Remnants of the Brown Case Applied to the Segregation of the Burnside School

Race in Chicago: Remnants of the Brown Case Applied to the Segregation of the Burnside School By Jonathan Wenegieme A Senior Essay submitted in partial fulfillment of the requirement for the Degree of Bachelor of Arts in History Colorado College Colorado Springs, Colorado May 2016 2 Chicago has been known for its racial inequality in both its schools and in its local neighborhoods. The injustice towards black youth has recently been the repeated subject of crime in Chicago. Before what has been going on now, the African-American community had to witness their children being dealt the segregation that should have been dismissed in the Brown v. Board of Education case in 1954. The neighborhood of Burnside in Chicago was one of the places where segregation needed physical action to fight it. Burnside is the smallest of the 77 community areas in Chicago, and it is located in Community Area 47. The Burnside Elementary School, which is still active today, received much controversy due to the double shifts which occurred because of overcrowding due to European immigrants. A mix of immigrants and a high black population of students laid the seed to racism in the school. Faculty at the two biggest schools in the Burnside area, Beard Elementary and Dever Elementary, were 88.3% white. Most of the other schools in the area also had more than 50% percent of a white faculty in 1961.1 These numbers were gathered shortly before the civil rights activist movement happened in Chicago. Timuel Black, who is currently deceased, was interviewed by a Chicago news station many years after he was a part of the protests in Burnside. He was an African- American who went to Burnside Elementary in 1959, when it was still predominantly white. He explained how he entered into his second-grade classroom and his teacher “was flabbergasted.”2 He continues with when he shared a book in class with the girl next to him and the teacher reacted in shock. The teacher barked, “Barbara, what are 1 A History of School Desegregation since 1954, William Vrame, p. 154 2 Encyclopedia of Chicago you doing?”3 It is hard to read this without thinking about what a small little boy could do against the racism that he didn’t deserve to receive. Black describes in the interview how he felt angry and lonely. When his father heard about the racist environment, he said, “What the hell, you put that child in a room with those crackers?”4 Black’s family also lived in a white neighborhood, so they felt isolated in their own house. Black, speaking many years later, did not seem regretful unlike many of the persons I encountered in my research were. Black seemed only to want to let go of the past. Derrick Bell and the Brown Case To get a better understanding of what happened in Burnside, the background of desegregation is important. The Brown v. Board of Education case is the fundamental. The Supreme Court case was ruled on May 17, 1954 and legally ended segregation in schools across the country. The ruling judged separate black and white schools to be unconstitutional. In the eyes of a historian named Derrick Bell however, the outcome was supposed to be a breakthrough for the people of America toward the steps of freedom, but the famous Supreme Court case caused more separation than unity. Bell was the first tenured African-American Professor of Law at Harvard Business School. In his book Silent Covenants, he analyzed the Brown case differently from prior critics. He presented new information that was not talked about in wide context. Bell argues that over 5,000 black individuals were lynched at the hands of their white counterparts shortly after the case was ruled.5 Houses were burned, bodies were hung, and the white population in the country punished the blacks for legal equality. Bell 3 ibid 4 ibid 5 Silent Covenants, Derrick Bell, p. 45 4 concludes saying that the Brown case was a failure because although desegregation was legal, racism became more alive. It was introduced to the reader the notion that the “poor whites subordinate their economic hopes for feelings of racial superiority.”6 This was an interesting read because it also introduced a new logic that never came to mind until reading Bell’s thesis. Black people wanted equality between their white counterparts but the white population would even diminish their economic status to obtain racial superiority. This was a very intriguing, new way to look at this topic and it makes a lot of sense. That also made me question the motives of the Supreme Court, whose main electives were of the white race. In this essay, I explore much further by comparing Bell’s views of the Brown case to the segregation of schools in Chicago. Bell’s perspective was surprising because he was an African-American. My goal to test his hypothesis on the events at Burnside, when school desegregation was the prize to be fought for in America. Burnside sparked an even bigger movement in Chicago in the 1960s. An in-depth look into the events of the Burnside civil rights movement raised questions that I wanted to look into. First, I intend to use the evidence that I have gathered to determine if Bell’s analysis could be applied to the Burnside movement? Second, is it inevitable for desegregation to be followed by more racism? To acquire more information about Burnside, I looked into the Chicago Tribune, Chicago Defender, and the Encyclopedia of Chicago for access to information. Looking into the archives of the Chicago Tribune, articles in this source introduced a general 6 Ibid, p.30 context of what happened. It was very effective in showing a chronology of the events that took place in Burnside. The Chicago Defender was the primary newspaper to document the stories affecting African-American citizens in Chicago in the mid-20th century. Many contributors for this paper were black Chicagoans telling stories from their neighborhoods. The topics of interest ranged from housing issues to education reform. The information that I found in the Defender was much different than what I found in the Tribune. The combination of both let me see through the eyes of someone who experienced the events of Burnside. The Encyclopedia of Chicago was also a great resource because it gave more of a history of Chicago, with a great section specific to Burnside. It looks closely at the history of Chicago schools. The CE incorporates interviews from citizens speaking about their academic experience in Chicago, for instance the Timuel Black interview. It offers information about the geography, the history of the neighborhood, as well as the events that the area was best known for. Willis as the Superintendent The events that occurred in Burnside started to take form when Benjamin C. Willis was elected to be the Superintendent of the Chicago Public Schools on June 8, 1953.7 Willis was previously the Superintendent of the Buffalo Public Schools in New York. Willis commented on his new job by explaining how the job “is a challenge which no man interested in public education can decline.”8 He would be the subject of blame throughout the desegregation protests in Burnside. 7 Chicago Tribune, “Willis Accepts School Post as ‘Challenge’, June 9, 1953, John R. Thomson 8 ibid 6 It appears that Willis knew that Chicago was going to be a tougher place than Buffalo to work in, in part because of what the former Superintendent, Howard C. Hunt, had left for him. Twenty-two thousand school employees were all under civil service.9 This means that they came straight from the military with no prior experience to the job. In addition, many of the substitute teachers for the public schools were hired at a minimum level of education. There were many vacancies in the schools and teachers were not fully licensed. Therefore, with unlicensed teachers unable to teach children well, the productivity of the schools was weak.10 The 1953 Chicago Tribune introduces an article discussing the matter, pointing out a big flaw: Willis’ priority was to fill the vacancies only. On September 4, 1953, Willis proudly commented on the problem with the 800 new and unlicensed teachers. “The future of Chicago rests more in the hands of these educators than any other group.” One might ask, how could they possibly be the future when they are not rightfully equipped with the tools to teach the next generation? At the same time, the situation was that there were not enough teachers and the school board was in the state of urgency, so that side of the issue is plausible. Shortly after his appointment, Willis created a payment plan for the teachers of the Chicago district, which he averaged to be a 7.1 million dollar contract per year.11 Each teacher would get paid more due to the education that they had received prior to working in the schools. Teachers with bachelor’s degrees started with a salary of $3,600 a year with a maximum of a little over $5,000. Teachers with master’s degrees started 9 ibid 10 Chicago Tribune, “Supt. Willis Addresses 800 New Teachers”, Sept 4, 1953 11 Chicago Tribune, “Willis Offers Single Salary Teacher Plan”, Nov 26, 1953 with a salary of $4,000 with a maximum of a little over $6,000.12 The problem here was that many of the teachers who were hired were below the bachelor level. Many of them just came from the military and fulfilled the minimum requirements to be considered as an “elementary” teacher.13 The uncertified teachers were paid less than $2,000 a year and that created a tense discourse between the teachers and the school board.

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