Fighting Back: School Closure and Resistance in the Rural Black South

• In Event: Race, Rurality, and Education: Envisioning Educational Equity in Racialized Rural Spaces

Abstract

Objectives and Perspectives
The Delta spreads across east Arkansas flat and green. But these fertile acres hide vast inequalities (Stockley, 2009). Here, land and businesses are still mostly White-owned, and Black residents have fewer economic and educational opportunities. Recently, this inequality has included the loss of Delta schools due to consolidation and state sanctions. School closure might be best understood as both cause and manifestation of spatial injustice (Soja, 2010)—that is, geographic unevenness in access to necessary resources; spatial injustice tends to most disadvantage low-income communities of color (McKittrick & Woods, 2007; powell, 2008).
The policies and processes that create and maintain spatial injustice across rural spaces remain under-explored (Lichter & Parisi, 2008). Using the lens of spatial injustice, this presentation examines the many effects of closures on the predominantly black community of Elaine, Arkansas.

Methods and Data Sources
This research is part of a larger, longitudinal study of the impacts of closure on three rural Black Delta communities. Today, Elaine is an agricultural town with about 500 residents, nearly 70% Black. It has a history of Black organizing—in the early 1900s, sharecroppers organized to fight for fairer payments—and racial violence—this organizing sparked one of the largest racial massacres in U.S. history. Its schools were closed in 2006, soon after consolidation.
The author uses the qualitative method of portraiture. Focusing on strength (Lawrence-Lightfoot & Davis, 1997), portraiture offers an important alternative to research methods that pathologize Black geographies (McKittrick & Woods, 2007). Over seven years, they interviewed twenty-two Elaine residents, several of them multiple times, and observed community and school events. Analysis integrates “etic” and “emic” approaches (Morris et al., 1999), combining concepts from spatial injustice with themes grounded in the data, to identify closure’s effects and inform the portrait of Elaine.

Preliminary Results
Before closure, Elaine’s elementary and high school, at which nearly all students and staff were Black, were underfunded but loved. Teachers cared, and childrearing was a communal endeavor. Basketball games packed the gym, and the schools employed dozens. All of this changed with closure.
At the new school, the teachers didn’t know the Elaine students, and fights broke out. There are no Friday night games in Elaine now, and closure eliminated jobs, shuttered other businesses, and depleted the population. To many residents, closure is a racist event, reminiscent of desegregation, when White administrators closed schools at the center of Black culture and social life.
But closure also produces resistance: the Black community organized to file lawsuits and regain control of the school buildings, which are now used for community activities. Closure politicized residents and through their organizing, they helped overturn closure-causing policies.

Significance
This study provides a more thorough understanding of the social, economic, and political effects of closure, identifying a key process of spatial injustice shaping rural Black communities. As Elaine grapples with its history and imagines its future, it shows how rural Black communities seek to remedy the spatial and racial injustices of closure—by fighting back.

Author

• Mara C. Tieken, Bates College