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

Includes bibliographies and index.

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.

This 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, some one in Silverstein's situation would be black. She was white, however - one of the few white students in her entire school. 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 equally 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. Her story, woven with historical details, confronts us with powerful questions about race and the use of our schools to engineer social change.

COPYRIGHT NOT covered - Click this link to request copyright permission:

https://lib.ciu.edu/copyright-request-form