Reimagining Urban Education: Civil Rights, the Columbus School District, and the Limits of Reform
THESIS
Presented in Partial Fulfillment of the Requirements for the Degree Master of Arts in the Graduate School of The Ohio State University
By
Patrick Ryan Potyondy, B.A.
Graduate Program in History
2012
Master's Examination Committee:
Steven Conn, Advisor
Daniel Amsterdam
Kevin Boyle
Copyright by
Patrick Ryan Potyondy
2012
Abstract
Local civil rights organizations of Columbus, Ohio, such as the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP), the Congress of Racial Equality (CORE), the Columbus Urban League, and the Teenage Action Group, served as the engine for urban educational reform in the mid 1960s. Activists challenged the Columbus School
District to create equality of educational opportunity for its black residents. But civil rights groups ran up against a socially conservative city and school district that had little interest in dismantling the unequal neighborhood school system. Racial tensions ran high as African Americans faced persistent discrimination in employment, access to public accommodations, housing, and schooling. Frustrated by an intransigent district, which spurned even moderate reforms proposed by the NAACP and continued with its unequal school construction policy, the Columbus Urban League presented a radically democratic proposal in 1967. The document reimagined the image of the city by simultaneously challenging both racial and class-based barriers, primarily through the concept of the educational park—large K-12 campuses consisting of centralized resources and thousands of students. The school board snubbed this new civil rights initiative as they had with all previous proposals and instead commissioned a report by the Ohio State
University in 1968. The OSU Advisory Commission on Problems Facing the Columbus
Public Schools presented incremental, targeted reforms to specific issues only and thus perpetuated the district’s traditional resistance to reform. In essence, by drawing on
ii legitimized social science professionals, the district manufactured support to maintain the city’s historical unequal school system. In the end, although Columbus was a relatively economically stable city and did not experience the deindustrialization of its rustbelt brethren, meaningful school reform proved impossible despite the best efforts of several civil rights organizations.
iii
For my whole family.
iv
Acknowledgments
The generous people and policies at the Ohio Historical Society helped me procure more material than I thought possible. Similarly, the libraries and archives at the Ohio State
University put a wide array of resources right at my fingertips. Without support for public institutions like these, history and teaching would not be possible. As with most things, teachers deserve most of the credit, particularly: Mr. Tom Michoski, Dr. Peter Boag, Dr.
Jennifer Bair, Dr. Ralph Mann, and Dr. Cheryl Higashida. Without the long chats with
Joe Arena, the guidance of Tyran Steward, the insight of Delia Fernandez, the editing of
Mark Boonshoft, and the students in Dr. Kevin Boyle’s writing seminar, this thesis wouldn’t have been written. My advisor Dr. Steven Conn pushed the thesis to be more rigorous, relevant, and coherent. Dr. Daniel Amsterdam offered his expertise and counsel throughout. And Dr. Kevin Boyle has helped me to think and write like a historian.
Finally, my biggest acknowledgement is reserved for my family: for Eric and Lena who supported and challenged me; for my folks who guided me; and, especially, for my life- partner Amber who, more than anyone else, made me the person I am today.
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Vita
2009...... B.A. History, English, and Sociology, the
University of Colorado at Boulder
2010 to present ...... Graduate student, History, The Ohio State
University
2010 to present ...... Graduate Teaching Association, Department
of History, The Ohio State University
Fields of Study
Major Field: History
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Table of Contents
Abstract ...... ii
Acknowledgments...... v
Vita ...... vi
List of Maps ...... viii
Introduction: Reform’s Possibilities and Impossibilities ...... 1
Growth in an Atmosphere of Racial Exclusion in a Non-Deindustrializing City ...... 6
Educational Reform Frustrated: Civil Rights Activism Meets District Resistance,
1963-1966 ...... 21
The Choice: Systemic Democratic Radicalism or District-Approved Incrementalism .... 33
Grand Reform that Failed to Pass: Civil Rights Proposal Spurned ...... 53
Bibliography ...... 58
vii
List of Maps
Map 1...... 11
Map 2...... 13
Map 3...... 14
Map 4 ...... 15
Map 5...... 16
Map 6 ...... 17
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Introduction: Reform’s Possibilities and Impossibilities
In August of 1967—four months after the Columbus Urban League proposed its six-point school reform plan centered on the radically democratic educational park—
Reverend Larry McCollough of Mount Zion Baptist Church in the Near East Side told the
Columbus Board of Education, “If you seven white people who compose the school board think Negroes are going to accept your policies, you should be reminded of Stokely
Carmichael’s statement of, ‘Hell no, they ain’t gonna.’” Gene Robinson of the United
Student Action Committee supported Rev. McCollough saying, “One way or another, black power will prevail.” When Dr. Watson Walker, the only black member of the board responded that he could not be mistaken for being white, Rev. McCollough interrupted him: “Then act like a Negro and stand up for us.” A large crowd then stormed out of the public meeting after someone yelled, “Black people, let’s get out of here and unite.”
Shouts of “go back to Georgia” and “go to hell whites” mingled with the chanting of
“black power!” A self-labeled “angry white mother,” Jocelyn Ritter, a representative from the Committee of Columbus School Parents, tried to calm the board. The district had nothing to fear from her and the other white mothers, she said; it was only those
“others” who were causing trouble.1 Two weeks later, the local branch of the National
Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP) picketed the board’s
1 David Cain, “School Policy Protested / Shouts of ‘Black Power’ Accompany Walkout,” Columbus Dispatch (CD), 16 August 1967. 1 downtown meeting because of its lack of action on their moderate proposals for limited busing or the Urban League’s plan. “There are so many people involved and some of them want to go to extremes,” NAACP educational chairman Waldo Tyler warned.2
The Columbus Urban League’s proposal “Quality Integrated Education for
Columbus, Ohio”—published in April of 1967—could not have arrived at a worse time.
It came at the tail end of nearly a decade’s worth of heated battles between civil rights activists and the local school district. This thesis tells the story of the plan’s genesis and its eventual failure. In so doing, it adds to the literature on civil rights activism and educational reform in the 1960s by examining both in a mid-to-large Midwestern city that has not received adequate scholarly attention.3
The struggle over educational reform in Columbus took place in a city shaped by racism, exclusion, and neglect. The Columbus School District experienced steady growth throughout the 1960s, which pushed the board of education to its limit in trying to keep up with new construction and expansion. Board members avoided questions of
2 “NAACP to Picket Board,” CD, 2 September 1967. 3 For an introduction into the literature on the urban crisis spanning from the 1950s through the 1980s see: Arnold R. Hirsch, Making the Second Ghetto: Race and Housing in Chicago, 1940-1960, (Chicago: The University of Chicago Press, 1983); John Bauman, Public Housing, Race, and Renewal: Urban Planning in Philadelphia, (Philadelphia: Temple University Press, 1987); Ronald P. Formisano, Boston Against Busing: Race, Class, and Ethnicity in the 1960s and 1970s, (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 1991); Thomas J. Sugrue, The Origins of the Urban Crisis: Race and Inequality in Postwar Detroit, (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1996); Heather Ann Thompson, Whose Detroit? Politics, Labor, and Race in a Modern American City, (Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 2001); Jerald E. Podair, The Strike that Changed New York: Blacks, Whites, and the Ocean Hill-Brownsville Crisis, (New Haven: Yale University Press, 2002); Robert Self, American Babylon: Race and the Struggle for Postwar Oakland, (New Jersey: Princeton University Press, 2003); Jack Dougherty, More Than One Struggle: The Evolution of Black School Reform in Milwaukee, (Chapel Hill: North Carolina Press, 2004); Alison Isenberg, Downtown America: A History of the Place and the People Who Made It, (Chicago: The University of Chicago Press, 2004); Kevin Kruse, White Flight: Atlanta and the Making of Modern Conservatism, (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2005); Matthew Countryman, Up South: Civil Rights and Black Power in Philadelphia, (Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 2006). Kevin Lynch’s The Image of the City, (Cambridge: MIT Press, 1979) remains a canonical work for urban planners and historians for analyzing the physical and social map of the city. 2 educational inequality as long as they could. To the Columbus Board of Education and the Superintendent’s Office, reform entailed small-scale, targeted efforts that would not upset the traditional system; in other words, they chose incrementalism. But expansion helped to lay bare racial inequalities in the city’s school system. Civil rights organizations highlighted district growth to push for equality of opportunity. Yet battles over open housing intersected with the racial integration of Columbus’ schools so closely that reform of one seemed to imply reform of the other.4 The district, and those who supported it, wished to uphold what they saw as traditional neighborhood schools. Civil rights groups desired to find workable solutions to achieve racial and economic egalitarianism. This thesis argues that the Urban League, pushed to the brink by the near- complete refusal of the district to meet them halfway, presented a vision of school reform by 1967 that threatened—if only for a brief moment—to radically transform the economic, cultural, and physical layout of the city.
The civil rights movement blossomed in Columbus, Ohio, in 1963 after a couple years of on-again, off-again activism. By the summer of 1965, activists demanded broadly-based educational reforms. Led by a nucleus of activists from the local chapters of the Congress of Racial Equality (CORE) and the NAACP, the movement staged sit-ins and protests inside the state capitol, in front of businesses, and around public schools as high school students took direct action against district policies. Throughout the period, the actions of civil rights activists drove efforts for urban reform in several areas—most notably, schools.
4 In several ways, white communities in Columbus viewed their “neighborhood schools” in a similar manner as the white ethnics of Boston during the same era. As institutions, they were embedded in the social fabric of the area and the identity of the people living there. See Formisano. 3
Embedded in all of their demands was a challenge to racial and financial inequalities in the metropolitan educational system. Facing a reluctant school administration and moderate-to-conservative metropolitan culture, activists focused on curtailing construction projects that perpetuated “de facto” school segregation. Thus, they challenged both material and cultural inequality when calling for reform. Second, despite the complicated nature of the issue, civil rights organizations openly attacked the concept of the neighborhood school, showing that it was neither a natural outgrowth of urban evolution nor an egalitarian model. And third, civil rights leaders clashed with conservatives who imagined an ideal past of opportunity for all in a free society.5 In short, civil rights organizations pushed not only for legal equality but also for a genuinely equal educational system through systemic reform.
In 1967, the Columbus Urban League proposed an expansive, plainly-worded six- point educational plan that it hoped would foster equality of educational opportunity along both class and racial lines. It arrived on a tide of radical, largely nonviolent agitation by segments of the Columbus black and white communities. The plan reimagined the city as a “democratically” integrated space that would have not only torn down racial barriers, but economic and residential barriers as well. The League placed the educational park at the center which, some educational policy professionals argued, offered a palliative to several issues facing American metropolitan areas in the late
1960s—most notably racial segregation and underperforming schools. Though designs varied widely across the nation, educational parks consisted of centralizing the city’s schools into several large campuses of K-12 schools. Columbus, with slightly over
5 For more in this vein of argument, see Podair. 4
100,000 public school students by the mid-1960s, could plan to establish between eight to twelve parks with 8500 and 14,000 students attending each park or campus. These campuses would be placed on large plots of land and could organize children by age, academic subject, intellectual ability, or special need.6 Most cities pursued the idea to breach racial fault lines, though the plans undoubtedly implied economic integration as well.
But, the proposal never bore fruit. The Columbus School District remained decentralized, cut-off from the encircling suburban districts. First, backlash politics that blended rhetoric of anti-communism, anti-federalism, and anti-civil rights limited the appeal of the document. Second, the plan ran up against a school district that sought only incremental changes rather than structural transformations. The district, instead, chartered and then implemented a counter proposal by the Ohio State University advisory commission, which advocated incrementalism without the systemic restructuring urged by civil rights leaders. This result illustrated the limits of meaningful school reform even in an economically stable urban community like Columbus.
6 Columbus public schools surpassed 100,000 students beginning with the 1964 school year. Private schools accounted for roughly another 20,000 students. “Columbus School Enrollment Due To Pass 100,000 Mark Sept. 9,” CD, 5 August 1964. 5
Growth in an Atmosphere of Racial Exclusion in a Non-Deindustrializing City
In 1955, Columbus was within 550 miles of half the population of the United
States.7 The city itself was not so large that it remained in a class of its own like Chicago or New York, but not so small that it could be easily dismissed.8 It was a big city with both suburban and urban characteristics. Like other cities, too, certain neighborhoods or districts were dominated by particular racial groups and economic classes. The Columbus
Area Chamber of Commerce had it right when it declared, “Come to Columbus and
Discover America.”9 In fact, the city was so representative of America that since the
1950s, national companies have often used it as a test market.10 But because Columbus
7 Columbus Area Chamber of Commerce, “The Col-Met Handbook,” (Columbus, Ohio: 1955), The Ohio Historical Society, Columbus, Ohio (OHS). 8 Though it has been by historians generally speaking. 9 Delmar G. Starkey, “The Growth and Development of Columbus: An Address by Delmar G. Starkey, General Manager, The Columbus Area Chamber of Commerce,” (Columbus, Ohio, 1957), OHS. 10 Since the 1940s, Columbus families have had a higher spending average than the general US. This remained only one of the reasons the city remained a prime location for serving as a test market. The Burgoyne Index, a market research company, used Columbus along with Cincinnati, Fort Wayne, Indiana, Minneapolis, and Tucson as locations for its test market sites in the 1960s. Federated Department Stores Inc., owner of mega-retail chains such as Bloomingdale’s, also used Columbus as a test market site. Hair color by Breck in 1969, analgesics by Colgate-Palmolive in 1970, space-age cable and satellite television in 1977 and 1980, and those handy coupons printed right at the register for you in 1979, Gélare Ice Cream flavors in 1983, a new variety chain store from Woolworth’s in 1985, and lick-less stamps by the US Postal Service in 1989 all tested in Columbus as well. See “Display Ad 28 – No Title,” New York Times, 17 March 1944; Philip H. Dougherty, “Advertising: And Spanish Eyes Are Smiling,” New York Times, 2 June 1967; Isadore Barmash, “Federated Plans Discount Venture,” New York Times, 22 June 1967; Philip Dougherty, “Advertising: Breck Introduces Hair Color,” New York Times, 2 June 1969; Philip Dougherty, “Advertising: A Million Passengers for 747,” New York Times, 20, July 1970; C. Gerald Fraser, “Complex Ohio Experiment to Try Different Uses of Cable Television,” New York Times, 14 February 1977; “Two- Way Cable TV,” New York Times, 29 September 1977; Philip Dougherty, “Advertising: A Cents-Off Coupon Test in Columbus,” New York Times, 20 January 1978; Les Brown, “From the Air: Programs by Satellite and Cable: The New Video,” New York Times, 17 February 1980; Kendall J. Wills, “New, Fancy 6 did not rely on manufacturing like the surrounding rustbelt, it did not experience the economic crises that slammed cities like Detroit and Cleveland in the 1950s and 1960s.
Instead of shrinking during these decades, Columbus grew overall. But some whites began fleeing the urban center by the late 1960s either for suburbs or peripheral neighborhoods.
During these decades, the Columbus School District struggled with what it perceived to be its greatest challenges: rising enrollment, financial pressures, testing, and teacher training. Equality of opportunity was not one of the district’s leadings concerns, the consequence of a community that was hostile to federal influence and equal rights and connected the civil rights movement with “communism”—in this they were rather like other average American cities. As Columbus expanded, the board chose to focus on what it saw as the traditional problems facing a city school district.11 This did not include civil rights liberalism—which pleased many in the city as they disproportionately benefitted from the fruits of Columbus’ economic security. Strained race relations stewed just below the surface during the era. The potential of urban development seemed unlimited, but it was also tortuous, concealing—for a time—economic and racial inequities.
Ice Creams Threaten Haagen-Dazs – and American Waistlines,” New York Times, 11 September 1983; Isadore Barmash, “Woolworth’s New Wager,” New York Times, 24 November 1985; and Barth Healey, “Stamps: If They Don’t Have to Be Licked, Will They Be as Popular with Buyers...,” New York Times, 10 December 1989. See also: “Columbus is Now One of America’s 35 ‘Over a Million” Markets: The City, Already known as a National Test Market, Should see even Greater Activity in the Near Future,” Columbus Dispatch, 24 July 1973. “Columbus Has the Perfect Demography, According to the Marketers of a New Magazine, Which is Why They have Chosen It as Test Market for ‘Book Digest,’ Featuring Condensations of Books,” Columbus Dispatch, 18 June 1974. This tradition was so strong that by 2009, NPR declared Columbus, Ohio, “Test City, USA.” Neeli Bendapudi interviewed by Neil Conan, “Columbus, Ohio: ‘Test City, USA,’” National Public Radio, 14 October 2009, last accessed 27 February 2012. 11 “School Aid Hike Urged By Board,” CD, 9 October 1960. 7
Columbus was not a manufacturing city like Detroit, Cleveland, or Chicago.12 But
Columbus shared a common social reality—aspects of its unequal economic climate, its demographic shifts, its cultural tensions—with other major metropolitan areas from the
1950s to the 1980s. The city was a cousin of Detroit and Pittsburgh rather than a brother.
But they were related all the same. Because of Columbus’ diversified economy, it compared favorably to other industrial heavyweights like the Motor City or Milwaukee by the late 1960s. Manufacturing made up only 25 percent of Columbus’ economy from
1950 to 1968.13 Things were good in 1968. According to the Columbus Area Chamber of
Commerce, the city had only a 2 percent official unemployment rate.14 By the 1970s, the city’s business community highlighted its centrality to markets and its prospects in higher education.15
The economic might and stability of the Columbus metropolitan area continued to draw people in, which necessitated sustained expansion of the area’s school districts through the 1950s and into the mid-1960s. From 1950 to 1960, school enrollment jumped
79 percent while the general population rose 24 percent.16 By 1960, the Columbus School
12 Detroit and other rustbelt cities did not weather the urban crisis well to say the least. See Sugrue, Urban Crisis. See also: Jefferson Cowie, Capital Moves: RCA’s Seventy-Year Quest for Cheap Labor, (New York: The New Press, 1999) and Kevin Boyle, “The Ruins of Detroit: Exploring the Urban Crisis in the Motor City,” Michigan Historical Review 27, no. 1 (Spring 2001): 109-127. 13 This was compared to 1960s figures: 47 percent manufacturing in Detroit, 37 percent in Philadelphia, or 29 percent in Boston. John F. McDonald, Urban America: Growth, Crisis, and Rebirth, (Armonk, N.Y.: M.E. Sharpe, 2008), 12. Much of the statistical data concerning Columbus in this section has been taken from John McDonald’s Urban America wherein he compares Columbus to sixteen other major metropolitan areas across the United States. 14 Department of Research of the Columbus Area Chamber of Commerce, “Columbus Area Growth Report, 1969,” Columbus Business Forum (July 1969), 20, OHS. It should be noted that “official” unemployment rates never capture the actual unemployment percentage in capitalism given the nature of these measures. 15 Columbus Area Chamber of Commerce, “Columbus: Headquarters City,” (Columbus, Ohio: 1974?), 4, OHS. 16 Harold H. Eibling et al., “A Dynamic Decade in Your Schools: Superintendent’s Report on Progress in the Columbus Public Schools, 1950-1960,” (1960), 2, Columbus Metropolitan Library (CML). 8
District became the second largest district in Ohio, behind only Cleveland.17 Five years later, the district was the seventeenth largest in the nation, larger than Denver, Boston,
San Francisco, Minneapolis, and Pittsburgh.18
As part of its “expansion-and-modernization” plan, the Columbus School District built forty-seven new schools during the 1950s.19 Between 1964 and 1969, the district spent 11.5 million dollars for five new schools, nineteen additions to existing schools, thirty-four remodeling projects, forty-one “miscellaneous improvement projects,” and twenty-seven “expanded sites in the inner-city.”20 The superintendent’s office stressed modernization in construction and school renovations, as well as instruction.21
Professionalization of staffing and testing increased during the decade, paralleling a trend throughout the nation.22 The Columbus district’s bureaucracy became increasingly centralized during these years, though neighborhood schools were strictly maintained.
New councils appeared, bureaucracies were shuffled, and reports on progress were highlighted.23 Modernization—characterized by increased professionalization and rationalization—was certainly a central goal of the district. The continued expansion, however, mirrored previous trends supporting racial inequalities and barriers which civil rights groups would soon challenge.
17 “Columbus School Total Is Seen As No. 2 in State,” CD, 28 August 1960. 18 “City Schools System Now 17th in Size,” CD, 18 October 1965. 19 Eibling et al., “Dynamic Decade,” 2. 20 Harold H. Eibling, “School Memo #69-6,” (April 15, 1969), in “National Association for the Advancement of Colored People Records,” Box 3, Folder 12: “NAACP: Ohio, Education: Correspondence,” OHS. 21 Eibling et al., “Dynamic Decade,” 2, 7. 22 See William J. Reese, American’s Public Schools: From the Common School to “No Child Left Behind”, (Baltimore: The Johns Hopkins University Press, 2005). 23 Eibling et al., “Dynamic Decade,” 7-8. William Fulwider, “Requirements Raised For Ohio School Supervisors,” CD, 12 December 1961. 9
Modernization, development, and expansion of the school district proceeded unevenly. Industrial centers and employment rates were unequally dispersed throughout the metropolitan community. To publicize the city’s strong economic position, the
Columbus Chamber of Commerce mapped out Franklin County’s “industrial, research, and office park developments” in 1974 (Map 1 below). Only one office park was located near the inner-city.24 Jeanne Woodward, executive board member of the NAACP, highlighted the discrimination unskilled, skilled, and professional black workers faced in all aspects of economic and educational life.25 Conversely, Ebony magazine listed
Columbus as one of the ten best cities for black employment in 1965. But they also listed
Los Angeles and Detroit, so perhaps the periodical did not quite have its finger on the pulse of city life.26 Alternatively, things were so bad for African Americans in urban
America, that Detroit and LA looked comparatively good.
24 Columbus Area Chamber of Commerce, “Columbus: Headquarters City,” (Columbus, Ohio: 1974?), 9- 10, 15,The OHS. The Chamber also mapped out the city’s parks which mirrored the placement of the business centers in Map 1. 25 Jeanne Woodward, “Status of Negro Here Is Termed Unsatisfactory,” guest column, CD, 9 August 1963. 26 “Local Negro Job Picture Is Praised,” CD, 3 March 1965. “10 Best Cities For Negro Employment: National Survey Reveals Job Openings Across U.S.,” Ebony, 1 March 1965. The “Watts Riots” as they are popularly known erupted after pent-up frustration over lack of economic opportunity and from structural racism, thus making them a form of rebellion. “All we want is jobs . . . . We get jobs, we don’t bother nobody. We don’t get no jobs, we’ll tear up Los Angeles period,” said one man. Taylor Branch, At Canaan’s Edge: American in the King Years, 1965-1968, (New York: Simon and Schuster, 2006), 297, and 284-285, 288-289, 293-299. Detroit would erupt in rebellion in 1967 which is falsely seen as the pivot for Detroit’s downfall; the real origins lie much earlier. See Boyle and Sugrue, Origins. Also see Branch, 631- 634. 10
Map 1: Produced by the Columbus Area Chamber of Commerce, circa 1974. Shows placement of industrial parks (squares), office parks (circles), and future planned sites (triangles). All of the planned sites lie well outside central Columbus.
Demographic changes in Columbus resembled the expansion of the urban crisis.
The city contained a higher percentage of publicly assisted housing than its rustbelt neighbors.27 Already from 1950 to 1955, Columbus had experienced strong population growth and housing development in suburban areas as well as the urban center (Map 2
27 A juxtaposition between the manufacturing giants and the slightly smaller Columbus would have placed Columbus at a distinct disadvantage in housing conditions by the late 1950s. Whereas 0.91 percent of Columbus’ housing was public housing, Philadelphia only had 0.31 percent, Minneapolis only 0.14 percent, and St. Louis only 0.26 percent. Columbus also contained a higher percentage of substandard housing. In fact, it had more than double the rates of Detroit, New York, Chicago, Boston, Pittsburg, and Cleveland. Local manufacturing, while at its peak, was clearly an asset. Substandard housing was without running hot water, private toilets or bath, or in a generally dilapidated state beyond repair. McDonald, 22. 11 below).28 This urban core became increasingly African American. In 1950, African
Americans made up 12.5 percent of the population; this rose to 16.6 percent in 1960, and
18.5 percent in 1970 (Map 3 below).29 By the mid 1970s, the Mid-Ohio Regional
Planning Commission, identified white population movements away from the inner core of the city toward the outlying suburbs where industry, business, and shopping centers were increasingly located (Map 4 below).30 The urban core was one-fifth African-
American by 1970, but it contained over 90 percent of the entire Columbus African-
American population—a greater concentration in the inner-city than New York, Chicago,
Cleveland, St. Louis, and many other cities.31 Despite the economic advantages of the
Columbus Metropolitan Area, the city experienced much of the turmoil that still characterizes the urban crisis in large part because the share of the wealth, derived from a modern post-World War II capitalist economy, remained unevenly distributed spatially and racially (Map 5 below).32 Thus, while slightly smaller in size and without the extreme deindustrialization of other large metropolitan areas, Columbus developed a concentrated
28 This trend mirrors those found in Hirsch and Sugrue, Origins. For the best analyses of white flight see: Kruse, Isenberg, Sugrue, Urban Crisis, and Sugrue, Forgotten Struggle. 29 United Community Council and The Franklin County Regional Planning Commission, “The Population Characteristics of Franklin County 1950-1960,” Prepared for The Comprehensive Regional Plan, (April 1967), Population Study Map 4, CML. 30 Mid-Ohio Regional Planning Commission, “Franklin County Housing and Community Development Third Year Program,” (Columbus, Ohio: 1975), 30, CML. 31 McDonald, 107, 108. 32 United Community Council, “Population Characteristics,” Population Study Map 9. These statistics on income are corroborated by a second United Community Council report: United Community Council Research Services, “Demographic Characteristics of Columbus and Franklin County, Ohio,” (March 1965), 3. CML. This report also reveals that the majority of semi-skilled and unskilled laborers as well as level of education correlates strongly with the income and racial distributions, United Community Council, “Demographic Characteristics,” 26-27, 31. It can also be found in a report by the Department of Development, “Recommended Columbus Community Development Plan, 1975-1978,” N. Jack Huddle, Director, The City of Columbus Ohio, (January 1975), 175, CML. 12 inner-city black population that was cut-off from the suburbs—a key characteristic of the urban crisis that developed during this era (Map 6 below).33
Map 2: Map produced by the Columbus Chamber of Commerce of population growth in Franklin County and Columbus from 1950 to 1955. The darkened black areas represent general population growth of over 100 percent with lighter areas representing less growth.
33 Several reports from the city of Columbus, Franklin County, and local not-for-profit organizations highlighted the racial disparities in employment, residence, and schooling by the mid-1970s although such differences were apparent for anyone who cared to look in the 1960s. Similar maps examining the concentration of “minority populations,” average income distribution, and assisted housing by census tract can be found in several different sources. Housing Opportunity Center of Metropolitan Columbus, “Housing Patterns in Franklin County Ohio,” (1970), in Columbus Area Civil Rights Council Papers, Box 2, Folder 1, OHS. 13
Map 3: Columbus racial distribution in 1960. Red areas denote 80 to 100 percent “non-white.” The next color moving from dark pink to lightest pink represent: 50 to 79.9 percent, 25 to 49.9 percent, 5 to 24.9 percent and 0 to 4.9 percent non-white. Gray areas are non-residential.
14
Map 4: This map shows “Population Movement by Sector, Franklin County, Ohio, 1960-1970.” It has been focused on the Columbus Metropolitan Area to make the population figures visible. Each arrow denotes “population movement direction and amount.”
15
Map 5: Median Income Per Family, Franklin County and Columbus. The darkest red color denotes earnings of over $10,000. The next shades from darkest to lightest are: $7000 to $9999, $5000 to $6999, $4000 to $4999, and $3207 to $3999. Gray areas are non-residential.
16
Map 6: A focus on housing racial segregation in Columbus and its suburbs in 1970. Yellow denotes 50 to 100 percent black housing. Blue denotes 0 to 1 percent black housing.
Because of these demographic shifts, by the late 1960s, the city’s school district realized that its formerly strong tax base was weakening, creating a perilous situation for schools district-wide.34 Columbus’ school district also missed out on new development in
34 David Lore, “Schools Have Money Surplus,” CD, 4 January 1967. Sociologist Kathryn Neckerman identified three reasons why urban schools failed. Reason number one was a decrease in school funding that coincided with the increased demand from needier students (black and ethnic whites alike) that came to be seen as an urban decline. See Kathryn M. Neckerman, Schools Betrayed: Roots of Failure in Inner-City Education, (Chicago: University Of Chicago Press, 2007.) Newsweek described Detroit by 1976: “At night, the city hollows out: all you can see are the taillights of the middle class, taking their spending money—and much of the city’s tax base—to the suburbs. The blight left behind adds about 800 abandoned properties a 17 edge nodes—where there are more jobs than homes—as suburbs such as Worthington obtained or sustained rights to tax-rich property.35 Because of the economic vitality of the city as a whole, however, white flight occurred in Columbus later than in cities like
Detroit and often led to whites moving to a new location within the city’s limits. The suburbs grew at a faster rate than the urban core of the metro area over the course of the decade. While the number of dwelling units in Columbus grew 25 percent during the decade, Upper Arlington grew by 38 percent. Worthington grew a startling 60 percent, and Grove City grew over 80 percent.36
On the neighborhood level, race relations remained terribly fraught. It was not unheard of for African Americans who had recently moved into a white neighborhood to find a burning cross in their yard in the early 1960s. Ambivalence from the neighbors accompanied these occasional, direct racist threats. “I just don’t know,” said one white neighbor in 1960 when asked if she could condone the fiery cross lit in the front yard of her black neighbor in Clintonville.37 In 1963, Neal S. Francis, a father of three children, found the first fiery cross in his front yard. He told reporters, “I didn’t know it was an all- white neighborhood when I moved there. . . . There’s for sale signs all up and down the month to a wasteland that already numbers thousands of vacant and vandalized homes.” As quoted in Boyle, 109. Atlanta has a similar story. Roughly 160,000 white residents fled Atlanta from 1960 to 1980. The black population there rose from one-third to two-thirds in the same time frame. Kruse, 234. 35 William Fulwider, “Worthington May Keep Brewery Taxes,” CD, 22 June 1965. See Hayden, Building Suburbia, 155. Suburbs have a long and complicated history which I will not deal with here. For more on edge nodes and a survey of suburban history, see Dolores Hayden, Building Suburbia: Green Fields and Urban Growth, 1820-2000, (New York: Vintage Books, 2003), especially 154-180. For another excellent study of the broad development of the suburb in American history, see Kenneth T. Jackson, Crabgrass Frontier: The Suburbanization of the United States, (New York: Oxford University Press, 1985). Jackson points out that the origins of separate municipal entities—suburbs—hold origins in the late nineteenth century. Cars, furthermore, merely accelerated a pattern set by the turn of the century. 36 Columbus Area Chamber of Commerce, “Dwelling Units in Franklin County by Political Subdivision, April 1, 1960 (Census) to January 1, 1969,” Research Department, Richard J. Darwin, Manager, (June 1969). 37 “North Side Stirred By Fiery Cross,” CD, 13 July 1960. 18 street . . . for white or colored. . . . I think some of the neighbors did it because they waited ‘til there was nobody home and they stood on their porches and just watched.”38
Local whites also organized as they reacted to the perceived threat of residential—and thus school and economic—integration. In the summer of 1963, a
Columbus chapter of the National Association for the Advancement of White People
(NAAWP) obtained non-profit status to “promote the social, educational and general welfare of the Caucasian race.” Robert Leavey of northeast Columbus and president of
District 52 of the International Association of Machinists chartered the local group in direct response to activism by the NAACP.39 Although the group began by targeting the conflicts over black and white employment, the original charter emphasized both “social,
[and] educational . . . welfare” for whites. NAAWP members displayed signs reading:
“This present trend can only end in communism”; “Your kids have rights too!”; and “The civil rights bill deprives you of your inherent basic American rights.”40 The Ku Klux
Klan joined later rallies to resist open housing and education reform by civil rights
38 “Blames Neighbors In Cross Burning,” CD, 19 July 1963. Also in 1960, the Everett family was startled by a knock at the door, but found nothing to greet them except the two-foot high fiery cross. The “police probe” returned no suspects or arrests though it was unlikely any prosecution would have resulted in any case. “Police Probe Cross Fire At Negro Home,” CD, 9 December 1960. Covering the previous decade, Thomas Sugrue writes, “In the heavily segregated suburbs of Columbus, Ohio, a few blacks had attempted to cross the racial divide in the 1950s, but whites sent chilling messages to the would-be suburbanites. When a black family moved into suburban Columbus in 1956, white greeted them with a burning cross and cut telephone wires.” Sugrue, Forgotten Struggle, 229. Several of the cross burnings in 1960s Columbus were likewise accompanied by other forms of harassment such as telephone calls in the middle of the night, destruction of landscaping, and unordered taxis, police, and firefighters. 39 “Columbus Chapter NAAWP Gets Charter as Non-Profit Corporation,” CD, 24 July 1963. 40 Emphasis added. “Threatened Sale of Home to Negro Brings Protests,” CD, 2 September 1963. 19 activists.41 Conservatives of all stripes generally conflated anti-federal government sentiment with an ardent anti-communism.42
During this period, the Columbus School District faced continuing expansion and sought to meet that demand without varying too much from traditional policies or altering the image of the city. The pattern was set. Neighborhood schools remained intact while new schools were built alongside them, seemingly by natural necessity. The district did not pay attention to equal opportunity, even though new construction might have been put toward that end. Trends in development that favored suburban over urban areas and continued racial prejudice that had neither national nor local remedies by 1963 meant that
CORE, the NAACP, and civil rights activists generally continued to push for change.
41 “Eibling Says NAAWP Rally Can’t Be Barred at North,” CD, 22 May 1964. 42 “11-Months of School Urged By Education Board Member,” CD, 22 June 1960. After Sputnik, however, Ohio was more willing to accept federal funds with a focus on foreign language instruction which rose 79 percent across the state in three years. As long as federal funds targeted communism, federal funding via the National Defense Education Act was approved. In general, federal funding was more than frowned upon in any other instance. William Fulwider, “Requirements Raised For Ohio School Supervisors,” CD, 12 December 1961. William Fulwider, “Opponents Get Debate Edge On Federal Aid to Schools,” CD, 13 November 1962. 20
Educational Reform Frustrated: Civil Rights Activism Meets District Resistance, 1963-1966
Local civil rights organizations targeted education late in 1963, focusing on exactly how the school district expanded. From 1963 through 1967, local community leaders urgently stressed sweeping educational reform. They did not want to simply end segregation; they wanted equality of opportunity for each child in public school. School segregation meant separate and unequal, they said—unequal facilities, teaching, and opportunity for life. In some instances, local youth joined in protesting the school system.
On the other side, the Franklin County Anti-Communist Study Group, the recently chartered National Association for the Advancement of White People (NAAWP), and even more extremist groups such as the Klan continued to resist the activists’ agenda.
Opponents invoked the neighborhood school system to resist busing, a central policy proposed by the local NAACP branch. Civil rights organizations specifically targeted neighborhood schools, arguing they propped up an unequal system of education, especially for black students. In so doing, they directly challenged the backlash politics that sprang up in response to their advocacy.
For several years before civil rights groups targeted education, they focused on ending discrimination in public accommodations, employment, and housing. Early on, organizations focused on supporting the movement in the South by holding sympathy sit-
21 ins at local lunch counters.43 But housing in and around their own neighborhoods quickly became their focus. Picketing, rallies, and sit-ins were common, whether in front of the state capitol, the governor’s home in Bexley, or inside the state legislature.44 Civil rights groups in Columbus fought hard throughout the 1960s (and continued throughout the
1970s) for liberal, individual rights protections. Reform meant achieving a greater degree of racial justice and equality—in terms of access to public accommodations, equal access in the marketplace, and finally, to expansive rights to the public’s main institutions.
The rallies and picketing coincided with renewed yet tentative charges by the national NAACP of school segregation in the urban North. In 1962, Roy Wilkins announced a new drive to end northern segregation in the nation’s schools by listing some twenty-three cities outside the South where the NAACP had identified segregated facilities. “We have no desire to go to court,” Wilkins declared, “but we certainly will if we must.”45 In that same spirit, he also stated their “intention to destroy this fiction, this myth—the neighborhood school.”46 Columbus was not among the highlighted cities, despite clear demarcations along the artificially created white and black boundaries.47
Local civil rights leaders changed this.
An array of actions by civil rights organizations placed education high on the city’s agenda in the summer of 1964. CORE openly challenged the district well before the more moderate NAACP. Led by Rev. Arthur Zebbs of Aldersgate Methodist Church,
43 “NAACP Here Threatens 5 & 10 Sin-Ins,” CD, 18 March 1960. 44 “CORE and NAACP Hold Rally,” CD, 13 February 1962. 45 United Press International, “Educators Protest NAACP School Segregation Charge,” CD, 13 February 1962. 46 As quoted in Sugrue, Forgotten Struggle, 459. 47 United Press International, “Educators Protest NAACP School Segregation Charge,” CD, 13 February 1962. 22
CORE threatened to boycott the city’s schools unless the district addressed de facto segregation. They desired serious discussion on how to address unequal educational opportunities. Rev. Zebbs scoffed at the NAACP’s claim of a decade of talks on racial inequalities with the Columbus school board: “We can longer take another decade of discussion of the problem. What is of paramount concern and should now become top priority is that we must move carefully and wisely, but also swiftly towards an immediate solution to de facto segregation.”48 Zebb’s urgency seemed contagious as other groups began taking similar stances. The Urban League, for example, instigated legal action against local real estate agents for funneling African Americans to the fringes of older neighborhoods.49
The district, meanwhile, either continued to willfully ignore the situation or framed educational reform as a yes-or-no vote on busing. Historian Ronald P. Formisano points out that opposition to racial integration from the Boston school district in the
1970s “could have been predicted by its aggressive opposition to relieving racial imbalance during 1964-65 and its success in making the term ‘busing’ a shibboleth as early as 1965.”50 Similar dynamics played out in Columbus. In early 1964 Columbus,
Eibling asserted, “We have no schools in Columbus that are segregated by law or by any board policy, regulation or design.” School board president, Dr. Watson Walker, also declared in early 1964 that he was “definitely against” busing to achieve racial
48 William Fulwider, “CORE Chief Eyes School Boycott Here,” CD, 3 March 1964. 49 “Hits Fringe Area Housing For Negroes,” CD, 26 March 1964. 50 Formisano continues: “Long before busing ever came to Boston and before anyone ever proposed extensive busing as a solution, the school committee catered to and fed the fears of its white constituency by raising the specter of busing. They, not the NAACP or its allies, made busing a household word in the city.” Formisano, 36. 23 integration. He might be persuaded to consider “longitudinal rearrangement” of school boundaries, however. The district attempted to limit the debate to simplified issues, even when civil rights groups asked only for serious dialogue about racial problems. It remains unclear who first raised the specter of busing inside Columbus, but the specific reactions by Eibling and Walker were certainly partly a response to pressure from civil rights activists.51
Meanwhile, youthful activists also took charge. On Thursday, April 30, 1964,
Ruth Russell (22 years old), Marianne Howell (20), Fred Howell (26), Francis Perdue
(19), and Pete Calloway (26) walked out into rush-hour traffic. Blocking commuters leaving downtown for their suburban homes, the five African Americans staged a sit-in at the intersection of High and Broad Streets—the two main arteries of downtown
Columbus. As they risked life and jail time, their colleagues—an interracial group of activists—handed out leaflets protesting “de facto segregation” in Columbus area schools. Singing the classic civil rights ballad “We Shall Overcome,” the five were carried away by police. The handouts given to passersby highlighted the construction of new schools which continued the segregated neighborhood school system backed by
Eibling, the board of education, the NAAWP, and the Franklin County Anti-Communist
Study Group.52
51 Dr. Phale Hale stated in 1964 that the board was making “a lot of progress in the area of civil rights” and that it was “making the very best adjustments it can in a difficult situation”. “NAACP President Cites School Board for Civil Rights Steps,” CD, 1 March 1964. The NAACP attempted to maintain a moderate stance in the face of continuing board attitudes. 52 “Police Here Put on Alert For Rights Demonstrations,” CD, 1 May 1964. 24
In the face of such vigorous action, the white community reacted with anger. An editorial in the Columbus Dispatch denounced the protestors as “willful lawbreakers.”53
A member of the Columbus Board of Education called leaders of CORE and the NAACP
“rabble rousers” in a public meeting.54 Another letter writer compared civil rights activists to children, saying “most children who kick, scream and throw tantrums to get their way usually wind up wishing they hadn’t.”55 Others simply refused to admit there was any problems at all: “In my opinion the schools are integrated. [The CORE boycott] is just an attempt to stir up trouble.”56 This representative string of letters was punctuated at the end of March with the second cross burning in the front yard of Neal S. Francis, who had found another fiery cross in his yard the previous July. This time, his eleven- year-old son was not staying at his aunt’s house as he had been in 1963; instead, his child found the cross.57
National presidential politics, generational divides, and the inequality inherent in the neighborhood school system melded during a large, teenage-led protest in August
1964. The Teenage Action Group (TAG) took charge of the event as more than 350 people rallied in front of Monroe Junior High School. A majority of the attendees were teenagers, and several were white. Phale D. Hale, Jr., son of Rev. Hale of the NAACP, spoke on behalf of TAG at this “peaceful civil rights rally.” He highlighted specific construction projects that placed new schools in black neighborhoods on less than two acres of land and new schools in white neighborhoods that rested on ten acre sites. He
53 Editorial, “Who Has the Right?”, CD, 2 May 1964. 54 William Fulwider, “Columbus School Staffs To Be Integrated,” CD, 3 June 1964. 55 Mrs. H.J.M, letter to the editor, CD, 11 March 1964. 56 R.C., letter to the editor, CD, 12 March 1964. 57 “Juveniles Are Believed Behind Cross Burning,” CD, 26 March 1964. 25 connected these policies to national politics, boldly declaring that “white backlash is for
Goldwater” and urging people to only vote for upcoming school construction bond issues if they favored “this unequal educational system.” Rev. Hale and Rev. Zebbs emphasized the social benefits of mixed classrooms, and Zebbs pointed out local police who took photographs of the rally.58 TAG’s protest built upon the actions of their parents who questioned why there were differences in test scores between their children who attended predominately black schools in the urban core and white children at predominately white schools.59
Embedded in the demands of the black community was a challenge to financial inequality. Obviously, black parents did not believe that simply sending their children to school with whites would make them better students. Nor did the young Phale Hale Jr. argue that he and other students would succeed through osmosis. Instead, they challenged the continued construction of new schools that perpetuated material inequality. By protesting the traditional policy of the district, civil rights activists declared the current neighborhood school system neither meritocratic nor egalitarian. By highlighting the policies that promoted metropolitan economic and racial segregation, civil rights organizations argued that neighborhood schools were not simply natural outgrowths of city living. TAG, CORE, and the Urban League pushed for not only legal equality, but
58 “Schools and Goldwater Rapped At Rally Before Monroe School,” CD, 2 August 1964. 59 Black parents were not simply guessing, but were correct in their suspicions that the district was educating their children poorly compared to whites. Charles Glatt, OSU Professor and national desegregation consultant who researched and oversaw numerous desegregation court orders, highlighted the disparity in test scores between sixth grade white and black children at predominately white and black schools. No—none—black children at predominately black schools performed at or above their grade level while the vast majority of whites met or exceeded their grade level. Charles Glatt, “Average Achievement Scores By Grade Level,” 1969-1970, in Charles Glatt Papers, Box 1, Folder: “Desegregation Columbus: Sixth Grade Level – Average Achievement Scores, 1968-1970,” Ohio State Archives. 26 also an equal chance to fully participate in the public school system—the public institution connected to lifelong social and economic opportunity.
During this period, when civil rights leaders and students demanded greater and quicker reforms, the district sought to establish small-scale, targeted reforms aimed at relieving specific problems. To secure these reforms, they began to accept federal funds for education in tandem with private monies from philanthropic organizations—funds which were intended for targeted spending rather than comprehensive, broad-based efforts. A one million dollar grant from the Ford Foundation for a “special program for needy children” exemplified this method. Aimed at “primary children, from socio- economic backgrounds lacking educational opportunities,” compensatory education walked a thin line, trying to satisfy the civil rights community without producing blowback from the conservative and/or white community. The district also secured federal funds to begin Head Start. The offer of a 90 to 10 percent federal to local funding split was too good to pass up despite supposed heavy reservations concerning external control.60 Throughout the mid-1960s, the district actively sought federal funds despite fears of federal interference.61
60 “Schools Expand Plan For Needy Children,” CD, 22 April 1965. “Local Schools Planning Pre- Kindergarten Set-Up,” CD, 7 April 1965. As another example, the district began to set up health centers that they were first attached to inner-city, predominately black junior high schools. The project was connected to anti-poverty programs sponsored by federal funds. William Fulwider, “Heath Center Project Set By Schools,” CD, 18 July 1965. The district used both private and public funds to its benefit by obtaining both federal and foundation money. Washington DC and the Ford Foundation granted the district between two and two and a half million dollars to insert “enrichment teachers” into inner-city schools. William Fulwider, “Schools Seek Anti-Poverty Program Aid,” CD, 16 June 1965. 61 See for example, William Fulwider, “Eibling Asks Summer Education Plan / Board Gets Program To Help Needy,” CD, 7 Decemeber 1965; William Fulwider, “Schools Will Seek Anti-Poverty Funds,” CD, 21 December 1965; “School Board Will Ponder Poverty Plan,” CD, 3 January 1966; “School Poverty Fund Plans Approved / Program Will Start Next Week,” CD, 1 February 1966. 27
Not satisfied with the small overtures from the district, Zebbs pushed for systemic reforms. He threatened demonstrations unless the board acted to address demands from the black community but appealed, “Let us [discuss it] around the conference table. . . I have three kids . . . . You ought to take some positive action. . . . We have our backs against the wall. When you find people like that, it’s hard to tell what they might do.”62
He kept his distance from busing and instead admonished the board’s on-going construction policy. The minister echoed the demands of Phale, Jr. and TAG by calling for integration and better staffing, better academics, and more efficient operations
(themes highlighted in the future Urban League proposal). To this end, Zebbs praised the
“campus plan” for junior and senior high schools whereby several schools would be clustered together at centralized points. “We live in an urban society, but we are still building little red schoolhouses,” he said. “You can’t effectively teach when you keep on building little red schoolhouses.”63 Bigger meant better because it would offer efficiency, integration, and thus improved educational opportunity. This brand of reform also implied greater cultural transformation since it would potentially entail a greater degree of interracial and interclass exposure.
Responding to the pressure, in 1965 the board established the Council on
Intercultural Education, charged with investigating potential racial inequalities inside the district. The NAACP and Zebbs hailed the move while Julio Suarez, head of the Franklin
County Anti-Communist Study Group, warned, “Sooner or later the line will be drawn: are we going to destroy our present system of education? I hope the public is given notice
62 William Fulwider, “School Board Admonished: Integrate Now . . . Or Else,” CD, 22 September 1965. 63 William Fulwider, “Zebbs Likes ‘Campus’ Plan to Mix Schools,” CD, 23 September 1965. 28 through the press of that meeting because many representatives of many organizations will be here to oppose it.”64 Suarez, a recurrent figure at local board meetings, staunchly defended the neighborhood school system in the face of what he saw as minority rights intent on damaging Columbus’ traditional school system. The following years showed he had little to fear.
It quickly became clear that the Intercultural Council had no authority to enact change, which frustrated both members of the Council as well as local civil rights leaders.
The council did not actually form until 1966. Meanwhile, the district went ahead with its current construction plans—dating from 1959—spurring Zebbs “to declare war on building more segregated schools.” By this time, the disillusioned CORE activist strongly opposed the district, stating at a board meeting, “I promise you there will be conflict, and
I’ll be a part of that conflict. We’ll tolerate no more Jim Crow schools in Columbus.” He again distanced his organization from busing, instead calling for repositioning schools between segregated neighborhoods to achieve a semblance of racial balance.65
The NAACP and Urban League were more cautious in condemning the current system, but they changed their stance once the impotence of the council became clear to them. Rev. Hale thought the council a good start, but emphasized that segregation and poor education went hand-in-hand—solutions would need to be found that addressed both.66 Before the start of the next academic year, 1966-67, Hale and Ken Fickle, the
64 William Fulwider, “School Board Plans Rights Council / CORE Head Hails Move as Big Step,” CD, 20 October 1965. Other organizations continued to form as well, mirroring the creation of the NWACHR and CACCR. Over 600 participants from the Catholic Diocese and the Council of Churches sponsored the formation of the Columbus Area Conference of Religion on Race in the fall of 1965. “New Rights Group Planned,” CD, 31 October 1965. 65 “Zebbs ‘Declares War’ on School Plan / Segregation Claim Made,” CD, 17 November 1965. 66 William Fulwider, “School Board Sets Up Race-Advice Council,” CD, 8 December 1965. 29
NAACP co-chair on education, pushed for solutions to the “twin problems, housing and education,” and insisted that “so far the power structure of this town is supporting segregation in education.” They called for the dissolution of neighborhood schools and, like CORE, favored redistricting. The board of education was not pleased that the longtime moderate Columbus NAACP had turned so openly in favor of vigorous school reform. Intercultural Council chair person, and OSU speech professor, Richard M. Mall blurted out, “If you want us to solve the problems of the world, then we should probably take up what to do about Viet Nam as well.”67 In September, the NAACP released a terse statement criticizing the board for its “obscure, petty, and most ridiculous reasons for doing nothing” to end de facto segregation.68 Black parents were feeling the same way.
Othar Ball, father of eleven children, told the board in the spring of 1967, after yet another announcement of its intent to study the situation, “As a member of NAACP, I’m willing to go along with the go-slow trend, but I want some answers today.” Ken Fickle supported Ball, saying, “The NAACP will not accept a token approach to integration or a timid experimental program.”69
The Columbus Urban League well understood the intertwined nature of the public and private in school reform, especially as it pertained to neighborhood schools and the specter of busing. Director Robert Brown laid plain the problem: “The issue is whether or not a public service, namely public schools, when access to such service is based on residence, may legally build and operate a school in privately developed segregated
67 David Lore, “Cultural Council Hears Demands of Local NAACP,” CD, 11 August 1966. Soon after this meeting between the NAACP and the Intercultural Council the district had established, the civil rights organization stopped attending meeting with the council and went straight to the board of education. 68 David Lore, “City Council Delays Bus Decision,” CD, 12 September 1966. 69 David Lore, “Racial Balance in Schools Urged,” CD, 22 March 1967. 30 neighborhoods. Hopefully in the future we will have recourse to present a plan to the school board,” he stated at a board meeting in the fall of 1966.70 The League carefully noted the conflict that busing evoked: the rights of privately purchased property clashed head-on with the rights of the public good—a public good in favor of an egalitarian education system. The previous fall, the NAACP proposed a tentative busing plan between thirty-seven Columbus schools; the Intercultural Council reported only negatives, including the 200,000 dollar price tag. Parents immediately circulated a petition against the moderate proposal. Although the cost estimate was a mere a fraction of the 49 million dollar budget for the 1965-66 school year, busing always elicited immediate backlash.71
In the spring of 1967, the NAACP joined the Urban League and stopped dealing with the ambiguous Intercultural Council, instead going directly to the board of education with stricter demands.72 The Intercultural Council began to eat itself from the inside as committee members themselves became disillusioned. Council member Sol Morton Isaac attempted to dissolve the council in the summer of 1967 for lack of progress. At the meeting, Rev. Larry McCollough of Mount Zion Baptist Church called the school board
“a bunch of bigots.” But chairperson Richard Mall tried to end the meeting on a high note saying, “I love you all.” Isaac smiled, but retorted, “The feeling is mutual, but that
70 David Lore, “City Council Delays Busing Decision,” CD, 15 September 1966. 71 James Bradshaw, “School Busing Set at $200,000 / Figures for White, Negro Students Included in Report,” CD, 1 September 1966; “Parents Rap Bus Proposal,” CD, 4 September 1966; David Lore, “School Board Elects Calhoun, OKs $49 Million Budget,” CD, 4 January 1966. A string of letters to the editor in the CD railed against the NAACP busing plan: Disgruntled Parent, letter to the editor, CD, 11 September 1966; Ready to Vote, letter to the editor, CD, 12 September 1966; Mrs. A.C.P., letter to the editor, CD, 12 September 1966. 72 David Lore, “City Council Delays Busing Decision,” CD, 15 September 1966; “Demands by NAACP GO to School Board,” CD, 13 August 1967. It remains unclear whether the 1967 Urban League proposal was presented to the Intercultural Council or the board of education. 31 doesn’t do much for education.”73 District officials and civil rights leaders faced off, neither eager to give in to the other’s frustration. By the end of 1966, civil rights groups did not seem to have many options before them as they pushed for meaningful educational reform.
73 David Cain, “Intercultural Council Holds Against Attack,” CD, 10 August 1967. 32
The Choice: Systemic Democratic Radicalism or District-Approved Incrementalism
First, by serving the needs of a larger population group [the educational park] can encompass the diverse ethnic and socio-economic factors which are the reality of the community. By accurately reflecting the surrounding society, it can develop counterpart institutions which give all children experience in the understanding and management of social, racial and political relations. Secondly, utilizing the base provided by its multi-ethnic student population, the school can provide direct training in democratic citizenship, thereby fulfilling one of its most important roles. . . . Theoretically, the neighborhood school is supposed to do just this, but it cannot because of the intrusion of severe racial and socio-economic barriers . . . and becomes anti-democratic.74
Between 1967 and 1968, two major educational reform initiatives were proposed in Columbus. The Columbus Urban League presented the first in April of 1967: “Quality
Integrated Schools for Columbus, Ohio.” Written by community members and activists, the League’s report offered a six-point plan including the last and most sweeping, the educational park. An OSU advisory panel, commissioned by the school board, produced the second report in June 1968: “Recommendations to the Columbus Board of Education on Problems Facing the Columbus Public Schools.”75 Made up of professional academics
74 Columbus Urban League (CUL), “Appendices: Quality Integrated Schools for Columbus, Ohio: A Report by The Columbus Urban League, Education Committee,” (April 1967), 64, CML. 75 This report held both the summary report presented by the six member commission (appearing first) as well as the primary study report written by a large cohort of social scientists at OSU (the “study team,” appearing second). For all intents and purposes, the documents echo each other with the survey being more thorough and detailed. But, because page numbers repeat for study team report, citations must be clarified. The regular citation in full is as follows: The Ohio State University Advisory Commission on Problems Facing the Columbus Public Schools, “A Report to the Columbus Board of Education: Recommendations to the Columbus Board of Education on Problems Facing the Columbus Public Schools,” (June 1968), Ohio State Libraries and ERIC Database. The citation for the executive summary will read: OSU Advisory 33 and college deans, this advisory commission dutifully fulfilled its charge by studying the school system via social scientific methodology, without trying to locate the origin of any issues facing the district.76 The OSU advisory commission offered no systematic reforms for the district, focusing instead on compensatory education and further study by the district. Both plans entered into a national dialogue with professional policymakers, who sought to target the individual components of a school district’s problems and tailor a fix to each.
Reimagining the City for Educational Opportunity
Despite its size, the educational park provided a pragmatic solution to the problem of the color line.77 Amid the national cultural turmoil, differing visions of the American city, and the conflation of anti-communism/federalism/civil rights rhetoric, the Urban
League sought to reunify the city by reconstructing the role schools played as a public institution. The park idea spread quickly across the nation in part because it offered the chance to solve several of the problems facing America’s ailing public schools without necessarily alienating the interested parties. Its greatest potential, however, manifested in its democratic vision of a system of schools based on egalitarian opportunity rather than
Commission, “Recommendations,” [page number]. Citations for the study team will read: OSU Study Team, “Report of the Study Team,” [page number]. 76 OSU Advisory Commission, “Recommendations,” i, 2. 77 Previous scholarship on “educational parks” is incredibly slight and remains restricted to contemporary public policy examinations in the mid-1970s. Many of the dissertations and theses covering educational parks were produced as contemporary social science case studies. For examples, see: Frank Fiscalini, “The Educational Park: A Preventive Strategy for Meeting Educational, Ethnic and Societal Demands,” (PhD diss., 1976); Barbara Gillespie, “A Proposal for a Diagnostic and Remedial Reading Center for the Educational Park Complex of the ESUHSD [East Side Union High School District, San Jose, California],” (PhD diss., 1975). Fiscalini’s study examined San, Jose, California, which did not consider the educational park as an option until June of 1968. See, “East San Jose Educational Park Study: Developing a Preventive Strategy for Meeting Tomorrow’s Educational, Vocational, Ethnic and Societal Demands,” (June 30, 1968), ERIC Database. 34 racial and financial inequality. The proposal promised to drastically alter the image of the city both physically and culturally because of its massive size and its new locations.
Although the Columbus Urban League credited Sylvia Meek and Dr. Robert
Rutman of the Philadelphia Urban League with originating of educational park idea, the concept seems to have had a wide pull throughout the nation. Historian William J. Reese credits Sidney P. Marland, the superintendent of Pittsburgh public schools and a major national education policy figure, with originating the idea of the educational park “late in the decade” of the 1960s.78 The idea may have originated slightly earlier since the
Pittsburgh Public Schools claimed the idea “was first developed by our staff during the winter of the 1963-1964 school year.”79 The idea traveled fast, since the educational park as a concept was floating around New York City by 1964. Although the New York plan was tentative and less sweeping than Pittsburgh’s, the local board of education still considered the park as a way to achieve “quality education” and racial integration. The board developed a report titled “Action Toward Quality Integrated Education” in tandem with a “policy committee on integration.”80 The presentation of the park as school reform was set: it would offer not only integration but quality education as well.
In August 1967, New York City’s Center for Urban Education (CUE), headed by
Max Wolff, published a survey on educational park developments in the US. The report
78 Reese, 296. Reese’s book, while excellent, does not provide notes nor specific primary source documentation so it is impossible to know where exactly he got this information regarding educational parks. 79 Pittsburgh Board of Education, “The Quest for Racial Equality in the Pittsburgh Public Schools, Annual Report,” Pittsburgh Board of Education, Pennsylvania, (1965), ERIC Database, 42. Marland claims that that the he and the Pittsburgh School District “began to use the term education park in the fall of 1963, before we had heard anyone else use it.” Sidney P. Marland, Jr., “The Education Park Concept in Pittsburgh,” Phi Delta Kappan 48, (March 1967): 328. 80 New York City Board of Education, “Action Toward Quality Integrated Education,” (Brooklyn, N.Y: May 28, 1964), ERIC Database, 4. 35 concludes that an earlier survey conducted in 1963 and 1964 found only one educational park that had begun implementation—the Nova School in Florida.81 Local manifestations of the concept deviated widely with some states seeking to simply cluster a few elementary, junior high, or high schools together or separately.82 “Some apply the idea,”
New York’s CUE report stated, “to promote regional development, bringing together scattered city and suburban systems; some view it as the best way to achieve the integration of school populations now separated by racial, ethnic or income residential barriers; other propose educational parks to prevent the development of segregation as minority in-migration rises.”83 The survey found “some type of educational park development” in 85 cities with populations over 50,000.84
While the educational park developed national appeal throughout the US, it remains unclear how seriously each district embraced the project. Along with reports in which they explored the plan, many cities also produced lengthy studies concerning racial integration through other means such as busing or shifting school boundaries. Judging from the OSU advisory commission report, academics were more likely to support incrementalist measures rather than broad systematic reforms. Nonetheless, the park was considered seriously enough to produce published reports in a wide array of locales:
Washington State; Washington, DC; Berkeley, California; San Jose, California; Fresno,
81 It remains unclear to this author if Sidney P. Marland, the Pittsburgh schools, Max Wolff, or if policymakers in Florida originated the idea (policymakers encompassing either professionals and activists). But establishing the exact origin—if that is actually possible with an idea—is not the purpose of this thesis. Max Wolff, Annie Stein, and Cia Elkin, “Educational Park Development in the United States, 1967,” Center for Urban Education, (New York City: August, 1967), 1, ERIC Database. 82 Max Wolff et al., “Educational Park,” 2. 83 Ibid. 84 Ibid., 4. Interestingly, the study included Puerto Rico where two educational parks were under consideration. 36
California; Chicago; Grand Rapids, Michigan; Wilmington, Delaware; and the South, in
Arkansas, Alabama, and Florida.85
Increased centralization tracked with historic trends. Columbus’ expansion in the
1950s and 1960s contributed to what historian William J. Reese has referred to as the
“big school movement” that was driven in large part by cold warrior and national educational figure James P. Conant.86 Conant, a long-time educational critic with a background in biochemistry rather than education, believed in school consolidation “in order to improve our public schools.” But he argued, it should and could be done without any “radical alteration in the basic pattern in American education.” Schools should be large, but not too large, Conant maintained, placing him firmly in agreement with
Superintendant Eibling in Columbus.87 Conant simultaneously wanted to maintain the highest of standards for gifted students from all social backgrounds while also expanding vocational training for others. Like Eibling, he desired to improve upon a traditional
85 Berkeley Unified School District, “Integrated Quality Education: A Study of Educational Parks and Other Alternatives for Urban Needs,” (Berkeley, CA: July 1968); Magnolia School District No. 14, “Feasibility Study of an Educational Plaza for the Magnolia School District,” (Magnolia, AR: 1968); Caudill, Rowlett & Scott, “Educational Park, A Case Study Based on Planning and Design for Anniston, Alabama,” (July 1968); New York City Board of Education, “Action Toward Quality Integrated Education,” (Brooklyn, NY: May 1964); Gladys E. Lang and Arthur J. Brodbeck, “A Plan For Accelerating Quality Integrated Education in the Buffalo Public School System,” Center for Urban Education, (August 1966); Chicago Urban League, “Plan for a System of Educational Parks in Chicago,” (December 1967); East Side Union High School District, “East San Jose Educational Park Study,” (June 1968); William Booth et al., “School Organization Patterns: The Educational Park The Middle School,” (June 1969); Grand Rapids Public Schools, “Planning and Operation of an Educational Park, Final Report,” (July 1971); Pittsburgh Board of Education, “The Quest for Racial Equality in the Pittsburgh Public Schools, Annual Report, 1965,” (September 1965); Joseph M. Carroll et al., “Developing Flexible Educational Park Planning Formats for the District of Columbia, A study of the Extent to which the Quality of Educational and Supporting Community Services Are a Function of Enrollments and Time Utilization, Final Report,” (June 1969); Metropolitan Education Subcommittee, “Report of the Educational Park Advisory Committee to the Metropolitan Education Subcommittee of the Joint Committee on Education,” (August 1968); Wilmington Public Schools, “A Place in Society . . . for Everyone. Brandywine Educational Park,” (1970). 86 Reese first refers to the “big school movement” as part of the general expansion of US school districts in the post-World War II era. Reese, 296. William Fulwider, “More Efficient Education Seen By Consolidation,” CD, 1 July 1962. 87 Reese, 296. 37 system of education without any sort of “radical” transformation, which greatly limited any potential reform.88
Sidney Marland envisioned a different approach to solving urban America’s problems. In December of 1966, Marland—another national educational heavyweight of the period—attended the Education Symposium on Urban Problems held in Columbus.
The meeting drew other national figures including Roy Wilkins of the NAACP. Marland spoke directly to the problems of inequality facing the nation and Columbus, highlighting the role played by civil rights in forcing change: “The civil rights movement wants revolutionary changes now, but there are no clear cut or simple solutions.” The schools are best positioned to solve urban America’s problems, he argued. “Its compensation is long overdue.”89 Speaking on Pittsburgh’s plan to consolidate its twenty-two highly segregated high schools into “four or five” schools of 6000 students or more, he wrote,
“This will be a rational and reasonable and logical approach to integration.” There would be such “excellence in educational quality” that white families would not only remain in the city, but actually return to it. “During the next three years, our entire city will go through a major revolution. . . . These will be schools for the use of thousands, they will be concerned with excellence, they will be concerned with individuality.”90 In an article
88 Wayne J. Urban has recently argued that Conant fought for equal opportunity in education because he desired to educate the best and brightest from whatever social background. Urban only gives a slight nod in the direction of Conant’s tendency to simultaneously emphasize that goal while also limiting the educational opportunities of the rest of society by supporting expanded vocational training for the apparently stupider students. Wayne J. Urban, “James Bryant Conant and Equality of Educational Opportunity,” Paedagogica HIstorica 46, no. 1-2 (February-April 2010): 193-205. 89 David Lore, “U.S. Schools, Slums Scored in Negro Riots,” CD, 14 December 1966. 90 Sidney P. Marland, Jr., “The Big Issues in the Big City Schools,” in A Report Education Symposium on Urban Problems, Sponsored by the State Board of Education of Ohio and the Northeast Region of the National Association of State Boards of education, (Columbus, OH: December 13 and 14, 1966), ERIC Database. 38 in the spring of 1967, he stressed the diverse nature of the educational park; the idea took many different manifestations and could thus be shaped to meet the unique demands of a given city.91
Likewise, the Columbus Urban League put together an extensive proposal with radical, democratic goals for its city’s public schools. The League convened a diverse education committee, which presented a six-point plan to the district for consideration: 1) establishment of a division of planning for integration; 2) changing “feeder patterns” of how children move from elementary to junior high to high school; 3) redistricting; 4) phasing out Head Start programs; 5) conversion of predominately black schools to
“special purpose facilities” and assigning those students to new schools; 6) creation of educational parks.92 In relation to point six, the educational park, they explicitly drew from the Philadelphia’s plan authored by Meek and Rutman.
The League clearly demarcated the problem facing the city and presented its proposals on the premise that segregated schools produced poorer education. They pushed for “efforts to eliminate racism” by ending “de facto segregation” in Columbus, which the organization defined as a “school in the Columbus School System . . . whose total student population had more than 35 percent Negro students or less than 15 percent
Negro students.”93 Given their desired goal, they counted four high schools, six junior highs, and twelve elementary schools as integrated racially, while seven high schools,
91 Marland, “Education Park Concept,” 328. 92 The committee included: Amos Lynch of the African-American Call and Post; Charlotte Wikind of the League of Women Voters; Dr. Nason Hall, OSU sociology professor; John Hilliard, a teacher at an “inner- city school”; local businessmen from Ohio State Insurance and White’s Camera Shop; and Sister Miriam Therese. CUL, “Quality Integrated Schools,” 2, 38, 51, 59. 93 CUL, “Quality Integrated Schools,” 3-4, 6. 39 sixteen junior highs, and a stunning 107 elementary schools remained segregated.94 A majority of these were hyper-segregated, with student populations that were more than 85 percent white.95 The Urban League cited the US Commission on Civil Rights which concluded that black children performed better in integrated settings.96 The Ohio
Commission mirrored these findings, stating that “the very existence of wholly or predominately Negro schools, irrespective of cause, tends to mitigate the quality of education obtained by the students of such schools.”97 They joined a chorus of voices that emphasized the detriment to both white and black children, though the effects on the latter, they pointed out, were arguably worse.98 It is important to note, whatever one concludes concerning the benefits of remaining a racial minority in a school setting, that the Columbus Urban League and the US and Ohio Commissions on Civil Rights were advocating for economic as well as racial integration, given how class-based inequalities correlated with racial demographics.
As such, the League saw two paths before the city: attempting to improve the quality of education for inner-city schools piecemeal or improving the quality of education for all through general integration. The League chose the latter course. It dismissed the desirability of the former, of so-called “compensatory education,” instead seeking a complete systematic solution to educational inequalities, noting that while
94 CUL, “Quality Integrated Schools,” 9. 95 Ibid. 96 Ibid., 3. 97 Ohio Civil Rights Commission, “Racial Imbalance in the Public Schools: Survey of Legal Developments,” (April 1965), 4. 98 CUL, “Quality Integrated Schools,” 11-12. 40 economic or employment-based solutions alone would not solve inequality, separate and unequal schooling perpetuated very real separate and unequal economic outcomes.99
All six points contributed to the League’s vision of reform, but it was the educational park—“a plan which will bring quality-integrated education to each and every child in Columbus, Ohio”—that held the possibility of reimagining urban relations.100 Integration, as they framed it, would allow black students to view themselves as “individuals” and “not just members of a group (i.e. the white community frequently responds to a Negro as just a member of his race and does not see him as an individual).”101 By situating each campus just so, they imagined a system that gave “all population segments equal access to uniform, high quality education geared to individual needs and not dependent upon special compensatory or selective devices. Such a plan provides means for immediate as well as long range continuous improvement of education through expansion of curricula and auxiliary services to keep abreast of technological and cultural change,” regardless of creed, color, or class.102 “For the Negro child, the park environment will encourage a constructive self-image and an emergence of human dignity based on confidence in the school as a source of support rather than oppression.” Students would be offered “competition, cooperation, and self-government .
. . in an environment which realistically denotes the multi-racial and ethnic makeup of our community, country and world.”103 In sum, they envisioned the park as offering
99 CUL, “Quality Integrated Schools,” Preface, 3-4, 12-13, 29-30 100 Ibid., 59. 101 Ibid., 23. 102 Ibid., 60-61. 103 Ibid., 61-62. 41 democratic educational equal opportunity for individual children across racial and class- based demarcations.
Educational parks offered a complex blending of solutions that offered something to everyone in the minefield of school reform. First, they skirted the contentious issue of housing. People would continue to live wherever they wanted. Thus, a new brand of
“neighborhood school” would be fostered without completely wiping the slate clean.
Children and families would patronize one school campus from their home, therefore keeping neighborhood cohesion intact. Students would continue to attend school with friends, and parents would see their neighbors at school events—just as they did under the traditional neighborhood school system. The plan also attempted to undercut the specter of busing solely for the purpose of racial integration.104 Even under the traditional neighborhood school setup, students were often transported to and from school via bus; by the late 1960s, public school systems were even ordered responsible for busing private school students.105 Attempting to ease the fears of white parents, the League stressed,
“We do not advocate the transportation of students from outer-city schools to inner-city
104 By 1972, “busing” was fully opposed by whites even though, as noted earlier, large swaths of America feared it at least since 1964. Whites opposed busing across the board by massive majorities: 71 percent of Easterners, 77 percent of Midwesterners, and 82 percent of Southerners, according to Gallup Polls. Blacks were more evenly divided, but divided they were: 47 percent against and 45 for. As reported in “Civil Rights News: The Monthly Newsletter of the Columbus Area Civil Rights Council,” Vol. 9, no. 3 (March 1972) in “National Association for the Advancement of Colored People Ohio Branch Records,” Box 6, Folder 1, OHS. 105 Beginning with the 1966 school year, all Ohio school districts had to abide by new Ohio legislation that required offering public busing service to students attending private schools. It was estimated in early 1966 that the order would cost the district over 500,000 dollars. “Senate Will Get Busing Bill,” CD, 13 January 1965; “Group Set to Oppose Busing Bill,” CD, 17 January 1965; “State Aid For Pupil Transit Hit,” CD, 22 January 1965; Howard Thompson, “Foes Attack School Bus Bills as Illegal,” CD, 1 April 1965; Howard Thompson, “Ohio Senate Passes School Busing Bill,” CD, 30 July 1965; David Lore, “School Board Elects Calhoun, OKs $49 Million Budget,” CD, 4 January 1966; “Parochial Pupil Busing Set for Fall,” CD, 31 January 1966. 42 facilities.”106 The local NAACP supported their approach since the neighborhood school
“all too often has been misused and distorted to justify separate white and Negro schools.
In fact, the neighborhood school tends to be determined not by distance or geography, but by color and class.” They also insisted that busing “despite all of the distorted accounts, is not a plan of desegregation,” since “the use of school buses does not represent a departure of any kind in American education.”107 Because the parks would be so large, some amount of busing for the purposes of transportation would surely be necessary. But busing in this context, the Columbus League hoped, would create a “community school” instead of the traditional neighborhood model.108
Third, parks potentially improved every individual’s education by centralizing resources which, reformers hoped, would foster improved curricula, instruction, counseling, food, health, and extracurricular services.109 Lastly, they imagined the park as a continuation of the two big school movements where small, often one-room schoolhouses combined with adjacent districts to improve educational offerings. The park represented a progressive belief in rational modernization and the centralization of resources. And although clearly centralized to a greater degree than that already established by districts across the nation, educational parks maintained local control.
106 CUL, “Quality Integrated Schools,” 58. 107 Midwest Education Office Education Department, “NAACP Resolutions on Education, as Adopted at National Conventions 1967-72,” National Association for the Advancement of Colored People, (Chicago: 1972), 5, in “National Association for the Advancement of Colored People Ohio Branch Records,” Box 5, Folder 13, OHS. 108 CUL, “Appendices: Quality Integrated Schools,” 69-70. 109 Meek and Rutman highlighted the advantages of centralization in almost every area of social life connected with schools. Educational parks might incorporate health and counseling facilities, auditoriums and science laboratories, and other public services such as welfare. See CUL, “Quality Integrated Schools,” 48-50. 43
The physical placement of the Urban League’s proposal threatened to recast what urban planner Kevin Lynch called “the image of the city.” Lynch asked what the material form of the city does for the people who live there. How does it affect and shape their lives? Just as developing edge nodes redefined the lives of people leaving the inner city, the educational park could have shifted metropolitan social relations across boundaries of race and class. It might have shaped what Lynch refers to as “the imageabilty of the city.”110 The educational park offered a “child-centered community” that would prove attractive to both young people and families, the League argued, unlike “the attractiveness of new, modern homes and shopping centers [which] cannot of itself reverse the present reasons for mobility” of white families to the suburbs. The project proposed to redefine redevelopment of metropolitan areas facing “urban problems”
(concentration of poverty, of non-whites, of poor housing, of lacking of opportunity).
These “parks have now led to a new aspect which may, in the long run,” the plan read,
“be most important in reversing the dispersive trends which undermine urban planning and which may thereby help to reestablish the unity of city and suburbs.”111
The Urban League encapsulated its vision as derived from civil rights, stating,
“The park is the physical manifestation of egalitarian education. . . . The premise of education on the park is a respect of human dignity and individual worth. Conversely, the park rejects invidious distinctions based upon race, class, religion, or national origin as
110 Lynch, 9-13. Lynch defines “imageability” as the relationship between physical qualities of structures and the identities associate with it when picturing it in the mental image. “A highly imageable (apparent, legible, or visible) city in this peculiar sense would seem well formed, distinct, remarkable; it would invite the eye and the ear to greater attention and participation. The sensuous grasp upon such surroundings would not merely be simplified, but also extended and deepened. Such a city would be one that could be apprehended over time as a pattern of high continuity with many distinctive parts clearly connected.” Lynch, 10. 111 CUL, “Appendices: Quality Integrated Schools,” 74. 44 well as any notion of inferiority of individuals or groups of individuals.”112
Neighborhood schools, the League argued, offered only artificial community, arbitrarily based on “walking distance.”113 By serving large numbers of families, each campus might serve as a central node for social interactions, for neighborhoods, and for community.
Just as railroad stations or traditional city squares have served as city nodes where public and private interactions took place and were imbued with meaning, the educational park might have rearranged the city, to place the public education system at the center of metropolitan life. The park would foster “democratic, integrated ‘sub-societies,’” representative of “the diverse ethnic and socio-economic factors which are the reality of the community” (emphasis added).114 And if the parks were based on the democratic model presented by the Urban League, the image of the city itself might have become interwoven with these newly constructed central nodes.115
Policymakers at the federal level and scholars of the period considered the educational park as a pragmatic solution to urban needs. The Department of Health,
Education, and Welfare (HEW) sponsored several of the studies for local districts considering educational parks. An arm of HEW, in conjunction with the University of
Oregon, reported of the parks in 1969 as “one of the most dramatic solutions offered to meet the educational needs of students in metropolitan areas today.” This was because
“although the educational park may be regarded as a form of consolidation, its unique
112 CUL, “Appendices: Quality Integrated Schools,” 55-56. 113 Ibid., 64. 114 Ibid., 63. 115 Lynch, 72-78. “Nodes are the strategic foci into which the observer can enter, typically either junctions of paths, or concentrations of some characteristic. But although conceptually they are small points in the city image, they may in reality be large squares, or somewhat extended linear shapes, or even entire central districts when the city is being considered at a large enough level. Indeed, when conceiving the environment at a national or international level, then the whole city itself may become a node.” Lynch, 72. 45 purpose is to provide a common location for a number of schools serving students of several age levels” that would include “expanded educational offerings,” much like those highlighted by the Columbus Urban League two years previous. The federal survey concluded starkly:
Disadvantaged children in the inner city stand little chance of enjoying the quality of education provided their more privileged suburban peers, and the life chances that quality education affords, unless they are in some way able to participate in educational programs that correspond in richness and scope with those provided students living in more educationally advanced districts. As more communities face the problem of providing equal education for their students, the educational park demands consideration as a possible solution.116
Max Wolff at the Center for Urban Education—like Sidney P. Marland and many others—portrayed the parks as the solution to the “crisis in urban education.”117 “The size, the cost, the ambitious innovations of an Educational Park often frighten people at first,” Wolff concluded. He stressed that only through careful coordination with every interested body of urban planning along with enthusiastic, yet cautious, community involvement could produce an educational park.118 Not all professional urban planners agreed with Wolff’s assessments, however.
The OSU Advisory Commission Report
The Columbus Urban League’s proposal for educational parks went nowhere.
Instead, the district turned to a university commission and implemented the targeted reforms it offered. The OSU Advisory Commission Report overshadowed the Urban
League’s proposal in the end in part because of its non-threatening institutional and
116 John A. Klebe, “Introduction,” in “Selected Bibliography on Educational Parks,” (July 1969), v. 117 Max Wolff and Alan Rinzler, “The Educational Park: A Guide to its Implementation,” (New York: 1970), see Table of Contents, 1-2. 118 Wolff and Rinzler, 49-53. 46 professional legitimacy in the eyes of the school board and superintendent. The commissioned report drew on social scientific research at the university and national level by offering specific recommendations to specific problems. Incrementalism supplanted the systematic reform proposed by the CUL.119
The first and what “may well be the most important [recommendation] in the report,” according to the commission, was the formation of an “urban education coalition.”120 This new organization would facilitate dialogue between the district and the community. It would also foster partnerships between schools and industry so that a private business could “‘adopt’ a specific junior or senior high school.” In so doing, the district would fulfill a second recommendation: placing greater emphasis on occupational education.121 This brand of reform set the tone for the entire report.
The advisory commission strongly asserted the need to create educational opportunity for students in Columbus. “Equality of educational opportunity cannot exist unless there are members from the black and white communities attending school together,” it asserted. But the report simultaneously lowered expectations. Schools could not control the neighborhood or familial environment of the pupil, for instance.122 So, the district was advised to open a “Family Development Center” to “build strength into families so they could carry their future responsibilities more effectively.”123 In effect, the
OSU panel reproduced the themes of the Moynihan Report.124 Avoiding laying
119 OSU Advisory Commission, “Recommendations,” 21-22. 120 Ibid., 13. 121 Ibid., 12. 122 Ibid., 18. 123 Ibid., 22. 124 For more on the infamous Moynihan Report of 1965, see Sugrue, Forgotten Struggle, 374, 378-79, 380- 81 and James T. Patterson, Grand Expectations: The United States, 1945-1974, (New York: Oxford 47 responsibility at the district’s doorstep, the commission emphasized that Columbus
Public Schools could only operate “within the resources and legal structures available” to them.125 Open housing legislation, they argued, put the matter of racial or economic integration out of their grasp.126 Therefore, the OSU report supported “managed school integration” including “boundary revision” as new schools were constructed.127
This trend set by the OSU commission endured as the OSU College of Education, the OSU Graduate School, and the Continuing Education Division sponsored their first
Postdoctoral Seminar entitled Problems of School Men in Depressed Urban Centers.
Despite the title, the series of papers presented at the three day conference (attended by
Superintendent Eibling) sought to address the “children in urban centers who have educational liabilities.” Like the OSU advisory study team, these academic researchers produced “purposefully descriptive” essays that “particularly focused attention on educational problems rather than on a wide range of political, economic, occupational, organizational, and related problems, which were legitimate topics but not directly related to the daily problems of the educator.”128 Seminar sessions focused on the particulars of
University Press, 1996), 384, 586. For an example of the immense cultural impact of the report on America, see Ann duCille, “Marriage, Family, and Other ‘Peculiar Institutions’ in African-American Literary History,” African-American Literary History 21, no. 3, (2009): 612, which highlights how, “The report recommends a kind of rescue mission that would encourage black males to enlist in the ‘utterly masculine world’ of the Armed Forces—‘a world away from women, a world run by strong men of unquestioned authority’.” 125 OSU Advisory Commission, “Recommendations,” 17. 126 Ibid., 19-20. 127 Ibid., 20-21. 128 Arliss L. Roaden, ed., “Preface,” in Problems of School Men in Depressed Urban Centers, (Columbus, Ohio: The Ohio State University, 1969). 48 school-specific topics: learning obstacles, curriculum, instructional materials, teachers, and administration leadership.129
The responses by the board of education to the two proposals were diametrically opposed. The board publicly released a response to the 1968 study completed by the OSU advisory council: “The Board and administration staff gave immediate and top-priority attention to the university’s report and recommendations.” Admitting that “like all large and growing cities in our nation, Columbus has problems,” the district took “positive action on fifty recommendations that could be carried out within available funds.”130 In fact, the statement from the board slighted civil rights leaders by praising the “response of the community in general—and business and industrial leaders in particular” to OSU’s report.131 Their public response to proposals from civil rights organizations, mass-mailed to PTA organizations during a tense boycott by a black parents organization on the Near
East Side in September of 1967 read:
You are no doubt aware that there are movements under way attempting to force or coerce the school board to abandon the long established and successful neighborhood school concept. These movements propose to transport students by bus from one school district to another, whether it relates to open enrollment, educational parks or redistricting. The board maintains the neighborhood school concept is the best plan perpetuated to date, even though it has agreed to voluntary enrollment, but they see nothing to be gained by busing students except tremendous expense and inconvenience to many.132
129 Roaden, ed., Problems of School Men in Depressed Urban Centers. 130 Edward N. Sloan, “Statement of Edward N. Sloan, President Columbus Board of Education,” (6 August 1968), 1-2, attached within “School Memo #3,” Harold H. Eibling to Columbus NAACP, in “National Association for the Advancement of Colored People Records,” Box 3, Folder 12: “NAACP: Ohio, Education: Correspondence,” OHS. 131 Ibid., 6. 132 David Lore, “School Board Votes Racial Study / Rights Group Pickets Object To Delay,” CD, 6 September 1967. During the one-day boycott, nearly fifty percent of the student body either stayed home or attended alternative neighborhood schools modeled after freedom schools in the South. For more on freedom schools and student participation in them, see William Sturkey, ““‘I Want to Become a Part of 49
Despite the best efforts of the Urban League to dissociate the educational park from busing and to replace the neighborhood school concept with a more inclusive community model, the district still associated any and all civil rights educational reform as simply busing and the destruction of “the best plan perpetuated to date.” Oddly enough, the district would at least pay lip-service to redistricting when counseled by the OSU commission.
Drawing on the OSU advisory commission recommendation, Eibling and district administrators implemented small-scale programs designed to target specific problems. A follow-up report by the district, “Community Recommendations Relative to the
Construction Needs of the Columbus Public Schools,” outlined several efforts to placate community demands. These included an amalgamation of individual, non-coordinated suggestions by no less than 132 people and organizations originally compiled by the OSU commission. These mirrored those recommendations already presented by the OSU study.133
The district’s construction plans reflected the guidance of the national Council of
Educational Facility Planners (CEFP), which produced the Guide For Planning
Educational Facilities in 1969.134 The OSU-published book served as “an authoritative
History’: Freedom Summer, Freedom Schools, and the Freedom News,” The Journal of African-American History 95, issue 3/4 (Summer/Fall 2010): 348-368. 133 Urban Education Coalition, “The Schools: Community Recommendations,” Newsletter of the Urban Education Coalition, (February 1970), in Columbus Area Civil Rights Council Papers, Box 1, Folder 1, OHS. 134 This national organization’s committees included professors, bureaucrats and administrators from public school districts and state departments of education, and the US Office of Education. Dating back to 1921, the CEFP was originally charted the National Council on Schoolhouse Construction under the guidance of Samuel A. Challman, Frank H. Wood, and Charles McDermott. Council of Educational Facility Planners, Guide For Planning Educational Facilities, (Columbus, Ohio: September 1969), 1, 3. 50 and comprehensive guide to the planning of educational facilities from the conception of need through utilization.”135 The organization boasted that it served as the “the basic textbook for students enrolled on graduate level facility planning courses.”136 Systematic reform was not pursued from this direction either; the organization did not advocate reimagining the city. The guide instructed architects and planners to work with local district needs given available funding. As professionals, they were to execute the given project rather than present new directions or reforms. The Council of Educational Facility
Planners sought to streamline the implementation of plans set forth by the superintendant’s office and the local board of education. The CEFP listed “federal and national resources” that planners should acquaint themselves with including universities, private businesses, professional associations, and various government agencies. Civil rights groups were completely absent.137
After receiving the OSU advisory commission report, the district addressed equality of opportunity only in passing and never addressed broader social equality that might have satisfied Zebbs and members of TAG. In its 1968 statement, for instance, the board decided to stress recruitment “of Negro teachers, supervisors, and administrators.”
“Integrated education and compensatory education” were listed once, but the point did not deviate from previous strategy: the board endorsed yet more “research and feasibility studies” as if the Intercultural Council they chartered or proposals from civil rights
135 Council of Educational Facility Planners, 1-2. 136 Ibid., 3. 137 Perhaps the oddest example of the sort of group cited to the exclusion of organizations like the NAACP or Urban League was this statement concluding the section on “national resources”: “Many parties having a more indirect interest in school facility planning are also useful as resources. For example the National Rifle Association can be helpful in planning rifle ranges.” Ibid., 11-13, 17-22. 51 organizations never existed.138 A year later, the district began to fully implement standardized testing.139 Compensatory educational efforts were the order of the day in the concluding reports on the OSU advisory commission’s findings.140
By 1969, the Columbus School District planned to kick-start its normal construction process which the OSU advisory council proposal only temporarily halted.
Upon review of the district’s construction policies, the Building Committee proposed projects that looked exactly like proposals from the previous two decades. Admirably, they planned to reduce the student-to-teacher ratio. They also persisted in pursuing state and federal funding. But they continued new construction of individual schools to cope with increased enrollment while maintaining the neighborhood school system.141 The
Urban League, NAACP, CORE, and TAG had forced the district to acknowledge some of the inequalities present in the Columbus School District, but their proposals were still sidelined in favor of the status quo.
138 Sloan, 3. The next year, Eibling suggested yet another program to foster community engagement called “School Seminars” which were “to give parents and others the opportunity to discuss major issues”. Harold H. Eibling, “School Memo #69-3,” (14 March 1969), in “National Association for the Advancement of Colored People Ohio Branch Records,” Box 3, Folder 12: “NAACP: Ohio, Education: Correspondence,” OHS. 139 Harold H. Eibling, “School Memo #69-4,” (25 March 1969), in “National Association for the Advancement of Colored People Ohio Branch Records,” Box 3, Folder 12: “NAACP: Ohio, Education: Correspondence,” OHS. 140 Harold H. Eibling, “School Memo #69-6: 55 Steps To Better Schools in the Inner City of Columbus,” (15 April 1969), in “National Association for the Advancement of Colored People Ohio Branch Records,” Box 3, Folder 12: “NAACP: Ohio, Education: Correspondence,” OHS. 141 The “new” construction actually reified old patters by replacing schools that were built in the nineteenth century without adjustment to mollify through construction demands for greater equality. Robert A. Ramsey, “Statement of Robert A. Ramsey Chairman of the Building Committee Columbus Board of Education,” (1 April 1969), 1-4 and attached maps, in “National Association for the Advancement of Colored People Ohio Branch Records,” Box 3, Folder 12: “NAACP: Ohio, Education: Correspondence,” OHS. 52
Grand Reform that Failed to Pass: Civil Rights Proposal Spurned
“Because expectations for schools had risen dramatically,” writes historian
William J. Reese, “urban policy making was a lush landscape of ideas littered with many ideological land mines.”142 The educational park proposal never navigated those land mines. The district turned to a university commission instead and pursued the incrementalism it offered. The 1970s did not witness successful or systematic school reform, even in this economically successful “All American City” as racial tensions persisted. Several reasons account for the rejection of the educational park idea. Some sprang from the cultural conflicts surrounding local attitudes toward government, race, and the civil rights movement. Despite national educational policy experts who supported the educational park as a solution to a wide array of problems plaguing urban America, the idea died a quiet death in the late 1960s.
Meanwhile, the NAACP, in a series of resolutions between 1967 and 1972, persisted in advocating for a broad definition of educational reform, including educational parks. Their first resolution, and the goal which received the greatest attention by the press and historians, aimed for “policies and plans to end segregated schools.” Resolution number listed a wide array of desegregation plans that included expansive proposals: “reorganizing the use of schools (centralized schools, converting
142 Reese, 238. 53 schools to other use, or, if necessary, closing schools); changing feeder patters of elementary and secondary schools; . . . educational ‘parks’ or centers . . . . We, also, urge the development of metropolitan planning whereby public school systems are merged without regard to political organization.” The NAACP sought compensatory policies such as hiring more black teachers and utilizing federal funds for additional programs.
“There is no choice between the critical need to end segregation and the equally critical need to provide the highest educational standards for schools now serving Negro children,” the resolution declared. “Both objectives must be pursued vigorously and relentlessly.”143 Like the Urban League’s proposal of 1967, the organization connected
“quality education” and desegregation.
Perhaps the greatest limitations facing the Urban League’s “Quality Integrated
Schools” proposal were financial and bureaucratic in nature. Purchasing and locating between eight and fifteen tracts of 100-plus acres would cost any city dearly. Columbus had a long history of underfunding its public schools compared with other Ohio cities.
Out of the seven largest school districts in Ohio in 1968, Columbus still came in last in funding per pupil—15 percent lower than the highest funding city, Cincinnati.144 In the
1965-66 school year, the district had 119 elementary schools, twenty-two junior high schools, and eleven senior high schools—all separated from each other on discrete tracts of land scattered across the city.145 Despite continued opposition from civil rights groups,
143 Midwest Education Office Education Department, “NAACP Resolutions on Education, as Adopted at National Conventions 1967-72,” National Association for the Advancement of Colored People, (Chicago: 1972) in “National Association for the Advancement of Colored People Ohio Branch Records,” Box 5, Folder 13, OHS. 144 Sloan, 5. 145 CUL, “Quality Integrated Schools,” 9. 54 the district pursued its traditional construction plans; in 1969, for example, the district had completed five more elementary and five more junior high schools.146 The inertia and cost of previous district planning and expansion seemed too great for civil rights groups to alter it.
Financial limitations were inseparable from political and cultural conflicts, however. In 1969, the people of Columbus voted down a special election bond levy for education. In so doing, they rejected both the massive cost of targeted reform programs as well as the necessary expansion of construction to meet the growing student population.
The election centered on providing both an increased number of facilities (new schools and renovations) as well as a long list of compensatory educational measures.147 National trends were shifting against increasing public funding for public schools overall.148 After the district apparently surveyed voters, Eibling concluded that a majority of both those for and against the levy were in favor of more facilities, but spending for equal opportunity had lost public support.149 Columbus did pass a regular bond issue later that year, but it was not derived from the OSU commission’s recommendations. Instead, the
146 Howard O. Merriman, et al., “The Columbus School Profile: A Report of the Columbus Public Schools to the Community – May, 1970,” (Columbus, Ohio: 1970), 7. 147 Harold H. Eibling, “School Memo #69-10,” (19 September 1969), in “National Association for the Advancement of Colored People Ohio Branch Records,” Box 3, Folder 12: “NAACP: Ohio, Education: Correspondence,” OHS. 148 In 1969, Gallup Polls indicated that 49 would vote against new taxes while 45 percent would vote for. By 1970, those numbers shifted to 56 percent against, 37 percent for. Stanley M. Elam, ed., A Decade of Gallup Polls of Attitudes Toward Education 1969-1978, (Bloomington, IN: Phi Delta Kappa, 1978), 45, 71. 149 Harold H. Eibling, “School Memo #69-12,” (30 September 1969), in “National Association for the Advancement of Colored People Ohio Branch Records,” Box 3, Folder 12: “NAACP: Ohio, Education: Correspondence,” OHS. 55 bond facilitated traditional construction projects and standard issues like teacher pay, not measures geared specifically toward promoting equal opportunity in the district.150
The Urban League’s proposal, made possible by the activism of civil rights organizations, also slammed up against the cultural turmoil of the late 1960s. By the summer of 1967, the Columbus black community had become weary of an intractable school district. School reform had become such a heated topic that segments of the black community chose black power and community control over continued fruitless engagement with Superintendent Eibling and the school board. The board meeting in the summer of 1967 spoke directly to that—“Black people, let’s get out of here and unite,” protestors declared.151 For whites and the district, the push for educational equality of opportunity by CORE, the NAACP, the Urban League, and TAG produced too much resentment and backlash from both the district and the white community. Instead of treating the activists’ proposals as viable options, the district turned to professional social scientists at the local university to, again, study individual problems and present individual solutions.
Throughout the 1950s and 1960s, Columbus’ diverse economic base sustained stable economic growth and a low unemployment rate. But progress was not for everyone. Racial tensions still ran high as cross burnings and discrimination remained all too common. From the vantage point of the white community, reforms associated with civil rights remained tainted by the rhetoric of minority versus majority rights, federal
150 Harold H. Eibling, “School Memo-#70-1: The Appropriation Measure for 1970,” (8 January 1970), in “National Association for the Advancement of Colored People Ohio Branch Records,” Box 3, Folder 12: “NAACP: Ohio, Education: Correspondence,” OHS. 151 Cain, “School Policy Protested / Shouts of ‘Black Power’ Accompany Walkout,” CD, 16 August 1967. 56 versus local control, American free choice versus Soviet totalitarianism, black versus white, and public versus private. Although the city did not experience the turbulence of deindustrialization, successful school reform proved out of reach. The image of the city remained largely unchanged, the school system separate and unequal.
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