The Lynnertic

Oh, Freedom (a negro spiritual)

The Friday Protest Song for June 29, 2007
Give me Liberty or Give me Death!

The Negro Spiritual “Oh, Freedom” was written during the Civil War by emancipated black soldiers in the Union Army as they fought to end slavery. It was repopularized in the 60’s during the Civil Rights movement, when the concept of freedom grew to include equal protection under the law, equal opportunity, and an end to racial segregation. Its message is equivalent to Patrick Henry’s call to arms in the Revolutionary War, “Give me liberty or give me death!”

I chose “Oh, Freedom” because it is an appropriate response to the Supreme Court’s decision yesterday to ban racial integration programs in public schools. Their decision to stymie progress towards racial equality yesterday should be a wake-up call for people who care about racial justice and civil rights.

“School integration dealt a loss” announces the San Jose Mercury News at my doorstep this morning. “Justices voted 5-4 to strike down school integration plans in Louisville, KY, and Seattle, a decision that imperiled similar plans that hundreds of cities and counties use voluntarily to integrate their schools.”

The parents of white students in these two school districts sued so that their children could be admitted to the school closest their residence, their first choice in a system that had students competing for enrollment to a school of choice among a list of possibilities.

In both cases, parents fought for seats that had been awarded to non-whites as part of an integration program. Both districts used race as a “final tie-breaker” when considering student applications for over-prescribed schools.

The paper doesn’t go into any details of the case, but offers a shallow reassurance that the hundreds of school districts under Federal orders to integrate won’t be affected by this ruling. The article also points out that California already has a 1996 ban on considering race in school admissions (so like, cool, we’re still about a decade ahead of the rest of the nation, even in our backwardness).

Integrated schools provide a safe environment for children (and their families) to be exposed to other cultures and to learn to be comfortable around different people. This is a valuable and necessary life skill, one of the few that children can still learn in the wasteland that the No Child Left Behind Act has made of our public schools. Exposing children to people of other cultures on a day-to-day basis benefits society by attacking the root causes of racism: insecurity, fear and ignorance.

Furthermore, integrated schools ensure quality schools for minority students. “For African American students, the struggle for quality education has been inextricably intertwined with the struggle for desegregated education, for racial equality,” Ted Shaw, the director of the NAACP Legal Defense Fund, said in an interview this morning on Democracy Now.

The most charitable opinion I can have of this ban on racial integration is that the Justices who voted for it must be trying to end affirmative action in order to usher in an official end to racism. They probably think that eradicating any mention of race and racism in the law, would eradicate it in life.

Unfortunately, people’s minds can’t be rewritten so easliy. Brown v. Board of Education may be 50 years old, but it took 17 years for desegregation to be enforced. People who attended segregated schools are still alive. Yesterday’s decision comes 50 years too early.

Subsequent verses of this marching song replace the words “Oh, Freedom” with the following phrases:

No more moanin’ …
No more weepin’ …
There’ll be singin’ …
There’ll be shoutin’ …
There’ll be prayin’ …

Americans have not progressed to the level the Supreme Court would wish of us, but we can get there if we remain vigilant and jealously protective of our civil rights, and continue to insist upon justice for all. True social equality will be attained gradually, as our societal attitudes change to require it.

Ted Shaw sees hope. He told Democracy Now that he didn’t consider the decision to be a 5-4 decision but a 4-1-1 decision with Justice Kennedy’s opinion standing in the middle:

… while it was a defeat [for racial equality], it reminds me of Bakke in many ways, the Bakke decision, of course, which in 1978 sanctioned affirmative action in higher education, that was finally reaffirmed by the court in the Michigan cases. Bakke was not a 5-4 decision. It was a 4-4-1 decision, in which Justice Powell’s lone opinion eventually controlled and sustained affirmative action for twenty-five years. Now, we see that Justice Kennedy’s opinion is the one opinion, and the question is how much can it hold. So it’s not a complete loss. We don’t know, however, how much of a loss it is and won’t know for some time.

Return to Top
Resources:

Supreme Court - School Integration
A national clearinghouse of Supreme Court School Integration information. Established by NAACP LDF.

NAACP Legal Defense Fund Fact Sheets:
School Integration : Seattle Fact Sheet (PDF)
School Integration: Louisville Fact Sheet (PDF)

The Supreme Court Decision (PDF)

Democracy Now! Interview with Ted Shaw

African American Spirituals

Articles by Tom Faigin:
Negro Spirituals: Songs of Survival
Popular Songs During the Civil War