School Desegregation in Forty-Three Southern Cities Eighteen Years After Brown
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DOCUMENT RESUME ED 065 646 UD 012 821 TITLE It's Not Over in the South: School Desegregation in Forty-Three Southern Cities Eighteen Years After Brown. INSTITUTION Alabama Council on Human Relations, Inc., Huntsville.; American Friends Service Committee, Washington, D.C.; National Association for the Advancement of Colored People, New York, N.Y.; National Council of Churches of Christ, New York, N.Y.; Southern Regional Council, Atlanta, Ga.; Washington Research Project, Washington, D.C. SPONS AGENCY Southern Education Foundation, Atlanta, Ga.; Urban Coalition, Washington, D.C. PUB DATE May 72 NOTE 146p. EDRS PRICE MF-$0.65 HC-$6.58 DESCRIPTORS Ability Grouping; Bus Transportation; Court Role; Discipline Problems; Expulsion; Faculty Integration; Integration Plans; *Integration Studies; Negro Students; Racial Balance; *School Integration; *School Segregation; *Southern Schools; Suspension; Token Integration; *Urban Schools IDENTIFIERS Florida; Geogia; Louisiana; South Carolina ABSTRACT The focus of this study on school desegregation is on 43 cities in the following areas: Bibb and Chatham Counties (Ga.) ; Orange, Duval, Hillsborough, and Pinellas Counties (Fla.); Cado, Quachita, East Baton Rouge, and Orleans Parishes (La.); and, Richland County District Number 1, Florence County District Number 1, and Orangeburg County District Number Five (S.C.) . Based on the reports of the study monitors, the following are among the recommendations and findings made:(1) equal protection of laws is yet not a reality for most black students in the South; (2) at least a dozen major urban, Southern school systems are operating on inadequate and outdated court orders and desegregation plans; (3) some urban Southern school districts are not only segregated but do not provide any form of student transportation;(4) a school district cannot desegregate half-way; faculty and student integration must go hand-in-hand;(5) resegregation is an alarming fact in the urban Southern school systems, aided by local state and federal action; (6) a large number of black students are congregated in the lower academic groups in southern urban schools because of "abilityfl grouping;(7) widespread student unrest is symptomatic of racism, insensitivity, and injustice; (8) suspensions and expulsions of students are so widespread as to raise serious questions as to the effectiveness of these methods to enforce discipline; and, (9) increased use of police and security guards does notseem to have eliminated or significantly decreased disciplinary problems. (Authors/RJ) "4. U.S. DEPARTMENT OF HEALTH, EDUCATION & WELFARE CD OFFICE OF EDUCATION THIS DOCUMENT HAS BEEN REPRO- DUCED EXACTLY AS RECEIVED FROM THE PERSON OR ORGANIZATION ORIG- INATING IT. POINTS OF VIEW OR OPIN- CI° IONS STATED DO NOT NECESSARILY REPRESENT OFFICIAL OFFICE OF EDI.). CATION POSITION OR POLICY Ui Not Over In re ,h School Desegregation In Forty-three Southern Cities Eighteen Years After Brown A Report by The Alabama Council on Human Relations American Friends Service Committee Delta Ministry of the National Council of Churches NAACP Legal Defense and Educational Fund, Inc. Southern Regional Council Washington Research Project May, 1972 TABLE OF CONTENTS Foreword Termc iv Statistical and Legal Profile Charts ix Major Findings and Recommendations 1 Leadership Can Makr.' a Difference 10 Districts that Green, Alexander and Swann Forgot . 30 Obsolete and Inadequate Desegregation Plans 44 The Students Involved 66 Black Teachers and Administrators 84 Transportation 103 Second Generation Problems 108 FOREWORD Much of the focus of desegregation efforts of the past decade has been on small rural districts of the South where resistance to desegregation has often been the most determined and violent. But these districts, relatively easy to desegregate in the structural sense and subject to consistent legal and administrative pressures, as well as to national publicity, were often the first to abandon the formal trappings of racially separate schools. In the last two years attention has shifted to the urban school systemsnot of the South but of the nation. In these, the complexities of size, geography, trans- portation and hypocrisy have made school desegregation an issue which has demonstrated that resistance, legal rationalizations, and violence are not peculiar to any one region of our country. With only a few exceptions, however, the urban school systems of the South have been forgotten, as the national hysteria has escalated and the federal government has switched sides in the struggle for equal educational opportunity. With this in mind six private organizations with a long history of activity in the Southern school desegregation movement initiated a project to monitor the desegregation progress of 43 school districts in the urban South. This report is the result of that project. The organizations involved in its preparation were the Ala- bama Council on Human Relations, the American Friends Service Committee, the Delta Ministry of the National Council of Churches, the NAACP Legal Defense and Educational Fund, Inc., the Southern Regional Council and the Washington Research Project. The purpose of the project was to determine: 1.The extcnt of the presence of de jure segregation in school districts of the urban South. 2. The role of the federal government in eliminating de jure segregation in these districts. 3. The nature and scope of any new problems resulting from lingering vestiges of de jure segregation. 4. The progress being made in moving toward equal education and true inte- gration in the post-desegregation unitary school systems. Forty-threc districts representing school systcms across the region were selected. The districts were selected in order to get a sampling of school systems with various student enrollments, with varying percentages of minority students, using different desegregation plans, operating under both voluntary and court order plans, involv- ing plaintiffs represented by government and private attorneys, and whichwere most likely to have taken some new desegregation initiatives in light of the Swann v. Charlotte-Mecklenburg Board of Education decision of April 20, 1971. During January and early February of this year our monitors went into these school districts to conduct an intensive survey. In most of the systems, the monitors interviewed superintendents, central officestaff,principals, and teachers. The superintendent in Macon, Georgia, refused to cooperate, and attorneys for the Chattanooga, Tennessee, system advised school officials not to cooperate since the district was involved in desegregation litigation. We made an effort to monitor Macon anyway, but we did not monitor Chattanooga. In all other districts, school officials were given an opportunity to provide accurate information to the monitors as well as share with them their opinions and observations. Our monitors also talked with students, parents, and other citizens. Every effort was made to validate reports and observations from the community. But the organizations involved in this report did not have the personnel, time or other resources to make a detailed investigation of all the facts behind each example or incident cited. Facts or situations reported herein may have changed since recorded by our monitors or there may be some additional information which would put them in a different light. We believe, however, that on balance this report repre- sents an accurate assessment of desegregation in these districts of the urban South. Our monitors also used confidential sources in government and school systems. We have not attempted to categorize districts as "good" or "bad" because we found problems in even the best systems and signs of hope in the worst. For example, while many of the districts did not meet our judgment of what constitutes an adequately desegregated school system, some such systems arc offering good educational programs which serve black studerts. We found somc districts that are meeting change and grappling with it as effectively as their capacities and the burden of the past will allow. Others are quietly yielding to change, knowing they can never return to the simplicity of the past but hoping that somehow they will be delivered from the confusion of the present. Still others are standing still, riot really convinced that their condition has changed at all. II In any case, the crude recalcitrance of the past seems to be waning. Complex issues, showing evidence of apparent sincere and even effective attempts to meet the educational needs of all students, and, at the same time, showing evidence of continuing injustices, do not make for easy judgments. We have, therefore, been reluctant to quickly praise or condemn in this report. But from our experience and what we learned, we have made some recommendations. To identify school districts for our readers we have referred to their principal cities throughout the report rather than giving the formal names of the districts. Readers should keep in mind that some districts include only those students within the city limits of an urban area, while others include the city plus all or part of the surrounding county. In some districts only part of the city is included in the district. All school districts in Florida are county-wide. The following districts are those which have the more formal names (all others in the report are usually known by the name of city): Proper Namc of School District: Name Used in Report: Georgia Bibb County Macon Chatham County