Youth Media Workshop
Empowering economically diverse African-American youth from public schools to make media and social change
More Than a Bus Ride: Desegregating Champaign Schools (2005 documentary)
Dereke Clements says he felt special in 1968 when, as a fourth grader, he was chosen to leave his all-black school and take a school bus with other black children to the formerly all-white Lottie Switzer School. But it wasn’t long before he realized that desegregation was going to be harder than he expected.
Whereas teachers at Booker T. Washington School had nurtured black children and looked out for them, white teachers at Switzer talked harshly to black students. “That was not a good feeling,” said Clements, now a marketing director and music/concert producer in Atlanta. “The white teachers had extremely low expectations of black students.”
On the positive side, at Switzer the books were brand new, the pencils and paper were plentiful, and the playground equipment was abundant. Washington had had hand-me-down books and few educational resources. “It was like night and day,” he said. And eventually, the move to desegregated schools was a positive one for him. “It was a great transition in terms of my growth, because it later gave me the feeling and the understanding that people are all the same.”
Clements is one of 14 former and current Champaign residents interviewed for a new radio documentary, More Than a Bus Ride: Desegregating Champaign Schools, produced by African-American girls at Franklin Middle School as part of The Youth Media Workshop, a collaboration between WILL radio and Innovative Ed Consulting, Inc., headed by Dr. Will Patterson.
This is the second year a group of girls from Franklin has produced a radio program focusing on local African-American life. This year a group of 12 Franklin students, assisted by three peer educators from last year’s project, created More Than a Bus Ride.
The Franklin students interviewed teachers, principals, parents, students and members of the committee formed to desegregate the schools in 1968. Interviewees talk about who formed the desegregation plan, why many black parents pushed hard for desegregation, how black students were selected to be the first to go to formerly white schools, and conflicts and friendships between white and black students and teachers.
More Than a Bus Ride: Desegregating Champaign Schools was made possible, in part, by a grant from the Illinois Humanities Council, the National Endowment for the Humanities, the Illinois General Assembly and the Unit 4 School District.
