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FREEDOMWAYS FOURTH QUARTER 1972

created by this "crisis." The nature of the impact of this conflict is reflected in the positions taken by each faction. In the protest meeting set up by the Board to allow the community to air its differences (in other words to divide and conquer) on the white teacher issue the anti-white teacher faction, 

"...objected to the appointment of a white teacher in a colored school for the reasons that she would not be likely to live among colored people. That she would not associate with her pupils or their parents. That the social influence of an education teacher was very desirable and that the colored people could not secure it while the policy of employing white teachers in colored schools was adhered to. Mr. Bundick claimed that the taxpayers' daughters were obligated to accept menial positions at 6 or 8 dollars a month; that competent colored teachers can be found and that it is disgraceful to close this avenue of employment to colored females...There would be little inducement to colored people to educate their children if they were shut out from all but the humblest places in society." 28

In contrast the pro-white teacher faction reasoned that, "The objection to her on the grounds of color was ridiculous; that she was doing well; that her removal would be injurious to the school, whose welfare was after all the chief considerations." 24
While expressing an overriding concern with the quality of education offered in Colored Schools, the groups demonstrated divergent attitudes toward the impact of identity on the educational process. The faction seeking the teacher's dismissal seemed to view identity as a significant aspect of their children's education in general and attached a positive value to Black identity in particular. In stark contrast, the faction advocating the teacher's retention completely negated the impact of identity. The objection to her color was labelled "ridiculous." In the community protest over the abolition of colored schools the faction for separate schools characterized themselves as, "that portion of the community that are neither ashamed nor afraid of being known as colored..." while the opposing faction expressed a "desired to be known as American citizens...instead of being proscribed as colored men." 25 Caught up in a frame-

23 Ibid., March 2, 1869.
24 Ibid. 
25 Ibid., November 11, 1873.

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