The road that led to the creation of the Milwaukee Parental School Choice program was paved with potholes placed by the Milwaukee School Board, institutional racism and socio-cultural engineers.

It would be a disservice attempting to view school choice in isolation when in fact it is, in many respects, the outgrowth of a half century old struggle by the Black community to secure quality education for their children.

As I mentioned last week, the choice program, and to a lesser degree the MPS neighborhood schools initiative, are the culmination of fruitless attempts to fulfill the underlying premise of Brown v. Board.

It would, thus, be disingenuous to assess the current state of Black education in Milwaukee without assessing the historic Black leadership schism, one which has roots dating back to the 1940s, when sides were drawn over the strategy to ‘integrate’ the MPS teaching corps.

While that early battle focused on employment opportunities in general, following the Brown decision in 1954, Black leadership found themselves on different sides of a cultural divide with the Milwaukee Urban League pitted against the NAACP.

History (make that His-story) may provide a simplistic explanation for that early division. But it was anything but lucid, particularly since many role players frequently changed sides as the movement evolved.

For reasons too numerous to mention, the division at various times pitted integrationists against progressive pragmatists, middle class versus the low income, assemilationists against Black nationalists, and even Northsiders against Westsiders (residents of the North Division attendance area against Black residents living in the Washington High School attendance area, AKA Sherman Park).

While those divisions may seem disruptive, a case can be made that in each case the groups were all on the same track, but different trains.

During a span covering my life time, these opposing sides would find themselves fighting over compensatory education (an acculturation program introduced in MPS to ‘civilize’ Black migrants), attendance area schools, school desegregation/integration efforts, community control of schools, the creation of a ‘Black’ school district, neighborhood schools and ultimately school choice.

Today the lines are even more pronounced, with special interests on both sides lending their support.

I discussed some of the defining educational issues of the period between 1940-69 last week. The key battlegrounds have since been more defined and have drawn national attention.

In the mid-1970s, the factions found themselves in conflict over the methodology and fairness of the school desegregation settlement of 1976, subsequent conflicts over ownership of North Division High School, the creation of an autonomous school district and school choice.

In between were minor skirmishes over Black studies, the Chapter 220 ‘integration’ program, and, believe it or not, quota ceilings on the number of Black teachers allowed to teach at any given public school.

The school desegregation fiasco illuminated not only the dichotomy of opposing strategies, but also the huge divide between classes based on not only income, but also sociopolitical and cultural foundations. Thus, it was not surprising to observers that fights were waged between philosophical camps over the extent of ‘integration’ and even its definition, the fairness of the process and whether the pot at the end of the rainbow was filled with gold or grout.

Ironically, grass root leadership found themselves at odds with the three Black school board members in office in the mid-1970s—Marian McEvilly, Clara New and Leon Todd—who openly dismissed a community uproar over the Black busing burden and turned a deaf ear to complaints about White teacher hostility to Black students.

As a budding reporter covering education, my perception of that conflict was pretty much consistent with the assessment of historian Jack Dougherty, author of "More than One Struggle, The Evolution of Black School Reform in Milwaukee."

Dougherty basically concludes that the Black board members’ stance was not only rooted in their unwavering support for the misleading promise of school integration, but by—in part—by a desire to maintain the racial diversity of the new Sherman Park area, which they saw as some sort of new racial paradigm.

So unwavering were they for that idealistic dream of miscegenation, that they appeared to accommodate White rejection of, and hostility toward, desegregation, and the unfair burden for the process placed on Black students.

Believing the ends justified the means, McEvilly and Todd in particular, were not only willing to sacrifice the safety and sanity of Black students, but later fought to deny Black neighborhood students the right to attend a newly constructed North Division High School.

Consistent with inflammatory comments he made a decade later about Malcolm X Middle School’s African Centered curriculum (which he called Voo Doo), Todd went so far as to lambaste supporters of community control of North, and to call the school a ‘cesspool and a cancer.’

The Black board members came to represent a philosophy totally opposite of the majority of Black Milwaukeeans who were not only upset with the failed promises of desegregation, but the burden shouldered by Black students and the school board’s decision to close Black neighborhood schools or convert them into magnet schools, thus forcing Black students to be bused.

Dougherty notes that the board trio, each of who were residents of the Sherman Park neighborhood, viewed the inequities of the desegregation process as a necessary evil. And while most of us who may have criticized the trio for their philosophy--but not their lifestyles--Dougherty surmises that maybe Todd and McEvilly’s positions were in part rooted in their interracial marriages and belief that integration was a cure all for educational gaps. That it would somehow also spark a social revolution, and lead to total assimilation.

The inherent unfairness of the desegregation process and the conspiracy by the board would ultimately be detailed in an U.S. Commission on Civil Rights report. The commission decried desegregation as an educational placebo that hurt Black children, and destroyed community institutions. The commission also noted that the program was conceived in such a way as to benefit Whites at the detriment of Black students.

The desegregation process was at the root of the battle over North Division. The campaign to ‘save’ North gave way to a call by State Rep. Polly Williams for an independent Black school district, which further defined the philosophical camps.

The separate school district proposal—which actually passed the state assembly and was headed for the pen of then-Governor Tommy Thompson before being derailed by then State Senator Gary George—was introduced as evidence mounted showing the failure of school desegregation.

Despite promises to the contrary, Black achievement, truancy and drop out rates began a steady climb under school desegregation, even as the board became more entrenched and antagonistic to expressed concerns from the Black community for quality education.

Fed up with the declining quality of education and the hostility of the board to change, Williams joined with Howard Fuller to press for an alternative: A district within a district that the community would control.

As I remember Williams saying, "if they refuse to educate our children, are more concerned with buses than babies, then let us set up our own district. Let us educate our own children."

Interestingly, the campaign for the separate school district drew the wrath of integrationists, the Black elite, the teachers union, state Democrats and the White media. The criticism, however, seemed to energize their base, and pave the way for a new crusade: school choice.

In many respects, the choice movement was the natural evolutionary progression of the school reform movement. Conceived with the dual purpose of forcing greater accountability from MPS and providing options for poor children failed by the system, school choice also represents the clearest example to date of the philosophical divide that has defined the struggle for educational equality in Milwaukee.

A key historical footnote is needed here: school choice was first introduced in Milwaukee in 1970 when Black activists sought a federal voucher grant, and reemerged in 1988 as the recommendation of Robert S. Peterkin, then superintendent of public schools here as a vehicle for a public private school partnership. Peterkin made note of the failure of desegregation and hostility to Black empowerment, and saw as a viable solution a ‘system of schools’ to replace the public school system.

Probably the most interesting fact of this entire scenario is that today we find ourselves back at square one. Thirty years after school desegregation and 50 years after Brown, we are at the segregated paradigm we began with. We are still fighting for quality education, and in many respects, our situation has worsened as evidenced by the fact that Milwaukee has the highest Black drop out rate in the country and the largest gap between Black and White student achievement.

As one of my favorite poems concludes: "we shall not cease from exploration, and in the end we’ll arrive at the beginning and know it for the first time."

True, true, true. Maybe we should amend the poem to note that the only constant is that the battle continues, and there are still many trains, hopefully on the same track, trying to get to the Promised Land.

Hotep.

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