Women in Kentucky - Public Service
The time is past due for some straight talk on this resolution and what it represents. Regardless of all the carefully spoken endorsements we have heard that have piously proclaimed their good intentions, this whole resolution can be summed up by the title of a recent publication, “It ain’t the buses, it’s the niggers.” Let’s stop all this egg walking and put our cards on the table. If you support this resolution, you are voting for continued racial segregation of our public schools and I for one am not going to stand idly by while some attempt to force us to swallow this sugar coated racism pill.
Proponents of this resolution have suggested that it’s busing not desegregation they oppose. Others have clothed their support in terms of saving the community school. Everyone is so busy justifying their position that they ignore the facts:
Fact #1- school buses and bussing are as American as apple pie. Almost half (43.5%) of all school children are presently transported to school by buses. In Jefferson County, 65% of the school children are bussed to their schools. Until the issue became desegregation, no one gave bussing a second thought. It was simply a means to an end. So, when people now try to convince us it is bussing not desegregation they are against, how naive do they think we are?
Where, I ask, were those opponents of bussing when Black Kentuckians were being forcefully segregated and bussed past the fine white schools to Black schools. Why were those vocal Jefferson Countians not voicing their disapproval of “bussing” when every Black Jefferson County child of high school [age] was forcefully bussed to the city because the county didn’t have any Black high schools. No one was opposed to bussing to maintain segregation. They are only against bussing to achieve desegregation.
Fact #2- the community school is not in jeopardy. No one is going about the nation closing down neighborhood schools. Even under the most ambitious desegregation plan. Most of a neighborhood school’s population comes from the immediate area. Let’s not kid ourselves, as I earlier noted, 65% of Jefferson County children are presently being bused to school. For them there is no “neighborhood school just across the street.” Again, I observe, that when the Black children were bussed out of their community for the purpose of segregation, no one complained about losing neighborhood schools. It was only when the issues became desegregation that the “neighborhood school” became important.
So if you vote for this insulting resolution, don’t tell me you are in favor of civil rights or that “some of your best friends are Black.” Because, if you vote for this resolution, you won’t have any Black friends. Nobody thanks the man who slams the door in his face.
Finally, I must warn that calling for a constitutional convention to insert an anti-bussing amendment will declare open house on the U.S. Constitution. You cannot limit the scope of any such constitutional convention and you will be inviting all the demagogues from all sides of the political spectrum to rush in and carve up our constitution. While I won’t define it as a perfect instrument, it has stood the test of time and I for one would be reluctant to let it be tampered with. Let us not be stampeded into a rash and imprudent course. The courts set the issue of school segregation to rest in 1954. Let’s not dig it up again. So I urge you--vote no on the amendment and on House Resolution 29.
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