A Victory of Sorts: Desegregation in a Southern Community.

A Victory of Sorts: Desegregation in a Southern Community. By Winfred E. Pitts. (Lanham, Md., New York, and Oxford: University Press of America, Inc., c. 2003. Pp. xxiv, 218. Paper, $43.00, ISBN 0-7618-2533-9.)

The redress of ancient wrongs can be as painful as resetting an ill-mended fracture. A Victory of Sorts brought to this reviewer's recollection memories of school desegregation in his own community. Although school desegregation represented a necessary step forward for southern communities, it was not an unmixed blessing. African Americans were sometimes little more inclined than their white counterparts to enter its troubled waters.

Winfred E. Pitts's book centers on the closing of the E. E. Butler High School in Gainesville, Hall County, Georgia. He provides a good overview of the history of the community, as well as a fine account of the history of education there and in the state of Georgia as a whole. He points out that, while black education suffered severe neglect, white education was rather indifferent at best. The book also provides a lengthy summary of the establishment and dismantling of segregated education, including two chapters discussing the entire process of school desegregation and white and African American responses to it. Pitts refers to the policy white school boards produced after early attempts to equalize educational opportunities in Georgia as one of "spend rather than blend" (p. 38).

The book's greatest strength lies in its exploration of African American reactions to school desegregation. The school was one of the centers of African American community, and the black people of Gainesville, Georgia, viewed with alarm and sorrow the end of their separate educational institutions. Many African American students had difficulty adjusting to the white school. They frequently encountered hostility and lack of comprehension from white teachers and administrators, who often automatically relegated them to lower-level classes and expected little from them. The complete absorption of E. E. Butler High School was paralleled by the decimation of the ranks of African American educators, further depriving the students of role models and sources of moral support and encouragement. Although blacks in Hall County regarded desegregation as a necessary step forward, they also felt that they lost a great deal and were made to bear the brunt of the changes.

A Victory of Sorts is well written with copious notes and a wide range of sources, both oral and written, local and national. The book is a fine example of local history at its best. It would be of great value in any course on the history of the civil rights movement or any government course studying the impact on local people of policies decided by distant strangers.

Valdosta State University 

JOHN CROWLEY