[I am so distracted by world news. around the same time as US desegregation, Guatemala was going through their trouble with the whole world for electing a socialist president, Jacobo Arbenz. One headline that broke my heart said that Arbenz felt he could reach an agreement with Eisenhower. I just wanted to say: nooooo! they are going to overthrow you!! They don't want to negotiate! But it is 2010 and it is too late. There was also a lot of news about Fulgencio Batista and Cuba, murmurs of revolutionaries. *insert foreboding music* The Cold War was sooo fascinating. Anyway. I digress...]
Today's library goal was to get newspaper articles regarding desegregation in the US and the Panama Canal Zone.
Essentially, after Brown vs. Board of education and US desegregation, the Panama Canal Zone allowed Black Americans to attend the white American schools (as this article explains. I like this picture. yay me). This says nothing of non-Americans who lived in the canal zone, right? Most of them attended different schools. To avoid complete integration (both color and nationality), those English language schools were soon changed to "Latin American Schools." The language of instruction was changed from English to Spanish. You can imagine how that affected English speaking children of West Indian Canal Zone workers, their English speaking instructors, and their general socialization via education. It was not just a language change. It was a system change.
I found a few good articles about that so I left happy.
Panama was also struggling with a serious mosquito problem. It still is, but here is a cartoon of the school racial desegregate era [sorry. I do not know why it is loading sideways. and I do not know how to fix it]
the teacher is congratulating the student for not discriminating in their labors, unlike other schools!
I think my dad lived through that transition. He went to schoool in English through 8th grade and then in 9th grade they switched school to Spanish only. He's never really talked to me about the transition or how was able to do well in school in a second language though.
ReplyDeleteI didn't know your dad went to school in the Canal Zone!
ReplyDelete