(All the names in this diary have been changed or just an initial or two given, with the exception of Alan Berg. His name and part in all this remain unchanged.)
This is a picture of my 6th grade class of the 1974-1975 school year. The faces are blurred intentionally. The faces aren't important, but the complexions are.
You may notice that the only obvious African American face is that of a teacher. This was the first time while I was attending public school this had ever happened in my class. It was a direct result of desegregation.
The 1974-1975 school year was the school year the Denver Public Schools (DPS) began desegregation. Up until that time I never knew that we weren't, because there always were African American kids in my classes in both public elementary schools I attended to that point.
DPS had put a great deal of thought and preparation into how our schools would be desegregated. We would begin desegregation by each "white" elementarily school pairing with a sister "African American" elementary school. Parents of the children in the districts of the "home" school toured the sister schools, asked questions and vented.
The plan was to split each classroom into two groups. One group would attend the sister school for half a semester, and only in the mornings. In the afternoon the traveling group would return to the home school for these classes. Then when the half semester was reached the group that had stayed at the home school in the mornings would now be the traveling group, returning to their home school for the afternoon.
In reality that picture above represents only one half of the kids in my 6th grade class in the 1974-1975 school year, at Asbury Elementary. A racist or bigot might not consider the afternoon class white, Our afternoon class had 3 Hispanics, 1 Asian, and 1 Jew too. I have no idea how many of my classmates were Catholic.
Before beginning this school year there were the racist rants against busing, desegregation, "exposing white children to black children," and the "white flight" that accompanied desegregation. Some of the families who were against desegregation could not afford to move, but most in my class chose to stay.
Those who were leaving after the 1973-1974 school year weren't exactly quiet about it. Their children weren't either, so we weren't surprised when they didn't show up in our 6th grade either in Miss D's class or the other 6th grade class. But we were all very surprised when one girl, a virulent racist, came back during second semester. I'll call her "Tammy."
We knew here from last year. She was assigned to my class and my group which stayed at the home school for the first part of both semesters. She was fine while she was at our home school. But everything changed in our first week of second tour of mornings at our sister school.
Our sister school was Whittier Elementary. During the first semester the old school (built in the 1880s) was being torn down. The new school (built in 1973-74) was built in what was the old school's field, and now, once the old school was torn down, the new schools field would be in it's place.
(old Whittier- new Whittier).
To this day I love old buildings. I love learning about it's history and what it's original purpose was, sometimes it can be a bit of a mystery. Asbury was built the same year my mother was born, 1929. And though I had only been there starting in 5th grade I loved the squeaky hardwood floors, the beautiful scroll work about the doors, the old style black slate chalk boards, the pull up foot lights on the stage in the auditorium, and the transoms above the interior doors.
While old Whittier was in the process of being torn I spent many lunches, while waiting for our bus to take us back to Asbury gazing into the school through the ragged, torn openings left by the demolition. It seemed very little had been removed, recycled or saved. Not the light fixtures, not the beautiful polish wood hand rails and banisters of the grand stair case, or the beautiful wooden classroom doors, not the blackboards, nothing but the furniture. In this way I pitied the students of new Whittier because compared to the beauty of the interior of their old school, the new one was an ugly utilitarian prison.
Often times you'd find a piece of a slate blackboard lying next to the fence that kept kids out of the demolition area. If you were lucky you could retrieve it and take it home.
By the time of our group's second time travel to the Whittier came, the old school was completely torn down. The only thing that remained was the gym which had been built in 1930, and was now part to the new school. Whittier once again had a field, and softball/baseball pitches, backstops, etc.
By that time we all had become accustomed to each other. I'm not sure if any deep friendships between the two groups had been made. The next year the kids of each school would attend totally different junior high schools. Much like a teen entering (senior) high school for just their senior year, one doesn't have the times or give much thought or desire into making a deep friendships. In all likelihood, we weren't going to see each other again.
But that doesn't mean we treated each other as aliens. Many of us became friends, ball games were played, at parties "Soul Train" lines were created, which for most of us white kids it was the first time we danced down one, etc.. I had never heard of the Ohio Players before, and recall found memories of that year whenever I hear "Fire" played.
I also had a raging crush on African American male classmate with a beautiful Afro. And that crush wasn't diminished one iota when I confided it to my Kansas cousin who told me it was a sin to have a crush on an African American. Our races, she said, were supposed to be separate, "God intended it that way."
I knew that most of the was from my crazy racist and religious uncle (her father) who spouted his crap whenever they came to visit. He gave us his unwanted and unsolicited opinions on everything including the tv show Mannix and "his n*gg** secretary," which he didn't want to watch. It was one of my Dad's favorite shows.
Had he known that my best friend in 2nd grade* was African American and that she spent the night at my house, I spent the night at her house, and we often played together at each other's houses, went to church together, (hell she even wore one of my dresses to church so we could be "twins") he would have disowned my family long ago. My uncle's "Biblical" pronouncements were a pile of horse crap, along with his racism, and I knew it.
Sometimes I'd laugh to myself thinking that my parents might have wondered if they should spray Lysol in his wake.
There were girls in the sister school that I liked and got along with, and one who I didn't. It had nothing to do with her being black, and me white. It had to do with the fact that we simply didn't like each other, period. Yes, she took it one step further by vandalizing my backpack (she cut both straps in two), and it upset me. But it wasn't like I hadn't experienced anything like that from the white bullies at my old school. I had.
The school paid to have a local cobbler sew up my backpack and that was that. (Though she denied doing it for the whole of our 6th grade year, she later admitted to doing it when we were all in junior high.)
Once Tammy returned it seemed like things got a little more tense. We had heard her racist comments the year before so to hear them now wasn't surprising. We wondered if she'd spout off in the morning, but she kept them to the afternoon when "only us white folk" were at Asbury. We had told her to quit many times, but eventually we go tired of repeating ourselves.
Our first day of traveling for our morning at Whittier we thought would go smoothly, if she just kept to her afternoon habits. But she didn't hold back when we got to Whittier that first morning of the second half of second semester.
Now, with the cynicism and jading of age I wonder if those who drummed the hate into her dear little ear didn't also set her up.
She talked trash, dissing the students and the school. We all knew she was headed for trouble, because first of all, black or white, you don't disrespect someone elses school when you're on "their" turf. We thought that went without saying, and it did, for everyone but Tammy. Her derogatory talk went on from there, she eventually unloaded her racism.
After lunch on the new field the Whittier students let her know their feelings about her comments and the garbage rolling out of her mouth.
We watched from the black top as a crowd gathered on the field. It moved with Tammy as she tried to get away. None of us in her Asbury class rushed out to help her or went to get a teacher, because we frankly felt she deserved it. We had warned her, we had told her to quit and in the mulling talk on the black top as we watched the consensus was that she brought it on herself.
When the teachers in charge of the playground saw what was going on, they went to investigate. Tammy was with us that afternoon, and we, silly stupid little white kids thought it was nothing more than a regular playground incident, that it would be marked down as such and that it was over. We got a front row seat on what racism can do.
The shit hit the fan.
For the next few days we were questioned.
Did you see Tammy get punched? No
Did you see Tammy get knocked to the ground? No, she was standing up moving the entire time.
How did we know? Because we always saw her blond head.
What did you see? Sometimes there was a crowd around Tammy, sometimes she was in the lead with the crowd close behind. The crowd moved with Tammy. The crowd was always moving. There was a lot of yelling. We (I) didn't see any punches thrown.
Why didn't you get help? . . . "because we felt she deserved it."
You might blanche at that we as a group were so cold. We just left her out there alone, but there were teachers on the playground, they would deal with it. We told those investigating all that Tammy had said, how she provoked. Maybe we were wrong to do nothing but our inaction and failure to support her also proved a blow to the idea of "white racial solidarity against blacks." We did not step up to defend her, or lie about what had happened. Instead we felt her racism was deplorable and had provoked the response.
Tammy's parents must have thought they weren't getting enough satisfaction from DPS because soon the incident erupted in the media. From there it was picked up by talk show host Alan Berg.
Nine years later Berg would be assassinated in the driveway of his Denver home by members of the white nationalist group, The Order. The Order had targeted him because he was Jewish and, because he used his radio show to "speak out against racism."
However during this incident and the day his radio show was about the incident at Whittier, he did nothing but fan the flames of racism.
Our classes were suspended, radios brought in and sitting at our desks our class listened to the whole show. And the racist dog whistles he blew.
First dog whistle; the students from Asbury, the ones who watched the incident were cast as being scared, intimidated and terrorized by the black students. That's why we, in their narrative, didn't seek help for her or rush to her defense.
Second dog whistle; Whittier, that school was a "jungle." Berg used this pronoun so often about Whittier that Mrs. T (an African American teacher at Whittier) was having a hard time keeping herself from marching down to the office and calling his show.
Third dog whistle; Tammy had been knocked to the ground, her shirt ripped off and she was groped by the African American male students. This was the first we, the Asbury students had heard of the groping and shirt charge. We knew it wasn't true because we knew she hadn't been knocked down, we knew where she was. Her shirt had neither been ripped off of her or ripped at all.
Berg continually made his racist comments while interviewing Tammy's parents and Tammy herself. At no time was there any mention of Tammy's behavior, or any representative from DPS on the show - it was all "scary black people destroying your schools, coming for our white women and girls." Alan Berg, that "great champion" against racism fanned the racist flames.
I don't know if it ever occurred to him that he was promoting, continuing and buttressing the racist ideas about Jews and blacks. Maybe this incident became part of the change that made him an "outspoken critic against racism."
After all ruckus Tammy returned to Asbury, she never again traveled to Whittier. She was still in our class and still had to deal with the Whittier students. I'm not sure how the mornings went for her, but the afternoons were certainly chilly.
In so many ways it didn't go back to "normal." Though the friendships with the students at Whittier stayed at the same level.
She didn't matriculate to our junior high with us, and I never saw her again. I never wanted to.
But I do wish I had a picture of the other half of our class. Our classmates at Whittier Elementary.