Susan Hansen, July 22, 2011 from Trinity College on Vimeo.
Hansen, Susan. Oral history interview on West Hartford, CT and restrictive covenants (with video), by Candace Simpson for the Cities, Suburbs, and Schools Project, July 22, 2011.Available from the Trinity College Digital Repository, Hartford Connecticut (http://digitalrepository.trincoll.edu/cssp/).
The picture above from the Hartford History Center displays students from the city of Hartford being bused in to a school in Suffield, approximately 30 minutes outside the urban center. This photo is somewhat surprising due to the fact that it is from 1968, because it displays racial segregation in the educational system slowly advancing towards integration. It indicates that the children bused in from Hartford were of African American descent and the teacher greeting the students is Caucasian therefore integrating mixed races under one building.
In the video below, Susan Hansen responds to the map portraying the race restrictive covenants in her suburban dwelling that were permissible in the 1940’s stating that, “[It was] before my time so I don’t really give it much thought. But no, I never heard of this. I never this happening anywhere, really, in Connecticut or this part of the country. Like I said, grow up in New York and when you heard about problems, it was “Well, that’s the South. You know, they still have this horrible segregation, but we don’t have it in New York.” At least superficially we didn’t have it in New York, but certainly when I was a kid, you noticed” [00:05:43]. Race restrictive covenants go hand in hand with the educational system that was enforced in the same time period. Just like any discriminatory or communal policy implemented, the internal institutions such as schools were affected along with the community members, students, in the same society. The shock that Hansen evokes provides the evidence that the notion of racial segregation has certainly diminished if not completely eliminated in the modern world, giving the photo above credit for the production of integrated schooling.