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The Importance of Education to Black America and Black History Page 3 by Roger Smith President Dwight D. Eisenhower, to his dismay (he was hoping it could be settled without confrontation), had to intervene. He mobilized the 101st Airborne Division and the Arkansas National Guard to defend the students. The next morning, the students were taken to school by members of the 101st. In a convoy of jeeps with mounted machine guns, the students left their homes surrounded by 350 paratroopers. By the time they reached the school, there were helicopters hovering above, and the 101st and National Guardsmen surrounding them from all sides. Upon entering the building, they were all assigned their own guard who escorted them throughout the school. Their ordeal was over, they could now focus on being Central High School students. Since Brown vs Board of Education and the Little Rock Nine incident, education for black people in America has changed dramatically. In THE NEGRO ALMANAC: A Reference Work on the Afro-American (IV Edition) it states that "In 1954, less than 1% of black students in the South attended schools with white children. By 1968, 20% of black students in the South attended schools that were more than 50% white, and by 1978, 44% did so. Nationally, in 1978, 38% of black students were in schools that contained more than 50% of whites in the student body. These figures underscore two points: desegregation has progressed, and a great deal more needs to be achieved." Not only has desegregation increased over the past three decades, it also has had a positive effect on black students. Some of the effects are: (1) Academic achievement rose as the black student learned more.... (2) Black aspirations, already high, were positively affected; self esteem rose; and self-acceptance as [a black] American grew.... (3) Tolerance, respect, and occasional friendships were the chief characteristics of student and teacher relations in desegregated schools.... (4) Virtually none of the negative predictions by segregationists - lower achievement, aggravated self concepts of black children, and growing disorder in desegregated schools - found support in the studies of actual desegregation.These factors, that have come about through desegregation, have had a profound effect on the education of black students. From 1960 - 1997, the proportion of black students receiving a high school diploma has more than tripled for black females, from 21.8% to 76%, and more than quadrupled for black males, 18.2% to more than 73%. And, the same holds true for black students receiving a four year college degree, where for females it has more than quadrupled, 3.3% to almost 14%, and for males the same, going from 2.8% to 12.5%, as recorded by the AFRICAN AMERICAN ALMANAC, Eigth Edition. Education, hopefully, will be something that black America continues to strive for because only by being educated can people truly be free. To elaborate on my opening quote by Frederick Douglass, "All the world is a school, and in it one lesson is just now being taught, and that is the utter insecurity of life and property in the presence of an aggrieved class. This lesson can be learned by the ignorant as well as by the wise. Education, the sheet anchor of safety to a society where liberty and justice are secure, is a dangerous thing to a society in the presence of injustice and oppression."
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