Institutional Racism, School Desegregation Implementation, and Waco's First Black School Board Members

• In Event: Black Educators and the Struggle for Educational Justice

Abstract

This essay examines a southern city’s racial climate as its school district struggled to realize racial equality. Waco, Texas’ 1976 election of Dr. Emma Harrison and Rev. Robert Gilbert animated this period of school desegregation implementation. I analyze how these trustees' Blackness alongside their gender and age distinguished their promotion of racial equality. I argue that in a historically white public school district, Harrison and Gilbert contended with institutional racism. This seemingly obvious point reveals a notable yet under-emphasized drawback of school desegregation: its incapacity to ameliorate racial injustice in public school governance in historically white districts. Despite this limitation, racial realism underscores the significance of Harrison’s and Gilbert’s resistance as two Black but differently gendered and aged trustees.

Author

• ArCasia D. James-Gallaway, Texas A&M University