William Hungate Papers (S0813)
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PRELIMINARY INVENTORY S0813 (Accession SA2260, SA2268, SA2463, SA2477, SA2594, SA2926, SA2928, SA2935, SA2942, SA2950, SA2971, SA2974, SA2991, SA2996, SA3001, SA3004, SA3056, SA3057, SA3069, SA3070, SA3135, SA3148, SA3234, SA3237, SA3264, SA3298, SA3365, SA3374, SA3916, SA3922) WILLIAM HUNGATE PAPERS This collection is available at The State Historical Society of Missouri Research Center- St. Louis. If you would like more information, please contact us at [email protected]. Introduction Approximately 403 cubic feet The William Hungate Papers contain correspondence, reports, speeches, meeting minutes, agendas, photographs and campaign files pertaining to Hungate’s career as Missouri’s Congressman from the ninth congressional district (1964-1977) and as the United States District Judge of the United States District Court for the Eastern District of Missouri (1979-1992). Topics of interest include Watergate and the desegregation of St. Louis City schools. The materials in this collection date from 1954 to 1996. William L. Hungate was the Congressman from Missouri's ninth district from 1964 to 1977. Born in Benton, Illinois, in December 1922, Hungate moved with his family to Bowling Green, Missouri, when he was seven. He was educated in public school and received his A.B. from the University of Missouri in 1943. The following year he married Dorothy Wilson of Cyrene, Missouri, a former kindergarten teacher. During World War II, Hungate served as a rifleman in the Army's 95th Infantry Division. After receiving a Bronze Star and other decorations, he resumed his education in 1946 at Harvard Law School. Following law school, Hungate moved to Troy, Missouri, where he practiced law with the firm of Hungate and Grewach from 1948-1951. In 1951 he gained the nomination for prosecuting attorney and ran unopposed from 1951-1956. From 1958- 1964 he served as special assistant attorney general of Missouri. Following the death of Clarence Cannon in 1964, Hungate was elected representative from Missouri's ninth district. In the House, Hungate served on the House Judiciary Committee, the Select Committee on Small Business, and the D.C. Committee (until his resignation in 1971). In 1973 and 1974, He received national attention when the Judiciary Committee investigated whether sufficient grounds existed for the impeachment of Richard Nixon. Following his retirement from Congress, Hungate served as a visiting professor of political science at the University of Missouri-St. Louis until his appointment as a Federal Judge for the Eastern District in Missouri in 1979. As a federal judge for the Eastern District of Missouri, Hungate would preside over one of the most controversial cases of his tenure: Liddell vs. Board of Education. The case had its origins in the U.S. Supreme Court’s 1954 decision in Brown v Board of Education, which declared statutory public school segregation unconstitutional. From the 1830s until the Brown decision, Missouri’s public schools were legally segregated, a condition made permanent in the 1875 state Constitution. THE STATE HISTORICAL SOCIETY OF MISSOURI MANUSCRIPT COLLECTION 1/29/2021 S0813 (SA2260, SA2268, SA2463, SA2477, SA2594, SA2926, SA2928, SA2935, SA2942, SA2950, SA2971, SA2974, SA2991, SA2996, SA3001, SA3004, SA3056, SA3057, SA3069, SA3070, SA3135, SA3148, SA3234, SA3237, SA3264, SA3298, SA3365, SA3374, SA3916, SA3922) WILLIAM HUNGATE PAPERS Constitutional segregation created not only a separate but unequal school system for black children as well. The City of St. Louis maintained the largest segregated school system in the state, including hundreds of black students transported to the City’s segregated schools from St. Louis County districts. For much of the twentieth century, the segregated North St. Louis grew primarily due to neighborhood housing covenants and real estate agencies “steering” blacks to the area. As the City School Board assigned students to neighborhood schools, a segregated education system was inevitable. Following the Brown v. Board of Education decision, the St. Louis Board of Education approached the desegregation issue cautiously. Despite the Supreme Court’s order that legally segregated schools should be desegregated “with all deliberate speed,” for nearly two decades after the Brown decision St. Louis made minimal efforts to comply with the Court’s order, and in the early 1970s little had changed in the racial separation of St. Louis city students. In North St. Louis, the students and staff were black, and the reverse was true in South St. Louis. Moreover, Northside school buildings, equipment, and books were usually inferior to those in the all-white schools. Consequently, in 1971, Mrs. Minnie Liddell founded a Northside group called Concerned Parents to seek relief from the inadequate education system imposed by segregation in North St. Louis schools. A year later, Mrs. Liddell filed a class-action suit against the St. Louis School Board, individual school board members, and St. Louis County school superintendents in the name of her son Craton Liddell seeking an end to the unequal segregated system. The suit claimed that the defendants, in maintaining segregated school systems, violated the Fourteenth Amendment rights of their children by denying them equal educational opportunities. As the case (referred to throughout the Collection as Liddell, et al, plaintiffs, v Board of Education, et al, defendants) developed, the list of litigants expanded. Parents of other black children and the NAACP were the most significant additions to the plaintiff list, while parents of white children filed countersuits to prevent any change in the school system. Defendants included the St. Louis Board of Education, individual Board members, and school administrators as well. Ultimately, the Missouri Board of Education, state Commissioner of Education, and state executives, notably the Governor and state Attorney General, also became defendants. Lastly, many the of St. Louis County School Districts Boards of Education became litigants because their districts transported black children into St. Louis during the legal segregation era. The case of Liddell, et al v Board of Education, et al lasted nearly thirty years, from 1972 until the litigants agreed to a final settlement in 1999. Even then, the state continued to support Interdistrict student transfers for another three years with a promise to fund magnet schools for ten years. Due to its length and complexity, Liddell v Board of Page 2 of 363 S0813 (SA2260, SA2268, SA2463, SA2477, SA2594, SA2926, SA2928, SA2935, SA2942, SA2950, SA2971, SA2974, SA2991, SA2996, SA3001, SA3004, SA3056, SA3057, SA3069, SA3070, SA3135, SA3148, SA3234, SA3237, SA3264, SA3298, SA3365, SA3374, SA3916, SA3922) WILLIAM HUNGATE PAPERS Education tested not only the legal knowledge but the patience, nerves, and stamina of the presiding judges. In all, four judges of U.S. District Court, Eastern District of Missouri, Eastern Division, located in St. Louis, presided in Liddell, et al v Board of Education, et al. Chief Judge James H. Meredith first heard the case from February 1972 until December 1980. Judge William L. Hungate oversaw the case until he asked to be relieved in February 1985. Stephen N. Limbaugh then took up the gavel through September 1991 when Judge George F. Gunn replaced him. Upon Gunn’s death in 1998, Limbaugh presided over the case until the 1999 agreement at last brought an end to Liddell v Board of Education. As the length of the case suggests, Liddell v Board of Education was a complicated case, involving as it did, sensitive racial issues, with their origins in Missouri’s history as a slave state and the maintenance of a constitutionally mandated segregated school system once slavery was abolished. The City of St. Louis initially defended the segregated school system by maintaining that its schools reflected the demographic distribution of whites and blacks in the south side and the north side neighborhoods, respectively. Additionally, the Board of Education emphasized, seventy percent of the students in the school system were black, making meaningful integration impossible. The Board’s defense came under close scrutiny as the case developed. In the first segment of Liddell v Board of Education, Judge Meredith presiding, some progress was made, notably with the creation of a number of integrated “magnet schools” (with specialized curricula such as arts, music, and so on) and a modest effort to integrate the teaching staff. However, Meredith eventually ruled in 1979 that the city school board was not responsible for the segregated school system. The Liddell plaintiffs appealed the ruling to the U.S Court of Appeals, 8th Circuit Court. In March 1980, the 8th circuit overturned Meredith’s decision and referred the case back to the U.S. District Court with orders to develop an integration plan. Meredith appointed Edwin T. Foote, Dean of the Washington University Law School to prepare a voluntary desegregation plan that would involve both the St. Louis School system and the school districts of St. Louis County. In turn, Foote called on educational expert Dr. Gary Orfield to develop a voluntary plan. Orfield’s plan, modified several times, ultimately served as the solution to the case. In late December 1980, Meredith requested relief from the case. District Court administrators appointed Judge William L. Hungate to replace Meredith. Another nineteen years of costly hearings, rulings, appeals, and often strident political resistance and public uproar passed