[Congressional Record Volume 144, Number 14 (Tuesday, February 24, 1998)]
[Extensions of Remarks]
[Page E196]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov]




          1998 CONGRESSIONAL OBSERVANCE OF BLACK HISTORY MONTH

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                               speech of

                        HON. WILLIAM (BILL) CLAY

                              of missouri

                    in the house of representatives

                      Wednesday, February 11, 1998

  Mr. CLAY. Mr. Speaker, as we meet today in commemoration of Black 
History month, I would like to comment on the historic battle for 
educational opportunity that continues to this day in the state of 
Missouri. The State of Missouri is proposing to end the 17-year-old 
school desegregation program that is finally, after more than a century 
of struggle, beginning to offer equal educational opportunity to black 
children in the city of St. Louis.
  It is almost impossible to comprehend the current controversy 
surrounding efforts to end St. Louis' successful voluntary school 
desegregation program without understanding the sad, sordid history of 
state imposed segregation in Missouri's public schools. In 1847 the 
Missouri Legislature outlawed teaching reading and writing to colored 
children. In fact, for the next 18 years it was a state felony for any 
person to teach blacks to read or write. The crime was considered so 
heinous that those who committed it were subject to six months in jail 
and a fine of $500. Fortunately, there were people of courage who stood 
up to this preposterous law.
  Catholics, Quakers and Unitarians, the First Baptist Church, St. Paul 
A.M.E. and Central Baptist and other colored churches conducted 
clandestine schools in underground locations. Catholic nuns at the Old 
Cathedral openly defied the law and taught Negro children. Six Sisters 
of Mercy defied the state government and opened a school for blacks in 
1856.
  John Berry Meachum, a former slave, purchased his freedom and then 
saved enough money to buy a cooperage and boat supply company. He used 
his earnings to buy the freedom of many slaves and let them work for 
him until he was repaid. Meachum also became pastor of the First 
African Baptist Church. During the time that it was illegal to teach 
blacks to read and write, he operated covert classrooms on boats moored 
to a sandbar on the Mississippi River. When Meachum's boat schools were 
discovered, he built a steamboat, equipped with a library, and 
transported black children and illiterate adults to the middle of the 
Mississippi River where federal law prevailed. There blacks were taught 
to read, write and add numbers. His floating school continued until his 
death.
  Despite, the heroic and valiant efforts of a few, the state 
government was determined to keep the black citizens of Missouri 
illiterate and uneducated. In 1865 the Missouri Constitution stated: 
``Separate schools may be established for children of African descent. 
All funds provided for the support of public schools shall be 
appropriated in proportion to the number of children without regard to 
color.'' The following year the City of St. Louis opened its first 
school for blacks. This was 28 years after the City had opened its 
first school for whites. In that era more than 120,000 blacks lived in 
Missouri and according to the 1865 report of Superintendent Ira Divoli, 
colored property owners paid taxes on between two and three million 
pieces of property.
  In 1889, the Missouri Legislature enacted a law mandating separate 
schools ``for the children of African descent.'' A year later, the 
Missouri Supreme Court upheld the statute and in its unanimous decision 
declared that ``colored carries with it natural race peculiarities'' 
justifying the separation of blacks and whites. Six years later, the 
U.S. Supreme Court in Plessy V. Ferguson declared segregated education 
the law of the land and ruled that ``separate but equal facilities were 
legal.'' As ``separate'' became the edict, ``unequal'' became the 
standard for black tax-supported education throughout the nation and 
the state of Missouri.
  For nearly 80 years after the historic Plessy V. Ferguson decision, 
the public schools in Missouri were legally segregated institutions of 
opportunity for white students and ill-equipped, underfunded dungeons 
of disgrace for black children who were provided an absolutely inferior 
education. In 1972, a class action suit was filed alleging segregation 
in the City's public school system. But, in 1979, the federal district 
court ruled that the St. Louis Board of Education had not violated the 
Constitution's ``equal protection'' provisions.
  Finally, in 1980, the 8th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals recognized 
the plight of black children and overruled the 1979 decision. The lower 
federal court then issued an order allowing busing of children for the 
purpose of desegregating St. Louis' public schools.
  Since 1980, more than $100 million has been expended to improve the 
all-black schools in St. Louis and to assist the St. Louis County 
suburban schools which serve inner city children. Those who now condemn 
seventeen years as too long and assert that the expenditure of public 
funds has been too extravagant, need to familiarize themselves with the 
long and costly history of mis-education of blacks and the role played 
by the State of Missouri in this long, sad story.
  I suggest that critics of the St. Louis school desegregation program 
compare what the State of Missouri spent in dollars and cents to deny 
black children an equal education with the amount that is now being 
expended to equalize educational opportunity. It is hardly the time to 
decry the cost of school desegregation as excessive and wasteful.
  Under the court-approved plan each year, 13,000 black children from 
St. Louis attend public schools in the suburban districts of St. Louis 
County in the largest voluntary metropolitan desegregation program in 
the nation. White children from the County attend magnet schools in St. 
Louis and substantial funds are devoted to early grade reading programs 
and other educational improvement efforts in St. Louis. These thirteen 
thousand black students voluntarily board buses in the inner-city each 
school day and go to the suburban school districts where they learn in 
an integrated atmosphere alongside middle class white students. These 
poor black children fit into the latest national study showing that 
poor children attending predominantly middle class schools do much 
better than their counterparts who go to school with mostly poor 
children. And, the record reveals that the 13,000 inner-city students 
attending integrated and magnet schools in middle class neighborhoods 
are graduating from high school at twice the rate of students attending 
all black schools in the inner city.
  These 13,000 St. Louis school children may be, at long last, ending 
one of the ugliest chapters in the history of the State of Missouri. 
Yet, unbelievably, some state leaders are rushing to dismantle their 
classrooms.
  Mr. Speaker, Black History Month was established to inspire all 
people to learn a little more about the history of Black Americans. It 
is a history that Blacks were once denied the opportunity to learn by 
the power of the state. Those who do not comprehend this are conspiring 
to gamble away our future.

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