Desegregation decision was ‘wonderful moment,’ woman recalls Oct. 20, 2004 By Linda Bloom* STAMFORD,
Conn. (UMNS) - Mai Gray was a first-year schoolteacher in Kansas City,
Mo., when the U.S. Supreme Court decided that segregating her students
was against the law. The
May 17, 1954, announcement by Chief Justice Earl Warren that the court
had decided "separate but equal has no place in public education" was a
"wonderful moment," she recalled. Gray
and Carolyn Johnson, a Purdue University professor, took part in a
discussion marking the 50th anniversary of that landmark court decision,
"Brown vs. the Board of Education," during the Oct. 15-18 annual
meeting of the Women’s Division, United Methodist Board of Global
Ministries. Both
of the African-American women are former presidents of the division -
Gray serving from 1976 to 1980 and Johnson from 1992 to 1996. The
court decision, actually based on cases from four states, found that
the doctrine of "separate but equal" had no place in public education
and that separate educational facilities "are inherently unequal." "Brown
was not an isolated case," Johnson explained. "It was part of a long
strategy to dismantle the concept of separate but equal." Gray
recalled growing up at a time in Jackson, Tenn., when education was
"separate and unequal." But even though the teachers at her all-black
school knew the realities of American society, "they wanted to make
every student succeed." Her
mother, also a teacher, encouraged her children "to learn all that you
can learn so that you can work anywhere in the world." Methodist
women were ahead of the Supreme Court on the issue of racism, according
to Gray. Two years earlier, they had adopted the first charter on
racial justice and had just affirmed it during the Women’s Assembly in
Milwaukee the day the court decision was announced. The
Women’s Division also affirmed Brown as "a new determination to
eliminate segregation from every part of our community," Johnson said.
This commitment continues today in the division’s work on racism and
public education, she pointed out. The
division’s current charter on racial justice was presented to the 1978
Women’s Assembly in Louisville, Ky., which Gray presided over as
president. Previously
occupying the Louisville convention center site had been a church
building where the Methodist Episcopal Church had divided over the issue
of slavery in 1834. In 1978, Gray noted, the discussion was again on
race "but on doing something positive about it." *Bloom is a United Methodist News Service news writer. News media contact: Linda Bloom, New York, (646) 369-3759 or newsdesk@umcom.org.
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