White girl : a story of school desegregation / by Clara Silverstein.

Format:

Book

Author/Creator:

Silverstein, Clara, 1960-

Language:

English

Subjects (All):

Children, White--Virginia--Richmond--Biography.

Children, White.

Middle school students--Virginia--Richmond--Biography.

Middle school students.

Girls--Virginia--Richmond--Biography.

Girls.

White people--Virginia--Richmond--Biography.

White people.

School integration--Virginia--Richmond--History--20th century.

School integration.

Richmond (Va.)--Race relations.

Richmond (Va.).

Richmond (Va.)--Biography.

Silverstein, Clara, 1960---Childhood and youth.

Silverstein, Clara.

Physical Description:

x, 149 p., [6] p. of plates : ill.

Edition:

1st ed.

Place of Publication:

Athens : University of Georgia Press, c2004.

Language Note:

English

Summary:

This poignant account recalls firsthand the upheaval surrounding court-ordered busing in the early 1970s to achieve school integration. Like many students at the vanguard of this great social experiment, sixth-grader Clara Silverstein was spit on, tripped, and shoved by her new schoolmates. At other times she was shunned altogether. In the conventional imagery of the civil rights era, someone in Silverstein's situation would be black. She was white, however--one of the few white students in her entire school. "My story is usually lost in the historical accounts of busing," Silverstein writes. At the predominantly black public schools she attended in Richmond, Virginia, Silverstein dealt daily with the unintended, unforeseen consequences of busing as she also negotiated the typical passions and concerns of young adulthood--all with little direction from her elders, who seemed just as bewildered by the changes around them. When Silverstein developed a crush on a black boy, when yet another of her white schoolmates switched to a private school, when she naively came to class wearing a jacket with a Confederate flag on it, she was mostly on her own to contend with the fallout. Silverstein's father had died when she was seven. Another complication: she was Jewish. As her black schoolmates viewed her through the veil of race, Silverstein gazed back through her private grief and awareness of religious difference. Inspired by her parents' ideals, Silverstein remained in the public schools despite the emotional stakes. "I was lost," she admits. "If I learned nothing else, I did come to understand the scourge of racism." Her achingly honest story, woven with historical details, confronts us with powerful questions about race and the use of our schools to engineer social change.

Contents:

A school bus, a mother's tears

Joined hands

My father's last moments

Ann and Lee, Mom and Dad

Packing it in

You talk like a Yankee

Tomboys

Freedom of choice - yes! busing - never!

"Model" schools

Interim integration

Busing hits home

Manners

Jim Crow's legacy

Liberal teacher, Southern lady

The buses roll

No one wants you here

Black is beautiful

Self-segregation

Separate soundtracks

In the classrooms

My flag, my shame

Girl talk

Ebony and ivory

The white boys

Filmstrip in the dark

The fox-trot, the cha-cha

Invisible

Voice of loneliness

The liberals

Legacy of defeat

No yearbooks, no good-byes

Singing "Dixie"

The open high school

I surrender!

Belonging and not belonging

Driving lessons

Preppie envy

A shell tossed into the ocean

The education mom

Racial differences still evident

Was this a good school?

My father's words

I am Lee's daughter

Splinters of glass.

Notes:

Bibliographic Level Mode of Issuance: Monograph

ISBN:

9780820345093

0820345091

9780820345888

0820345881

OCLC:

856929673