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Delaware’s Role in Desegregation as a Means to Inform Current Views
A thorough and honest investigation of the justification behind busing resident students of Wilmington out of the city and into the suburbs in order to attend public high school involves going backwards in time to the late 18th century and early 19th century. After the civil war (in which Delaware was technically a part of the union, but very much divided in terms of morals and opinions between the northern and southern halves), schools for African American students existed, but paled in comparison to schools for white students.4 White schools operated for twice as many months as “colored” schools and by 1920, approximately 20 percent of all African Americans in Delaware were illiterate (as opposed to 1.8 percent for whites).5 The physical conditions of the schools certainly reflected the inequality amongst both races, as well; schools for African American students were dilapidated, over-crowded, and had despicable sanitary facilities (if they had any at all).6
In 1917, Delaware’s leading industrialist, Pierre S. du Pont, contributed $2.6 million to promote public education as the key to societal progress.7 Aspiring for a fully funded, state-supported educational system, du Pont took preventative action toward naysayers by offering to donate all of the necessary funding to build new schools for African American students.8 In 1921, Delaware’s education law underwent revisions that required an equivalent education for the state’s African American and white students.9 Unfortunately, the educational system in Delaware was not exactly reflective of the laws for several years; a large majority of African American students still attended schools staffed by one teacher scattered throughout the state and very few of these schools were high schools.10 In fact, a study conducted in 1923 determined that the number of African American high school students and African American high schools was so minute that the author completely omitted tables with attendance and absence records for those school pupils within the study.11
By 1940, more than a third of African American Delawareans over the age of twenty-five had less than five years of formal education.12 Inequities proved to be prolific, despite the fact that the city of Wilmington began the construction of its own public high school for African American students: Howard High School.13 Built to accommodate 750 students, 1,039 were enrolled there in 1946.14 Considerably low teacher salaries, insufficient curricula, facilities, and materials continued to separate the African American schools from the white schools.15 Although the state of education in Delaware improved following du Pont’s famous donation, it was certainly far from equal.
The streets of Wilmington and its neighboring suburban communities in the northern part of the state, however, told a different story than that of the educational system in Delaware. Neighborhoods were fairly mixed with immigrants of various nationalities and also included African Americans.16 Children of all races and nationalities often played together, despite the fact that they had to attend different schools. Wilmington Friends School set the precedent in 1943 when they scheduled a basketball game against Wilmington’s African American high school, Howard High—and Salesianum (the city’s leading Catholic school) and other schools were quick to follow suit.17 This social progression was very different from that of the law.
Post-secondary education in Delaware was very much a reflection of its own public school system; the University of Delaware in Newark served white students, which the substantially smaller and underprivileged Delaware State College for Negroes (DSCN) now Delaware State University served African American students in Dover.18 However, in 1949, a group of 30 students from DSCN applied for admission to the University of Delaware…only to be vehemently rejected.19 Seeking a college education that was more than that of the glorified high school setting of Delaware State, the group of students took their case to Louis Redding, Wilmington native and first African American admitted to the practice of law as a member of the Delaware bar.20 After Redding’s letter to Delaware judge Hugh H. Morris, president of the university’s board of trustees, proved unsuccessful in attempting to urge the board to change its admissions policies, Redding partnered with a young white lawyer named Jack Greenberg and took the case to the Delaware Court of Chancery.
The judge on the case, Collins Jacques Seitz, was remarkably perspicacious for the age of 36. A Wilmington native, Seitz had a reputation for his progressive mindset and the fact that his motivation seemed unchanged by the prospect of making money.21 Nationally recognized for his ability to balance vigorously conflicting interests between prominent companies, he served as a model arbiter of corporate law. Seitz found DSCN “grossly inferior” to that of the University of Delaware and ordered the African American plaintiffs to be admitted to the white university. In recognition of the severe nature of the inequity between the two colleges, the state did not appeal the judge’s decision and the University of Delaware became the first state-financed institution in America to be desegregated at the undergraduate level via court order.22
In 1951, Louis Redding’s work proved to be far from done when eight African-American parents residing in Claymont came to him regarding the inequity they, too, were experiencing with Delaware’s education system.23 Suburban Claymont, about nine miles north of Wilmington, was equipped with a prestigious combination grade school and high school nestled on a beautifully landscaped and manicured fourteen-acre site.24 African American children were not permitted to attend, and instead had to take the bus downtown to Howard High School, a much less attractive and well-kempt building surrounded by dilapidated factories, warehouses, and other deteriorating buildings. Claymont students traveled nearly an hour to get to the overcrowded school, which had significantly less course offerings than its white counterpart.25
That same year, Louis Redding was approached by Sarah Bulah of Hockessin, who couldn’t help but feel it unjust that a bus would drive past her house on a daily basis to take white children to a beautiful neighborhood school while she had to drive her daughter, Shirley, two miles to an old one-room schoolhouse for “colored children.”26 Not only were there significant differences between the schools, but Shirley was provided with absolutely no transportation.27 Mrs. Bulah wrote a letter to the Department of Public Instruction in received a response from Elbert N. Carvel, Delaware’s Governor; he simply told her that transportation services for her daughter were not offered.28 After being turned down so quickly and so harshly, Mrs. Bulah brought her case to Louis Redding, as well.
These two separate court cases— Belton v. Gebhard and Bulah v. Gebhart (Francis B. Gebhart being the first alphabetical member of the State Board of Education, ultimately became incorporated into the larger U.S. Supreme Court Case of Brown v. Board of Education.29 Ultimately, in 1955, the courts ordered schools in Delaware to desegregate and “white” and “Negro” schools slowly began to become a notion of the past. However, in 1971, parents of children who attended public schools in Wilmington asked the federal court to rule that Wilmington schools were never appropriately or entirely desegregated, as around 85 percent of the students were African American.30 A decade long court battle, Evans v. Buchanan, ensued, ultimately leading to the nation’s first metropolitan, multi-district school desegregation court order.31 The large percentage of African American students in Wilmington schools is directly related to Delaware’s city and suburban demographics, as nearly half of the city of Wilmington’s population was African American, whereas merely 5 percent of the outlying suburban population was African American.32 The nation’s first metropolitan, multi-district school desegregation court order was born out of a decade long court battle involving ten suburban school districts.33
In 1978, a strategy to desegregate not only Wilmington schools, but schools within the ten surrounding suburban school districts as well, was formulated. An elaborate plan was executed in September of 1978, when 20,000 of the 65,000 students in the affected areas were bused across city-suburban lines in order to better balance the racial makeup of schools.34 At the time of the court order, Wilmington had three high schools, one of which was what used to be Howard High School but was incorporated into the New Castle County Vocational-Technical School District in 1978 and became Howard High School of Technology.35 Pierre S. DuPont High School became a middle school and then an elementary school, and Wilmington High School was left to become the major battleground of racial antagonism.36
Many people were greatly upset by the new busing procedures, and students at Christina School District high schools remember protests and walkouts. Suburban families were extremely uncomfortable with the idea of busing their children into Wilmington and enrollment in private schools skyrocketed.37 As a result of “white flight,” enrollment in Wilmington High School dwindled, and it graduated its last class in 1999 before it was transformed into an arts magnet school, leaving the city of Wilmington totally devoid of a public high school.38
Public Art as it Relates to Civil Rights
Artist Maya Lin’s Civil Rights Memorial in Montgomery, Alabama, is an obvious paragon of public art dedicated to civil rights. Maya Lin earned an astounding reputation as both an architect and designer with her Vietnam War Memorial in Washington, D.C., and was sought after by the Southern Poverty Law Center in Montgomery to design the memorial.39 The memorial’s design is centered largely on a quote from Martin Luther King, Jr., “we will not be satisfied until justice rolls down like waters and righteousness from a mighty stream.”40 The quote itself is carved into a black granite wall that sits behind a table-like structure, and the names of important people and events of the civil rights movement are chronicled on the table, giving it the appearance of a clock. Water emerges from the center of the table and flows gently and evenly across its surface, providing both a tactile and visual experience for the viewer.
While Maya Lin’s design is just one of many works of public art dedicated to civil rights, it provides an alternative way of thinking to the more traditional statue to which Wilmington is accustomed. There are certainly more civil rights monuments worth exploring, including, but not limited to: “I Had a Dream” by Robert H. Miller in Selma, Alabama; “A Monument: The Birmingham Jail” by Joe Minter in Birmingham, Alabama; “Civil Rights Garden” in Atlantic City, New Jersey; “Testament” in Little Rock, Arkansas; Three “Freedom Walk” sculptures by James Drake in Kelly Ingram Park in Birmingham, Alabama. Furthermore, Maya Lin’s Civil Rights Monument begs conversation regarding its similarities to what is arguably her most famous work of public art, the Vietnam Veteran’s Memorial in Washington, D.C.
While northern Delaware made significant contributions to Brown v. Board of Education, this history is not exactly well known. Therefore, it is no surprise that Wilmington’s public art ignores this compelling piece of history, as well; unfortunately, none of Wilmington’s public art is in tribute to northern Delaware’s role in nationwide desegregation or civil rights as a whole. Pierre S. du Pont, despite his financial contribution to equal rights in education, is not recognized in any of Wilmington’s public art, and the fact that his grandson, Admiral Samuel Francis du Pont, has his own memorial is totally unrelated to the contributions Pierre S. du Pont made towards increasing equity within Delaware’s education system (Samuel Francis du Pont’s monument is due to his contributions to naval warfare).41 The fact that the subject matter of Wilmington’s public art is mainly dominated by wars, presidents, and other political figures is not necessarily surprising given Delaware’s history as one of the original thirteen colonies, but the disregard for such an important piece of Delaware’s history is a bit more unanticipated.
Wilmington’s closest nod to civil rights through public art is in two war-related statues, the first of which is its Vietnam memorial by Charles Cropper Parks. The memorial consists of two nine-foot-tall soldiers, one carrying the other, while crossing over a Vietnamese hillock in search of refuge. The statue is very much a modern day pieta in its composition, with an African American soldier carrying a shirtless wounded white soldier. The monument is meant to not only depict the loss suffered from the Vietnam war, but also to remind the public that in the field of war, there was no segregation; death was shared equally amongst black and white.42 In fact, in order to ensure the receipt and interpretation of this message, the artist exaggerated the face of the African American man with “unquestionably Negroid features.”43 The memorial was sponsored by New Castle County and was unveiled in 1983 in a large ceremony with several prominent attendees, including government officials and Vietnam veterans and their families.44
Wilmington’s second war-related monument that references civil rights is its 1998 Monument to African American Medal of Honor Recipients. The monument is actually said to be the only one in existence, which is strange considering the fact that none of the names on the monument belong to Delawareans.45 The initial voice of the project proposal belonged to Wilson K. Smith, a decorated and disabled African American Vietnam veteran from Wilmington.46 Smith questioned why more African Americans were not recognized and led the massive effort to erect the statue—the only of its kind—in Wilmington.47 This particular piece of public art is an excellent example of how one voice can gain the support of many others over time and become a collectively powerful influence that gains the support of state lawmakers.48
Finally, Wilmington’s most recent piece of public art that alludes to the important role of African Americans in history is the Tilton Park Mural, installed and dedicated in 2012. The primary goal of the mural… “was to depict the historic themes…and industries intrinsic to Wilmington and to Delaware.”49 The mural features a wide range of themes from and chemical inventions to banking and finance. Scenes from the Underground Railroad are also featured on the mural, which acts as this mural’s acknowledgement to African-American history. Unfortunately, though, the publicity surrounding the mural is nowhere near as vast as its content; in fact, a database search of Delaware’s newspaper does not uncover a single article about the mural; sadly, the mural is only mentioned as a landmark to describe the location of nearby crimes. Like much of Wilmington’s public art, the Tilton Park mural seems to provide nothing more than a background to the city’s endless problem with crime and violence.
It is impossible to ignore the irony created by the combination of Wilmington’s notorious reputation for its crime and violence and the fact that many of its memorials and monuments are war-themed. However, war and loss certainly have their places both in history and in public art, and it takes a particularly skilled artist to be able to successfully represent both within a single work of art.
Popular National Works of Public Art
Maya Lin began her career as a famed architect and designer as a student at Yale University. Her participation in a seminar on Funereal Architecture led to her original design for the Vietnam Veteran’s Memorial in Washington D.C. that was unanimously chosen as the winner of a design contest.50 Lin defined a memorial as a place that allows people affected by a tragedy to mourn and recognize their grief to bring closure and move on, and her unique and sentimental view helped lead her design to stand out from the rest.51 In fact, Lin’s preliminary sketches that were submitted along with her proposal serve as an artistic prophesy to the deep thought and meaning behind her idea. Lin used soft pastels to create an abstract rendering of the memorial—a much different approach than the harsh, graphic, high-contrast line drawings that usually accompany an architectural idea. To Lin’s supporters, the sketches were an ideal representation of the thoughtful memorial she had designed, but to her protesters, the drawings spurred a series of negative epithets, such as “the gash” or “the boomerang.”
The Vietnam Veteran’s Memorial was as controversial as it was groundbreaking. Many people disputed the boomerang-like shape of the memorial, its dark color, and the fact that its designer was the daughter of Chinese immigrants.52 Veterans who were dissatisfied with the memorial’s design proposed multiple changes and additions, a few of which were accepted by the committee overseeing the monument (but not condoned by Maya Lin).53 The most prominent part of the memorial is also its greatest likeness to its successor, the Civil Rights Memorial. Both works of art include a unique visceral quality that invites viewers to touch the names (in the case of the Civil Rights Memorial, the names and the events) that are etched into the stone. In the case of the Vietnam Veteran’s Memorial, the act of looking up a name to determine its chronological location on the wall and then physically touching the name can give viewers a kinesthetic connection with the loved one whom they have lost. This connection, of course, is what fueled Lin’s design, and what makes this memorial so unique and admirable.
In the classroom, discussing the plans and construction of the Vietnam Veteran’s Memorial leads to insightful conversation about the items left behind to commemorate visitor’s loved ones. The way in which these objects, ranging from the expected bouquet of flowers to small toys, letters, and other sentimental objects, become a piece of public art both alone and in conjunction with the wall itself, can easily provide a transition into conversations about public art which is more defined by the actual public’s interaction with it. Magic Carpet, a unique installation by a Philadelphia artist named Candy Coated, is a primary example of interactive public art in which the public’s contribution is just as notable and meaningful as the art itself. During a one-month span in the summer of 2014, the artist transformed the oval in front of the Philadelphia Museum of Art into a whimsical environment of color, pattern, illusion and movement.54 The ebullient design included inviting brightly colored sandboxes, three-dimensional optical illusion art, and decorative vinyl floor coverings reminiscent of a rug or carpet. 55 The artist aims to evoke feelings of community with the piece, referring to the “gathering” that typically takes place on a carpet within one’s home.56 Although this piece has a drastically different look and feel from most memorials, the way in which it beckons to its audience to come and interact with it is not entirely different from the level of interaction one can experience with the works of Maya Lin, despite the fact that each interaction potentially leads to very different emotional experiences.
The role of public interaction in the overall effectiveness of Magic Carpet is not unlike the murals of Chicano Park in San Diego, California. Chicano Park is a 7.4-acre park located in San Diego city’s Barrio Logan.57 Barrio residents who use the space for social and political events created the park in 1970. 58 Its most distinguishing feature is also one that can be easily overlooked; forty murals are painted on twenty-four concrete pillars that support the San Diego end of the San Diego-Coronado Bay Bridge.59 Although the murals cannot be seen from the bridge and highways above, their depictions of Mexican icons, events, achievements, and other cultural images serve as a prominent backdrop to the events that are held in the park itself. Chicano Park’s murals are a perfect example of how two-dimensional public art, together with prominent public spaces, can easily take an otherwise flat image and transform it into a three-dimensional space and experience. Furthermore, while the Chicano Park murals began as a guerilla effort, they serve as an example of how community-based art can transcend the realm of high art over a period of time based on the community interactions they encourage.
Although these are just a few examples of more famous or well-known public art projects, there are obviously several more worthy of discussion. Other pieces of public art worth deserving of analysis include: Mount Rushmore National Memorial in South Dakota; the Gateway Arch in St. Louis, Missouri; Robert Indiana’s LOVE in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania; the Lincoln Memorial in Washington, D.C., Florentijn Hofman’s famous traveling Rubber Duck sculpture, and Project Row Houses in Houston, Texas. Naturally, the possibilities only expand more once expanding one’s possibilities to an international level, but introducing students to these three specific works forms a diverse, yet sturdy, foundation for discussing the interaction between public art and public history.
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