The Roots of Allyship
Tags: Schools, Fort Worth, Education, Texas, Allyship

Becky, Emily and Justin were high school classmates of mine. The four of us were all in the same year at Paschal. Additionally, the three of them were among the few White classmates I had in Morningside’s magnet program. My contact with them over the years has been sporadic. I have seen Emily a few times when I have returned to visit Fort Worth. Justin and I would occasionally run into each other when we both lived in Austin. I haven’t seen Becky at all since high school. But we have all been able to keep in touch with one another thanks to social media. In seeing their empathetic responses to the social unrest of the past several years, I wondered if their time at Morningside played a role. So I asked them.

All three of them said that it had. I wasn’t too surprised by this; it was my working hypothesis, after all. What did surprise me was just how top of mind this has been for all of them. Both Justin and Emily stated that it is something that they have thought about a lot over the years. And Becky said, “One of the things I take most from my experiences at Morningside is that we had a great opportunity to learn and thrive in the inner city bubble we were placed in. It breaks my heart that opportunity isn’t given to more kids. It definitely impacted my worldview.”

Being a White student in the magnet program at Morningside Middle School meant experiencing what it was like to be in the minority. It meant having a Black principal and Black teachers.* It meant being in a gifted and talented program whose director was a Black woman. It meant being in classes where the smartest kids were usually Black. Being a White student at Morningside Middle School meant having a front row seat to the full spectrum of Black humanity at one of the most formative times in a person’s life.

Former Morningside teacher Wanda Ray, left, with former magnet program director Evelyn Meeks. Photo courtesy of Morningside alum Dr. Stephen Roberson.

(*All students in the magnet program at Morningside during this time took multiple classes with Wanda Ray, who taught English and social studies. As anyone she ever had in her class can tell you, Mrs. Ray was not an educator who believed that teaching Black history and about prominent Black Americans was something that should be limited to the month of February.)

As all three of my friends acknowledged, these things have stayed with them ever since. Becky shared that her family was recently ready to purchase a new house that she described as “great.” But then she researched which school her daughter would attend if they moved into it. When she saw that the student body was over 90% White, she backed out to look for a house in a more diverse neighborhood. Becky credits her time at Morningside as a contributing factor to having such a perspective as an adult.

“The real me had a window seat into the world of being in the minority,” Emily said. “The real me rode the bus to Morningside. In a magnet versus main school scenario, all magnet kids are ‘other’ because ‘smart.’ [But] the main school was comprised of Black kids from poor families, so some of us magnet kids were more ‘other’ than the rest because we were not Black.”

Justin provided the most succinct analysis of Morningside’s influence. When I asked him how much he felt being a student there shaped his current worldview, his immediate response was, “More than anything else that’s happened to me in my entire life.”