With their success at the polls, the small core group of parents who elected Joe Martin to the school board started asking, why not direct the neighborhood movement towards the schools? Many of them had first met at a neighborhood association meeting, and as they started having children helped found the Morningside babysitting co-op and the Atlanta Cooperative Preschool. Like the older women who had fought the highway, they also joined the League of Women Voters while at home with their
concerned leadership,” Virginia-Highland Voice, Newsletter of the Virginia-Highland Civic Association, August
1977.
184 Interview with Joe Martin, April 2, 2009.
185 Interview with Trisha Senterfitt, October 13, 2011.
186 “Important Meetings: Sept. 19,” Virginia-Highland Voice, Newsletter of the Virginia-Highland Civic Associa- tion, September 1977.
187 For an account of the impact of the 1977 election in the context of the Atlanta Compromise see Jackson, “Deseg- regation, Atlanta Style.”
young children. During the seventies as their children had joined the cross-town pairing, they volunteered at CW Hill Elementary School. Every Wednesday morning, the mothers met for breakfast at the Old Hickory House on Monroe Drive at Piedmont to talk about their concerns. They took turns serving as PTA president and between 1976 and 1978 formed education committees through their neighborhood as- sociations. For these parents, who had moved into the close-in, reviving neighborhoods in the face of massive white flight, defeated the highway, and through a grassroots movement transformed local poli- tics, the public schools were the next stage of the civil rights movement. What brought these families, Atlanta’s first urban pioneers, to this new kind of growing edge? What made them want to be a part of the change mechanism?
In Morningside-Lenox Park, Charlotte Hale, who had served as one of Joe Martin’s precinct cap- tains in 1977, focused on sharing information with other parents in the neighborhood. Now with children at Morningside and CW Hill, she saw how uneasy the pairing made parents. Having moved from south- west Atlanta three years earlier, she knew firsthand the impact that white flight could have on the neigh- borhood. Having grown up in Georgia and attended Wesleyan College and then Michigan State for graduate school, Hale moved back to Georgia in 1964 after her husband Floyd graduated from the Uni- versity of Chicago Law School. Her husband, who had been on a scholarship from the Cobb County- based aerospace company Lockheed as an undergraduate student at Emory University, accepted a job in its law department. At first, they lived in the suburb of Sandy Springs. Yet after five years, the Hales real- ized they were not happy with their lifestyle in the suburbs. Hale remembers why they decided to move:
After being at Lockheed for five years he decided he wanted to do a different kind of law, one where he had more contact with the clients individually. So he went from Lockheed to Legal Aid. It was a big change. It just evolved, and we decided to make some other changes at the same time. I actually came up with the idea of moving to southwest At- lanta. I had seen on television Southwest Atlantans for Progress, [which had been founded in 1968 by white and black homeowners to integrate the southwest neighbor- hoods]. We wanted to see if we could help stabilize the white flight…the third thing we changed was our church. We had gone to Peachtree Road Methodist, and then when we moved we went downtown to the progressive Trinity Methodist Church. Which was also a dramatic change but something that was very meaningful to us.188
188 Ibid. Floyd Hale became very active in the city’s first shelter and soup kitchen, which had been started at The Shrine of the Immaculate Conception before it moved to Trinity Methodist.
Though their son had only just turned two and their daughter was still an infant, the Hales realized that they wanted their children to grow up in an integrated neighborhood. So they made the decision in 1969 to move from Sandy Springs to Cascade Heights in southwest Atlanta. They loved their new community. They attended concerts at Spelman and Morehouse College. Their children made friends and attended the birthday parties of their African-American neighbors. However, the optimism that brought them to southwest Atlanta was not enough to counter white homeowners’ fears. They painfully watched as block- busting rapidly transitioned the neighborhood from white to black.189 By the time their son had started at Cascade Elementary School in 1971, he was the only white child in his class. His experience contrasted sharply with their younger daughter, who was attending the integrated Atlanta Cooperative Preschool.
At the Co-op, the Hales met other white parents who were committed to integration, including Marcia and Dan Klenbort, Pete and Betsy Richards, and Jane and Andy Lipscomb. The Klenborts, like them, had moved into southwest Atlanta, while the Richards and Lipscombs were some of the early pio- neers who moved into Morningside. Through her friendship with Marcia Klenbort, she became involved in the “committee for an open school,” which from 1973 to 1974 sought to establish the city’s first inte- grated K-8 public school. “It was a very exciting committee with a lot of the preschool people from across town. Then we lost by one vote at the Atlanta school board meeting.”190 With their final attempt to sup- port integration having failed, the Hales decided to move. They knew from friends at the cooperative pre-
189 For more on the efforts by white and black, middle-class homeowners and parents to maintain an integrated neighborhood see the following articles on Southwest Atlantans for Progress (SWAP): “SWAP to meet at Green- brier Thursday at 8,” Atlanta Daily World, February 21, 1968, page 6; “Town Hall meeting set in Southeast,” At- lanta Daily World, April 14, 1970, page 1; “Hungry Club gets Temple Award,” Atlanta Daily World, May 1, 1970, page 7; “W.M. Alexander seeks House seat from 96th,” Atlanta Daily World, June 12, 1970, page 8; “CRC Award,” Atlanta Daily World, March 30, 1971, page 1;“Carter names ‘Blockbusting’ committee; Governor calls tactics the ‘Most unscrupulous’,” Atlanta Daily World, July 8, 1971, page 1. For more on SWAP see Bayor, Race and the Shaping of Twentieth-Century Atlanta, 235-7; Harmon, Beneath the Image of the Civil Rights Movement and Race Relations, 217.
190 Interview with Charlotte Hale, October 18, 2011. For more on the Atlanta Cooperative Preschool see “Movies for children shown at Morris Brown,” Atlanta Daily World, December 22, 1970, page 3; “TV program spotlights ac- tions of four local women on Dec. 20,” Atlanta Daily World, December 14, 1972, page 6; “Flower Power Day ob- served in Atlanta,” Atlanta Daily World, May 29, 1979, page 2; Ozeil Fryer Woodcock, “Social Swirl,” Atlanta Daily World, May 4, 1980, page 3; “International food festival,” Atlanta Daily World, March 30, 1984, page 3. For more on the “committee for an open school” see “Open school receives ‘No’ vote,” Inman Park Advocator, July 1974.
school that Morningside had defeated the highway and that there was a core group of parents who were committed to the neighborhood and the pairing. In fact, Pete and Betsy Richards, who they also knew from the preschool co-op, had agreed to take on the presidency of the CW Hill PTA that first year.191 Hale recalls how those friendships led to them buying their home in Morningside-Lenox Park:
We started talking to our friends the Lipscombs, Jane and Andy Lipscomb in Morning- side, who were some of the pioneers there. They had started the first babysitting co-op [and] were in the busing program at CW Hill. We moved intentionally, knowing from the Lipscombs, who were supportive of [the pairing], that Hill was a really good, formally black, small school…so we left in 1974 and went to Morningside, to another kind of growing edge. That was just after the highway had been defeated by the neighbor- hood…they were really energized because they had just defeated the road, but what we also understood was that a lot of families had moved out right before we got there, worry- ing about the schools primarily and also the highway. It was sad because those two things really took a lot of long time residents and families that had been there. But new people were moving in and that was the same year that the big gasoline crunch hit, the energy crisis. People wanted to move near town and so that helped. It was a dynamic changing time.192
They found Morningside to be invigorating. Like many of the young couples moving in, they joined the civic association right away. As their children got older, they decided to finish off their attic, and the next year, their home on North Morningside Drive was on the Tour of Homes. Charlotte Hale also joined the League of Women Voters, but her primary focus, as it had been in Cascade Heights, was the schools. As a former teacher, she knew how important it was to have parent volunteers. She started off doing “the nor- mal things” in her children’s schools and that eventually led to her serving as PTA president at CW Hill Elementary School in 1977 and education chair for the Morningside-Lenox Park Neighborhood Associa- tion in 1978.193
Under her leadership, the education committee concentrated on easing parents’ fears. She put to- gether a brochure that provided information on each of the four schools to show Morningside-Lenox Park parents that the public schools were their neighborhoods’ greatest assets.194 She also coordinated coffees
191 Pete Richards then served as president of the Morningside-Lenox Park Neighborhood Association for two years before being elected to the school board.
192 Interview with Charlotte Hale, October 18, 2011. 193 Ibid.
194 The brochure provided a school system overview and detailed descriptions of the public schools that served the neighborhood: C.W Hill Primary, Morningside Elementary, O’Keefe Middle School, Grady High School, and spe-
and tours with other parents in the neighborhoods, including newly elected school board member Joe Martin and his wife Larrie Del and Trisha and Jack Senterfitt, who had taken over as co-presidents of the CW Hill PTA that fall.
The August before in 1977, Morningside Elementary School had opened with only eight kinder- garten students.195 With their oldest child Marie starting kindergarten, the Martins decided to start hosting coffees in their home. Martin remembers why he and his wife opened up their home to prospective par- ents from the neighborhood right after their daughter started school:
Morningside’s enrollment dropped to less than 200 students and was on the verge of be- ing closed. I was coming on the board, and my wife and I decided to have open houses recruiting for Morningside Elementary School. Can you think of anything more ridicu- lous that that today? But that was because there was so much concern about getting on the bus and going to Hill. It was not that far, but it was a whole other world.196
When they were out and people would say to them, “Well, I’m not going to sacrifice my children to send them to a certain school,” the implication was clear, “Why did you sacrifice your children? Are you just committed to a cause and you let your kids suffer the consequences?”197
Trisha and Jack Senterfitt confronted similar pressure from couples at her husband’s law firm after they started hosting coffees for parents at their home. Trisha Senterfitt targeted the wives of other lawyers because they could not use the argument that the Senterfitts could not afford private school. In- stead, she explained that they were choosing to send their children to public school because it was “the right thing to do” if they were going to push past their fears. After becoming the co-presidents of the CW Hill PTA in 1978, the Senterfitts tried to have the coffees at Hill. Their oldest daughter Shelley had just started second grade, and they hoped to get prospective parents into the neighborhood to show off the beautiful facilities. Parents’ fears persisted, yet Trisha Senterfitt held to her beliefs. “We should not be a
cial programs. “Schools: Our Neighborhoods Greatest Assets,” brochure, Morningside-Lenox Park Association
Education Committee, date unknown, Joe Martin Papers (privately held). 195 “Morningside School History Project,” May 1996.
196 Interview with Joe Martin, April 2, 2009.
197 Michelle Cohen Marill, “Resegregation: Integration was supposed to level the playing field in public schools. Fifty years later, is new de facto resegregation so bad?,” Atlanta Magazine, April 2009.
separatist world, and were going to be if we didn’t break that cycle…it’s very clear how we learn our fears. So that’s what we were trying to do and hoping to do.”198
When the Senterfitts had moved to Atlanta in 1974, they had searched for a neighborhood and church that embraced their values. Trisha Senterfitt recalls their housing hunting experience:
We first came to Atlanta in the summer of 1973. My husband is a lawyer, and he clerked at Alston, Miller and Gaines, where he ultimately received an offer…we had met some friends that summer at the law firm when Jack was clerking and when we analyzed who we identified with the most, [it was the couples] that lived in Morningside. That was a big factor. That and the schools. We knew that they were in trouble because of integration, but we weren’t afraid of that. We wanted our kids to be in school with black people…we then found a church out in Decatur because the Morningside Church was so small. We’re Presbyterian, and we wanted to go right there where we lived but there were no kids so we went to North Decatur, which was very liberal and supportive of integration.199
The more they looked at homes in Morningside, the more the Senterfitts were attracted to the neighbor- hood. The style and age of the homes, the proximity to his new office, and the price were appealing. The most important factor in their decision was the values the community represented. Her father was a Pres- byterian minister and his parents were a Baptist minister and a director of Christian Education. Growing up, both of their families had been active in the civil rights movement. “Both of our families took us to marches. We had been a part of trying to get racial peace.”200 In Kingsport, Tennessee, Trisha Senterfitt had listened to her father preach in support of the civil rights movement, and she was looking for a neigh- borhood where their young family could be part of an integrated community and continue the mission of the movement.
After Jack Senterfitt finished law school at Vanderbilt, they returned to Atlanta so that he could start work at Alston and Bird’s predecessor. At home with their daughter who had just turned three, Trisha quickly got involved in the Morningside baby-sitting co-op. Made up of over fifty families, the group had been started after a couple of the mothers read about the idea. “The road was still a threat at that point, so everyone that moved into the neighborhoods had to be risk takers…the personalities of the
198 Interview with Trisha Senterfitt, October 13, 2011. 199 Ibid.
kind of people that came here, we were all pioneers, that was important.”201 For women like Trisha Sen- terfitt, who had gradated from Eckerd College and worked as a high school German teacher while her husband finished his tour in Vietnam, the babysitting co-op was a lifesaver. It was how she made friends, how she found playmates for her children, and how she first got invited to join the League of Women Voters. After their children started school, the same group of mothers started meeting every Wednesday morning at the Old Hickory House for breakfast.202 “We had to have those weekly meetings to cheer each other on, to process what was going on, and to make our plans for how to deal with problems. It was really brilliant, how it happened. We didn’t have any training. It was out of sheer desire for our kids.”203
This core group of mothers, women like Charlotte Hale who was now chairing the Morningside- Lenox education committee and Trisha Senterfitt who was serving as president of the CW Hill PTA, reached out to prospective parents moving into the close-in, reviving neighborhoods that were zoned for the pairing. Through coffees and tours, they encouraged the parents to visit the schools. “We spent hours trying to take people on tours to meet the teachers,” yet they found that not even the brand-new building was enough. It wasn’t about the facilities. “It was about race.”204
The most challenging of the close-in neighborhoods was Ansley Park. The Ansley Park Civic As- sociation’s education committee had been founded two years earlier by parents fighting to keep their neighborhood school, Spring Street Elementary School, from being closed.205 Like the Hales, Marcia and Dan Klenbort had decided to move from Mozley Park in southwest Atlanta after their youngest child, who had been attending the Atlanta Cooperative Preschool, became the only white student at Frank L. Stanton Elementary School.206 They had first moved to Atlanta ten years earlier when her husband was hired by Morehouse College’s History Department. They began searching for a stable neighborhood with
201 Ibid.
202 When the Old Hickory House at Piedmont Road and Monroe Drive closed, the group moved to the American Roadhouse. Though several generations of parents had now come through, the group continues to meet every Wednesday morning.
203 Interview with Trisha Senterfitt, October 13, 2011. 204 Ibid.
205 The 1976 Ansley Park Civic Association education committee members included Marcia Klenbort, Betsy Leif- ermann, John and Joyce Tucker, Emily Tillman, Sally Hardin, Nancy Foster, and chair Sally George.
206 After the defeat of the “committee for an open school,” the Klenborts enrolled their older son at the private Paideia School.
an integrated, neighborhood school. In 1976, the Klenborts purchased their second home on Avery Drive in Ansley Park in order to be in the Spring Street Elementary School district. Upon moving in, Marcia Klenbort quickly became caught up in the Ansley Park education committee’s campaign to keep the neighborhood elementary school open. Despite their efforts Spring Street Elementary, whose enrollment had fallen to 200 students, was closed. It was announced Ansley Park families were to be rezoned to