Martyr for a Cause: Desegregation

Herald-Leader columnist, Merlene Davis, wrote an interesting column recently about the passing of a 107-year old former teacher named Emma Jean Guyn Miller.

In her tribute to Miller's career, Davis wrote that her career ended "when integration made her years of knowledge and experience dispensable."

Interesting choice of words.

Some would argue that many desegregated schools have yet to become integrated. Further, Davis soft-sells what happened to end Miller's career when she called her experience dispensable."

What happened to Miller was an oft told tale in the African American community - so much so that Davis can be forgiven for glossing over it. But many whites have forgotten the "martyrdom" of far too many African American teachers during desegregation in this and other states.

The truth is that during the Jim Crow decades, whites argued that schools for blacks may have been separate, but they were equal to those of whites. Of course, everyone knew that wasn't true. They were funded at roughly a third of white schools. Leftovers from white schools were standard issue for blacks. The evidence of inequity was overwhelming. It was how folks expected things to be.

There was a period of time when African American teachers were better educated than white teachers in Kentucky, and with her teaching credentials as early as 1921, Miller would have been among that better-educated number.

But when segregation really ended in Kentucky - not in 1954 with the Brown decision, nor in 1955 with Brown II, nor in 1964 with the passage to the Civil Rights Act, but following 1968 when Green v County Board made it clear that school districts that continued to resist desegregation would lose federal funding - those African American teachers who had educated so many were simply discarded because politicians and school administrators knew black teachers would not be acceptable to white parents. They couldn't get jobs in desegregated "white" schools.

Following a parallel course, were the once "equal" schools that blacks attended. After desegregation, those building weren't good enough for white children to attend and most were closed: Lexington's Constitution, Jefferson Davis, and Dunbar high School to name only three.

Yes, Miller became dispensable. Many black teachers became dispensable.

This from H-L:

She taught with love and was loved in return

If calls and e-mails to our newsroom are any indication, Emma Jean Guyn Miller touched a lot of lives before her life ended peacefully at her home in Nicholasville on Friday. She was 107 years old.

For more than 40 years, Mrs. Miller was a schoolteacher, starting in a one-room schoolhouse during segregation and ending when integration made her years of knowledge and experience dispensable.

"She taught every person in my family," said Sarah Newby of Lexington. "There were seven of us."

Newby was in "Miss Emma Jean's" primary class in 1942 at Dunbar Elementary School on Chestnut Street in Nicholasville. Mrs. Miller taught first, second and third grades in one classroom, and Newby remembers her being loving but strict.

"She had a mailbox on her desk," she said. "We all took pride in writing her letters, nice letters, and she would read them on Friday. It was so much fun seeing the expression on her face when she read the letters. It made us all excited."

Newby's love of reading and her love of learning came from Mrs. Miller, she said. She transformed that love into a teaching career that spanned half a century in Lexington....