An integrated classroom in Anacostia High School, Washington, D.C., in 1957
School integration in the United States is the process of ending race-based segregation, also known as desegregation,
within American public and private schools. Racial segregation in
schools existed throughout most of American history and remains a
relevant issue in discussions about modern education. During the Civil Rights Movement school integration became a priority but since then de facto segregation has again become prevalent.
Background
Early history of integrated schools
Some schools in the United States were integrated before the mid-20th century, the first ever being Lowell High School
in Massachusetts, which has accepted students of all races since its
founding. The earliest known African American student, Caroline Van
Vronker, attended the school in 1843. The integration of all American
schools was a major catalyst for the civil rights action and racial violence that occurred in the United States during the latter half of the 20th century.
After the Civil War, the first legislation providing rights to African Americans was passed. The 13th, 14th, and 15th Amendments, also known as the Reconstruction Amendments,
which were passed between 1865 and 1870, abolished slavery, guaranteed
citizenship and protection under the law, and prohibited racial
discrimination in voting, respectively.
The Jim Crow South
Despite these Reconstruction amendments, blatant discrimination took place through what would come to be known as Jim Crow laws.
As a result of these laws, African Americans were required to sit on
different park benches, use different drinking fountains, and ride in
different railroad cars than their white counterparts, among other
segregated aspects of life. Though the Civil Rights Act of 1875 prohibited discrimination in public accommodations, in 1896 the Supreme Court ruled in the landmark case Plessy v. Ferguson
that racially segregated public facilities such as schools, parks, and
public transportation were legally permissible as long as they were
equal in quality. This separate but equal doctrine legalized segregation in schools.
Black schools
This institutionalized discrimination led to the creation of black schools—or segregated schools for African-American children. With the help of philanthropists such as Julius Rosenwald and black leaders such as Booker T. Washington,
black schools began to establish themselves as esteemed institutions.
These schools soon assumed prominent places in black communities, with
teachers being seen as highly respected community leaders.
However, despite their important role in black communities, black
schools remained underfunded and ill-equipped, particularly in
comparison to white schools. For example, between 1902 and 1918, the General Education Board,
a philanthropic organization created to strengthen public schools in
the South, gave only $2.4 million to black schools compared to $25
million given to white schools.
Legal action
Throughout
the first half of the 20th century there were several efforts to combat
school segregation, but few were successful. However, in a unanimous
1954 decision in the Brown v. Board of Education case, the United States Supreme Court ruled segregation in public schools unconstitutional. The NAACP legal team representing Brown, led by Thurgood Marshall,
argued that racially separate schools were inherently unequal, as
society as a whole looked down upon African Americans and racially
segregated schools only reinforced this prejudice.
They supported their argument with research from psychologists and
social scientists in order to empirically prove that segregated schools
inflicted psychological harm on black students.
These expert testimonies, coupled with the concrete knowledge that
black schools had worse facilities than white schools and that black
teachers were paid less than white teachers, contributed to the landmark
unanimous decision.
Initial responses to school integration
Criticism
Protest of the integration of schools in Little Rock, Arkansas in 1959
Despite the federal ruling in Brown v. Board of Education, integration was met with immediate opposition from white Americans. In 1955, Time
magazine reviewed the status of desegregation efforts in the 17
Southern and border states, grading them from "A" to "F" as follows:
|
|
Grade | State |
|---|---|---|
| A | A | |
| A- | ||
| B | B+ | |
| B- | ||
| C | C+ | |
| C | ||
| C- | ||
| D | D+ | |
| D | ||
| F | F |
A policy of "massive resistance"
was declared by Virginia Senator Harry F. Byrd and led to the closing
of nine schools in four counties in Virginia between 1958 and 1959;
those in Prince Edward County, Virginia remained closed until 1964.
Supporting this policy, a majority of Southern congressmen in the
U.S. House of Representative signed a document in 1956 called the Southern Manifesto, which condemned the racial integration of public institutions such as schools.
In 1957, in accordance with massive resistance, Governor Orval Faubus of Arkansas called upon the Arkansas National Guard to prevent nine black students from attending the newly desegregated Central High School in Little Rock, Arkansas. In response, President Dwight D. Eisenhower dispatched federal troops to safely escort the group of students - soon to be known as the Little Rock Nine - to their classes in the midst of violent protests from an angry mob of white students and townspeople.
Praise
Prominent black newspapers such as the Chicago Defender and the Atlanta Daily World praised the Brown decision for upholding racial equality and civil rights. The editors of these newspapers recognized the momentous nature and symbolic importance of the decision. Immediately, Brown v. Board of Education proved to be a catalyst in inciting the push for equal rights in southern communities, just as Charles Houston and Thurgood Marshall had hoped when they devised the legal strategy behind it. Less than a year after the Brown decision, the Montgomery bus boycott began—another important step in the fight for African-American civil rights. Today, Brown v. Board of Education is largely viewed as the starting point of the Civil Rights Movement.
By the 1960s and 70s, the Civil Rights Movement had gained significant support. The Civil Rights Act of 1964
prohibited segregation and discrimination based on race in public
facilities, including schools, and the Voting Rights Act of 1965
prohibited racial discrimination in voting affairs. In 1971 the Supreme
Court in Swann v. Charlotte-Mecklenburg Board of Education approved the use of busing
to achieve desegregation, despite racially segregated neighborhoods and
limited radii of school districts. By 1988 school integration reached
an all-time high with nearly 45% of black students attending previously
all-white schools.
Implementation
Brown II
After Brown vs. Board of Education
ruled that school segregation was unconstitutional, the implementation
of desegregation was discussed in a follow-up Supreme Court case termed Brown II.
Though the NAACP lawyers argued for an immediate timetable of
integration, the Supreme Court issued an ambiguous order that school
districts should integrate with "all deliberate speed."
Integration in response to Brown
On August 23, 1954, 11 black children attended school with approximately 480 white students in Charleston, Arkansas.
The school superintendent made an agreement with local media not to
discuss the event, and attempts to gain information by other sources
were deliberately ignored. The process went very smoothly, followed by a
similar action in Fayetteville, Arkansas the same fall. The following year, the integration of schools in Hoxie, Arkansas drew national coverage from Life Magazine, and bitter opposition from White Citizen's Councils and segregationist politicians ensued.
Opposition to integration
Various
options arose that allowed white populations to avoid the forced
integration of public schools. After the Brown decision, many white
families living in urban areas moved to predominately suburban areas in
order to take advantage of the wealthier and whiter schools there.
William Henry Kellar, in his study of school desegregation in Houston,
Texas, described the process of white flight in Houston's Independent
School District. He noted that white students made up 49.9 percent of
HISD's enrollment in 1970, but that number steadily dropped over the
decade. White enrollment comprised only 25.1 percent of HISD's student population by 1980.
Another way that white families avoided integration was by
withdrawing their children from their local public school system in
order to enroll them into newly-founded "segregation academies". After the 1968 Supreme Court case Green v. County School Board of New Kent County
hastened the desegregation of public schools, private school attendance
in the state of Mississippi soared from 23,181 students attending
private school in 1968 to 63,242 students in 1970. These two practices, collectively termed white flight,
led to a decrease in white populations in urban public schools so much
that between 1968 and 1978 schools in the South were more segregated
than they were pre-Brown.
The subject of desegregation was becoming more inflamed by the
day. In March 1970, President Richard M. Nixon decided to take action.
He declared Brown to be ''right in both constitutional and human terms''
and expressed his intention to enforce the law. He also put in place a
process to carry out the court's mandate. Vice President Spiro T. Agnew
and I (George Schultz, then secretary of labor) were asked to lead a cabinet committee to manage the transition to desegregated schools.
Impact on Hispanic populations
The
implementation of school integration policies did not just affect black
and white students; in recent years, scholars have noted how the
integration of public schools significantly affected Hispanic
populations in the south and southwest. Historically, Hispanic-Americans
were legally considered white. A group of Mexican-Americans in Corpus Christi, Texas challenged this classification, as it resulted in discrimination and ineffective school integration policies. In Cisneros v. Corpus Christi Independent School District
(1970), the Federal District Court decreed that Hispanic-Americans
should be classified as an ethnic minority group, and that the
integration of Corpus Christi schools should reflect that. In 2005, historian Guadalupe San Miguel authored Brown Not White,
an in-depth study of how Hispanic populations were used by school
districts to circumvent truly integrating their schools. It detailed
that when school districts officially categorized Hispanic students as
ethnically white, a predominately African-American school and a
predominately Hispanic school could be combined and successfully pass
the integration standards laid out by the U.S. government, leaving white
schools unaffected. San Miguel describes how the Houston Independent
School District used this loophole to keep predominately white schools
unchanged, at the disadvantage of Hispanic students.
In the early 1970s, Houstonians boycotted this practice: for
three weeks, thousands of Hispanic students stopped attending their
local public schools in protest of the racist integration laws. In response to this boycott, in September 1972 the HISD school board - following the precedent in Cisneros v. Corpus Christi Independent School District
- ruled that Hispanic students should be an official ethnic minority,
effectively ending the loophole that prevented the integration of white
schools.
Impact on modern schools
Educational implications
A
National Assessment of Educational Progress study showing the gap
between reading test scores of white and African-American students
For students who remained in public schools, de facto segregation
remained a reality due to segregated lunch tables and segregated
extracurricular programs. Today, the pedagogical practice of tracking
in schools also leads to de facto segregation within some public
schools as racial and ethic minorities are disproportionately
overrepresented in lower track classes and white students are
disproportionately overrepresented in AP and college prep classes.
The growing emphasis on standardized tests
as measures of achievement in schools is a part of the dialogue
surrounding the relationship between race and education in the United
States. Many studies have been done surrounding the achievement gap, or the gap in test scores between white and black students, which shrank until the mid-1980s and then stagnated.
Social implications
It has been proven that integrated classrooms are beneficial for all students.
In 2003, the Supreme Court openly recognized the importance of
diversity in education, where they noted that integrated classrooms
prepare students to become citizens and leaders in a diverse country.
Psychologists have studied the social and developmental benefits of
integrated schools. In a study by Killen, Crystal, and Ruck, researchers
discovered that students in integrated schools demonstrate more
tolerance and inclusionary behaviors compared to those who have less
contact with students from other racial backgrounds.
Related court cases
- Roberts v. City of Boston (1850)
- Clark v Board of School Directors (1868)
- Tape v. Hurley (1885)
- Cumming v. Richmond County Board of Education (1899)
- Berea College v. Kentucky (1908)
- Lum v. Rice (1927)
- Lemon Grove Incident (1931)
- Hocutt v. Wilson (1933)
- Missouri ex rel. Gaines v. Canada (1938)
- Hedgepeth and Williams v. Board of Education (1944)
- Mendez v. Westminster (1947)
- Sipuel v. Board of Regents of the University of Oklahoma (1948)
- Sweatt v. Painter (1950)
- Davis v. County School Board of Prince Edward County (1952)
- Gebhart v. Belton (1952)
- Bolling v. Sharpe (1954)
- Briggs v. Elliott (1954)
- Lucy v. Adams (1955)
- Cooper v. Aaron (1958)
- Griffin v. County School Board of Prince Edward County (1964)
- Alexander v. Holmes County Board of Education (1969)
- Brown vs Board of Education (1954)
- United States v. Montgomery County Board of Education (1969)
- Coit v. Green (1971)
- Keyes v. School District No. 1, Denver (1973)
- Norwood v. Harrison (1973)
- Milliken v. Bradley (1974)
- Pasadena City Board of Education v. Spangler (1976)
- Runyon v. McCrary (1976)
- Bob Jones University v. United States (1983)
- Sheff v. O'Neill (1989)
- Board of Education of Oklahoma City v. Dowell (1991)
- Paren
