Multiple major newsworthy events happened in 1969. Neil Armstrong was the first man to walk on the moon. 400,000 people, mostly college students, gathered in upstate New York for the Woodstock musical festival. The Vietnam draft began. Less discussed, at least among white people, are some equally noteworthy events related to the Civil Rights Movement. For example:
New York Representative Shirley Chisholm was sworn in as the first Black woman elected to The U.S. Congress.
The Supreme Court ruled in Alexander v. Holmes County (Mississippi) Board of Education that school districts must put an immediate end to segregation.
Fred Hampton, leader of the Black Panther Party, was killed by police during a controversial raid.
UCLA established the first Black Studies Center in the United States.
I’d never heard of those four facts until recently. There are volumes of facts like these that are unknown to a disturbing number of white people.
I was in the third grade in 1969. I went to Lake Lucina Elementary School in Jacksonville, Florida. My homeroom teacher was a large, round black woman named Miss Rosier. The minute I saw her, I liked her. She reminded me so much of Nanny.
Teachers rotated classrooms three or four times during the school day to teach different subjects. There was no mistaking which one Miss Rosier was in. The scene was always the same, and the ruckus could be heard almost throughout the entire school. I vividly remember the twisted expressions, the moans and groans from most of the students any time she walked in our classroom.
Every day Miss Rosier tried her best to get the students to be respectful and quiet, to stay at their desks. She stood at the blackboard vowing to teach no matter what. That was her job and she was determined to do it. Kids would be throwing things, yelling and fighting. Some students were especially cruel, making fun of the way she pronounced certain words or letters of the alphabet. They would badger her and demand that she speak properly. Sometimes she would give in to them, and pronounce words the way they insisted. Maybe she hoped it would pacify them. It didn’t. They would just laugh and mimic her.
Every day these vicious kids would attempt to antagonize her to tears and drive her out the door. The rest of the class would erupt in cheers whenever they succeeded. The little white tormentors would mockingly bow, “at your service.” That particular scene had a chilling quality, reminiscent of the lynchings from the not-so-distant past. If Miss Rosier dared to scold one of her persecutors, they would taunt her and threaten, “You better not yell at me. I’ll tell-on-you and you’ll get in big trouble.”
Several times a week, frustrated teachers from nearby classrooms would burst in the room, exasperated, pleading with Miss Rosier to get control of her class. The students would quiet down briefly, only to start up again not long after.
There were a handful of us good students who liked to learn, and liked Miss Rosier, or at least felt sorry for her. When we could no longer tolerate the chaos, one of us would stand on a chair at the front of the classroom and scream to the top of our lungs, “Shut up… shuT UP!” until they did. “Let her teach!”
Another student would stand on a chair across the room so that between the two of them, they could see the whole class. Once things quieted down, they would look over at Miss Rosier and nod, signaling for her to continue the lesson. We, the little white saviors*, standing on the chairs, would keep an eye out for any disruption. We threatened to report anyone who made a sound. The worst part about all this was the depth of discouragement in Miss Rosier’s eyes. Did she appreciate our help? How could she not? Did she feel stigmatized? Of course she did. No one at our all-white school in our all-white suburban neighborhood did a thing to help her. She was on her own. Those of us who did try were only eight years old.
The teachers that ridiculed her couldn’t see that she feared for her job. What was she going to say? —“The students are picking on me because I’m Black.”
For her to “play the race card” back in the sixties, especially in Jacksonville, Florida, could have invited blatant retaliation from parents, teachers and the school administration. So often, victims like Miss Rosier had to carefully consider the dangers of speaking out.
Eventually, the principal, wearied from all the complaints, gave Miss Rosier the support she needed. She established that someone from the office, or another teacher, or the principal herself, would sit in on the class while Miss Rosier taught. I think it was a relief to everyone.
Despite all the meanness heaped upon Miss Rosier, a surprising thing happened. It was the very end of the school year and the kids and teachers were ready for summer. Like a lot of schools in the 60s, we had an annual paper drive. Paper drives were often used as fundraising tools for schools. It also raised environmental awareness. Lake Lucina’s paper drive was a major competition at our school plus the surrounding schools. The small group of good kids in Miss Rosier’s class, the ones standing on chairs, implored all the mean kids to make things up to her by doing everything they could to win the competition for our homeroom class.
The drive was held outside on a large grassy swath of land, offering enough room for the multiple stacks of newspaper for each class, plus room for the cars to drop off all the newspapers from parents, friends and neighbors. As the sun beat down that day, the cars kept coming. Kids would jump and cheer when one of the cars pulled up to their section. Well wouldn’t you know it, those vile little creatures from our class came through. They must have had some kind of conscience after all. The cars kept coming, and most of them were stopping at Miss Rosier’s section. By the end of the event, Miss Rosier was laughing and chatting with all the teachers and parents who participated. Meanwhile, our class was enjoying the ice cream we got for winning. It’s been too many years for me to remember the actual number of paper stacks but I can still clearly see in my mind’s eye the countless cars that kept coming to our section, and how puny all the other sections looked in comparison.
The bad kids were good that day. They stood proud in our section and helped unload all the cars when they pulled up. They had “done all they could” to get a lot of people to turn Miss Rosier’s section into a monumental mountain. Still, it in no way made up for the cruelty they showed her that year.
Reflecting back on that time, I think about those mean kids. Were their homes like mine, so overtly racist? I wonder if they think about it now, the way I do? And if they do, I hope they’ve tried to come to terms with all that was so terribly wrong back then and have made positive changes in their lives.
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AI Inquiry
*"White savior" refers to a narrative or behavior pattern in which a white person is portrayed as the rescuer or helper of non-white people, often in a way that:
1) reinforces racial power dynamics, 2) centers white perspectives and experiences, and 3) oversimplifies complex social issues. The term critiques the assumption that marginalized communities need saving by white people rather than requiring systemic change and self-determined solutions.
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