Ebony and Ivory

The Ebony and Ivory site is about how our life has been a  unique opportunity to learn to love people of different races and religions. Before us, every generation of Americans had lived a segregated life and had been educated in separate schools, churches, and communities.

When we came to be, we received a unique opportunity to be together at school for the first time in the history of this country. We were free to measure ourselves against one another, to contend, to fight, to embrace, to choose our friends, to love, or to hate.

There was no road map for this journey we were embarking on. No Americans had ever traveled this far down any road together. We succeeded, I believe, because we were ready to abandon old lies about the superiority of any race or religion over another.

I believe that we are part of a chosen generation that was presented with a special opportunity to come together as friends and to establish for ourselves whom we would call 'Brother.' This page is devoted to my best friend for over 40 years, Mr. Young David Potter. From our earliest days together in 1968 we have been friends. We have suffered together, laughed and cried together, and even been a blessing to one another on an occasion or two. Our friendship, like so many others of our classmates, was a rare opportunity unique to our generation and to Miami Carol City Senior High School in 1971. We are the first fruits of integrated schools.

Integration is not perfect yet. It may never be because we humans aren’t. But we have succeeded despite all the words and sentiments to the contrary. Together we stand as a testimony that being united as Chiefs has allowed us to be something that we could never have been if they had kept us divided and segregated.

Lest we forget where we have come from here is an excerpt from.

An Historical Perspective on Public School Desegregation in Florida:

Lessons from the Past for the Present 

Irvin D.S. Winsboro

Florida Gulf Coast University 

In 1896 many people in the Deep South applauded the Supreme Court’s decision in Plessy v. Ferguson, which held that separate facilities for blacks and whites did not violate the Fourteenth Amendment’s “due process” clause as long as those facilities were equal in services. Even before the Plessy case gave legal sanction to separation in Florida, local jurisdictions took their segregationist cue from Tallahassee. The Florida Constitution of 1885 provided that, “White and colored children shall not be taught in the same school …”[1] Plessy in 1896, and other state statutes in 1905, 1913, and 1939, reinforced the separate schools doctrine.[2] The experiences of state-local interaction to perpetuate segregation in the public schools of Lee County, Florida until 1969, fifteen years after the landmark Brown decision struck down public school segregation, provides key lessons on how the segregationist system worked in the ”Sunshine State” from post-Reconstruction to recent times. The education of black students in Lee County remained limited to church and private instruction until 1913, when the Lee County Board of Public Instruction allocated meager funds to support the education of the growing black population in Lee County. The Board subsequently created a segregated school in Fort Myers, the county seat, which served blacks on a segregated basis until 1969.

The eradication of dual school systems in Lee County, Florida came only after constant pressure applied by local citizens, the NAACP, the Federal Courts, and the US Department of Justice. For a decade, historical and newly-promulgated measures had worked to prevent desegregation in Lee County Schools. It took the Civil Rights Act of 1964 and the Blalock case to move a recalcitrant board away from those state guidelines on segregation towards compliance with federal law and Court orders. It also took these Federally-supported measures to move Lee County to finally eschew the segregationist lessons of the past, which had so steadily trickled out of Tallahassee, to move into a modern era of compliance with the dictates of Brown. Viewed as a case study, the experience of Lee County, Florida reflects all too poignantly what it took to move Florida from a segregationist past to an integrationist present.

Here are some of the laws and steps that it took to finally give us the chance to come together.

1896
Plessy v.Ferguson, 163 U.S. 537
The U.S. Supreme Court establishes the doctrine of “separate but equal” and upholds the Constitutional validity of segregation laws, including the segregation of public schools.
1954
Brown v. Board of Education, 347 U.S. 483
The U.S. Supreme Court overturns the “separate but equal” Plessy decision and rules that racial segregation in public schools violates the equal protection clause of the Fourteenth Amendment.
1955
Brown v. Board of Education (II), 349 U.S. 294
U.S. Supreme Court hears arguments from school districts in segregated states about the implementation of school desegregation plans and orders desegregation to proceed with all deliberate speed.

1958Cooper v. Aaron, 358 U.S. 1The U.S. Supreme Court enforces the Brown decision, and mandates Arkansas Governor Orval Faubus to desegregate Little Rock’s Central High School.

1968
Green v. County School Board of New Kent County, (VA), 391 U.S. 430
The U.S. Supreme Court holds that "freedom of choice" plans do not effectively promote school integration and establishes the principle of “unitary status,” i.e. a school that has eliminated all vestiges of segregation as measured by the Green factors: student assignment, teacher assignment, staff assignment, facilities, extracurricular activities, and transportation systems.
1971
Swann v. Charlotte-Mecklenberg Board of Education, 402 U.S. 1
The U.S. Supreme Court upholds the busing of black and white students to achieve racial balance in a formerly segregated school districts.
1973
School District No. 1, Denver, Colorado v. Keyes, 413 U.S. 921
The U.S. Supreme Court applies the Brown desegregation mandate to school systems beyond formerly segregated school districts to Northern and Western school districts with de facto segregation.
1974
Milliken v. Bradley, 418 U.S. 717
The U.S. Supreme Court holds that federal courts cannot impose an inter-district desegregation remedy on a city and the surrounding suburbs in order to integrate city schools without proof that school district boundaries were drawn to foster segregation.
1991
Board of Education of Oklahoma City Public Schools v. Dowell, 498 U.S. 237
The U.S. Supreme Court holds that federal courts must continue to consider the Green factors, however a declaration of unitary status is appropriate after the school district has demonstrated that is has complied with the desegregation order of the court for a reasonable period of time and demonstrated its good faith commitment to the Constitutional rights that were the predicate for the initial judicial intervention.
1995
Missouri v. Jenkins, 515 U.S. 70
The U.S. Supreme Court rules that federal courts may not devise an indirect inter-district desegregation remedy that the courts cannot accomplish directly under Milliken. It concludes that some academic disparities between the races are beyond the authority of federal courts to address. No public school system will ever be perfect but it became far better than it was... Perhaps we actually had the best of it. Only time will tell...