The local YMCA had a huge program for small children. Many of those children were black. I was talking to a Y employee, and she said they only hired the largest black young men they could find because that was the only way to control the black children. The kids ignored white boys/men and walked all over white girls/women to the point where it was physically dangerous for them. But they were afraid of black men/boys who they KNEW would not hesitate to smack the living hell out of them and that was what was required to keep them in line.
My white buddy was a fifth-grade schoolteacher. They gave him all the problem black boys because he was the only male teacher, and they thought the boys would do whatever he said. (Or they just didn’t want to deal with problem kids and used that as an excuse to dump them.) But they told him he couldn’t touch them; he couldn’t threaten them. He quit. He said, they made my job impossible. If you can’t maintain discipline, you’re wasting your time, and the rest of the kids are wasting theirs.
My sister (before she retired) told the same story about her magnet school in Baltimore. The big black male staff could keep good order. My sister (white) was well liked by her kids and knew how to maintain an orderly classroom, so she seldom needed his help.
In 1960 in upstate NY, my teacher was a no-nonsense male. I think he was probably a WW II vet. In that era, those guys maintained good discipline in schools.
The segregated Black (Colored in those days) schools might have been separate but UN-equal, but they had teachers and administrators that could raise productive citizens.
Just like the fear we had of our fathers back then. Telling.