Whites Only: School Segregation Is Back, From Birmingham to San Francisco
“More recently, Clemon has found himself in another surreal situation. This past winter, he was in court to argue Stout v. Jefferson County once again, this time because a middle-class Birmingham suburb called Gardendale wants to leave the Jefferson County school system. Gardendale, which is mostly white, says race has nothing to do with its push for secession: It simply wants to control its schools. Clemon is skeptical. ‘The intent is to create a local school system where they will have control over who comes in and that they will minimize the number of blacks who come in,’ he told me in his raspy, slightly mischievous baritone. Local control has become a popular rallying cry in municipalities across the nation—including liberal states like New York and California—that want to form their own school districts. They all have their reasons, and the reasons all sound reasonable, but Clemon believes he knows what motivates Gardendale and at least some of its counterparts around the country, which is schools that share a single feature that mild suburbanites, with their secret yearnings, will not name. But Clemon, who faced off against Bull Connor and his water cannons and his dogs, will: ‘No blacks.’”