Tuesday, the residents of Memphis, Tennessee voted to merge their school district with the one in Shelby County, the more affluent suburb that surrounds them. In a city-wide referendum, the residents of the city voted to surrender control of Memphis City Schools and it's 105,000 students to Shelby County, creating a massive school district consisting of 150,000 kids.

The vote led to a heated debate over race and class, particularly since the white and far wealthier residents of Shelby County didn't appear to support the merger. David Pickler, Chair of the Shelby County school board, is vowing to fight the merger in court. Before the merger took place, Shelby County and Memphis pooled their resources and were required to educate all children within the city of Memphis and in the surrounding suburbs. Shelby County, however, had been hoping to obtain "special district" status, allowing it to close off its boundaries to keep Memphis children out of their finances.

Memphis residents approved the referendum by a wide margin, with two-thirds of Memphis citizens supporting the move. The decision to give up the charter was made by the Memphis city school board back in December to preempt plans by the Republicans in the state legislature to allow Shelby County to separate itself from the city of Memphis. After seeing the Memphis city school board make it's move, the state legislature passed a law on February 11 requiring any transition to have a planning commission and also that such transitions can only take place three years after a vote. This gives the county plenty of time to find ways to prevent the merger from happening.

Even more interesting in this game of political cat and mouse is that the state legislature also lifted a statewide ban on the creation of special districts, allowing Shelby County to gain special status. These moves may prevent the merger from ever taking place. Shelby County has also filed a federal lawsuit seeking to stop the merger altogether.

As an outside observer to all of this, I can say that I am in favor of the move by the residents of Memphis. The idea that the wealthy folks in the suburbs can create legal barriers to our children having access to a similar quality of education simply screams of segregation, elitism and blatant civil rights violations. Tennessee, being a state that has long considered black folks to be second-class citizens, appears willing to continue with the same political shenanigans that Thurgood Marshall had to deal with over 50 years ago. Legally preventing a mostly black group of citizens from having access to the schools of a mostly white county is simply a modernized version of Jim Crow. The residents of Shelby County should be ashamed of the actions of their school board leadership, for racism is written on every wall of their ridiculous behavior.

Roland Martin, a friend for whom I have tremendous respect, has expressed outrage over voter turnout. Martin mentioned recently on Twitter and the Tom Joyner Morning Show that only 17% of the residents of the city of Memphis showed up to vote in the referendum. I agree with Martin's point on this matter. I did not, of course, agree with the fact that Roland brought a pastor onto Joyner's Show (Kenneth Whalum) to oppose the merger, but didn't even acknowledge the other point of view. Additionally, Pastor Whalum was not able to provide hard facts and data to support his assertions (unlike the information I received from another pastor in the Memphis area, Stacy L. Spencer). I wasn't convinced by his arguments and after doing further research on the issue, I personally concluded that Memphis residents had no other choice but to merge with the Shelby school system.

On an issue as critical as this one, all of the residents of Memphis should have been compelled to speak up for their kids. The lack of voter participation within the city of Memphis is a sad reflection of two fundamental facts: Many African Americans don't feel that the political process has a direct impact on their lives, thus making them feel powerless. It also reflects the fact that, unfortunately, African Americans have lost our understanding of the extreme importance of education. When our kids don't get properly educated, they end up dead, unemployed, in jail or in poverty. No parent should want this for their children, so we've all got to do better.

Dr. Boyce Watkins is the founder of the Your Black World Coalition To have Dr. Boyce commentary delivered to your email, please click here. To follow Dr. Boyce on Facebook, please click here.