With Barack Obama getting the Democratic nomination this week, it’s amazing to think that just 44 years ago, African Americans were excluded from the Democratic Party in some Southern states.

It was 1964. The Democratic National Convention was held in Atlantic City, New Jersey. The nominees were Lyndon Johnson for president and Hubert Humphrey for vice president. Blacks in Mississippi who had attempted to attend Democratic Party meetings had routinely been turned away at the door. They had not been able to participate in electing delegates to the Convention. And besides, the all-white Mississippi Democratic Party was demanding “separation of the races in all phases of society.”

Bob Moses and the staff of the Council of Federated Organizations (COFO) decided to fight back. They organized the Mississippi Freedom Democratic Party (MFDP) and attended the Democratic Convention. This group of 64 black citizens and four white citizens from Mississippi demanded to replace the all-white Democratic Party members from Mississippi. They argued that the existing delegates represented a segregated all-white party that had been illegally elected to represent their state, since segregation violated federal law.

One of the leaders was a sharecropper named Fannie Lou Hamer. One of twenty children and the granddaughter of slaves, she was evicted from the plantation she’d been raised on for registering to vote. She remained an activist though, and after attending a literacy workshop in Winona, Mississippi, she was arrested on false charges and taken to jail, where she was brutally beaten.

At the 1964 Democratic Convention, Hamer gave a passionate speech and portions of it were played on national television. In her speech she asked:

“Is this America, the land of the free and home of the brave, where we have to sleep with our telephones off the hooks because our lives be threatened daily, because we want to live as decent human beings, in America?”

While I was researching my book A Thousand Never Evers, I read a lot about Fannie Lou Hamer and the Mississippi Freedom Democratic Party. But it was just last week I discovered that my father, Harvey Burg, actually played a small part in this piece of history. I was interviewing him about his job as a civil rights lawyer in Alabama in the 1960s. (I’ll post the interview on the Feature page of this site next week.) That’s when we got to talking about the 1964 Democratic Convention.

“I was privileged to be one of the civil rights workers advocating the seating of black delegates from this newly-formed Party,” my dad told me. He described how, after lots of fighting, the Democratic Party offered a “compromise,” which was two at-large seats.

The “compromise” was that members of the Mississippi Freedom Democratic Party would be able to observe proceedings but they still couldn’t vote for a candidate at the Convention. “The national Democratic Party officials said this was an important first step, and the President and Vice Presidential candidates urged the Mississippi Freedom Democratic Party to accept,” my dad explained.

Fannie Lou Hamer, the Mississippi delegation, and the leading civil rights figures of the time went to a church in Atlantic City to discuss whether to accept the offer. “The meeting stretched on for hours and hours,” my dad explained. “It was one of the greatest demonstrations of democracy in action that I have ever seen in my life. National leaders of the civil rights movement like Roy Wilkins, Dr. King, John Lewis, Bob Moses, James Farmer, and of course, Fannie Lou Hamer, all discussed their heartfelt positions.”

In the end, though, the Mississippi Freedom Democratic Party rejected the compromise, because they did not want a symbolic or token victory. They wanted real change. “This principled stand set the change for a great many reforms to come,” my dad told me.

The next day, members of the MFDP resorted to direct action, picketing on the Jersey Boardwalk and protesting on the convention floor.

With that history in mind, it’s especially exciting to watch this political season unfold.

Classroom Resources: Check out this outstanding documentary on youtube.com titled “Sick and Tired of Being Sick and Tired.” It covers civil rights in Mississippi, Fannie Lou Hamer, and the MFDP. Ten minutes long and narrated by young people, it’s a natural for showing to middle and high school students. Also, teachers, for an in-depth account of the MDFP, read the chapter devoted to it in Local People: The Struggle for Civil Rights in Mississippi by John Dittmer.

It’s been quite an exciting homecoming here in Boston. Last week, I had the honor of taping a segment of The Literati Scene, a Boston Neighborhood Network TV show hosted by Smoki Bacon and Dick Concannon. There were several authors invited, and after we taped, we ate lunch at the Park Plaza Hotel and discussed politics. It was most interesting to hear the analysis of Sophie Freud, a social worker, author, and granddaughter of the late great Sigmund Freud.

That night Random House hosted a magnificent dinner for me at the Lenox Hotel’s restaurant Azure. It was a real treat to meet so many of the superstars who dwell in that magical world where literature and education collide.

Guests included: Susan Bloom, Professor Emerita and former director of the Simmons College Center for the Study of Children’s Literature; Betsey Detwiler, owner of Buttonwood Books & Toys; Kim French, former editorial staffer at Random House and outstanding teacher at Edward Devotion School; Lori Kauffman from Brookline Booksmith; Dr. Marilyn A. McCaffrey, Professor Emerita of English and Guardian of the Robert Cormier Manuscript Collection at Fitchburg State College; Alison Morris of Wellesley Booksmith and ShelfTalker fame; Charlene Peters of The Marblehead Reporter; and Terri Schmitz, owner of The Children’s Bookshop. I was thrilled that Smoki and Dick joined us for dinner too. Gobs of appreciation to Tracy Lerner, Library Marketing Manager of Random House Children’s Books, our terrific host for the evening.

The next day, I visited with relatives and old friends. Then it was time to begin preparation for another bookstore event at The Spirit of ’76 Bookstore in my hometown of Marblehead. This event felt like an episode of that old show “This is Your Life.” The store was full of people I’ve known since I was born, including my childhood neighbors, the Macks, and three of my favorite Marblehead teachers: Marcia Williams-Lord (Grades 4 and 5), Jan Darsa (9th Grade English), and Marilyn Day (Advisor to the High School Newspaper). Thank you, thank you to everyone who attended and most especially to bookstore manager Hilary Lay.

Contrary to what people may think, the true story of desegregation in our nation’s public schools is not stuck in history books. It’s a current event. Or perhaps, more accurately, a future aspiration.

How many of us realize that since the 1980s our nation’s schools have not been desegregating but resegregating black and Latino students? Scholars from the UCLA Civil Rights Project Gary Orfield and Chungmei Lee discuss this in their paper Why Segregation Matters: Poverty and Educational Inequality (2005). They write:

U.S. schools are now 41 percent nonwhite and the great majority of the nonwhite students attend schools which now show substantial segregation. Levels of segregation for black and Latino students have been steadily increasing since the l980s…

Before we go any further, a legal briefing (although those of you who took high school Latin can skip ahead to the next paragraph): De jure means by law. And de facto means through practice.

So school segregation mandated by Jim Crow Laws was de jure, until the Brown v. Board of Education Supreme Court ruling in 1954 that declared that segregation in the public schools was against the law nationwide.

Today we have de facto racial segregation, meaning there’s a separation of races not due to law but other factors. As Orfield and Lee write:

The high level of poverty among children, together with many housing policies and practices which excludes poor people from most communities, mean that students in inner city schools face isolation not only from the white community but also from middle class schools.

(Photo on right from Memphis Commercial Appeal.)

Some school systems have successfully worked to overcome de facto segregation by implementing policies that deliberately create a racial mix of students in each school.

However, last year, in landmark cases, the Supreme Court found that the racial integration efforts in both Louisville, Kentucky and Seattle, Washington were unconstitutional. In July, Emily Bazelon published a fascinating article about these cases titled “The Next Kind of Integration” in the New York Times Magazine. She explores whether desegregation based on factors other than race—perhaps socioeconomic status or parental education level—is the wave of the future.

Read the rest of this entry »

This week my sister, Rachel Belin, hosted a book release party for me at Joseph-Beth Booksellers in Lexington, Kentucky. A huge thank you to Rachel, to everyone who showed up, and especially to Brooke Raby and the Joseph-Beth staff. The “Read One, Give One” program was a big success, and we managed to collect a whole boxful of books to donate to a Fayette County school in need of literary assistance.

My favorite part of the night was meeting all the young readers and writers who came to say hi. Eleven-year-old Alexus Dunn told me she reads “really big books all the time.” And her nine-year-old brother Nehemiah asked me excellent questions about who turns a manuscript into an actual book and how much money it takes to do that.

Then thirteen-year-old Anne-Marie Campbell and her mom came to say hello. Anne-Marie is home schooled and had already read A Thousand Never Evers. She had a list of interesting questions for me, before she revealed that she too is a writer with a rigorous daily practice and a novel underway.

Also, twelve-year-old Abby Miller and her fourteen-year-old sister were there. Abby and Emily, along with their mom Lisa, have their own book on the shelves of Joseph-Beth. It’s called Girls Rock! Just the Way We Are: Wise Teens Offer Tweens & Moms Advice on Healthy Body Image, Self-Esteem & Personal Empowerment. I think I’m going to read it right now.

Apparently at the Texas PTA Leadership Conference in Austin.

Yup, I was surprised too.

I went to the conference to sign books at the Barnes and Noble booth but arrived early and had time to stroll the conference floor. I don’t know what I expected to find at such a convention, but what I discovered was booth after booth of vendors selling school fundraiser trinkets.

And what really caught my eye was the booth of the Texas Beef Council right there among them.

In addition to being a former vegetarian–after a decade, I gave it up at the sight of a filet mignon–I’m also an avid Oprah Winfrey fan who carefully tracked Oprah’s trial after she insulted the beef industry. So needless to say, I was intrigued.

Enter Stacy Bates, certified dietician and passionate beef eater. “What’s the connection between beef and the PTA?” I asked. Stacy told me that she was at the conference to encourage families to get back together at the dinner table and eat beef. “It’s good for our health,” she said. Then she told me there are 29 cuts of lean beef that have only one gram of fat more per serving than chicken.

“How often do you eat beef?” I wanted to know.

“Three times a day,” she said with a straight face.

I was astonished. “You eat beef three times a day?”

“Yes, I do.” Stacy smiled.

“Isn’t that unhealthy?”

“No,” Stacy told me. “It’s all about portion size. A portion is about the size of your palm. Not my palm,” she said. “Mine’s about five ounces.” She looked at my hands. “But yours. Yours are about three.”

Wow! I was really starting to like Stacy. The impact of being told I have three ounce palms by a smart and beautiful beef expert cannot be underestimated. But I was still doubting that Stacy ate beef for breakfast.

“Doesn’t that take a lot of planning?” I asked.

“Yes it does,” Stacy told me. “I defrost six ounces the night before and cook it up. Eat three ounces for dinner and have the rest in the morning.”

“Do you feel bad eating so many cows?” I know that I’m a hypocrite these days when it comes to meat. I feel like my body needs it, especially for the B-12, but I still can’t swallow it down without thinking of the poor chicken or cow’s extended family.

Stacy just looked at me quizzically.

“I mean, do you think they have feelings?” I prodded.

“No more than dogs,” she said. “They’re not domesticated.”

I wasn’t really satisfied by that answer, but I went on to ask a more…err….burning question, one brought to my attention by an ardent vegan friend. It was about the methane buildup in the atmosphere because of so many cows constantly err… releasing gas. “Do you think the cows mmmming in the air causes a problem?” I said, “mmming” like I was too proper to use the ‘f’ word, like it was a fill-in-the-blank activity.

To her credit, Stacy knew exactly what I was asking. “No, the farmers make their livelihood by keeping the environment clean. Why would they want to mess it up?”

It was an interesting response. I looked around the beef booth, mulling over everything she had told me. And that’s when all of a sudden I noticed all the booklets on the beef table.

“Oh, those are our curricula,” Stacy said.

“Curricula? Beef curricula?”

“We have history, Spanish, cultural diversity.”

I couldn’t believe I had just discovered the curricula and it was already 4:25pm. I had to be at the Barnes and Noble table signing at 4:30pm.

“They’re not beef-centric,” Stacy assured me.

Udderly fascinated, I thanked Stacy. Then it was time for me to mooove along.