Board of Education. When you first heard that the Supreme Court had eliminated segregation in schools, what did you think? I was very excited and I suppose, like most people, just really rejoiced that we'd reached that point.
HEIGHT: Well, I really thought it would mean that our schools would be open, that children would be able to go to all schools, doors would be open. I thought it was the end of segregation, that's really what I thought.
I grew up in Pennsylvania, and -- it's where, of course, there were no Negro teachers -- and I came to appreciate what it meant to be in a classroom with students, you know, where we were all different races, predominantly children who were foreign-born, however. And it was a very small group of us who were colored. But I thought that here, at last, we have something like that.
Because one of the things that I value is what it meant to me to grow up in a school where I had equal chance, I felt, to do whatever I wanted to do, to become something, and that I thought this is what now we had. It was disappointing to find that immediately there became all of these counter-activities, efforts to not only not move forward, but to push us backwards.
And I thought that resistance in itself was so disturbing because it confused the picture, and the -- really, the action was more like this was about bussing and not about school.
