Word: webster
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Dates: during 1950-1959
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...puts the story across with great gusto thanks to the work of a generally talented cast, greatly aided by director Stephen Aaron and musical director Howard Brown. What it lacks in polish, it almost always makes up for in vigor. Backed up by the sumptuous settings and lighting of Webster Lithgow and Jordan Jelks, the actors really go to town--especially in the ladies department...
Almost daily since the U.S. Supreme Court banned segregation in the public schools, an odd ritual has taken place in little (pop. 5,100) Hillsboro, Ohio. Each morning before the Webster elementary school opened, a group of Negro mothers would march up to its main door, parade around for a while with placards reading, "Our Children Play Together; Why Can't They Learn Together?" and then return peacefully to their homes. There was never any violence, not even a sign of hate or temper. But the fact remained that Hillsboro is the scene of the only integration battle...
Until 1939 Hillsboro never really thought of maintaining separate Negro and white schools. But that year, when Webster was jammed to capacity, the board of education decided to solve the problem by quietly packing all Negro pupils off to the ramshackle Lincoln elementary school on the east side of town. For 15 years no one protested. Then came the Supreme Court's historic decision. Negro parents living nearer Webster than Lincoln began demanding that Webster admit their children. The board's answer: it redistricted the whole town, assigned two widely separated Negro neighborhoods to all-Negro Lincoln...
...down (he was convicted of arson and sentenced to 1 to 15 years, paroled after serving nine months). Later, five Negro mothers took their case to court. All this failed to budge the board an inch. When school opened that fall, 22 Negro children who tried to get into Webster were turned away. Their mothers, refusing to send them to Lincoln, began tutoring them at home...
Though the board insisted it was without racial prejudice, it argued that until the town could complete a new school, the 850-pupil Webster School could not possibly add 22 Negroes. Judge John H. Druffel of the United States District Court apparently agreed, for he refused to issue an injunction ordering the board to reverse itself. Last fall, when school opened again, Negro pupils applying for Webster were given chairs on the first day, but assigned no classes. On the second day the chairs disappeared...