Hate behind opposition to school desegregation remains today, civil rights icons who faced it say

Carmen Jungbluth drove from Boone to eastern Iow a today to hear two pioneers of school desegregation from the American South speak in Muscatine to a crowd of 120 rapt audience members in the lead-off event to a three-day tour of Iowa dedicated to barrier-breaking events that civil rights icons Dr. Leona Tate and Carlotta Walls LaNier described in both historic and urgent terms.

Official response and confirmed impact

They spoke tonight in Muscatine at the Stanley Center For Peace and Security.

“It just really meant a lot to me to come and hear these women,” Jungbluth, 67, said after the event.

“We (white people) just went to school automatically without having to think about was it our right to be there.

We didn’t have adults yelling at us as we were going into school.”

Tate also will speak about desegregation on Saturday from 5 to 7 p.m. at First Congregational United Church of Christ, 315 Moore Street in Algona.

Incident background

LaNier, a member of the Little Rock Nine, and Tate, one of the New Orleans Four, integrated schools in their respective cities in the late 1950s and early 1960s in high-profile flashpoints in American history.

LaNier and Tate will speak again Friday night at Plymouth Church on Ingersoll Avenue in Des Moines from 6 to 8 as part of a Trailblazers of School Desegregation series organized and moderated by historian and author Rachelle Chase of Ottumwa and podcaster and Iowa agriculture leader Joshua Manske of Algona.