Brownshirts vs. the Board of Education

[Nevilledog]

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Talia Bracha Lavin
@chick_in_kiev
I wrote about what's happening in school boards. It is, to my mind, an existential threat to public education that bears parallels to the era of "massive resistance" to integration. So I drew those parallels.

Brownshirts vs. the Board of Education
A right-wing maelstrom has descended on public education all over America.
theswordandthesandwich.substack.com
8:38 AM · Oct 18, 2021

https://theswordandthesandwich.substack.com/p/brownshirts-vs-the-board-of-education

Consider, briefly, two organizations, which arose in the same state, sixty-six years apart.

On October 26, 1954, five months after the monumental Supreme Court decision Brown v. Board of Education mandated the desegregation of public schools across America, the Defenders of State Sovereignty and Individual Liberties was chartered in Virginia.

“We believe,” they wrote, in a statement of purpose widely distributed across the state,

“In the Sovereignty of the Several States;
In certain liberties for the individual citizens of these states;
In the preservation of racial integrity;
In an education for all children;
In a society based on racial separateness;
In the separation of church and state;
In the precious heritage handed down to us by our forefathers;
Very sincerely, that our objectives are in the best interest of both races.”

The organization claimed to be “non-profit” and “non-political.” But their objective was strident opposition to desegregation; its members included Congressmen, ministers, and housewives. Husband-and-wife memberships were offered at $10 per annum, the same price as a regular membership. According to historian Brian E. Lee, the organization attracted some 10,000 members, becoming an important source of funding for new all-white segregation academies. Its members were indeed “people from all walks of life” — as Lee put it, white people engaged in a sense of “a shared fate among the white citizens in something greater than themselves.” The organization presented itself as a union of concerned parents and public officials, working for the welfare of children by preserving “racial integrity.”

*snip*

[alwaysinasnit]

1. "Racial integrity" - Jeez, we're all mutts!

[rampartc]

2. great link to "the sword and the sandwich"