The effects of integration on schoolchildren, Black and White, has received a great amount of attention over the years. What has been much less considered is the effect that integration had on the Black teachers who were in Black schools when the changes initially came. Many of them, including in my town, were taken out of the classroom. The children were to be integrated, not the teaching staff. Putting Black teachers at the head of classrooms of mainly White students was never the school district’s priority. People who had been figures of authority were put in charge of dispensing books and
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