Florida Republicans and Dixiecrats Strike Back against public education

Get the Point!

When I arrived at Morehouse College in 1990, one of the occasional dorm debates that used to intrigue me was when schoolmates would argue that they did not consider Florida to be "part of the South."

Florida Field, home of the University of Florida Gators, replete with Confederate Flag in the student section circa 1955…

Even more curious was when some of those same classmates would argue that they didn't really consider Maryland, my home state before our family moved to Florida, or Virginia, the state in which the Hobbs family lived before moving to Maryland, to be part of the South, either. 

NAACP protests outside of the Ford Theater in Baltimore, Maryland circa 1948…

As a history major who was equally adroit at geography, I would always remind my schoolmates about the Mason-Dixon line and the fact that while Maryland, south of said line, did not join the Confederacy prior to the Civil War, that it still remained a slave holding state, the same as Delaware, Kentucky, Missouri, and Washington, D.C.

Slave auctions often took place in close proximity to the White House, a structure, like the Capitol, that was built by enslaved Black hands. The District of Columbia would later compensate white slave owners up to $300 per enslaved Black when slavery was abolished…

I also would remind my Brothers that Jim Crow segregation was very much in full effect in those states and in D.C., too, well into the late 1960's by law—and still in custom long afterwards!

Now, my words often fell on deaf ears as many of my schoolmates hailed from those very slave holding, Jim Crow practicing enclaves; perhaps they wished to "wish away" the past in their minds? I'm not sure, but what I was very sure of as a son of parents who grew up in Jim Crow Florida was that while the Sunshine State loved to praise itself in the 1980’s as being the home of Mickey Mouse, orange juice, and pristine beaches, it was still the home of some whites who proudly called themselves "Florida Crackers" while discussing the "good Ol' days" along the "S’wanee River," an homage to the racist state song by Stephen Foster that featured “darkeys,” or Black minstrels, pining for the “old folk at home” on the slave plantation.

My father, Charles Hobbs, was a standout football and track athlete at George Washington Carver High School who made the Miami Times All-City Football Team (above) in 1956 and 1957. The team was racially segregated per Jim Crow custom from the white Miami Herald All-City Football Team during the same era…

Today, as Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis joins thousands of other Republicans across America in reestablishing what I often call Jim Crow 2.0, I am reminded more than ever that in some respects, the original Jim Crow never really went away.

My mother, then known as Vivian Williams, placed second in the all Black Tallahassee City Spelling Bee circa 1956. Per Jim Crow custom, mom and her friends were prevented from competing against white students in Leon County…

You see, as the Civil Rights Act of 1964 led to a rapid integration increase in Florida's 67 public school counties, what often goes unmentioned is that while Black students, faculty, and administrators began mixing with whites, that those self proclaimed "Florida Crackers," Dixiecrats who soon turned Republicans, were steadily creating private schools to keep their little white children from mixing with little Black children. 

The Maclay School, one of the most prestigious private schools in Florida today, was founded in 1968 during a time when Tallahassee's public schools were being integrated…

Seriously, if you check the founding dates of private K-12 schools in Florida and across the South, most were established after 1954. If you're asking, "so, what happened in 1954," I remind that the United States Supreme Court's Brown vs. Board of Education decision was handed down on May 17th of that year—a decision that signaled the "legal" end of Jim Crow segregation in public schools. 

Lest we forget that while Southern white politicians and lawyers did their best to stall the implementation of the Brown decision that in the interim, they started building and staffing all sorts of "Christian," "Catholic," and "Prep" schools to keep the government from forcing their kids to learn and play sports with Black kids. 

Right here in Tallahassee, the Florida legislature, fearing integration, started earmarking funds at a torrent pace to build brand new Black high schools as if to say, "see, our facilities are separate—but equal." These Florida segregationists figured that if there were brand new buildings or additions at, say, FAMU High School and Lincoln High School in Tallahassee, or Havana Northside High and Carter-Parramore High Schools in Quincy, Florida, that "The Blacks" wouldn't dare enter the hallowed all-white public schools like Tallahassee's Leon High School or Florida High School, or nearby all-white Quincy High School!

History shows that with the exception of FAMU High School, the other Black schools were closed or demoted to middle school status, with Black students then forced to attend previously all-white Leon High School, Florida High School, or the brand new Rickards High and Godby High in Tallahassee, and Shanks High School in Quincy. 

I was an 8th grade JV football player at FAMU High School standing on the sidelines as upperclassmen Craig Allen (89) and Tony Cartwright (44) prepared to tackle North Florida Christian's All-American quarterback Casey Weldon. Our team was all Black, theirs was all white—in 1985! We beat them so soundly that by the last quarter, all of us 8th and 9th graders even got a few snaps in…

In the 50 years since, however, those early integrated days across Florida dissolved due to, 1. White flight and 2. Increased private school options.

When I was growing up in Tallahassee during the 80’s, both Rickards and Godby High Schools, established in the 60's, were already majority Black due to whites fleeing the Southside and Westside for the more affluent areas in North Tallahassee.

Today, Leon County Schools, a system that was still litigating integration cases in Tallahassee in the early 1970's, has over 70% minority enrollment—with 31.5% of students identified as economically disadvantaged per U.S. News & World Report's latest rankings. 

Tallahassee Rickards High School circa 1968 was predominantly white. By 1988 (above), my junior year of high school, it was predominantly Black, which it remains in the 2020’s (also above)

Now, those numbers do not account for the thousands of white students that attend charter schools and private high schools, like Maclay School, John Paul II Catholic School, and North Florida Christian School. And while those institutions enroll Black and other racial minorities, the populations remain overwhelmingly white, affluent, and subject to whatever curriculum whims of the governing boards of the same.

Further, those Tallahassee private schools are filled with the children of prominent politicians, politicos, and other wealthy professionals, including some who are among the leading critics of public school education and proponents of limiting what can be taught at the same!

What strikes me as perverse about the last sentence of the preceding paragraph is that those critics, men like Gov. DeSantis and all of his acolytes, either have their children enrolled in private schools—or their children are (or were) enrolled at the patrician public schools that look and operate like private schools. 

But the problem is that while DeSantis and others realize that full out legal segregation would not pass constitutional scrutiny even among the heavily conservative Roberts Supreme Court, their pernicious aims to "Make America Great Again," which I have always interpreted as make America look and feel like it did circa 1954, can be achieved by white washing the Black out of America's torrid racial history, while diminishing the rights and privileges that have been granted based upon religious tolerance and the LGBTQ community.

Tallahassee Classical School Chairman Barney Bishop (above), a former Florida A&M University Trustee, had the following to say in the wake of TCS's principal being ousted over an art lesson depicting Michaelangelo's nude sculpture of the Biblical King David: “Parents choose this school because they want a certain kind of education. We’re not gonna have courses from the College Board. We’re not gonna teach 1619 (Black History project) or CRT crap. I know they do all that up in Virginia. The rights of parents, that trumps the rights of kids. Teachers are the experts? Teachers have all the knowledge? Are you kidding me? I know lots of teachers that are very good, but to suggest they are the authorities, you’re on better drugs than me.”

Such is why I remain concerned that Florida Republicans, along with Tallahassee Democratic State Rep. Gallop Franklin II and Jacksonville Rep. Kim Daniels (D), recently pushed through a voucher bill that will only bolster the coffers of private schools—potentially at the expense of the state's public schools.

Now, all is not doom and gloom, however, as I was pleased yesterday to see that the U.S. 11th Circuit Court of Appeals has upheld U.S. District Judge Mark Walker's enjoining of Gov. DeSantis' (above) Stop Woke Act for now. But I remain concerned that the 11th Circuit, or the Roberts Supreme Court, could side with the madding MAGA crowd at some later date—and place public education, the type that serves Florida's minorities primarily, into greater peril.

Stay tuned…