Religious schools that preached integration privately remained segregated by class and race

Evidence

By the early 1960s, with the token integration of Atlanta’s public schools and the total collapse of Atlanta’s segregation academies, the city’s established private schools found themselves in the uncomfortable position of being the last bastion of segregated education in “the city too busy to hate.” Nowhere was this unease more keenly felt than in private religious schools. During the late 1950s religious leaders and educators stood at the forefront of Atlanta’s moderate coalition in counseling the calm acceptance of court-ordered desegregation. Through the “Ministers’ Manifestos,” a series of columns published in the Atlanta Constitution, and countless sermons to their congregations, these religious leaders had taken a principled public stand for the acceptance of desegregated schools. But by the early 1960s these same religious leaders found themselves confronted with the same situation in their own still-segregated institutions. Wrestling with this problem publicly and painfully, many found it hard to practice what they had literally been preaching. — Kevin M. Kruse, White Flight, 394

Categorization

• XREF: The clergy-as-hypocrisy thread connects to the moral double standard that also emerges in white-flight neighborhoods — privatized racism contradicting public professions. — connects to: Respectable private schools, not segregation academies, preserved segregation longest — Kevin M. Kruse, White Flight: Atlanta and the Making of…, 393; Church-affiliated private schools outlasted public schools as refuges of segregation — Kevin M. Kruse, White Flight: Atlanta and the Making of…, 405; Residential segregation by race persisted independent of class and education through 1970 — John T. Jost and Jim Sidanius, Political Psychology: Key Readings, 3348 (+3 more)

Broader Connections

• Residential segregation by race persisted independent of class and education through 1970 #corroborates (0.80) — John T. Jost and Jim Sidanius, Political Psychology, 3348
• Racial divisions historically eclipsed interdenominational religious divisions in American life #expands (0.80) — Sahar F. Aziz, The Racial Muslim, 464
• Racial exclusion persists through institutions while personal relations integrate #corroborates (0.75) — David Theo Goldberg, The Threat of Race, 909