The iconic images of school integration show determined black students making their way through jeering white crowds, just to take their seats in class. And at the head of those classes, teachers who were part of a workforce every bit as segregated as the student body.
After the landmark Supreme Court decision in Brown vs. Board of Education, teachers represented another, lesser-known, facet of the decades-long push for integrated schools.
Dr. Freddie Young spoke with WLRN about her experience integrating then all-white Pinecrest Elementary school in 1968. Young spent more than 40 years as a teacher and principal, 35 of them in Miami-Dade. She became principal of Ethel Beckford/Richmond Elementary school, and retired in 2003, just a year after the court order mandating desegregation in Miami-Dade was finally lifted.
You can listen to the conversation here:
