Mississippi Looking 'A Whole Lot Better Than Arizona,' Civil Rights Author Says

News Release

Contact: Susan Klopfer
Mt. Pleasant, Iowa
Cell: 505-728-7924
sklopfer@gmail.com
http://susanklopfer.com/

Smart students get angry when they learn they have been deceived in what they have been taught. This includes removal of truth from history lessons, says an Iowa author of three civil rights books.

Susan Klopfer, recent author of “Who Killed Emmett Till,” the story of the1955 Mississippi brutal murder of a young black student visiting relatives in the Delta, asserts this week’s efforts to ban ethnic studies in Arizona is “all about racism” and further, “the state will learn that censorship won’t work.”

With today’s students camping out on the Internet, reading uncensored e-books, news and pouring through editorial content, censorship and lies are harder to accomplish, Klopfer said.

"But just the attempt to blot out history will make people angry and alienated, especially those who are the targets of white political leaders and their weak attempts to control society."

When Arizona Governor Jan Brewer signed the infamous anti-immigrant bill into law, “the underlying racism was clear enough,” Klopfer said.

But Arizona’s new law that bans ethnic studies programs in the schools, in effect censoring history, "makes the attempted racism even more obvious," Klopfer added.

The Mount Pleasant author has written two books on Till and a detailed book on the civil rights movement in the Mississippi Delta, a region where she lived for two years, on the grounds of the state’s main prison, Parchman Penitentiary. Klopfer’s husband was the chief corrections psychologist in Mississippi, bringing the Oregon native and journalist into the South for the first time in her life.

“As soon as I began meeting people, asking questions and listening to their stories, it was so apparent that much of the U.S. history I had been taught in school lacked in truth. This made me so angry, that I spent up to 80 hours per week researching and writing my first civil rights book,” Klopfer said. "I wanted to make sure the history would not be lost."

Previously, Klopfer had worked as a news reporter in Branson, Missouri where as the city reporter she won state awards for investigative and community news reporting.

Following activities in Arizona for the past two week, Klopfer asserts that “Mississippi is actually looking a lot better than Arizona. Educators and citizens in Mississippi have finally decided their history must be told correctly, and the state legislature even passed a law to make this start happening in the fall.”

Mississippi has become the first state in the nation to mandate that civil rights history be taught throughout the public school system, Klopfer said.

“Sure, not everyone is happy about this and it will be a tough change, but state and academic historians have been putting their heads together to develop new materials that show what really happened in early times, from the days of enslavement through the modern civil rights movement and into the present, as more and more African Americans are taking political office and demanding change.”

Arizona, Klopfer adds, was the last state in the Union to recognize the Martin Luther King, Jr. holiday and “suffers from a poor track record on tolerance, to start with."

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Klopfer answers questions about her books and racism:

Q. Why did you become so motivated in Mississippi to write your first book?

A. “What motivated me more than ever was the anger I felt after moving to the Mississippi Delta and learning the history I’d never been taught -- the story of Emmett Till, for instance, or the history of Medgar Evers who was assassinates; Fannie Lou Hamer -- how she was beaten and raped for using a white restroom -- and shunned by the Democratic Party when she tried to tell her story at the 1964 convention; or stories about Aaron Henry and Amzie Moore who, in fact, were founding fathers of the modern civil rights movement, and yet rarely recognized in today’s history books.”

Q. What is happening in the world of text books today?

A. “Bad stuff. This spring, the Texas Board of Education approved a curriculum change that essentially mandates a conservative, white-Christian bias in the teaching of social science. This has resulted in a wholesale removal of brown and black people from the textbooks.

“People such as Supreme Court Justice Sonia Sotomayor and civil rights groups like LULAC and the Mexican American Legal Defense and Education Fund were stricken from the books. The story of Justice Thurgood Marshall was allowed to remain but important details were removed. The same goes for Cesar Chavez and the grape boycott.

“Conservatives defeated attempts by Hispanic board members to include more Latino figures in the curriculum, in that heavily Latino state. Hence, the people who determine how history is taught in many of our schools throughout the country (because they select the official textbooks) are rewriting history, not only of Texas but of the United States and the world."

Q. When did ethnic studies begin? Why are they important?

“This movement came about in the 1960s and early 1970s at a time of empowerment for racial and ethnic minority groups. When Harvard students demanded black studies in 1968, some faculty predicted the end of civilization! Students on campuses around the country began challenging the Eurocentric teaching of history, the social sciences and the humanities on college campuses. The feeling was that when marginalized students -- African Americans, Hispanics, Native Americans and others -- learned how their people were a part of American history, they would excel in their studies. Further, we all benefit as a society when we learn about the heritage of all groups, and their contributions to the world.

“As this country moves more into globalization, this is a time when we should be increasing our multicultural efforts and teaching our children to live together and understand one another. As Mississippi has come to recognize, the people of Arizona must understand they are sending the wrong message by banning ethnic studies and truth in history. It won’t work to lie and it will make many people even angrier as they learn the truth. Instead of working together, Arizona is telling people of color they don't count, that their culture doesn't matter.”

Mississippi Delta Parents Group Wins School Battle in Cleveland

A Cleveland, Mississippi parent’s organization has won a significant battle with the city’s school board. But only after 1,000 students boycotted schools for one day in February and took to the streets with a march from their schools to district offices.

Because of their stance, D.M. Smith Middle School and Margaret Green Junior High School will house sixth, seventh and eighth-graders attending the Cleveland School District for the 20110-2011 school year.

What parents and students actually won was defeat of an earlier board decision to place mostly black junior high students into a school building that would bring them into close contact, daily, with high school students. White students would remain in a facility that maintains separate faculties from the older students.

Due to building deterioration, relocation of junior high school students has been inevitable. But placing black students into a building that has no separate lunch or gym facilities, meant the young black students would be at risk, parent’s group organizers said.

But the problems parents face are much larger, and stem from Cleveland’s dual educational system -- unofficially, the district maintains separate and unequal facilities for its black and white students through a practice that has been the target of the U.S. Dept. of Justice since 1969. The Parent group is waiting for Justice to come into the school district and force overall change.

Meanwhile, this victory is sweet.

For an outsider, attending Monday’s school board was a fascinating experience, almost like going back in time.

The Cleveland, Mississippi school board was in session Monday night, March 8, and the room was small and crowded -- about 60 parents and interested parties were cramped into a room with too few chairs.

No one attending could hear members of the school board as they spoke.

With all of their mumbling and whispering going on, it would be a surprise if board members could even hear themselves talk.

But the parents didn’t give up. Instead, they stayed and were heard.

The district has schools in several communities of Bolivar County -- most are in Cleveland, one in Boyle and the other in Merigold. The entire school district is about 68% black, 29% white, 2% Hispanic and 1% Asian.

Yet, someone forgot to tell school officials about Brown I and Brown II, the famous Supreme Court rulings in 1954 and 1955 that made “separate but equal” schools illegal, since the Cleveland schools have remained separate and unequal for over 40 years.

The small town of Cleveland, in the heart of the Delta, has a population of about 13,000 and a dual school system -- two high schools, two junior high or middle schools, and five elementary schools. Children can choose which schools to attend, but for the most part they want to go to schools in their own neighborhoods where they feel more comfortable. And where there are more black teachers.

But the dual system is in trouble, even white school board members admit. Black leaders say school board members (chaired by a black professor) refuse to commit to change because they are afraid of what the community will think of them.

“They’re just waiting for the Dept. of Justice to make changes, so they won’t have to,” said Leroy Byars, a retired administrator from Greenwood High School who also worked nine years as principal at East Side High School, predominantly black.

“Title Nine issues are evident for the district, for instance. Cleveland High School has great facilities for girls who play basketball and softball. Nothing of the same order exists for black female students in the Eastside High School,” Byars said.

Title IX of the Education Amendments of 1972, renamed in 2002 the Patsy T. Mink Equal Opportunity in Education Act in honor of its principal author, is a law enacted in 1972 that states: "No person in the United States shall, on the basis of sex, be excluded from participation in, be denied the benefits of, or be subjected to discrimination under any education program or activity receiving Federal financial assistance..."

Just reading the local newspapers, it’s apparent the major issues for board members is the possibility of “white flight” if they repair their schools through unification. For now, they would rather pay for twice the number of school administrators than necessary for such a small school district. There is no mention from the board members that unification could strengthen their schools.

Board members, led by Dr. Harvey Jackson, a professor from a small nearby college, mumbled and whispered throughout the meeting. Several times they were asked to speak up, but none complied.

At the end of the session, a board decision regarding placement of students for the following school year was read aloud, but no one could hear what was being read and there was no handout describing the decision made earlier on Saturday, during a special meeting.

No microphones? Not enough chairs? A small board room?

“Oh, it’s always like this,” said Bryars.

Kelvin Williams Sr. is PTSO president of D.M. Smith Elementary and James Stamps worked 36 years in the Cleveland schools as a band teacher.

Both say the Justice Department became involved in 1969 over integration of the public school system. “From there on, it has been one battle after another. In 1989 they paid another visit that ended up with a consent order mandating the district take specific steps to complete the dismantling of a dual system,” Stamps said.

All three say they are positive about recent conversation’s they’ve had with the Justice Department, however.

“We are working with a representative from Justice and they are telling us they will revisit this by the end of this semester that ends in May,” Bryars said.


“They asked us to comment and we have sent transcripts of calls and comments we’ve received to Jonathan Fischbach along with all the articles, petitions, comments, etc.”

All three men say the problem could be resolved by

• Sending ninth and tenth graders to one of the city’s two high schools and sending eleventh and twelfth graders to the other school -- in other words, setting up one high school with two campuses.

• Sending all junior high students either to Margaret Green, the East side junior high or DM Smith on the West.

• Rezoning the school district for elementary students, as mandated in the court order.

An old railroad track has been used as a dividing line for school districts. The Justice Department has already said this was illegal because any two schools in the district have been less than 3.5 miles apart. The correct thing to do would be to rezone or redistrict.
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