Black Students Ordered to Give Up Bus Seats to White Students

[lofter1]

We want to think w've come so far and then you this sh!t happens (the "Comments" at the end are particularly revealing) ...

Black students ordered to give up seats to white children

Status of Red River Parish bus driver is unknown

Shreveport Times (http://www.shreveporttimes.com/apps/pbcs.dll/article?AID=/20060824/NEWS01/608240332/1002/NEWS)
By Vickie Welborn
August 24, 2006

COUSHATTA -- Nine black children attending Red River Elementary School were directed last week to the back of the school bus by a white driver who designated the front seats for white children.

The situation has outraged relatives of the black children who have filed a complaint with school officials.

Superintendent Kay Easley will meet with the family members in her office this morning.

The National Association for the Advancement of Colored People also is considering filing a formal charge with the U.S. Department of Justice. NAACP District Vice President James Panell, of Shreveport, said he would apprise Justice attorneys of the situation this week. He's considering asking for an investigation into the bus incident and other aspects of the school system's operations, including pupil-teacher ratio as it relates to the numbers of white and black children, along with a breakdown of the numbers of black and white teachers employed.

"If the smoke is there, then there's probably fire somewhere else," Panell said in a phone interview from New Orleans. "At this point, it is extremely alarming. We fought that battle 50 years ago, and we won. Why is this happening again?"

Easley would not comment much on the allegations Wednesday, saying it is a personnel issue. She acknowledged that she has investigated the claim. And she confirmed that the bus driver did not run her route Wednesday, nor would she today.

Asked if the driver would work for the rest of the year, Easley said, "I'm not going to answer the questions. "You're getting all that you're going to get from me. I'm sorry."

Red River Elementary School Principal Jamie Lawrence tried to rectify the seating situation when it was brought to her attention. But it was ultimately handled at the Central Office, Patricia Sessoms said.

Sessoms aunt, Iva Richmond, is the mother of two of the children, ages 14 and 15, and foster parent to three others, ages 5, 6 and 10. Janice Williams, who is the mother of the other four children, is Richmond's neighbor. All nine children catch the bus at a stop on Ashland Road.

Sessoms will join Richmond and Williams in their meeting with Easley today. Sessoms said they would ask for bus driver Delores Davis' immediate termination. Davis, who originates her bus route in Martin, has called Richmond to apologize, Sessoms said. A message left on Davis' answering machine late Wednesday afternoon was not immediately returned.

After Richmond and Williams filed complaints with the School Board, Transportation Supervisor Jerry Carlisle asked Davis to make seat assignments for her passengers, Sessoms said.

"But she still assigned the black children to the back of the bus," she added.

And the nine children had to share only two seats, meaning the older children had to hold the younger ones in their laps.

A new solution reached Monday by School Board officials has a black bus driver driving across town to pick up the nine black children.

"I think the whole school system needs to be reviewed in Red River Parish," Sessoms said.

Sessoms, who has two children at Red River Elementary, said she has no problems with her bus driver. "I have a wonderful bus driver," she added. Sessoms' request to have her young children sit near the front because of their ages was granted.

School Board member Gene Longino said Wednesday evening that he had not heard about the situation involving the nine children.

"I don't know anything about that. "Until something formally comes to the School Board members through the superintendent, we don't know the details," Longino said.

School Board President Ricky Cannon was at work Wednesday evening and unavailable for comment. Board member J.B. McElwee also was not at home. Calls to the homes of Cleve Miller, Kassandria Wells White, Karen Womack and Jessie Webber were not answered.

Article Comments

The Race Card - Full House
Thu Aug 24, 2006 9:28 am

Good Day,

The Race Card is a term that has had quite an impact on lexicon and social fabric of our oddly woven patchwork society. As expected, this particular phrasing has become cliche'. Oft times its use indicates linguistic lethargy as opposed to substantive conversation.

TheRaceCard.com will take care of that. Our goal is to deliver fun, information, provocation, and inculcation. We know what you need and we are going to give it to you.

Don't think. Just listen! Save your rationalizing and pre-judging for your ex. What we say is right, and the sooner you accept these (largely self-evident) truths, the less time you will have wasted reaching piety and rightousness. Blah blah, yada yada.

We believe Robert Shapiro was as far afield as Neil Armstrong in his lone historical quote, about OJ and Johnnie Cochran playing 'the race card.' THERE IS NOT ONLY ONE RACE CARD. There is a whole deck of race cards of varying value and utility, resulting in myriad combinations, like a Poker deck.

Years of courageous research and development have resulted in what may this crucially analogous juxtapostion of race relations and poker. As a social device poker hands and their understanding could be employed to impart great understanding, parity and social viscosity between races.

We're callin this a FULL HOUSE. The black families are definitely holding a hand that is impossible to ignore by the rest of the players. The school district has nothing. The bus driver should fold. It's obvious who this hand goes to. What remains to be seen is, just how much the pot is.

Respectfully submitted,
TheRaceCard.com


Bull
Thu Aug 24, 2006 9:25 am

This is such a load of garbage. Anything that ever happens to a BLACK person is suddenly a racist issue. Had that happened to a WHITE person it would be ok


Liberals..how bad can they be?
Thu Aug 24, 2006 9:22 am

Now if you had to guess: to form an opinion about someone without enough evidence to make a definite judgment. Would you say that this bus driver voted for Bush?

I am just thinking out loud; could it be possible that he is really a liberal?

What does that tell you? Liberals are to soft and will let the black kids sit anywhere they want?

http://forums.shreveporttimes.com/images/smiles/icon_cool.gif


School bus
Thu Aug 24, 2006 9:22 am

If this wasn't so darn serious I would laugh. Can you say Rosa Parks. Is this person brain dead or what.???


Reader Comment
Thu Aug 24, 2006 9:06 am

Nine black children sitting in two seats with the younger ones sitting in the older ones' laps?! If that's true, then this is outrageous!

What are the odds that all of the black children on this bus were older than all of the white children?


Simply astounding
Thu Aug 24, 2006 8:58 am

I live around Milwaukee, which is one of the most segregated cities in the US, although that is changing. I find it hard to believe that it in this and age someone would actually be stupid enough to send the black kids to the back of the bus. Rosa Parks fought this 50 years ago and won.

Nine kids in two seats? Even if they were being grouped as siblings based on the oldest ones' ages, 9 kids in two seats just isn't safe.

I don't blame the parents for objecting. On the face of it this looks like a clear case of "blacks to the back". If there are other explanations I'd be interested in hearing them.

Copyright 2006© The Times

[eddhead]

the comments ARE relealing!!! How in the world can anybody rationalize this!!

[Ninjahedge]

I am totally confused about the whole "Liberals" comment. He/she managed to turn a horrible act of discrimination ito a complaint about liberals and Bush! WTH?

He/she was only one step away of comparing it to the Nazis!!!!! :p

[eddhead]

I am totally confused about the whole "Liberals" comment. He/she managed to turn a horrible act of discrimination ito a complaint about liberals and Bush! WTH?

He/she was only one step away of comparing it to the Nazis!!!!! :p
I think the comment was intended as a sarcastic swipe at people who lambast liberals and utter the word as if it was a four letter word. I think that person was sayin, " Come on people when you look at this action, how much worse can it get if liberals were in office..."

[Jake]

A new solution reached Monday by School Board officials has a black bus driver driving across town to pick up the nine black children.


hahahaha, that's hilarious, don't ask me why

[OmegaNYC]

It's the South, the most ass-backwards place in the world. What else is new? ~_~

[Fabrizio]

This sorry incident will justly get national headlines and even eventually wind up in the news section of a forum devoted to architecture. But as Bob Herbert writes in yesterdays NYTimes: "If white people were doing to black people what black people are doing to black people, there would be rioting from coast to coast".

Wednesday, August 23, 2006

A Triumph of Felons and Failure

August 24, 2006
Op-Ed Columnist

By BOB HERBERT (http://topics.nytimes.com/top/opinion/editorialsandoped/oped/columnists/bobherbert/index.html?inline=nyt-per)

I was browsing at a newsstand in Manhattan recently when I came across a magazine called Felon. It was the “Stop Snitchin’ ” issue, and the first letter to the editor began: “Yo, wassup Felon!”

Another letter was from “your nigga John-Jay,” who was kind enough to write: “To my bitches, I love ya’ll.”

Later I came across a magazine called F.E.D.S., which professes to be about “convicted criminals—street thugs—music—fashion—film—etc.” The headline “Stop Snitching” was emblazoned on the cover. “Hundreds of kilos of coke,” said another headline, “over a dozen murders,” and “no one flipped.”

What we have here are symptoms of a depressing cultural illness, frequently fatal, that has spread unchecked through much of black America.

The people who are laid low by this illness don’t snitch on criminals, seldom marry, frequently abandon their children, refer to themselves in the vilest terms (niggers, whores, etc.), spend extraordinary amounts of time kicking back in correctional institutions, and generally wallow in the deepest depths of degradation their irresponsible selves can find.

In his new book, “Enough,” which is about the vacuum of leadership and the feverish array of problems that are undermining black Americans, Juan Williams gives us a glimpse of the issue of snitching that has become an obsession with gang members, drug dealers and other predatory lowlifes — not to mention the editors of magazines aimed at the felonious mainstream.

“In October 2002,” he writes, “the living hell caused by crime in the black community burst into flames in Baltimore. A black mother of five testified against a Northeast Baltimore drug dealer. The next day her row house was fire-bombed. She managed to put out the flames that time. Two weeks later, at 2 a.m. as the family slept, the house was set on fire again. This time the drug dealer broke open the front door and took care in splashing gasoline on the lone staircase that provided exit for people asleep in the second- and third-floor bedrooms.

“Angela Dawson, the 36-year-old mother, and her five children, aged 9 to 14, burned to death. Her husband, Carnell, 43, jumped from a second-story window. He had burns over most of his body and died a few days later.”
If white people were doing to black people what black people are doing to black people, there would be rioting from coast to coast. As Mr. Williams writes, “Something terrible has happened.”

When was it that the proud tradition of Frederick Douglass and W. E. B. DuBois, Harriet Tubman and Mary McLeod Bethune, Louis Armstrong and Billie Holiday and Duke Ellington, Martin Luther King and Thurgood Marshall, gave way to glossy felon magazines and a shameful silence in the face of nationally organized stop-snitching campaigns?

In an interview, Mr. Williams said: “There are so many things that we know are indicators of a crisis within the community. When you look at the high dropout rate, especially among our boys. Or the out-of-wedlock birthrate, which is really alarming. Or the high rate of incarceration.

“When you hear boys saying it’s a ‘rite of passage’ to go to jail, or the thing that is so controversial but has been going on for a while — kids telling other kids that if they’re trying to do well in school they’re trying to ‘act better than me,’ or ‘trying to act white’ — all of these are indications of a culture of failure. These are things that undermine a child or an individual who is trying to do better for himself or herself. These are things that drag you down.”

Enough, in Mr. Williams’s view, is enough. His book is a cry for a new generation of African-American leadership at all levels to fill the vacuum left by those who, for whatever reasons, abandoned the tradition of struggle, hard-won pride and self-determination. That absence of leadership has led to an onslaught of crippling, self-destructive behavior.

Mr. Williams does not deny for a moment the continued debilitating effects of racism. But racism is not taking the same toll it took a half-century ago. It is up to blacks themselves to embrace the current opportunities for academic achievement and professional advancement, to build the strong families that allow youngsters to flourish, and to create a cultural environment that turns its back on crime, ignorance and self-abasement.

More blacks are leading successful lives now than ever before. But too many, especially among the young, are caught in a crucible of failure and degradation. This needs to change. Enough is enough.

[ablarc]

Enough, in Mr. Williams’s view, is enough. His book is a cry for a new generation of African-American leadership at all levels to fill the vacuum left by those who, for whatever reasons, abandoned the tradition of struggle, hard-won pride and self-determination. That absence of leadership has led to an onslaught of crippling, self-destructive behavior.
Good to see an African-American person speaking out on this matter. Not only would there be rioting if whites were doing this to blacks, but there would be indignant condemnation of any white person who dared point out what he decries. Much of that criticism would come from whites anxious to display their anti-racist credentials by springing (much) too avidly to the defense of all African-American phenomena. (Can find this even on Wired New York despite loss of TLOZ to punks who reveled in their crime.)

Such ethical mollycoddling does the black community a disservice.

Along with us all.

[OmegaNYC]

Mr. Williams is right. I'm black, and I see some of this going on way too much. I go to college, stay out of trouble, and will work in the Criminal Justice field one day. I just love this quote too. More blacks are leading successful lives now than ever before. But too many, especially among the young, are caught in a crucible of failure and degradation. This needs to change. Enough is enough.

[virtualchoirboy]

I had a conversation with a chinese co worker of mine...he seems to think that black people are over reacting, racism is dead... Some people will never understand.

Cracker barrell settled a case last year where they were feeding the black patrons food out of the garbage. And all the black workers were made to work in the back, regardless of experience.

Tyson Chicken restaurant last year is facing a lawsuit from the EEOC because one of the two bathrooms were broke. The only working bathrooms was deemed by the staff as a "whites only bathroom" and was labled as such.

There have been 50 lynchings in the south over the last five years, according to a documentary that I watched.

There are a number of stories and whats more interesting is the number of stories like this. Scary.

[ablarc]

There have been 50 lynchings in the south over the last five years, according to a documentary that I watched.
My effort to confirm this by googling ended in failure.

The Bush Administration engineered the World Trade Center attacks, according to a documentary that I watched.

[Fabrizio]

Lynch :

To execute without due process of law, especially to hang, as by a mob.

-------------------------------------

Yes, some confirmation on these "50 lynching in the South over the last five years" would be appreciated.

[virtualchoirboy]

Lynch :

To execute without due process of law, especially to hang, as by a mob.

-------------------------------------

Yes, some confirmation on these "50 lynching in the South over the last five years" would be appreciated.

Here is the one I can remember. Google the name.


Man hanging from tree investigated

TUSKEGEE -- Tuskegee police still are investigating the death of 29-year-old Winston Deroyal Carter, who was found hanging from a tree on County Road 65 in Tuskegee.
Tuskegee Police Chief Lester Patrick said a passerby noticed something hanging from a tree, but needed a second look. The passerby turned his car around, discovered Carter hanging from the tree and immediately called the police at 6:15 a.m. Friday. Carter's body was sent to the state crime lab to determine the cause of death. However, Patrick said that from information his department has gathered about the case, he is leaning toward suicide. Funeral services will be held at 1 p.m. today at the Wall Street AME Church, with burial in the church cemetery.

[ablarc]

One suicide?

50 lynchings?

[ZippyTheChimp]

Interesting how this thread has drifted from school kids being treated with indignity, through black people calling each other nigger or whore, to lynchings that may be suicides.

What happened to these kids is not the sort of racism most of us identify with. It is subtle and pervasive in the lives of those who experience it. It is almost impossible to complain about any one incident without it being trivialized, but taken in its entirety, it weighs down on its victims.

I've only come to understand this in conversations with my sister-in-law. A college educated professional, she has told me that it never bothered her too much if someone called her a nigger, because she realized that person is an ignorant butt-head with his own life-problems. More depressing, especially when she was in "civilian clothes," were things like storekeepers following her around to make sure she wasn't shoplifting. And what could you do? They were probably nice people who didn't realize what they were doing was demeaning and racist.

So, when you put faces on those kids, is it students having fun on a yellow bus on the way to school, or the punks who caused the death of TLOZ.

[OmegaNYC]

Interesting how this thread has drifted from school kids being treated with indignity, through black people calling each other nigger or whore, to lynchings that may be suicides.

What happened to these kids is not the sort of racism most of us identify with. It is subtle and pervasive in the lives of those who experience it. It is almost impossible to complain about any one incident without it being trivialized, but taken in its entirety, it weighs down on its victims.

I've only come to understand this in conversations with my sister-in-law. A college educated professional, she has told me that it never bothered her too much if someone called her a nigger, because she realized that person is an ignorant butt-head with his own life-problems. More depressing, especially when she was in "civilian clothes," were things like storekeepers following her around to make sure she wasn't shoplifting. And what could you do? They were probably nice people who didn't realize what they were doing was demeaning and racist.

So, when you put faces on those kids, is it students having fun on a yellow bus on the way to school, or the punks who caused the death of TLOZ.

Great post Zip. That is a good point.

[lofter1]

Red River schools leader issues statement

Shreveport Times (http://www.shreveporttimes.com/apps/pbcs.dll/article?AID=/20060825/BREAKINGNEWS/60825031/1002/NEWS)
August 25, 2006

"Prompt remedial action" has been taken against the Red River school bus driver who last week allegedly directed some black children to the back of her bus, says a statement released today by Red River schools Superintendent Kay Easley.

In addition, the parish's school bus drivers will undergo training next week, it says. The unsigned statement labeled "Press Release" and dated Aug. 25 was sent by fax from the Red River Parish School System office.

It reads:

"Kay Easley, superintendent of the Red River Parish School System in Coushatta, Louisiana, issued the following statement relative to the bus incident reported earlier this week:
"The Red River Parish School Board strives to maintain both educational and working environments free of all forms of harassment and discrimination. Unfortunately, employees of the School Board (like those of any other employer) sometimes engage in conduct that is contrary to certain strongly held principles and beliefs of the employer and the standard of conduct that the employer demands. When this happens, the employer must take immediate corrective action.

"Allegations have been made that an employee of the Red River Parish School Board (a school bus driver) assigned students to certain seats on the bus based on their race. The employee has been confronted and has indicated that the seat assignments were the result of problems with implementation of a seating chart for students on the bus which had been established last year and were not an attempt by her to segregate the students on the basis of race. Regardless of the cause for the action, however, it cannot be tolerated.

"We have met personally with the parents of the involved students, and we are satisfied that they realize that the actions of the bus driver do not represent the beliefs of the Red River Parish School Board, its administration or its employees. At the same time, we wish to again assure the students and the public in general that prompt remedial action has been taken against the employee relative to this matter. The specifics of that action cannot be disclosed as a result of Louisiana laws mandating confidentiality of personnel actions.

"Again, while we regret that this situation occurred, we feel that we have responded to it in a prompt and firm manner. In addition, training for our entire staff of bus drivers has been scheduled for next week. The Red River Parish School Board has worked hard to establish to satisfaction of the public, the United States Justice Department and the United States District Court that it does not discriminate in the school system. It does not intend to stand idly by and tolerate any conduct which might call into question its efforts and resolve in this area."

Article Comments

View All Comments (http://forums.shreveporttimes.com/viewtopic.php?t=19410)


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• Seating assignments left up to bus drivers (http://www.shreveporttimes.com/apps/pbcs.dll/article?AID=/20060825/NEWS01/608250332/1002/NEWS)
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[lofter1]

One comment that struck me ...

maybe they shold be segregated

Sun Aug 27, 2006 1:44 am
You know, I'm sure theres some hidden facts not revealed here that would make it less a civil rights case than what it truely is.. but heres my take on it...

Everyone knows, but yet, many are less inclined to admit, that blacks have a long history of violence and civil unrest. So, with that said.. I suspect the black kids were the unrulely ones and needed to be seperated...

[lofter1]

Some of her former black students speak out in her defense ...

"Blacks to the back:"
Bus driver accused of segregating students speaks out

ksla.com (http://www.ksla.com/Global/story.asp?S=5328738)
News 12 Exclusive
Reported by: David Begnaud
Aug 26, 2006

http://ksla.images.worldnow.com/images/static/video/gfx/icon_video.gif (http://javascript<b></b>:playVideo('931873',%20'%22Blacks%20to%20the%20bac k%3A%22%20Bus%20driver%20accused%20of%20segregatin g%20students%20speaks%20out',%20'v',%20'News',%20' 294300',%20'News',%20'',%20'');) VIEW: "Blacks to the back:" Bus driver accused of segregating students speaks out (http://javascript<b></b>:playVideo('931873',%20'%22Blacks%20to%20the%20bac k%3A%22%20Bus%20driver%20accused%20of%20segregatin g%20students%20speaks%20out',%20'v',%20'News',%20' 294300',%20'News',%20'',%20'');)http://ksla.images.worldnow.com/images/static/gfx/pxl_trans.gif

It sounds like a story right out of the civil rights era.

Black parents accusing a white bus driver of segregating students.

"I was upset, I'm not gonna tell no lie. My kids have never been treated that way every. My kids have white friends and their friends never did them like that, why on the bus," asks Janice Williams, a Coushatta mother who accuses bus driver Dolores Davis of sending her child to the back of the bus.

Williams filed a complaint along with other parents at the Red River parish school board.

The response was to take the students off of that bus route and put them on a bus with an African American bus driver.

But that has not toned down the criticism.

"The manual that tells you what to do about someone being asked to go to the back of the bus, that manual is somewhere in the archives somewhere.
That's not even something that you can even look in a book and find because we don't assume that's even something we would even have to be confronted with," says NAACP member James Pannell.

This story has captured national headlines, including CNN and the major networks.

A CNN crew on the scene with us tonight, but KSLA was the only TV outlet to get an interview with the woman at the center of all this controversy.

"I think my career is over," says bus driver Dolores Davis, whose doesn't believe her twenty four year career could end like this.

"I'm probably going to have to retire," she says.

Davis says the incident was blown out of proportion, and unfounded to begin with.

"I had told my other students to move over so some of my newer students could sit down, and of course, some of them didn't want to," says Davis.

She says she's had the same policy for more than two decades. At the start of each school year, the students who usually ride her bus, take their same seats. The empty spots are reserved for the new kids.

"My new students are the last ones to get on the bus and so when they got on I just told them to find a seat for that day."

The allegations are, Davis actually told the new "black" students to move towards the back of the bus.

"Did you seat the children on the bus according to race," asks News 12 reporter David Begnaud.

"No did not," she says.

"Are you in any way racist towards your students," asks Begnaud.

"No, I am not."

Davis says, since school started, she was bussing more kids than she could fit.

That's why, as the allegations stand, some of the black children not only sat in the back, but had to sit on each others lap.

"I consider all my white and black students, equally."

"Ms. Davis was my bus driver from elementary through his school," says Kapatrea Smith, who rode Davis' bus for 12 years.

"When I heard the allegations I just felt compelled to call her and let her know that all the years I rode her bus I never heard her make a racist remark or show any prejudices towards me or any of the blacks kids on the bus," says Smith.

"That helped my feeling when she called," says Davis.

As of tonight, Davis says she's been placed on leave without pay and asked to sign a letter of resignation.

"What it's going to boil down to is I am going to have to retire and probably sign that paper all over this simple matter that I did not think anything about because I am not a racist."

Davis says she was asked to make a seating chart, after the allegations surfaced last week, but refused saying she didn't know the names of all the children, and because of that, she says the school system, she feels has blamed her.

A training for bus drivers has been scheduled for next week.

The board is scheduled to discuss the issue at its next meeting September 5, this is, if Davis doesn't resign before then.

School board president Jessie Webber says Davis should resign, "for her own safety."

© Copyright 2000 - 2006 WorldNow and KSLA

[Ninjahedge]

I smell a rat.

As for the comment you posted Loft, I think the only thing she made the mistake of was associating behavior with a RACE, and not with a demographic.

Saying "that blacks have a long history of violence and civil unrest" is the surest sign of racial segregation and categorization that you can point to.

No, "blacks" do not have a history of this. The poor kids without proper parenting have had this, and in YOUR narrow little world than equats directly to "black" (not you Loft... ;) )


I think they should find out what is going on here before they start doing reactionary PC measures to calm civil unrest. IF this woman did indeed seperate them due to race, then she should be fired, but if she has 24 years w/o any record AND no collaborating statements from any of the other kids, these kids should be suspended. It is probably not even their fault, but their parents (if the charges are unfounded).

The kids come home and tell mom that they had to sit in their siblings lap at the back of the bus and the parents, instead of demanding more busses to help the overcrowding, cry race.

I really do not know what happened, and I don't think any of us really do either. But I am just getting tired at people either burning crosses, or seeing burning crosses where there are none.