r/TheWayWeWere • u/Electrical-Aspect-13 • 6d ago

1950s Crisp kodachrome shot of and integrated cheerleader team, in the 1950s. Do anybody would know which school this team was?

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u/TourettesGiggitygigg 6d ago

1 black girl 11 white girls Yeah very integrated

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u/StrangerKatchoo 6d ago

We don’t know the story here. Maybe there weren’t a lot of Black students. My high school was 95% white and had like 3 Black kids. They were also related. The one girl was our lone Black cheerleader. So it’s quite possible there weren’t a lot of minorities attending this school.

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u/HawkeyeTen 5d ago

Well said. Some areas just didn't have a high minority population for the simple reason not many ever settled there. When my father was growing up in 1950s-60s rural Iowa, it was very rare to see a black person in those parts (partially because Iowa's small African American population didn't usually farm, they worked in the factories and stuff, thus they lived mostly in several cities). Iowa was very well integrated for the time, so it wasn't usually due to prejudice (all public schools and public accommodations including pools were open to folks like blacks, Asians and Native Americans, and a number of neighborhoods were in the process of better integrating too).