On August 9, 2014, Michael Brown was shot and killed by Officer Darren Wilson while walking home from a convenience store in Ferguson, Missouri. Brown was 18 years old and had graduated from Normandy High School, a predominately black high school in St. Louis County. Wilson reported that Brown had assaulted him and that the shooting was an act of self-defense. Brown was black; Wilson is white. Missouri Prosecuting Attorney Robert McCulloch declined to indict Wilson for the killing of Michael Brown, and in March of 2015, the Justice Department also declined to file charges against Officer Wilson for the willful violation of Brownâs civil rights. Although the Justice Departmentâs investigation did not result in an indictment of Officer Wilson, Attorney General Eric Holder found that the Ferguson Police Department was guilty of racially biased practices.1
The killing of an unarmed black teen by a white police officer captured worldwide attention and brought to light serious questions about race relations in contemporary times. By the time Michael Brown was killed, Missouri had long been a place where race relations were perplexing. The Ferguson Police Chief expressed his complete surprise when Brownâs death was followed by racial protests. He claimed that he had never known of racial hostility in the area. Protestors claimed otherwise. The riots in St. Louis that followed Brownâs death allowed the city to be seen around the world as a racial powder keg.
In the protests that followed the death of Michael Brown and the subsequent protests following the prosecuting attorneyâs refusal to indict Officer Darren Wilson, Ferguson Police Chief Tom Jackson, who is white, publicly grappled with questions regarding the existence of prejudice in St. Louis. In addition, Ferguson Mayor James Knowles, who is also white, stated in a CNN interview, âIâve lived here 35 years. Thereâs always been a strong African-American presence.â He told CNN, âWeâve never seen this kind of violence, never seen this kind of frustration or tension between the races.â2 Their views serve as proof that policy makers must redefine racism to include examples in which physical violence is absent. In doing so, they can identify the myriad nuanced ways that racism has hindered equality and then use that knowledge to make changes.
The violent clashes that resulted from the police killing of a Normandy High School graduate force us to re-examine school policies in St. Louis and realize that school segregation is not only a historic problem. It is contemporary, and we must revisit desegregation policy to inform todayâs policies. I conclude that St. Louisâ complex racial history can be traced. Racism in St. Louis has, historically, been more quietly expressed than in the Deep South. This may explain why both the police chief and the mayor of Ferguson were unaware of its existence. Their definitions of racism may have been informed by the iconic racial violence that has plagued the Deep South. Their inability to identify more nuanced forms of racism is both evident and deeply problematic.
At the time that Brown was killed, I was in St. Louis gathering data for my dissertation. I had spent years researching the school desegregation system in St. Louis. Brownâs killing moved my research in a different direction. It had been reported that Brown had graduated from Normandy High School just eight days before his death. I knew of Normandy High School. As a native of St. Louis, I was well aware of Normandy School Districtâs reputation. The district was populated by black students, was known for underperforming, and Normandy community members had even endured a frightening health crisis in 2008 when it was learned that as many as 50 students may have been exposed to HIV.3 Consequently, I know people who could have easily been in Michael Brownâs situation. His death prompted a new set of research questions. Namely, why was his school still segregated after St. Louis school policy makers had gone through Herculean efforts to desegregate public schools? Given that other suburban schools were well funded, what was different about Normandy High School that it had not shared in the wealth? The answers to those questions are examined in this research. They are complicated and tied to a long history of expressions of racism that looked different from expressions of racism in the Deep South but had very similar effects.
In this study, I use school desegregation policy to highlight the quieter ways that racism was expressed in St. Louis. In short, St. Louisans employed what I call a dignified disdain for blacks. There was less violence that accompanied slavery, housing segregation, and the desegregation of schools, yet the result was the same. Black people were enslaved, housing communities were segregated, and to this day Normandy High School remains segregated.
This research offers a multilayered look at the history of school desegregation in St. Louis and concludes that the racism underlying the opposition to desegregation was more quietly expressed than in other parts of the country, but the results were ultimately the same. Varied evidence supports my claim. I use letters written by white mothers who vehemently opposed desegregation on no other grounds than their belief that black people are inferior; I also use documents proving the inconsistencies with which St. Louisans supported using tax money to benefit German immigrants and other white residents but opposed using tax money to support black residents. The ultimate proof that racism in Missouri was impactful is the fact that nearly 35 years after St. Louis schools were desegregated, school segregation persists.
Although meaningful desegregation in St. Louis occurred relatively late, 1980 for city schools and 1983 for suburban schools, the schools that benefited the most from desegregation policies were predominately white suburban schools. Wellston, Jennings, and the Normandy School District, which Brown attended, were predominately black and did not benefit from desegregation policies. Desegregation policies targeted suburban schools that lacked a significant black population. As a result, when busing was implemented as a means of limiting segregation, blacks were bused to white suburban schools and whites were bused to black city schools to alleviate segregation. No transfer program moved students from predominately black suburban schools to predominately white suburban schools. As a result, suburban schools that were predominately black remained so. The money that accompanied the transfer of black students for desegregation poured into white suburban schools. Black suburban schools were excluded from the financial benefits of desegregation.4 The gains made by black students in desegregated, suburban schools have been measurably greater than those of black students who languished in predominately black suburban schools.5 The result was that a student like Michael Brown, who graduated from a segregated, suburban school, fared no better than a student in a segregated, urban school. While predominately white suburban schools in St. Louis were lavished with as much as 150% per pupil spending incentives for each black transfer student they accepted, Brownâs predominately black suburban school was left to deteriorate under the weight of financial burdens and neglect from state policy makers.6 The desegregation policies were focused on shifting students in two directions, city to county for black students and county to city for the relatively small number of white students who agreed to attend city magnet schools.7 For black students who already lived in the suburbs, no desegregation policy was available. Black suburban schools were excluded from the millions of dollars granted to white suburban schools for their participation in the desegregation program. As wealthy suburban schools grew richer from desegregation payouts, black suburban schools withered.
For suburban schools that served predominately white populations, the financial benefits of desegregation were lucrative. However, the several suburban districts that served largely black populations, like Normandy, Wellston, and Jennings school districts for instance, could already meet the state ratios for African American students. Because these schools already served black students, they were ineligible to receive any of the government funding that went to white suburban districts, even those that were already wealthy. No attempt was made to transfer white students to these largely segregated schools. It appeared that in this regard, the desegregation policy failed. Black suburban schools were no oneâs priority for desegregation. Perhaps the low number of black suburban schools was to blame; more likely, however, was the fact that desegregation was framed by the notion that blacks must be intermingled with whites, who had better resources. There was no policy to integrate whites and blacks of similar or fewer resources. Years after the Desegregation Era, white suburban schools involved in the Voluntary Transfer Program flourished; Normandy School District, however, which Michael Brown attended, lost its accreditation in 2012. To prevent predominately white, suburban schools from having to accept transfer students from Normandy, the Missouri State Board of Education voted to disband the Normandy School District and to create a new district which has no record of a lost accreditation. Effective July 1, 2014, Normandy School District became known as Normandy Schools Collabo...