A Victory of Sorts: Desegregation in a Southern Community

A Victory of Sorts: Desegregation in a Southern Community, by Winifred E. Pitts. Lanham, MD: University Press of America, Inc., 2003. 218 pp., $43.00, paperback. Winifred E. Pitts in A Victory of Sorts: Desegregation in a Southern Community provides a substantive review of educational segregation in a southern community and how system was dismantled after passage of 1964 Civil Rights Act. Pitts illuminates, through primary sources, how school desegregation began in Gainesville, Georgia only after passage of 1964 Civil Rights Act. Pitts argues that without Act, power of implementation of historic Brown decision was limited. The 1964 Civil Rights Act utilized economic power to dismantle de jure segregation in schools. Hence, progress was made in implementation of Brown decision in Gainesville-Hall County, Georgia. Yet, Pitts concludes through voices of respondents in research that desegregation was a bittersweet endeavor for Black community. A major strength of this work is that Pitts's research continues a new genre of Black education history similar to Their Highest Potential (Walker, 1996) by examining a segregated school and its community. Pitts's analysis supports general contention that Black schools were not as fiscally supported as their White counterparts. However, Pitts also departs from this assumption by actually addressing intangible benefits of segregation that were lost when school desegregation was actually implemented in Black communities; a process controlled by local politics and policies. Consequently, Pitts, like Vivian Gunn Morris and Curtis L. Morris in The Price They Paid: Desegregation in an African American Community (2002), explores actual political, social, and community aspects of Black schooling before and after desegregation. Pitts explicates processes of resistance that school board used to thwart desegregation. The author argues that improvement of African American schools so that they appeared to be equal to, or better than, White schools was a common strategy employed by southern school districts. The desired result of strategy was that separate but equal would continue to be norm in public schools. It was in this spirit that a first-class high school for Gainesville and Hall County African Americans, E. E. Butler High School, was built in early 1960s, (p. xi) Pitts details how school became an important part of community because of its principal, Ulysses Byas, who made improvements in curricular offerings. Even though school was always overcrowded, and had other issues, such as a high drop out rate, it was still a significant part of Black community. At heart of its importance was cultural milieu created within institution through community support, teacher advocacy, and student commitment. The entire Black community, however, did not agree on desegregation. Pitts chronicles resistance by some members of Black community to desegregation; a factor which eventually led to closing of Butler High School. Pitts indicates that the Gainesville African American community en masse never spoke out against segregation in its schools, and this lack of collective voice later came back to haunt them (pp. 126-127). What Pitts uncovered in this book is multiple voices within African American community that have often been assumed to be monolithic. In doing so, Pitts provides a different view of what actually occurred in Gainesville. Pitts has uncovered taken-for-granted assumptions of benefits of desegregation. Rarely, do scholars critique desegregation. It is assumed that desegregation was good for everyone, and that everyone, particularly Blacks, supported it. This proved not to be case in Gainesville, Georgia. A Victory of Sorts provides reader with an examination of history of Gainesville City and Hall County Schools, and education of Blacks within district. …