‘I couldn’t afford to fail.’ Meet the family who helped integrate Bibb County schools

When Bert Bivins III was growing up, he remembers the specific moment that made his mother become one of the leaders in the Civil Rights Movement in Macon.

Bivins, his mother, Hester, and his grandmother got on the public bus that traveled between Warner Robins and Perry.

Bert sat down in the back of the bus, but he could see the bus driver fussing at his grandmother for not moving fast enough.

The driver’s behavior upset Bert’s mother to the point she was in tears. The driver had spoken to his grandmother in the most disrespectful way, and his mother knew it wasn’t right.

“When my mother came and sat down, that was the only time I ever saw her cry,” he said.

After that moment, Hester started going to meetings and became deeply involved with Macon’s integration movement.

Throughout the 1960’s, the Bivins family was at the forefront of school integration in Macon.

Brown v. Board of Education in 1954 made it illegal for public schools to be segregated, but Bibb County Schools did not start integrating until 1963 when Bert Bivins became the first African American man to attend an all-white public school. At age 21, he attended an adult vocational class at a local high school.

But, Bert was considered a special case because school officials at the time said the ruling allowing him in only applied to Bert.

The local schools slowly started to integrate in 1964 with the admission of 16 black students into previously all-white high schools, enrolling them at Lanier, Miller and Willingham.

By February 1970, Bibb County Schools were forced to fully integrate by a court order, and in August 1970, the school system opened for its first full year as integrated schools, according to The Telegraph archives.

This February, which is Black History Month, also marks the 50th anniversary of integration of Macon’s public schools.

Today, Bert Bivins is a Macon-Bibb County Commissioner after working at Robins Air Force Base for 30 years and teaching for 10 years.

Although Bert announced in July 2019 that he would not seek re-election as a commissioner, he has served the Macon community in many roles, including serving on the Macon Water Authority and Health Department boards.

Bivins said it’s still hard to believe how things were back then.

“It was almost like society was saying, ‘You’re kind of almost sub-human,’ but my folks always said, ‘You’re as good as anybody.’ And so, I resented those things that were done that made us appear that we were not as good as anybody else,” he said.

Challenges of being the first

When Bivins graduated from high school, he got a job as a janitor at Robins Air Force Base. It was, “the best job I ever had at that time,” he said.

He went back to school to take vocational classes at Ballard-Hudson, a black high school, at night, but the second year at the school they had too many students and not enough teachers.

Bert decided to transfer to Dudley M. Hughes Vocational School, the all-white alternative, with four other black students.

“In 1962, it really wasn’t safe to be doing things related to integration,” Bert said.

The other four students decided to back out, and Bert tried to transfer by himself, which ended up getting him suspended from Ballard Hudson.

During this time, Bert was also applying for an electronics apprentice program at Robins Air Force Base, and he was called to go to the civilian personnel office.

Although Bert had passed the test to get into the program, he said he felt they were trying to discourage him from continuing in the program because they were contracted to use Dudley M. Hughes High School as the vocational school, and they didn’t think the school would let him enroll.

“It was obvious to me he was trying to discourage me. They wanted me to say I didn’t want to get into it, which was easier for them,” he said.

When it came time for Bert to go to Dudley Hughes after three months of training at the base, the school refused to admit him, so he wrote a letter to U.S. Attorney General Robert Kennedy.

One morning at around 8 a.m., Bert’s mother, Hester, came in his room with the phone. Bert said he knew something was wrong because he never received phone calls at that time of day, and after Hester gave him the phone, she didn’t leave the room.

An agent from the FBI was on the other end of the line. Bert immediately thought someone had set him up because he had been working in classified areas at the base, but the FBI agent told him he wanted to talk about his letter.

Bert went to meet the agent, and the agent said he would talk to the school and the base, Bert said.

On June 13, 1963, Bert was officially enrolled in the adult vocational program at Dudley Hughes.

“Bert Bivins III thus became the first Negro to break the racial barrier in the Bibb County School system,” according to a Telegraph article at the time..

The Bibb County Board of Education denied that the decision was made due to pressure from the federal government or the potential loss of federal funding.

On the first day of class, the vocational director, Raymonde Kelley, escorted Bert to his classroom and carried his books as a safety precaution.

Bert said he was secluded from the other students, and while the other students worked in groups of three or four, he worked alone.

Despite not receiving help from the other students, Bert was one of the top students in the class.

“I just … I felt like I couldn’t afford to fail,” Bert said, with tears in his eyes.

Over the next six years, some of Bert’s six siblings would follow in his footsteps to further integrate Bibb County Schools.

Story of those who followed

James Bivins, one of Bert’s four younger brothers, along with his brother Larry were some of the first black boys to attend Lanier High School, an all-white boys school.

On the first day, James said he remembers boys standing behind him taunting him.

“They said, ‘I smell a (racial epithet),’” he said. “I finally decided just ignore it, don’t worry about it, stare straight ahead. … It was terrible.”

The only teacher that gave James problems was a science teacher who acted like he didn’t exist, but during the first few weeks of school, James said students got into fights almost everyday.

“They didn’t want us there, and they hated us being there,” he said.

James avoided the fights because his mother told him to go in the opposite direction.

“Mother taught us … you do what you gotta do. You don’t be violent and hurt nobody. You just do what you gotta do,” he said. “But, we made it.”

Their sister, Shirley, was also enrolled in A. L. Miller High School, an all-white girls school.

Shirley’s name also headed a lawsuit filed in 1963 that eventually led to the complete integration of Bibb County Schools.

Bert said their mother wanted them to go to those high schools because they had better resources than the black high school, Ballard Hudson, and they were separated by sex.

Shirley was scared to go to Miller because she said she didn’t know anything about white people, but she said her mother made her transfer to the school.

“My mama didn’t talk to me about it. She just said it was something I had to do and that ended it. That meant that there was not gonna be any talking, no crying, no babbling. You just gonna do it because that’s how my mom was. That’s how she raised seven children by herself. Her word was the last word,” Shirley said. “She knew what I was going through, but she felt like there was no way for blacks to get a better education.”

Shirley had to go to Mercer University for summer school before attending Miller because she said they were so far behind the white students.

She developed a resentment toward moving to the school because in addition to having to study all summer, she was seeing how many resources students were given at Miller compared with Ballard Hudson.

“I had a resentment toward my mama because I thought she didn’t love me anymore. If she was putting me through this misery, how could she love me?” Shirley said.

Shirley felt isolated and alone at Miller.

Transferring from a school that praised her intelligence to a school that acted like she didn’t exist had an immense impact on her as a 15-year-old girl, she said.

“I don’t mean to be rude, but it’s like walking out of heaven into hell,” she said. “As a child, that’s just how I felt. That’s how saddened I was.”

Shirley’s fear and anxiety worsened to the point that a doctor prescribed Valium to help treat muscle spasms she was having in her neck, she said.

It helped her stay focused and not worry as much whether the other girls liked her, Shirley said.

Shirley believes the girls and teachers at Miller accepted the fact that the schools were integrating after the first two years she was there, she said, but she has one particular memory that she said she has never forgotten.

A group of white girls were smoking in the bathroom when she walked in, and they offered her a cigarette.

Although Shirley had never smoked, she accepted the cigarette, she said.

“I could not believe that they were talking to me. I got excited,” she said.

The girls left the bathroom to tell the principal Shirley was smoking in there, and the principal threatened to not let her graduate, she said.

“They hurt me so bad. I thought these girls wanted to be my friend. I thought at last I had arrived, and maybe they saw that I was just as human as they was, and they could like me now. So, they really broke my heart,” Shirley said.

Making them feel wanted

Shirley’s older sister, Thelma, now Thelma Dillard who is the vice president of the Bibb County Board of Education, wanted to help her sister.

“They were already going through enough challenges just entering the school and leaving the schools where they were,” Dillard said. “I thought, ‘What can I do to help them feel a little bit better about going to an integrated school?’”

Shirley told Thelma that the white girls at the school had sororities, but they wouldn’t allow the black girls to join, so Dillard started a sorority for them.

Lambda Phi Local Teenage Sorority was founded in 1967 at the Booker T. Washington Center.

With the sorority, Dillard held pageants, taught the girls how to apply makeup and how to dress. Dillard said they started out with four members and it grew to around 10 members.

“I felt that I would be able to encourage the girls, help them with their academics, let them be exposed to some other things to help guide them in their studies, to encourage them to stand up against the challenges, and that everything was going to be all right,” Dillard said.

Continuing their legacy of activism

Dillard and her brother Bert did not stop there. They continued fighting for desegregation and equality throughout their lives.

The next mention of Bert’s activism in The Telegraph happened in January 1970 when he confronted the mayor about his treatment of white students versus black students.

“Mayor Ronnie Thompson was criticized by a young Negro man attending council, who said the mayor showed partiality in his treatment of Negro and white students meeting with him last week.

“The man identified himself as Bert Bivins III and said he was speaking only as ‘an interested citizen,’” read The Telegraph article.

After participating in mass meetings, marches and bus boycotts with their mother, Thelma and Bert organized the Youth NAACP in Macon.

Although Dillard didn’t experience desegregation like her brothers and sister, she said hearing the stories of the challenges her siblings were facing impacted her life.

“It made me want to work harder, to get as much education as I could, to go as far as I could, and to help as many young people as I could to become educated and to give them love and respect,” she said.

Segregation still happening

Although schools have legally been integrated for more than half a century, Curtis Jones, superintendent of Bibb County Schools, said de facto segregation, where people choose to separate themselves, is a national problem.

The Telegraph reported in January 2017 that the proportion of white students in Bibb County public schools had dropped by more than 40 percent over the last 20 years while the population of black students has held relatively steady. Nearly 40 percent of schools in the county were listed as nearly all black, according to the article.

Jones said this de facto segregation happens for several reasons including where people choose to live and how they choose to educate their children, such as sending them to private schools.

After full integration was forced in 1970, the number of private schools in Bibb County doubled to 12, according to The Telegraph archives.

“I think the way we address that is by continuing to provide … the very best value we can for the public, so they see a desire to send their child to our schools,” Jones said.

Although Shirley Bivins said her high school experience was miserable and she would not do it again, she said the outcome was worth it.

“We did come there to make a change,” Shirley said. “If it only helped one person, it was for the best.”