HOPE
Help Our Public Education

 After the Supreme Court ruled state-mandated school segregation unconstitutional in Brown v. Board of Education in 1954, many southern states passed laws to prevent desegregation—including laws that called for shutting down the individual schools or entire districts that chose to integrate. Georgia was one such state.

When several Black parents filed an integration suit against the Board of Education of the Atlanta Public Schools in 1958, the state’s segregationists leaders faced a politically difficult choice: allow Black and white students to attend school together or close the city’s schools. But, as historian Paul E. Mertz has pointed out, simultaneous court decisions being rendered in Virginia meant that “schools could not be closed selectively; if Atlanta’s schools were closed, Georgia faced the prospect of abandoning all public education.” The state was in crisis.

While Georgia Governor S. Ernest Vandiver considered closing the state’s public schools, a group white women from Atlanta’s wealthy Northside neighborhood formed a grassroots coalition to promote keeping the schools open. Help Our Public Education (HOPE), according to a New York Times article from April 12, 1959, was “one of the first organizations formed in the South to fight public school closure.” HOPE sprang into action with one goal: save the schools.

I’m currently working on the following papers related to this area of research:

  • Nichols, Joseph R. and Alyssa Ignaczak. “Help Our Public Education (HOPE), Concerned Motherhood, and Integrating Atlanta’s Public Schools.” Journal of Southern History. (identified for submission)

Publications

Presentations

  • Nichols, Joseph R. “Help Our Public Education, Integrating Atlanta’s Public Schools, and the Grassroots Pushback Against the Segregationist Conservatism of Georgia’s Political Leadership.” Paper to be presented at the annual meeting of the Southern Historical Association in Charlotte, NC, November 9-12, 2023. (paper)

  • Nichols, Joseph R. “Help Our Public Education, Integrating Atlanta’s Public Schools, and the Grassroots Pushback Against Georgia’s Segregationist Political Elite.” Presentation at the annual meeting of the Midwest Political Science Association, Chicago, IL, April 13-16, 2023. (presentation)

  • Nichols, Joseph R. and Natalie Gerke. “Help Our Public Education, Integrating Atlanta’s Public Schools, and How Race-Talk Shapes the History of Race and Segregation in American Education.” Poster presented at the annual meeting of the National Council for History Education, Salt Lake City, UT, March 23-25, 2023. (poster)