The Struggle to Redevelop a Jim Crow State, 1960–2000

Educating for a New Economy: The Struggle to Redevelop a Jim Crow State, 1960–2000 by William D. Goldsmith Department of History Duke University Date:_______________________ Approved: ___________________________ Nancy MacLean, Supervisor ___________________________ Edward J. Balleisen ___________________________ Adriane Lentz-Smith ___________________________ Gary Gereffi ___________________________ Helen Ladd Dissertation submitted in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy in the Department of History in The Graduate School of Duke University 2018 ABSTRACT Educating for a New Economy: The Struggle to Redevelop a Jim Crow State, 1960–2000 by William D. Goldsmith Department of History Duke University Date:_______________________ Approved: ___________________________ Nancy MacLean, Supervisor ___________________________ Edward J. Balleisen ___________________________ Adriane Lentz-Smith ___________________________ Gary Gereffi ___________________________ Helen Ladd An abstract of a dissertation submitted in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy in the Department of History in the Graduate School of Duke University 2018 Copyright by William D. Goldsmith 2018 Abstract This dissertation shows how an array of policymakers, invested in uprooting an unequal political economy descended from the plantation system and Jim Crow, gravitated to education as a centerpiece of development strategy, and why so many are still disappointed in its outcomes. By looking at state-wide policymaking in North Carolina and policy effects in the state’s black belt counties, this study shows why the civil rights movement was vital for shifting state policy in former Jim Crow states towards greater investment in human resources. By breaking down employment barriers to African Americans and opening up the South to new people and ideas, the civil rights movement fostered a new climate for economic policymaking, and a new ecosystem of organizations flourished to promote equitable growth. At first, they sought to create a high-wage economy based on the industrial North. But as branch-plant recruitment faltered as a development strategy, these policy advocates turned to worker co-operatives, entrepreneurial incubators, and improved education as an alternative. Kids were the new cash crop in part because policymakers came to believe that economic growth—for the locality, for the state, for the nation, for all countries at all times—depended on innovators and entrepreneurs. American workers, too expensive to perform physically grueling industrial chores in an unevenly governed global economy, had to be ready and willing to toss away old skills and acquire new ones to fit whatever tasks the innovators found humans still useful to perform. By stressing the economic value of education, these policy advocates succeeded—for a time—in boosting state and local spending. But this came at the cost of democratic rationales for public schools. Moreover, this approach failed to stabilize rural communities hurt by manufacturing job losses. iv Table of Contents List of Figures List of Tables vi vii List of Abbreviations Acknowledgements Preface viii xi xvi <ul style="display: flex;"><li style="flex:1">1</li><li style="flex:1">Introduction: The Rise of Education for Economic Development </li></ul>Chapter 1: Jim Crow’s Lost Harvest, 1900-1960 Chapter 2: Still Waiting for a “New Day,” 1960-1965 Chapter 3: Halting the Chickenbone Special, 1964-1972 Chapter 4: Growth, a Delicate Balance, 1971-1980 Chapter 5: “Education for Economic Growth,” 1980-1986 Chapter 6: “Beyond the Buffalo Hunt,” 1980-1992 Chapter 7: Kids, the New Cash Crop, 1990-2000 Conclusion: Education and a New Uneven Economy Epilogue: Unraveling the Education for Economic Development Consensus Bibliography 36 88 143 234 312 370 448 519 525 548 <ul style="display: flex;"><li style="flex:1">591 </li><li style="flex:1">Biography </li></ul>vList of Figures <ul style="display: flex;"><li style="flex:1">Figure 1: North Carolina Per Capita Income and Education Spending </li><li style="flex:1">6</li></ul>Figure 2: The Expansion of the Liberal Economic Development Non-profit Ecosystem in <ul style="display: flex;"><li style="flex:1">North Carolina and the South </li><li style="flex:1">9</li></ul>Figure 3: Map of Eastern North Carolina and Black Belt Figure 4: Poverty in the Black Belt (2000) 13 13 Figure 5: Diaspora Southerners as Percentage of All Southern-Born Adults Figure 6: Cartoon of Balanced Growth in North Carolina (1947) Figure 7: United Forces for Education Brochure (1960) Figure 8: Dallas Herring (1960) 21 62 75 77 Figure 9: The Open Door Comprehensive Community College (1965) Figure 10: Map of Community Colleges (1965) 113 116 208 220 272 285 295 340 362 381 383 386 390 392 394 438 477 523 531 532 538 Figure 11: Federally funded regional development programs (1970) Figure 12: Eva Clayton Political Advertisement (1968) Figure 13: Soul City diagram from N&O Investigation (1975) Figure 14: J.P. Stevens unionization victory in Southern Exposure (1980) Figure 15: Political cartoon about state testing program (1978) Figure 16: Jesse White and Stuart Rosenfeld of Southern Growth Policies Board Figure 17: Cartoon of Jim Hunt used against him in 1984 campaign with Helms Figure 18: The staff of Southerners for Economic Justice Figure 19: Black Workers for Justice Workers’ School (circa 1985) Figure 20: BWFJ cartoon of industrial recruitment (1986) Figure 21: Map of Worker-Owned Businesses in North Carolina (circa 1985) Figure 22: Jobs & Justice flier Figure 23: Sewing company spread from Center for Community Self-Help Figure 24: Cartoon of Gov. James Martin and Global TransPark Figure 25: John Locke Foundation charter schools cover (1996) Figure 26: Educational attainment in North Carolina Figure 27: Manufacturing employment, select MSAs, 1993-2017 Figure 28: Eds and meds employment, select MSAs, 1993-2017 Figure 29: Economic development grants by county, 2006-2012 vi List of Tables Table 1: Key votes on Civil Rights and Great Society legislation Table 2: Composition of CADA Board of Directors 138 176 182 204 441 Table 3: Education Expenditures in NC War on Poverty Table 4: Manpower Funding in North Carolina (1970) Table 5: Emergence of Libertarian State Policy Advocacy Groups vii List of Abbreviations <ul style="display: flex;"><li style="flex:1">AFL </li><li style="flex:1">American Federation of Labor </li></ul>ALEC ARA American Legislative Exchange Council Area Redevelopment Act of 1961 <ul style="display: flex;"><li style="flex:1">ARC </li><li style="flex:1">Appalachian Regional Council </li></ul>BWFJ CADA CAFO CDC Black Workers for Justice Choanoke Area Development Association Concentrated animal feeding operation Community Development Corporation Comprehensive Employment and Training Act of 1973 Congress of Industrial Organizations Congress of Racial Equality CETA CIO CORE CPRC DOJ Coastal Plains Regional Commission U.S. Department of Justice <ul style="display: flex;"><li style="flex:1">DOL </li><li style="flex:1">U.S. Department of Labor </li></ul><ul style="display: flex;"><li style="flex:1">ECS </li><li style="flex:1">Education Commission of the States </li></ul>Economic Development Corporation of Eastern North Carolina Equal Employment Opportunity Commission Eastern North Carolina – Local Initiatives Support Corporation Elementary and Secondary Education Act of 1965 Foundation for Community Development Federal Drug Administration EDC EEOC ENC-LISC ESEA FCD FDA viii <ul style="display: flex;"><li style="flex:1">FHA </li><li style="flex:1">Federal Homeowners Administration </li></ul><ul style="display: flex;"><li style="flex:1">Global TransPark </li><li style="flex:1">GTP </li></ul>HEW HUD U.S. Department of Health, Education, and Welfare U.S. Housing and Urban Development Department <ul style="display: flex;"><li style="flex:1">Industrial Education Centers </li><li style="flex:1">IECs </li></ul><ul style="display: flex;"><li style="flex:1">ISS </li><li style="flex:1">Institute for Southern Studies </li></ul>JTPA LINC LISC Job Training Partnership Act Learning Institute of North Carolina Local Initiatives Support Corporation Manpower Development Corporation Manpower Development Training Act of 1962 Raleigh (NC) News & Observer MDC MDTA N&O NAACP NAEP NAFTA NAM NEA National Association for the Advancement of Colored People National Assessment of Educational Progress North American Free Trade Agreement National Association of Manufacturers National Education Association NCAE NCCA NCCBI NCEA NCF North Carolina Association of Educators North Carolina Citizens Association North Carolina Citizens for Business and Industry North Carolina Education Association North Carolina Fund <ul style="display: flex;"><li style="flex:1">NCTA </li><li style="flex:1">North Carolina Teachers Association </li></ul>ix NLRB NGA OEO PPOP REAL RTP National Labor Relations Board National Governors’ Association U.S. Office of Economic Opportunity People’s Program on Poverty Rural Education through Action Learning Research Triangle Park <ul style="display: flex;"><li style="flex:1">SEJ </li><li style="flex:1">Southerners for Economic Justice </li></ul>Southern Growth Policies Board Southern Regional Council SGPB SRC SREB SSC Southern Regional Education Board Superconducting super collider Southern Technology Council Teach for America STC TFA TVA UFE Tennessee Valley Authority United Forces for Education UNC USDA UOCI WOSCO WTO University of North Carolina U.S. Department of Agriculture United Organizations for Community Improvement Workers’ Owned Sewing Company World Trade Organization xAcknowledgements The phrase “You didn’t build that!” earned Barack Obama a lot of flak on the campaign trail in 2012, but it fully applies to this dissertation. My labor producing this document has depended on the support of many, many others. Only a sliver of them are listed below. This (mis)adventure started with Glenda Gilmore, my undergraduate advisor. She connected me to eastern North Carolina sage David Cecelski, who patched me through to Tillery’s finest, Gary R. Grant—who, along with the other Concerned Citizens of Tillery, has taught me more than I can ever acknowledge, about history, organizing, and core values. Back in high school, Bob Yutzy modeled how to think, though I’m still in need of his tutelage (some day I’ll return your philosophy book!). Three people deserve mention for teaching me to write: Katherine Weber, Cathy Harding, and Robert Penn Warren (I blame him for all my bad habits, including this digression). Many people I have never met were foundational to this project; you can find most of their names in the footnotes. John Taylor Gatto wrote essays for Harper’s that made me think critically for the first time about the purpose of schooling. Through archived correspondence, I have a strange intimacy with Dallas Herring, George Autry, Lucy Watkins, Terry Sanford, John Ehle, Floyd McKissick, Joe Grimsley, and Betty Owen—all of whom I will never have a chance to speak with. I was glad to meet William Winter and Jim Hunt in the course of my research, as well as Tom Lambeth, Joel Fleishman, David Dodson and several others discussed in the following pages. Karl Stauber, Ferrel Guillory, Jane Smith Patterson, Stuart Rosenfeld, and, especially, Jesse White were instrumental in helping me understand this past. If I seem occasionally xi critical of the people in this dissertation, I hope it is clear that I am inspired by their engagement in the rough and tumble world of policymaking. You have showed me how one endures with grace in a harsh climate. In the course of my research, I’ve received financial support from a number of organizations, Duke University first and foremost. Financial, social, and emotional aid from the National Academy for Education/Spencer Foundation proved crucial for this final stretch. Tom Nechyba at the Duke Social Science Research Institute also helped bridge my completion funding, which also allowed me to spend many delightful hours with Jim Speckart. Along the way, the Tobin Project, the LBJ Foundation, the Kenan Institute for Ethics, and my wife and mother assisted me with research trips. Max Rose, Richard Hart, and Joshua Mbanusi helped me access the basement records at MDC, Inc., and thanks to Ret Boney for giving me permission to peruse her father’s papers. A host of librarians and archivists helped me see this amorphous concept in concrete sheets of paper. Thanks especially to the staff at the Southern Historical Collection at UNC and the Rubenstein Rare Book & Manuscript Library at Duke. Matt Turi deserves special mention at SHC. Kelley Lawton and Carson Holloway were my research supports at Duke Library. Thank you to the folks at RTI International, where I spent a summer as an intern, especially Jeff Alexander, Sara Lawrence, Sara VanLear, Mike Hogan, and Jacqueline Olich. Valuable feedback at workshops and conferences has sharpened this dissertation. Thank you to Tracy K’Meyer, Robert Pratt, Sarah Thuesen, Gavin Wright, Pam Laird, David Sicilia, Nelson Lichtenstein, Josh Freeman, John Jones, Ansley Erickson, Maris Vinovskis, and Elizabeth Tandy Shermer. Other “MacLean-iacs” gave me well-timed xii guidance and cheer, especially Crystal Sanders and Brett Gadsden. Fellow graduate students and other “emerging” scholars provided camaraderie and inspiration. Shout outs to Keith Orejel, Liz Lundeen, Sarah McNamara, Josh Davis, Nick Juravich, Cristina Groeger, Rudi Batzell, Claire Dunning, Paige Glotzer, Jessica Levy, Andrew Elrod, Mitch Robertson, Dom Barker, Dan Rowe, Kelly Goodman, Mollie McQuillan, Caroline Pinkston, Christina Ciocca, Phil Nichols, Gabriel Chouhy, Kevin Clay, Sarah Kabay, Leigh Soares, and Gabriel Rodriguez. I’ve gleaned so much from everyone at Duke, especially those in the History Department. Thank you especially to Sally Deutsch, Reeve Huston, Phil Stern, Fritz Mayer, Laura Edwards, Jehangir Malegam, John Martin, Jolie Olcott, Bob Korstad, and Susan Thorne, Robin Ennis, and Cynthia Hoglan. Other faculty in the area—especially Kat Charron, Jerma Jackson, Peter Coclanis, and Ben Waterhouse—provided much needed guidance. When I started the program, upper-level graduate students showered far more attention on me than I deserved. Thank you especially to Elizabeth Brake, Paige Welch, Karlyn Forner, Anne-Marie Angelo, and Shana Starobin. It has been great learning (and kvetching) over the years with Corinna Zeltzman, Ryan Poe, Ashley Elrod, Jon Free, Ashley Young, Tom Cinq-Mars, Mandy Cooper, Anna Johns, Paola Reyes, Brad Wood, Aaron Colston, Eladio Bobadilla, Hannah Ontiveros, Mercy DeMenno and Ashton Merck. If you’re not impressed with this dissertation, you don’t know how truly awful it would have been without such a wonderful committee goading me forward. Thank you Gary and Sunny. Adriane’s open door was always a welcome respite, even if she perhaps wished she kept it closed more often. A few other people have gone far beyond any xiii reasonable expectations of mentorship, offering me such tender attention that they are de facto committee members. Thank you to Ethan Hutt and Jason Ellis. Jacquelyn Hall always took me more seriously than I took myself and helped me imagine how to be a scholar. Mac McCorkle provided careful reading of my material, timely introductions, and many wonderful conversations. When I came to Duke, I had no clue what sterling mentorship I would get from Nancy MacLean and Ed Balleisen, which they continue to provide even as I squander many hours of their time and attention. Your generosity on this score shows in the great networks of former students I’ve had the pleasure to get to know through you. Several graduate students did backbreaking emotional lifting along with the usual work of scholarly feedback. Without Tiffany Holland, Yuri Ramírez, Meggan Cashwell, Alisha Hines, Mandy Hughett, David Romine, and Scovill Currin, I’m not sure I would have survived the initial years of graduate school, much less these isolated ABD days. Maceo Montoya served as my far-away sounding board as I churned out these words; our correspondence is perhaps the greater work to come from this. Since they came into my life, Chris Martin and Michael Ripski have always jerked my feet firmly back to the ground. My wife’s family has supported me with welcome laughs, drinks, and conversation. I have been blessed with remarkable friendships from my own days as a public school student in the North Carolina foothills (as I suggest in this dissertation, it is no accident that many of us left for Charlotte, Raleigh-Durham or farther flung locales). Thank you to Jon Kanipe, Wes Ballew, Scott Cunningham, and Chris Pruett. Ben Hollifield and Chris Lunsford have been with me through all the moments, good and bad. xiv Finally my family—Susanne, Elizabeth, my dad. My mother cleared her plate on a moment’s notice to rescue me from childcare in order that I could hunch over my desk to produce this damned thing. More than any novelist, she taught me to see people as the humans they are, rather than the gods or monsters we’d like them to be. Remarkably, my wife, Millie, stood by me through this all. What seemed like a lark in 2010 became a journey far longer than either of us anticipated, yet she supported me with grace and forbearance undeserved. My children Tere and Whitmel reminded me daily, hourly why I do this—as well as why work has limits. Our writings are like children, I learned from the poet Anne Bradstreet, yet no matter how long I nurse this “ill-formed offspring of my feeble brain,” my pride in it pales in comparison to the two of you. xv Preface As with almost any endeavor of this kind, a personal interest undergirds the research and framing. The story ends just as I enter the stage. In the summer of 2002, I came back to North Carolina, after four years of college in New Haven, Connecticut. Not knowing what else to do—uninterested in the pursuit of mammon, dismayed by the legacy of Americans abroad, ambivalent about the value of a life dedicated to the arts—I at least wanted to give back to the place that had given me so much. Growing up in a small foothills town, technically rural but (at that time) full of manufacturing employers, I benefited from an educational infrastructure created by many of the people discussed in this dissertation. My public high school offered sports, debate, student government, and a variety of college-level classes. I took advantage of as much as I could. I attended residential summer programs in science, mathematics, and English, paid for by the state, where I met ambitious fellow North Carolinians who raised the bar for me. I came back as part of Teach for America. With hundreds of other fresh-faced 20- somethings, I crammed during six weeks of summer training in Houston, a kind of boot camp on creating units, setting “big, hairy, audacious” achievement goals, and— especially—the fine arts of classroom management. I thought it would be familiar, maybe even comfortable, teaching high school in my homestate, as opposed to Baltimore, the Rio Grande Valley, or East L.A. I was wrong. Halifax County—a place that relatives on both sides of my family tree had once called home—felt like another world. I was astonished by the segregation in the area, more like the Mississippi Delta than the town where I had grown up. The county’s school system was divided into three districts. Only 5 percent of my students xvi were white, yet whites made up more than 70 percent of students in the Roanoke Rapids Graded District, a few miles up the road from my school. Even more stunning were the disparities of opportunity. The school where I taught offered no Advanced Placement or International Baccalaureate coursework and only a slim set of extracurriculars. The situation paled in comparison to Roanoke Rapids High. I trained as an AP English Literature teacher to foster more advanced courses. I started a Drama Club, and we put on a few fly-by-night productions. Those three years were well spent. I loved my students. Miraculously, some of them got something out of our time together. I learned a great deal about local cultures and histories my elder relatives had shunned and ignored. But I hardly pierced the fabric of unequal opportunity in Halifax County. I was increasingly bothered by my inability to explain, to my students and to myself, why going to college mattered beyond a wage premium, and why it was more challenging to get there from our school in comparison to the one up the road. Drilled into our brains as TFA teachers was the organization’s vision statement: “One day all children in this nation will have the opportunity to attain an excellent education.” It was, and is, a noble goal, despite the statement’s hedge (might we excise “the opportunity to attain”?). A number of prominent academics and educators have critiqued Teach for America for busting unions, promoting charter schools, and playing into the hands of anti-statists who want to dismantle public education. While I agree that much of the education reform movement has been coopted by libertarian ideologues, my experience with TFA was positive. TFA teachers filled pressing staff shortages in Halifax County; by the end of three years, I was among the senior half of the faculty at my high xvii school. Many TFA teachers moved into anti-union roles, but many also learned how necessary it is for teachers to have some countervailing power against the demands of the work environment, which otherwise eats you whole.1 The organization has seeded a broader set of people to engage with education issues, and TFA alumni are scattered across the vast educational policy ecosystem on all sides of the debates. Still, I have come to believe that to achieve that “one day” pledge, we must change more than the school system. Sure, we should pay teachers more in this country, in both material and psychological terms, whether those teachers are K-12 or preschool or college instructors. But even that will not yield a day where all children have a great education. If that day comes, it will be because other aspects of the political economy have changed. One day, perhaps, hard work will not yield such wildly uneven dividends. One day, perhaps, all of us will be secure enough not to worry that our children need more than the children in the neighborhood on the other side of town. In other words, education is not enough to create an equitable political economy; America has “educationalized” its problems long enough. North Carolina Gov. Jim Hunt frequently used to say that “if we had just one generation of properly born, adequately educated, healthy children, developed in character, we would have Utopia itself.”2 Rather than

The Struggle to Redevelop a Jim Crow State, 1960–2000

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