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There has been a long history of educational segregation in Sunflower County, Mississippi. ==Segregation== African Americans have faced tense political and social climates throughout history. A group around civil rights worker Charles McLaurin stated that Sunflower County was "the worst county in the worst state" concerning racial discrimination. In 1960 approximately two-thirds of the population in Sunflower County was black, and the average income African Americans in Sunflower County was lower than the federal poverty line. J. Todd Moye, author of ''Let the People Decide: Black Freedom and White Resistance Movements in Sunflower County, Mississippi, 1945-1986'', said "the segregated school system in Mississippi intentionally kept African American separate, ignorant, and afraid."〔Moye, p. (124 ).〕 Moye said that locals had resentment towards the black principals and teachers in the black schools, "in some cases for very legitimate reasons".〔 The schools were in session during the hottest periods of each year while white schools were closed, schools forced black students to pick cotton, and schools pressed parents to engage in fundraisers.〔 Black children in Sunflower County did not have the opportunity to go to school because they had to work in the fields. When they were able to go, their schooling was squeezed in between the cultivation of crops. African American children were not allowed to have school buses or adequate supplies. Many children did not go to school because it was too far to walk or it would be too cold in the winter to walk all the way from their family's farm. Black students and their families also had to pay several dollars for heating in the winter. Sunflower County estimated that there were 20,473 African Americans between the ages of six through twenty-one, however only 7,709 of them were enrolled in schools. When school buses were finally available for the black schools, they had to use hand-me-down school buses from the white schools that were not in safe conditions. The University of Mississippi’s Bureau of Education Research attempted to test black schoolchildren, but there were too few desks and the students had no knowledge how to take a standardized test. The Bureau of Education found that to make the minimum improvements to the black schools, Sunflower County would have needed to spend $2,493,745; the county refused to spend the money. When Gov. Hugh White visited Indianola in 1953, he stated that finding enough money to support the two separate school systems was the biggest financial problem of his administration. 抄文引用元・出典: フリー百科事典『 ウィキペディア(Wikipedia)』 ■ウィキペディアで「Educational segregation in Sunflower County, Mississippi」の詳細全文を読む スポンサード リンク
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