wfn.org | Black Methodists pass resolution against school resegregation

[NewsDesk <NewsDesk@UMCOM.UMC.ORG>]

March 28, 2000 News media contact: Linda Green·(615)742-5470·Nashville,
Tenn.  10-31-71B{174}

NOTE: This report may be used as a sidebar to UMNS story #172.

WINSTON-SALEM, N.C. (UMNS) - The African-American caucus in the United
Methodist Church has unanimously endorsed a resolution supporting advocacy
groups, religious bodies and educational associations fighting school
resegregation.

The National Black Methodists for Church Renewal (BMCR), in its 33rd annual
meeting, went on record March 24 in support of any group working for quality
education for black children.  They said local governments, through
re-districting plans and court decisions, are assaulting public education
and resegregating public school systems.

The resolution drew impetus from the fact that BMCR was holding its meeting
in Winston-Salem, Forsyth County, "where racially segregated schools have
risen sixfold in less than 10 years," according to the Rev. Donald Jenkins,
pastor of St. Paul United Methodist Church in Winston-Salem. Jenkins
submitted the resolution to the organization.

The U.S. Supreme Court's historic 1954 ruling in Brown v. Board of Education
established that the separate schools for blacks and whites, which were then
the norm in Southern and border states, were inherently unequal. The ruling
overturned the high court's previous decision in Plessy v. Ferguson, which
had allowed state-imposed segregation through a philosophy of "separate but
equal" school systems.

Lower courts applying the Brown decision issued desegregation orders to
school districts across the country. Districts that had maintained
historically all-black and all-white schools were ordered to open their
doors to all comers. In some districts, desegregation meant redrawing school
boundary lines; in others, it meant busing students -- usually blacks -- to
outlying districts.

Now, more than four decades later, a 1990 Supreme Court ruling has made it
easier for school districts to be "unitary," released them from
desegregation orders and eased restrictions. The eased restrictions
propelled school districts across the country to reverse many of their
educational policies and end desegregation

The ruling marked a step backward, civil rights activists say, because
integration is even more important as the nation becomes increasingly
multicultural.

Numerous reports and studies indicate that throughout the 1980s and 1990s,
school segregation has had a negative effect on Latino, suburban minority
and inner-city African-American students.

According to Jenkins, the segregation of schools has historically meant that
schools serving poor children, black children and other racial minority
children are under-served in terms of facilities, teacher resources and
instructional resources.

"We as United Methodists, and particularly those in multicultural settings,
cannot sit by and let society resegregate itself," Jenkins said.

By endorsing the resolution, BMCR also called on the United Methodist Church
to "support in whatever feasible ways anyone's efforts to provide quality,
desegregated public education for all children in general and black children
in particular," he said.

In a press conference with Winston-Salem media, Jenkins and Presbyterian
minister Carlton A.G. Eversley said BMCR joins the National Black
Presbyterian Caucus and the General Assembly of the Presbyterian Church
(USA) in opening up mainline Protestant resources -moral, physical,
spiritual and financial - to local groups around the country fighting school
resegregation. The two pastors said that in Forsyth County, one-race schools
have grown from five in the 1993-1994 school year to 31 in this academic
year.

BMCR's endorsement is a statement about where the church is, and it lets the
public know that the church does not endorse segregation, said the Rev.
Julius Del Pino of the Metropolitan United Methodist Church in Detroit. Del
Pino also spoke at the press conference.

What is happening in Winston-Salem impacts other cities across the country,
he said. "The church would not be the church unless it speaks upon issues
like these."

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United Methodist News Service
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