Lost ground
Ronald Davis will not accept the segregation he saw as a child in today’s schools
Segregation in the South was as much a political and economic reality as it was a social and cultural force. Ronald Davis, a native Southerner, puts it this way:
“When my parents would take us downtown to shop…the kind of ‘deference’ that people of color would give to white people…this cow down, bow down kind of thing…I found that troubling.”
Though legal segregation has officially ended in America, many communities have experienced a de facto re-segregation in their schools. Through his work with the Highlander Research and Education Center in New Market, Tennessee, Ronald is trying to reclaim some of this lost ground. With support from the W.K. Kellogg Foundation, he is helping to launch the New R’s of Education: Recall and Remember individual and collective experiences of race; Record and Reflect individual and collective race stories through documentation; and Repair and Recommend by rebuilding key networks and relationships in a grassroots manner in the South and Appalachia.
