g back to the days of the death of Martin Luther King Jr. Van, my father, went to Bloom from 1965-1969 and he said that there was this line that separated the whites from the blacks after the death of Martin Luther King Jr. He recalls the day after the death as a moment he will never forget. The cafeteria was seriously lacking in the black population when the students heard singing coming from down the hall. As the voices got closer, he said, you could make out that they were singing "We Shall Overcome". There were 500 whites that met eye to eye with 500 blacks at the door to the cafeteria. He does not remember what ignited the fight, but by the end there were blacks, whites, and teachers on their way to the hospital. The next day there were squad cars bumper to bumper around the perimeter of the school and there were fifty to sixty police officers in the halls and it stayed that way until he graduated. Even with these officers there, there were two to three fights a week. There were 4,000 students in one school which creates a problem in itself, there was more time spent policing the classroom than teaching. Bloom does have a high number of black students but it does not have anything to do with race, but rather economic class. Forty-three percent of students are from low-income families, way above the state average of thirty-seven percent (Bloom 1). There is no emphasis on education in a family where the parents have none themselves and do not aspire to attain any. Bloom has a graduation rate of sixty percent where the states' is eighty-three percent. Almost half of the students are dropping out to do what? Another public school in the surrounding area is Lincoln-Way Central where most students are from a high social and economic class. The graduation rate of this school is ninety-three percent and the percent of low-income families is two (Lincoln 1). Most of the students of Lincoln-Way have parents who have master's...
