-year test that will determine who becomes Bell Ringer. Throughout, Dawnie Rae pours into her diary her other hopes and desires, which include meeting Jackie Robinson and becoming a doctor so that she can research curative therapies for her autistic brother Goober. Goober’s presence in the narrative also provides a reminder that school desegregation after the Brown decision was hardly inclusive; this aspect of the decision’s implementation is not generally highlighted in consensus memory, but underlies the structure of the desegregation novel to varying extents.

Extending the School Story Tradition

The school story genre has several permutations, depending upon the era, nationality, and type of school setting. The foundation for many school story patterns is the British boarding-school story, stemming from popular nineteenth-century British novels about boys’ boarding schools such as Tom Brown’s Schooldays. The canonical plot arc generally follows a middle-class British boy, who is good natured and athletic but not terribly intellectual, as he enters a respected boarding school with certain traditions and rules to absorb. In his early years, he makes a couple of close friends (often at least one who is able to guide him through the unwritten codes of schoolboy society), looks up to the older boys, and learns the traditions of the school, including how to learn Latin without cheating, how to answer to school authority without tattling, and how to battle the school bully. In due course, he becomes a sixth form boy, distinguishes himself in sports, and graduates with his friends to love his alma mater and serve the British Empire at home or abroad. Education is primarily about learning patriotism and about gender and class socialization; Latin is necessary because it is a school tradition, but it is the cricket field and not the classroom that trains men for leadership and the work of empire.

The girls’ story, as it emerged in Britain and the United States at the turn of the nineteenth century, kept the framework of a little microcosmic world within which children could have adventures and develop their characters away from family, but revised some of the boys’ story traditions—for example, it de-emphasized the necessity of learning how to fist-fight a bully. Most importantly for the politics of the early girls’ school stories, they made intellectual excitement and opportunity central to the protagonists’ development rather than depicting them as a boring distraction from outdoor games.¹⁰ During an era when higher education for women was both increasingly common and also bitterly contested, girls’ school stories celebrated their temporary freedom to learn, to pursue their own interests, and to form passionate peer bonds. By the mid-twentieth century, American writers were developing new variations on the school story, including the teen drama or junior novel, the family story that featured school adventures, and the dark, Gothic version of the boarding school story, which critiqued the elitism and the conformity of American private schools.¹¹ Desegregation novels are imbued with some of the sunny nationalism prevalent in the early British boarding school stories, but they are also infused with some of the emphasis on intellectualism developed in the girls’ school stories and the pedagogical critiques of later American stories. They sometimes reinforce school authority in the same ways that canonical school ...