Tyler's Defacto Christian Segregation Academies

SEGREGATION ACADEMIES

“Examinations of private schools will take into account complaints from the public.” Ellis Campbell Jr. North East Texas District Director, I.R.S.


In 1964, only one year after the school board presented its ten-year "Stair-Step Plan" to unhurriedly complete the integration of the whole school system, a very concerned white Christian community caught a glimpse of a desegregated future of Tyler I.S.D. Like the rest of the former Confederate states, during the 50s and 60s, evangelical white church leaders in Tyler, Texas, realized that continued opposition to the federal government's enforcement of new civil rights legislation (U.S. Civil Rights Act of 1964) would ultimately prove futile. So they copied a plan already at work throughout the South: self-segregation. If enough evangelical Christians abandoned the public school system in favor of parochial, private schools outside the influence and control of the Federal Department of Health, Education and Welfare, then white children would not have to be educated side-by-side with black and brown students.

Mississippi Segregationist Address Christian Parents

 In December of that year, Tyler's racist church leaders began advertising an upcoming lecture. They invited their ideological ally, segregationist Rev. Leonard T. Van Horn, an independent fundamentalist Presbyterian minister from French Camp, Mississippi, to headline the event. Van Horn served as the Executive Vice President of French Camp Academy, a private, segregated Christian school.[1] Rev Van Horn's expertise in segregated institutions and Christian education would undoubtedly benefit Tyler families seeking the same. The local ads targeted "Christian Parents of Tyler" who might be interested in forming a new Christian Junior High School.

Who was and what defined Rev L.T. Van Horn’s nature and character? A few months before the December lecture in Tyler, kneel-ins were being organized and conducted by Memphis N.A.A.C.P.'s intercollegiate chapter members. According to Stephen R. Haynes, author of The Last Segregated Hour, "Students in interracial pairs visited prominent churches, most of which were willing to admit, if not welcome them. But after two students were turned away from Second Presbyterian Church on Palm Sunday, a full-fledged kneel-in campaign began bringing the church national media attention and dividing its membership. When denominational sanctions came down upon the congregation, the clergy joined younger members in a revolt against senior elders who were rotated out of service and soon departed to form their own church."

A few months later, Rev. Van Horn resigned from French Camp Academy to pastor the brand-new segregationist Memphis church started by the estranged elders who left Second Presbyterian. This church did not want integrated church services.

 The new church's name would be Independent Presbyterian Church (I.P.C.). Its legacy is birthed in schism protesting Second Presbyterian's sympathizing with black students and caving to hard denominational pressure to begin openly admitting visitors of color. There can be no doubt when the good Reverend spoke in Tyler that, his purpose was to encourage the creation of a private all-white Christian school to ensure the continuation of segregation or white supremacy for those families who had the means. It was the cause célèbre throughout the South, and it was a priority for white Christian Tylerites.

 Two years later, the Tyler paper published an article titled "Parochial Education Thrives In Tyler." The reasons reported for the success of Tyler's new private Christian schools were that they provided religious instruction and fulfilled a desire by Christian families to have their children develop scholastically as early as 3 and 4 years old. The paper bought into the “Christian” cover story.

The article failed to mention that the Christian community’s formula for success eliminated children of color. They belonged to another caste that couldn’t afford the tuition. But that did not matter. White families of faith were removing their children from the public school system in favor of an education that did not require them to learn next to black and brown children. This began the exodus away from public schools which would one day make Tyler I.S.D. a majority-minority system.

Charlie W. Jordan

Frm Aide To Governor George Wallace, “The Most Dangerous Racist In America.”

 1964 would not be the only documented open call for Tylerites to form an all-white Christian segregation academy. Charlie W. Jordan, an area businessman new to Tyler and member of independent Baptist South Broadway Baptist Church, recognizing Tyler I.S.D. would soon fully integrate due to Judge William Wayne Justice’s order, issued a call in 1970 for "concerned parents" to gather.[2] Jordan, who previously served as an aide to the white supremacist Governor of Alabama, George Wallace, with whom he agreed 100%, wished to share his dream of forming a nondenominational school for white children.

He succeeded. The following year Rose Garden Academy opened with incredible support from the community. But it didn’t last. Eventually, the school went defunct then Grace Community School took over the facilities. Grace Community School is a ministry of Grace Community Church that has roots in the Evangelical Methodist Church, a strict fundamentalist sect.

In 1986, Dana Tillman, headmaster of Grace Community School, led the charge to unify area church efforts to create a new Christian High School. Among known participating churches were Southern Oaks Baptist Church, Trinity Lutheran Church, Tyler Metro Church, and Grace Community. Tillman held a dinner meeting at Harvey Hall to discuss the new high school's formation, which he believed would complete an ad hoc evangelical protestant school system from K through 12 in Tyler. Tillman complained to a filled banquet hall that public schools inhibit exposure to Christian values. All the white parents agreed.

There were no black families in attendance.

Then Tillman introduced Mel and Norma Gabler from Longview, Texas, to speak for the night. The Gablers were Christian school advocates who became infamous as public education textbook critics (without formal education). The Gablers engaged in a long war on biology and science textbooks and any history textbook that made statements critical of enslavers, the institution of slavery, and even texts that claimed the Civil War was fought primarily over states' rights to engage in the slave trade. Gabler's educational consulting firm, Educational Research Analysts, encouraged textbook publishers to rewrite history, claiming that the real victims of the Civil War were Southerners that lost their "right" to engage in chattel slavery.[3] The Gablers even objected to a history textbook because they falsely claimed it equated civil rights leaders Cesar Chavez, Martin Luther King Jr., and Mohandas Gandhi with Jesus of Nazareth. The couple also strongly objected to statements in textbooks that they perceived emphasized contributions by people of color.[4]

It's easy to see that the Gablers, chosen by Grace's Tillman to address Tyler churches at Harvey Hall, were undeniably science-denying, historical revisionist, neo-confederate racists who believed their version of evangelical Christianity should guide public school education. It makes you wonder how Tillman might have steered and guided Grace Community High School. Nevertheless, Grace Community School would become one of the most influential & successful private schools in Texas.

In 1976, All Saints Episcopal School opened, offering a plurality of choice for discriminating parents who wanted to provide religious education, believed to exceed Tyler's public school system standards. James C. Wynne Jr., a successful local developer, and member of Christ Episcopal Church helped found All Saints. In 1971, Judge William Wayne Justice appointed Wynne to Tyler’s Bi-Racial Committee, created to help solve interracial struggles at the newly integrated high schools. But he resigned that same year after issues arose pitting black students against popular confederate symbols in use at Robert E Lee High School. Wynne cited the “likelihood of tension” as his reason for resignation. Was his refusal to lead cowardice or self-preservation? It is doubtful we will ever know but taking on the citizens of Tyler would have been futile and no doubt cost him dearly. A few years later, Wynne helped open a private school that many community members believed was probably a segregation academy.

Did some of the city's private Christian schools exclude Black students? The federal government did threaten to remove the non-profit status of Christian de facto segregation academies in Tyler. Because of the I.R.S. closure threat, many of Tyler's Christian schools HAD TO publicize non-discrimination policies to maintain their non-profit status. But the wealth differential became the de jure mechanism for continuously delivering self-segregated education.

What were the effects of the white student flight? To this day, Tyler's public schools greatly overrepresent minorities compared to the city's demographics. In turn, most local private Christian schools are overwhelmingly white. In 2018, Tyler I.S.D. Board President, Rev. Fritz Hager, revealed that the school system had fewer white students than in 1985. During a school board meeting, Hager, a strong, steady, and thoughtful presence on the school board, commented that the departure to local private schools was the reason.

While a few private schools, like Grace Community & Brook Hill, would make concerted, well-thought-out efforts to draw minority students, including providing financial aid to qualifying families, the charge that Tyler's white churches perpetuated deep racial division while holding onto the self-delusion of being charitable or even Christlike has merit. To make matters direr, data reveals the segregation academies are… STILL OVERWHELMINGLY WHITE. And 50yrs+ after the Civil Rights movement, the Barna Group found that ethnic diversity is not really a priority for Christians with children already enrolled or for those interested in enrolling. Change in Christian institutions comes slowly, if ever at all.

These segregation academies & their textbooks should be examined not only for the racism at work in the white Christian community and how they reinforce right-wing extremism and fascism but also for the significant resource drain it created from the public school system, both financial and intellectual, that worked, for half a century, against the best interests of the remaining students.

Will white evangelicals in Tyler engage in public truth-telling about our city's past and then do something to make a change? Attempts have been made, but they’ve left the truth-telling out of the equation. "If the American civil rights movement had led to a South Africa-style process of truth and reconciliation," pondered Haynes, Professor of Religious Studies at Rhodes College, "race relations today would look very different. Perhaps, in the absence of a grand scheme of reconciliation, healing will be found in the local practices of truth-telling and repentance that have become one the legacies of the kneel-in movement."[5]


Footnotes

  1. Hattiesburg American. 1962, February 10. Retrieved from Newspapers.com: https://www.newspapers.com/clip/68335408/van-horn-at-french-camp-academy/.

  2. Charlie Jordan ran unsuccessfully for a seat on the Tyler ISD school board with the purpose of stopping forced busing and desegregation. Jordan became a Tyler city councilperson and ran unsuccessfully for mayor. Tyler Morning Telegraph, Tyler, Texas, Mar 24, 1970, Page 7

  3. Piasecki, F. E. 1982, August. Norma and Mel Gabler: The Development and Causes of Their Involvement Concerning the Curricular Appropriateness of School Textbook Content, dissertation. Retrieved from University of North Texas Libraries, U.N.T. Digital Library: https://digital.library.unt.edu/ark:/67531/metadc331488/.

  4. Moore, R. (2001). Evolution in the Courtroom: A Reference Guide.

  5. Haynes, S. R. 2017, December 07. Kneel-Ins and the Last Segregated Hour. Retrieved from Huffpost: https://www.huffpost.com/entry/kneel-in-and-the-last-segregated-hour_b_2199312.

     

DG Montalvo

DG Montalvo is a justice advocate, author, and creative. He’s a lifelong student of the Biblical prophets and their God-given vision for justice and shalom. DG loves to give his time and attention to a few important causes as well as stirring for moral revival or a revolution of values. He’s recently started blogging, has a few books in the works, and bought equipment for podcasting. Who knows what’s next?

DG is a first-generation Mexican Native American. Late in life, after 20yrs years of work in the design/advertising world, plus many varied positions in mega-churches & international NGOs, he earned a Master of Arts in Global Leadership from Fuller Theological Seminary in Pasadena, CA. Fuller is one of the world’s most influential evangelical institutions and the largest multidenominational seminary.

There he honed his research skills while studying The Mission of God and Justice.

DG lives with his beloved wife of almost 20 years, Jenny, in the heart of East Texas, Tyler, along with their two beagles, Chompsky & Chelsea.

He loves the adventure of the open road & stimulating conversation. But most of all, his grandkids Eli & Jude.

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