Along Freedom Road: Hyde County, North Carolina, and the Fate of the Black Schools in the South. - book reviews

Monthly Review, Oct, 1995 by Arthur MacEwan

No, the story of Hyde County should not lead us to long for insular communities. In any case, there is no likelihood that we could create the homogeneity and intimacy of 1968 Hyde County black society out of the social fabric that we face in the United States of 1995. Yet there are some lessons to be learned from Hyde County, no less important because they are so simple.

One of these lessons is size. Large schools and large school districts create an alienated student body. Students who do not feel the schools belong to them most often feel that they do not belong in the schools. There are few success stories in public schools that do not include small administrative units as a central factor. Small administrative units, however, do not mean insular systems, broken off from larger political units. They do mean a decentralization of authority within those larger political units.

Another lesson is to be found in connections to the society outside the schools. Fund raisers and active Parent Teacher Organizations are parts of all good schools, whether in the rural poverty of Hyde County, the relative affluence of middle America's suburbia, or the heterogeneous environment of urban centers. Without the sort of "natural" community that exists in a Hyde County, connections between schools and the external society need more attention and conscious nurturing. Many school reform programs today call for parent and community councils to take an active part in running the schools. Some of these reform programs have no substance and ignore the fact that in today's economic environment few people have time to devote to running the school. Yet, if we want the schools to "belong" to the community and to the students, we have no choice but to find ways to build these connections. For starters, it is necessary to employ people to build and maintain ties to the community. School reform cannot be had on the cheap.

In the country, as in Hyde County, the reality of economic life places great constraints on what can be accomplished in the schools. Social and economic inequality and businesses' demands for a disciplined workforce dictate a great deal about the structure of the schools. But both Hyde County and other local stories make it clear that victories can be won in the schools. Perhaps through the schools, larger victories in society can also be won.

The ultimate lesson of Along Freedom Road is that progressive change is possible if it is built through popular struggle. There is no more fitting summary of that lesson from the Hyde County story than Frederick Douglass' famous statement:

If there is no struggle there is no progress. Those who profess to favor freedom and yet deprecate agitation are men who want crops without plowing up the ground. They want rain without thunder and lightning. They want the ocean without the awful roar of its many waters. This struggle may be a moral one; or it may be physical; but it must be a struggle. Power concedes nothing without a demand. It never did and it never will.