- [Voiceover] Warning.

This program contains strong language and racial slurs.

Audience discretion is advised.

(melancholic music) - [Narrator] A season of protests in 2020 turned up the volume on the nation's dialogue about race and racism.

It's a talk we've begun and dropped for decades.

- [Male speaker] If you're an American, if you love your country you have to talk about it.

- [Narrator] It's time.

The conversation starts with listening.

(melancholic music) On a mild August morning in 1972, children living in Amarillo's North Heights neighborhood began a regular commute that to this day can take up to two hours round-trip.

- The only kids in Amarillo that are bused are kids that live in the North Heights neighborhood.

The one place that we don't have a neighborhood school per se, is the North Heights.

And that's directly related to the desegregation.

The OCR ruling back in 1972.

- The OCR, or Office for Civil Rights is the federal government agency that works to ensure equal access to public education.

It approved Amarillo Independent School District's plan to desegregate North Heights schools in the seventies and oversees all modifications.

- In 1972 that neighborhood was about 98% African-American, about 1% Anglo and less than a half a percent of Hispanic.

Today it's about.

That neighborhood is about 68% African-American, about 20% Hispanic and then Anglo making up the rest of that population.

And so, what we've seen since 1972 is the ethnicity breakdown in Amarillo, when you break it up in quadrants.

We really do have a proportionate number of all races living in all portions of the city.

We no longer see just one area that is only, or predominantly one race.

- [Narrator] The demographic changes figure prominently into a new district proposal that will give all elementary school children in North Heights the opportunity to attend the magnet schools that are now located in their neighborhood.

But that wasn't an option when desegregation occurred.

- We were at the mercy of the school board of how they desegregated schools.

A lot of cities, that meant two-way busing.

If you're busing Black kids here, you need to bus some white kids here.

Not in Amarillo.

They just closed all the schools that were the Negro school.

They just closed 'em and sent kids all over the city.

- [Narrator] The district discontinued high school classes at the all-Black Carver Junior-Senior High School in 1967.

Soon, the junior high classes followed as did the closing of elementary schools that served only Black students.

The district divided students living in North Heights among its growing number of campuses.

- So that is a divide-and-conquer move.

- Explain.

- Divide and conquer, to me, it reminds me (Mildred clears throat) of the... Back in the Indian days when you would divide the villages.

And if you divide something it's easier to conquer, but you can't take it on full force.

If they are together it's harder to do, but if you divide, you can conquer.

- [Interviewer] Do you think that was the intent?

- Most definitely.

- [Narrator] North Heights families began to move to neighborhoods that offered schools.

- Because when you close the schools the neighborhoods sorta went down because you had some families that could afford to move out.

They did.

But then you had others where the kids had to be bused.

And I was one of those.

I had to be bused from the North Heights area all the way to Amarillo High School.

To the new Amarillo High on Bell Street, so.

- I lived on the line, so people right across the street from me went to Palo Duro, but I had to be bused to Amarillo High.

And so that experience was extremely different.

- [Interviewer] So you were able to graduate from Carver?

- From Carver, yes.

- [Interviewer] But then it was desegregated?

- It was devastating.

It was devastating because by the time they actually closed the school and started the busing, I had a school-aged son.

And it didn't really hit me until one morning I was taking him to the bus stop and he asked me, he said, "Mom, am I going to night school?"

- [Interviewer] It was that early?

- It was that early.

And we're talking a second-grader.

It's not safe and it's still not safe today, but they're still on the bus stop.

- [Narrator] Students in North Heights continue to be split apart despite the 1989 reopening of the Carver campus as a magnet school.

Ten years later the former Hilltop Elementary became Carver Early Childhood Academy, another magnet program.

- We had... Really about half of the school was neighborhood kids, the other half, were kids from all over the city.

- People thought it was for the neighborhood kids, but then it became a point of kids from all over Amarillo go, and people who live across the street don't get accepted to go to Carver.

They have to sit on a bus stop and drive past the school to get education.

And that's just inherently unfair.

- You kind of, I don't know why, I'm about to get emotional.

I went... (Isaac chuckles) I started off going to South Lawn Elementary, growing up on 1601 North Jefferson.

How far away was on the South side, South Lawn Elementary.

Carver was right up the street.

I could not even go to Carver in my neighborhood because it was a magnet school.

And so many people from other neighborhoods had the privilege of bringing their children to this community.

And so I had to be bused to South Lawn.

There were six Black children in the entire school.

I'm only 32 years old.

So when they say about the slavery and that oppression stuff and that racist stuff is so long ago, but this is not that long ago.

Six Black kids in the entire school.

Can you imagine that?

Bused during the winter times.

I'm having to wait outside.

and that's still happening today.

- I don't agree with busing.

I think every school should have the opportunity to succeed and every resource should be put into that school to make it successful, no matter what neighborhood it is.

I think busing, it takes away from the education of the child because he's putting more into getting to school and coming from the school that can be put more into just spending time in your community.

- It was a result of efforts for civil rights.

Do you think it kind of went astray?

- I think it was good in its intent.

Sometimes when people have good intentions it can either be good or bad and it's just not applicable now, you know.

Sometimes, what we've done in the sixties, or seventies, it just needs to be reevaluated in 2020.

- As I was coming in as superintendent, community members, and rightly so, were looking at me saying, "Our neighborhood, it just continues to deteriorate.

"And we believe," and I agree with them, "Is we don't have a school."

Schools are the center of neighborhoods.

On Friday night, people are at the football games.

On, you know, Monday morning people are at schools, people are volunteering in schools.

That's the center where we have Boy Scouts and the North Heights neighborhood just, you know, has not had that opportunity.

They don't have a true neighborhood school.

- [Narrator] After four community meetings in the Carver Attendance Zone, a committee, appointed by the District, helped draft the plan sent to the Office for Civil Rights.

All elementary school children living in North Heights would attend the Carver campuses.

- It would be the neighborhood school that all kids would feed to.

And then we'd still have the magnet component bringing in another two, or 300 kids from across the city.

There's probably only about 500, 600 kids in that total neighborhood, K through 12.

And so to keep two schools open.

We wanna be able to keep two schools open.

- [Narrator] Elementary school children who prefer their current campus, would have the option to still ride the bus.

Children who live in North Heights and are enrolling in Amarillo schools for the first time would be assigned to the Carver campuses.

Students will get a choice of middle and high school campus pathways.

- By not having a community school, there are lasting negative effects to that.

By having a community school, that means that the community has a cohesion from their youth.

So we all go to school together.

We play football together, play basketball together, go to the prom together, go to college together, go into the military together.

When Carver left, then everybody just scattered.

The school is the heartbeat of a community.

And I've realized that very quickly being at Bivins.

My school also serves lots of the shelters around town, specifically one being the Catholic Family Services shelter that's directly across the street from Carver.

And those students aren't even allowed to just go across the street to school.

There are kids that live across that street, their families have lived across the street from that school for generation, who've never gone to that school.

That building across the street is foreign to them.

It means nothing because "that's not my school."

But if that was a part of our community -- and we're moving in that direction, eventually I hope -- the community would be supported in a better way.

The school could have and host family nights.

We could build an ideal educational environment for kids in North Amarillo that live right there with this great school, with all these great programs and just say, "Hey, now you guys can come too," because we've got to move in that direction and have those conversations.

So people can understand why neighborhood schools are so important, but specifically why that neighborhood school needs to be a priority.

- [Narrator] Amarillo ISD submitted the proposal to the Office for Civil Rights in February 2019.

Late that year, the OCR responded.

- We finally had a response from them, said, "We're working on this.

"This is a priority.

"Right after the first of the year, January, February, "we'll be back in touch."

And so January came, silence, February came, silence and then COVID hit.

- I'm naturally an eternal optimist, but this situation stresses that beyond its limits.

I really don't think they hear us.

(haunting music) You know, we need someone.

We need leadership that's going to listen.

It doesn't matter if it's Republican or Democrat, we need leadership that will listen.

- [Narrator] A Confederate general no longer casts a shadow on an Amarillo Elementary school after looming large for nearly 70 years.

Robert E. Lee Elementary School in North Amarillo opened to white students only in the early 1950s, during segregation.

- For them to name it Robert E. Lee was a slap in the face because I guarantee you the individuals who voted on that school name, there wasn't any Black person in the whole room.

So, and the time period that it was named, it was done purposely.

- [Narrator] According to the Southern Poverty Law Center, the use of Confederate symbols in public spaces spiked from the 1900s through the 1920s alongside adoption of Jim Crow segregation laws and the revival of the Ku Klux Klan.

It spiked again in the 1950s and sixties during the Civil Rights Movement.

In recent years, there's been a groundswell of support for removing the monuments.

The Amarillo NAACP began lobbying for a new name for the Robert E. Lee campus in 2017.

- All the elementary schools, except that one, were named after the district they're a part of, like Wolflin, Avondale, San Jacinto and so forth.

- [Narrator] In January 2018, a controversial vote of the school board shortened the campus' name simply to Lee.

But Amarillo NAACP approached Loomis again after a district election and three trustee resignations changed the entire makeup of the board.

- And so this time when we came back in and talked about Robert E. Lee, we asked them about what's the policy for naming schools in Amarillo.

You don't have a policy?

Can we get a policy?

So they issued a policy saying all elementary schools should be named after a famous person from Amarillo, or for the neighborhood they're in.

All middle schools will be named after Texas heroes.

And all high schools will be named after landforms: The Tascosa, the Caprock, Palo Duro, Amarillo.

Great, this is your policy?

Vote on it?

Yeah, good.

So, then I come back two weeks later and say, "You gotta follow your policy.

"Robert E. Lee never lived in Amarillo, Texas."

Yeah, that neighborhood isn't Robert E. Lee neighborhood.

It's called Park Hill.

And so when we put that proposal to them they agreed and they voted unanimously to change the name of that school.

- And so it just made sense that if we had any kid that walked in the door and somehow it sent the wrong message to a kid.

Don't care what you believe about one side or the other.

I don't wanna get -- I try not to get caught up in the political issues of the day, but when I walk in and I'm AISD superintendent, what I'm looking at is Johnny, Billy, whomever, that is walking right through that door and is there anything that is keeping that kid from being successful?

And it was just...

It was clear to me, and the recommendation I made to the board is, if we've got a name of a school that somehow is isolating, (melancholic music) causing kids not to be successful, causing them to question who they are, their heritage, their culture, we need to change that.

(mournful music) - [Narrator] Little more than a year after desegregation began in Amarillo schools, one campus had to give up its homage to the Confederacy.

With its eye toward Federal Court rulings in January 1974, the Amarillo school board barred Tascosa High School from using Confederate symbols.

- I went to school, church rather, with a family, called the Turners.

And their son, Jesse, was a minister at a young age.

Started preaching.

And I remember in 1974, his sophomore or junior year, he started a campaign to change Tascosa.

Tascosa was of course the Rebels.

They had Colonel Reb as their mascot.

They played "Dixie" for a fight song.

And Jesse fought and did whatever he could along with the Amarillo NAACP and other kids, they had all that changed.

The unfortunate thing, Jesse couldn't walk with his class when he graduated because of death threats.

- [Narrator] Had the school board not made the decision, The district could have lost Texas Education Agency accreditation and with it more than $12 million a year in state funding.

- And so when we come to full circle now and I look at Tascosa High School and I look at the Hall of Fame that people have, you'll never hear Jesse's name mentioned when he should probably be the leading candidate there.

(melancholic music) - [Interviewer] What do you see in the children that you have in your school today as far as the ones of color?

Do they see enough educators and other people that look like them?

- You know, no, I don't think they see enough educators that look like them, but I think the district is trying very hard to bring qualified talent to this area to support all students.

- I can go back six, or seven years when I walked in as the human resources officer.

At that time we were over 90% white in our professional staff.

And we committed to finding a staff and developing a staff that looks like our student body.

And so, over the last seven, or eight years, we've gone from about 90.2% to right at 80%.

Our Hispanic teachers have grown from about 3% to about 15%.

Our African-American teachers have grown from about 1% to almost 3%.

And that's not nearly enough, but we're committed to that.

And part of it is about being able to recruit.

It's a national problem.

It's a national issue about making sure we've got enough African-American teachers, or Hispanic teachers, or Asian teachers.

- [Narrator] A 2016 study from the US Department of Education revealed an elementary and secondary educator workforce that is 82% white.

- I'm the first Black male principal at Bivins and I'm, even to a point I've been talking with individuals, I may be the only Black male principal in the Texas Panhandle.

So it's... We've got work to do.

(RJ chuckles) From the first time I became an assistant principal, I was excited.

Like, "We're gonna hire somebody.

"I get to be on that side of it.

"Okay, what do we need to do?"

And the first thing my principal looked at me and said, "Well, do you know anybody?"

Till it came to a point where I began to scratch my head and say, "Oh, that's why.

"That's why somebody that is a Black American "hasn't been included in the pool because "you don't know any."

That was where my first, within my first year of helping in the hiring practices I knew I could influence it a certain way.

- [Narrator] The 2016 US Department of Education report revealed that the pipeline of future teachers still is overwhelmingly white.

Individuals of color made up just 25% of college students enrolled in teacher preparation programs in the 2013 academic year.

- So three years ago we started a program called CORE.

Cultivating our own.

And we started with a cohort of about 20 that we were able, that wanna be teachers that went to WT.

As they move into this year, their junior and their senior year, we'll start providing staff development the AISD way.

The tools that we use in the classroom.

So when they graduate a year from now, they'll be ready to step into the classroom.

And what we've promised them is we'll give them a job and we'll bring them in.

We've also developed a relationship with AC and Texas Tech.

Kids can get their teaching certifications coming to AC, finishing out at Tech and really getting some really great student teaching opportunity almost a year long of internship and working in that process.

And we're excited.

- [Interviewer] Are they all minorities in these?

- They are all either minorities, or they are first-generation kiddos.

And so they are predominantly minority students - Even from a parent perspective.

I have a son in the district and I think that they're really trying to work hard at bringing role models for students in schools to show that in all aspects of schools, that there, you know... Is diversity.

- [Interviewer] And people that are successful.

- Yes, yes.

That are successful, that are professional.

That are living in their community and that are like them and something that they can aspire to.

- You have to be able to see it before you can believe it.

For any kid.

And kids have to understand, "Hey, I can be that person."

We've got some mentoring programs that are going on, helping to fill that void that we have at the moment, with some really strong African-American, Hispanic and Asian leaders in this community that go to schools (melancholic music) and really they don't have a job other than just walk around and talk to kids, make sure kids know that they're a banker, they're a lawyer, they're a, you know, whatever, a fireman.

You know, all walks of life and have the conversation about, "What do you think you can be?"

- I'm a statistic.

My father was incarcerated most of my life.

I was raised by a single, hardworking, God-fearing mother.

Thank you, Lord.

But I had to have the talk at an early age that you have to work twice as hard.

And that when you mess up, it will follow you forever.

That you don't almost have an opportunity to make a mistake because they won't let that go.

It's good because you can work hard, but then it's like, "You don't have the option to fail."

And so I think, as when we do fail, it's just, "Oh God."

It can be devastating.

- You're three steps behind.

Always.

And I feel like that was something that propelled me a lot because I feel like we are the Black community because we're put to such a low standard and we're expected to meet this standard if not be below it.

So that's just kind of all we're given, you know?

You're given just enough to meet the standard.

- My mom, I remember, telling me, "You have to work twice as hard to get half the credit."

And I just knew that I had to be good at my schoolwork.

And, people will respect me for what I do.

- When I was at school I wasn't allowed to wear blue jeans.

And my dad said it's because when he was a kid he had to get up, go check the cows, cut hay, whatever, before he went to school.

And he said, "I work enough for you "that you don't have to look like a sharecropper.

"You can put on decent clothes and go to school."

That also led to the thing of, whatever you do, you have to do it five times better than that white kid.

Why?

Because that's just the way society is.

They're gonna look as you as the lesser no matter what you do.

Whatever you achieve.

And you're gonna be looked upon as lesser.

So you always have to show respect and dignity and self-pride and self-love.

- My parents told me the exact same thing.

If my friend is white and they have a job and they are doing it well, I had to do it twice as good.

So, if I was cleaning toilets, I had to be twice as good.

- [Interviewer] Just to be looked at as even?

- Right.

That's exactly right.

- It kinda becomes this competitiveness where you have to be better than everyone just to be taken seriously.

And I think to a certain extent, that's unhealthy.

I don't think there's anything wrong with like friendly competition, or wanting to be better, or bettering yourself, but if you're doing it only for the sake of getting people to even listen to you, then (mournful music) eventually you're going to not have anything else to give.

And you're gonna wonder why you're not enough.

- [Narrator] Next time on the Handle, Living While Black, - You may not have owned human beings and called them slaves.

And no one is pointing the finger at you saying that you did.

- They'd sit down and they figured out how to oppress a people.

Sit down and figure out how to undo what was done centuries ago.

- We can't stay in the same comfortable setting and make change.

(nostalgic music)