NET Journal; 115; Head Start in Mississippi

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such a staff writer following program is wrong and at the national educational television network dan they need land to use the coffee cup and into

ideas and now they gave me a lot of the bear a creating an educational mississippi means more than sitting in a classroom it means breaking out of confinement explore the world has to go past the ponds edge over the top of the next hill you know now poverty and segregation set limits on the lives of

thousands of children in small towns and dusty plantations hundred years after the abolition of slavery were negroes are still trapped by conditions in the kind of modern humans in whitestone most of the land and almost all business workers hired is low and our fuel comforts of living it there are almost as many blacks as whites in mississippi but the whites make all the important decisions about taxes and jobs and schools education which should be a way out only perpetuate the old pattern of exclusion and dependency and then the pain and their operation head start the major educational effort of the war on poverty began to show what lay beyond its limits poor people were to do things for themselves

in the late spring of nineteen sixty five parents from at communities former child development group of mississippi cd kiev but they got a million and a half dollars from the office of economic opportunity for a summer nursery school program each community with organize its own school theater and then people began building their center in the community called second pilgrims today seven years i've been misguided idea to see some of the myths that our body their bodies that used to listen to when i was fifty sixty years of nature and we going to skew we have the royal palaces bio the latest posting as track and we would have people

out in recent times we've lived experience they could shoot hoops grow by the ground rules things like get to movies to keep he and i had the world came out and they can now fabel and bad country churches were fitted out of school because they were the only public buildings the negro communities known parents themselves hired local people as teachers cd gm sent in young professional educators to offer training and advice the chairman of the centre at second pilgrims rest was mrs saffo who had picked cotton and on housework until she got interested in the freedom movement well you did it well mike mcginness that were contrary of bp and i begin to reconfigure them a more gimlet you know these television in a

little more an avid in the eighth inning and anti eve begin to take effect on me about what they've allowed the fan about money at tv video likely than white people than in the you know in the end photo of the young not done at kd nikki thinking negroes and then again to think in waiting for the ftp to a beginning think about defending trying to stop now i think about my own children they would become the same thing that i was calm just before the cd gm head start centers open parents teachers and staff workers met on the old negro college campuses mark buehrle to talk about this summer's war organizers had been preparing the communities for headstart all spring we all introduce the oprah willow paul although community two rebels that the community to be designed by the community and will the community people by that i mean the people in poverty we don't believe in

heaven people get out of poverty the people that are in the lawyer hills of people who need it so that's why we are guaranteed to be and we will give him all the deal although poverty or were being in charge was a difficult new experience the first director of cd gm tom eleven there were differences and doubts among the parents right that people in their own opinions don't need somebody on how we don't need people with a cream we don't need it you know but now i want to know what people feel the parents had ever been able to take part in the education of their children and they lack the self confidence as well

as the political power to have influence in the schools it was hard for them to believe it and train people could be qualified to teach me it we have all kinds of people yeah right they resented negro teachers who work for white school boards i would not help organize the atm

oh man while we live the president you're welcome

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right all books in this is that they are independent and this is that they don't like that the bill but here all children of the equal to little glad we will likely have bigger will leave and that they call he's a paintings by it's been tom eleven the first director of see the gm is a new york

psychologist who had worked in the freedom schools of the civil rights movement a primer in the middle aged patients the city new york is not immigration but the ability of a child in the community to experience a common goal which is an alteration in their economic social political status in mississippi they need more people on her realized the sense of the rug that and find out more from the beginning many things they must protect the most precious commodity your children they have a responsibility to getting their children over china's second opinions and one of the first things we do is what we consider quote like in terms of potential state licenses and education

an important consideration for middle class an olympic committee but it will use the same concept to quell and translating into the mississippi for communities we would effectively disenfranchise the entire community but any role in running its program planning its program and the ultimate responsibility to move on we would be perpetuating a complete center buses choke so we ask ourselves does it qualify for publications were interested in quality i think we have people within the community but have a quad which no amount of identification can match that her roots in the community they have an understanding of the problem they can communicate with the people that were going to be working with them with the children and perhaps most important they're not going to have

the problem of the outside white reflection oh especially communicating to the people of mississippi they are in actuality they're out lack of training and essentially their lack of work who runs it is program must be run by people of opinions and i think they were doing excellently oh and everyone know that there was a week of teacher training it wasn't all lecture in theory less than one day you can make it was it was that was at the sake don't know the ball don't know i can get my liver donor was planned one day they'll only make it

and we have a tie you know we are letting captain you can keep a fatty you can get in a vip no one was an expert parents and staff learn from each other one in the holiday but if they don't pay you back and many people may need more humane

this became a penny he comes back all summer long in the hot bright mornings of the mississippi delta the children of duran gathered at the head start center and second pilgrims writer out there were forty five of them we were six years ago and all of them were black

oh wow the teachers and their aides were the women of direct none of them were trying all of them were poor and need a job on hand to offer their skills were a few experienced teachers like doris derby the center was the head now it's b

oh really making a game out of numbers was nude in a successful which you needed no training to understand the middle of children now it's b play was another new idea

playing houseman fooling with tin cans and corn cobs thank you the teachers were struck with the same sense of the right before you knew that everybody and excitement and discovery was contagious this government building blocks and raise you use and development

there aren't many ways to leave your children and iran to express themselves freely schools and parents and tradition of demand obedience and conformity and everybody in the place as the teachers began to understand the possibilities of a new kind of education they challenge the rules of a close society but now they're warm smiles and prays for every sign of creativity and achievement

now this is a nursery school and with the new type of issues you end doing a lot of knitting entirely from a new ideas like steve weekend think it's a new way with three key disciplines that might be harder than using the scene which were mentioned a couple whose evelyn and it's less than one in schools in homes all over the south the switch is an easy shortcut to respect and obedience the teachers were reluctant to get out of the goal of the child development group of mississippi was freedom not conformity and ms chu who's a miner teachers wanted

to and critique it became a real problem wasn't disobedience what we need like the society around especially distracting sometimes the difference between a listless and an energetic child was a case of warts most of the children have never had a medical examination

thank you only a few doctors would make house calls or extend credit and the mobile clinic was intimidating to the parents

crime your music just seems to be when you're going or program director on the central staff of cd gm she tried to help old ad for sanders to run smoothly if anybody say maybe it could extend that person basically had like a rather simplistic distance davidson blacks or a base or anything way i think will skip town and some low tables and entertainment that maybe an attainable mean i don't actually know where you could see him now not been put in the name of giving boxes though wichita eisenstein of people you know ryan impose those in the film almost here so the key is you know they can go to the polls the gospel loud and to have it

the schoolroom gradually took shape as teachers picked up with suggestions and learn from their own experience they built a dollhouse organizing and arrange the library on what they do now it was bad

community begins with a sense of identity and i respect her family i'm an upright and richness of the rings the gm was not afraid to celebrate black children played with negro magazines and help make their own books already you and he did and you know it i do the language and more of the community was the material of

education at school and at home there was a shared standard of value the children and the teachers had to love love it enough to want to make it better it is mm hmm

i am and i think as a program developed so did like hostility not far from the rent the veil with settlers burned to the ground it wanted and that i want to we use the committee a big beep bit about that really i got away with it that tell us dammit the bed all get better levees who will be weakened born radical involve you know what to do

that's right in every case that is now going to be alive and that it could be navigable back to me if you can he made me think about a day indeed we did now we have them or whether we have it within their own center at least parents felt secure but the children would integrate the white school in the fall and the grownups were white school it here you have the mother the interstate and innovation kenny anyone who hasn't doesn't have these

things haven't whether the children were reading i'd like to know the children are learning hi robin yeah very ali

and now and you know we have a kitchen that they and we need to go we have a piece which we don't play out that and we won't we were like they were eating at a time to do something to complete poverty despite growing tension with a white community in the senate became more and more active or was your goal on that one living whole families were drawn into the life of the center's older brothers and sisters played with the younger ones from the fields time to be with the children all i think you're doing you'll remember that new they help with moving equipment and hauling water and coventry and so most of them got no payment of the chores make work

is who recounted it was in the middle of their lives the white opposition was determined to stop see the gm scruggs earnings in the shootings and the harassment got worse well maybe as witness how local police weren't interested in a law student on the cd gm central staff came down the next day to get the facts and offer advice well you were there during the

world thank you he's baseball's bill it's b as parents talk to children about their tradition they went deeper toward their roots themselves the mississippi delta has its own flavors and sound and the community build a folk festival around them

there was nostalgia even about the bitter years of slavery ended in the head or low earned it these peace

head start is part of the war on poverty was meant to move communities to action and also that his teacher's job to carry just getting community action project on such as unhealthy in any ability to those things and well yeah things that going on in the area educational social political whenever the other things are that will help develop your things affect the parents has to do anything that is standing on china i think i wanna know you is right because nobody's expecting to have a bear has begun what we try to do in our eyes our favourites you don't have to eat into a bank robbery and not just tell him to cooperate and not cooperate our sales although maggie tidal wave just the job she came time backing people worker

if you expect to get something out of it together people will continue to go on not very unfamiliar ground that you were any of you are in a death in a land that you live to be here palin's talk about other forms of government held before ct gm they hadn't even known the possibilities now that he can even with that they leave their airline which will likely begin near a bank and got a lot of them about one of the doctors now in place but you know the real the other way not going to buy you a good job and then you're going to make money and then you begin the way the jaw you know

got acting than air at the end of the summer representatives from all the child development centers do you want to talk about the future of the program i don't think so we need a job we made it

we need to make a deal jobs were being created that cd gm was having that were negroes could run a school system and i couldn't manage their own affairs experience was deeply unsettling to white mississippi it attacked the assumptions of racists or could not believe that negroes were qualified citizen and it undermined the interests of many graduates who still treated needlessly to the black community at the bottom of the pyramid of power was on the move down the same streets in the

same council of the whites who had no trouble making themselves heard charges began to reach all we all headquarters in washington of bad bookkeeping misuse of funds for civil rights activities and professional standards and separatism cd gm funds were held up for five months while the program was investigated the books are audited and the political problems were way finally the money came through for a second expanded summer program and then suddenly when it was over the supporters of cd gm originally accused polio officials of killing the program to appease political pressures a charge they deny or juice sugar man of the oleo it helped set up cd gm had watched over its administration and tried to resolve its problems atala mr shriver but the entire o ios dev feel that there have been substantial contributions made by the program but in general we've we found a repetition of the

same kinds of problems that we experience that during the first great and that is politically in the misuse of funds at some degree of sloppiness in accounting and birth control of funds and recording of the purposes for which they were used and in new york and clark the educator and psychologist join a national citizens committee that also looked into cd gm and published a report that dismiss these charges and get away that too i do that the cd g and cannot be refunded or should not be refunded because of fiscal responsibility of the robber they're superficial and sophistry like type of argument between us has boomed but they can be handled should determine whether a program is refund and our deployment fiscal problems can be rented

my general feeling is that it is not a good idea to encourage the development of separatist they grow organizations even though i would acknowledge that this will provide valuable experience in responsibility and procedure which would be use real and in dealing with other organizations it is pretty clear to me and anyone knows the pbm picture that white children were not excluded and then let me emphasize that this is not a problem and he knows it's a program for all of the people of mississippi the fact of the matter is that you leave like lost in the arc of philadelphia los angeles the anti poverty programs are perceived by the white community as being for negroes and poor whites who are eligible generally do not

despite that this is true throughout the country it would seem to me that the obvious and would be true even more so in the city i think that there has not been any significant gain in the willingness of local community organizations and politically the official agencies of government to be involved in relationship to the negro communities at least in the context ocd and i think that my study you anti poverty programs one can almost predict the extent one group of potential successful program by leonardo antagonism which beck program generated from the political establishment leah i think get take second place to no one in our admiration for what can be done by nonprofessionals these kinds of programs same time well we have a definite feeling that there is a need for professional leadership and

supervision and training of the non professional and then increasingly i had the feeling that local communities were not receptive to that kind of participation and that the four cd gm was not willing and an able to enforce its its policies that there should be such participation can gm have any staff who came in set out both feet and gm programs throughout the city what is clear however is that that's that was probably more successful than any other staff in any other anti poverty program in this country and realistically and genuinely involving the people of mississippi themselves in the day to day running of that progress this witty intimate have been the goal of the anti poverty program as demonstrated that that goes into

among campaign to say seedy gm began with a mass meeting in jackson mississippi government officials were rapidly funding alternative headstart white school boards and welfare agencies were often in charge of the new program and how the sample came down from director teller much trouble she was having with the new program they're the online archive can you write if you get media and they'll only imagine there'd be white house party with opportunity to be what they say and you get the fighting they know their caps captain not fighting the yams who are so i don't know are that's right dc

it one of the alternative head start programs of the largest was chartered by three politically powerful figures at a moderate newspaper editor and industrialists and a plantation owner all what the twelve members of the board of directors only four of them are black and they are middle class moderates the governor of mississippi has endorsed is an old horror negroes and no militant civil rights leaders making policy you

the league that worried about their imminent all day at the way we laugh and they get it and at a cafe in my mouth and in the way a lot of red on obama's state that we know today is an actual watching them necessarily all that we

he going to say is that we know to be thought one vowel at it you know we marian wright was one of the few negro members of the mississippi by an incoming director of cd gm

at a time as we look across the united states at all richard bloom is a former polio director community action this stands out as about the lonely roller and when morty and one thing you didn't have any support from labor groups churchmen an independent citizen's was coming in from all parts of the country and even the all wheel offices in washington staff members signed a petition to save cdm your program is a great example of an app heard of a people who move beyond all this into basically programs that help themselves

no we do now wait korea it won't happen pepe and

politically and many of the people we all we got now the enormous energy of the civil rights movement

you have to pass by the people the police

now people in the navy the plan to pay there's been no way dave

the struggle went on for another two months finally just before christmas and we'll compromised edm program was founded on it the penny in going and going