Desegregation Goes North: Getting Around Brown

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Desegregation Goes North: Getting Around Brown

Stephen MenendianSenior Legal Research Associate,

The Kirwan Institute For the Study of Race and EthnicityThe Ohio State University

February 3, 2011

Brown v. Board of Education (1954)

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Brown

►Plaintiffs argued that segregated schools are not ‘equal’ and cannot be made ‘equal,’ in violation of the EPC of the 14A.

►Plaintiffs conceded that the Negro and white schools have been equalized or are being equalized, with respect to buildings, curricula, qualifications and salaries of teachers, and other ‘tangible’ factors.

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We conclude that in the field of public education the doctrine of ‘separate but equal’ has no place. Separate educational facilities are inherently unequal.

To separate them from others of similar age and qualification solely because of their race generates a feeling of inferiority

as to their status in the community that may affect their hearts and minds in a way unlikely to ever be undone.

‘Segregation of white and colored children in public schools has a detrimental effect upon colored children. The impact is greater when it has the sanction of law; for the

policy of separating the races is usually interpreted as denoting the inferiority of the negro group

►Although an enormous moral victory, the Brown decision did not dismantle segregative practices nor produce an integrated society.

►Instead, the decision provoked massive resistance, and a full decade passed with virtually no progress in desegregating schools.

A Brief History of Desegregation: Massive Resistance

The Crisis in Little Rock, 1958

►In Green v. County School Board (1968), the Court defined what desegregation required, the elimination of segregation ‘root and branch.’

►In Swann v. Charlotte-Mecklenberg (1971), the Court ruled that lower courts could order busing to achieve desegregated student assignments.

A Brief History of Desegregation: Courts Get Serious

Four Phases of Desegregation

►Massive resistance Cooper v. Aaron (1958)

►Courts get serious Griffin (1964), Green (1968) and Swann (1971)

►Desegregation moves north Keyes (1973) and Penick (1979)

►Drawing a line at the school district border Milliken (1974) and Jenkins (1995)

Segregation in the North

►In the South, segregation and Jim Crow were an expression of the values of the society, and was enforced by statute.

►Those values were also present in the north, except that segregation was more a matter of practice and custom than legislation.

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►In Keyes v. School Dist. No. 1 (1973), the Court extended school desegregation obligations to systems outside of the South that had employed discriminatory policies.

►Furthermore, this is true whether school districts or officials contributed either in the creation or “maintenance” of segregated schooling. Inaction as well as action could be a basis for liability.

A Brief History of Desegregation: Desegregation Moves North

► In Penick v. Columbus Board of Education (1977), judge Robert Duncan ruled that the Columbus Board of Education knowingly kept white and black students apart by creating school boundaries that sent black students to predominantly black schools and white students to predominantly white schools, and had failed to use its authority to alleviate existing racial imbalances.

► The United States Supreme Court affirmed.

A Brief History of Desegregation: Desegregation Moves North

Distinguished Jurist Robert M. Duncan

Measuring Segregation

►Residential dissimilarity index for (African American – White) segregation 1910 to 2000

►School dissimilarity index for (African American – White) segregation 1970-2000

►Spatial patterns of African American – White segregation in Columbus

Residential Dissimilarity Index 1910-2000 (African American - White Segregation)

30.9

43.2

58.162.8

74.3 76.1

81.4

73.0

67.263.1

30.0

40.0

50.0

60.0

70.0

80.0

90.0

1910 1920 1930 1940 1950 1960 1970 1980 1990 2000Dissimilarity Index (African American - White Segregation)

Housing Segregation and School Segregation are Linked

►There is a reciprocal relationship between residential segregation and school segregation.

►The segregation of folks across neighborhoods and districts results in segregated schools.

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School Dissimilarity Index 1970, 1990, 2000 (African American - White Segregation)

82.6

66.8 69.081.6

23.2

53.4

10.0

20.0

30.0

40.0

50.0

60.0

70.0

80.0

90.0

1970 1990 2000All Districts in Columbus Region Columbus Public School District

N

EW

S

African American Population in Franklin County by Census Tract 1970

Prepared by:Kirwan Institute for the

Study of Race & EthnicityDate: 10/13/05

Source: Census, NCDB

0 - 5%5 - 10%10 to 25%25 to 50%50 to 100%

Highways

Columbus Public School District

% African American

Legend:

N

EW

S





0 - 5%5 - 10%10 to 25%25 to 50%50 to 100%

Highways


% African American

Legend:

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N

EW

S





0 - 5%5 - 10%10 to 25%25 to 50%50 to 100%

Highways


% African American

Legend:

N

EW

S





0 - 5%5 - 10%10 to 25%25 to 50%50 to 100%

Highways


% African American

Legend:

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The Rise of Suburbia:But not accessible to everyone

In the suburb-shaping years (1930-1960), less than one-percent of all African Americans were able to

obtain a mortgage.

The Fair Housing Act of 1968

• The last ‘plank’ in the Civil Rights movement.– Signed into law a week after the assassination of

MLK

• Prohibits discrimination in the sale or rental of residential housing. – Exempted single family dwellings that were not sold

using a realtor

• Duty of all executive and administrative agencies to ‘affirmatively further’ fair housing.

Milliken v. Bradley (1974)

►May a federal court order desegregation across district lines? Multi-district desegregation

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Before the boundaries of separate and autonomous school districts may be set aside by consolidating the separate units for remedial purposes or by imposing a cross-district remedy, it must first be shown that there has been a constitutional violation within one district that produces a significant segregative effect in another district.

Specifically, it must be shown that the racially discriminatory acts of the state or local school districts, or of a single school district have been a substantial cause of inderdistrict segregation. Without an interdistrict violation and an interdistrict effect, there is no constitutional wrong calling for an interdistrict remedy.

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Metropolitan treatment of metropolitan problems is commonplace. If this were a sewage problem or a water problem, or an energy problem, there can be no doubt that Michigan would stay well within the federal constitutional bounds if it sought a metropolitan remedy.

When we rule against the metropolitan area remedy we take a step back that will likely put the problems of the blacks and our society back to the period that antedated the ‘separate but equal’ regime of Plessy v. Ferguson.

The reason is simple. The inner core of Detroit is now rather solidly black; and the blacks, we know, in many instances are likely to be poorer, just as were the Chicanos in San Antonio School District v. Rodriguez. By that decision, the poorer districts must pay their own way. Today’s decision, given Rodriguez, means that there is no violation of the Equal Protection Clause though schools are segregated by race and though the black schools are not only ‘separate’, but ‘inferior.’

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There is so far as the school cases go no constitutional difference between de facto and de jure segregation. Each school board performs state action for the Fourteenth Amendment purposes when it draws the lines that confine it to a given area, when it builds schools at particular sites, or when it allocates students.

The creation of the school districts in Metropolitan Detroit either maintained existing segregation or caused additional segregation. Restrictive covenants maintained by state action or inaction build black ghettos. It is state action when public funds are dispensed by housing agencies to build racial ghettos. Where a community is racially mixed and school authorities segregate schools, or assign black teachers to black schools or close schools in fringe areas and build new schools in black areas and in more distant white areas, the State creates and nurtures a segregated school system, just as did those States involved in Brown when they maintained dual school systems.

All of these conditions and more were found by the District Court to exist.

Milliken accelerated white flight

Central City

Suburbs

Suburbs

Suburbs

Suburbs

Jurisdictional fragmentation accelerated as

well

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Milliken increased segregation

Lower EducationalOutcomes

Increased Flight

of Affluent Families

Racial and Economic

Neighborhood Segregation

SchoolSegregation &Concentrated

Poverty

►The 1990s ushered in another significant shift Between 1991 and 1995 (see Jenkins), the Supreme Court invited school districts to bring proceedings to terminate desegregation obligations.

►Even though severe racial disparities and racial isolation remained, this marked the beginning of the end of court supervision and the return local control of schools.

A Brief History of Desegregation: Courts Dissolve Deseg Orders

Resegregation Trends

► U.S. public schools are now more than a decade into rapid resegregation:

Almost 1 in 6 black and Latino students are hyper-segregated, and attend schools in which the student body is 99-100% minority.

Nearly 40% of black and Latino students attend ‘intensely segregated schools,’ in which 90-100% of the students are minority.

Whites are the most isolated group of students. The typical white student attends a school that is 80% white, which is much higher than their share of overall public school enrollment.

Resegregation Trends

White Student Enrollment -Columbus

Black Student Enrollment

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► Sprawl: Between 1950 and 1990, the number of municipalities in metropolitan areas grew from 193 to 9,600.

► Segregation: Typical white resident resides in a neighborhood that is 80% white. A typical Black person lives in a neighborhood that is 33% white.

►Concentrated Poverty: 3 of 4 persons living in concentrated poverty are Black or Latino even though more whites are poor.

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Neighborhood Segregation

School Segregation

Racial stigma, other psychological impacts

Job segregation

community power, civic participation and individual

assets

Educational Achievement

Cross-Domain Impacts of Opportunity Segregation

Exposure to crime

Transportation limitations and other inequitable public services

Adapted from figure by Barbara Reskin at: http://faculty.washington.edu/reskin/

Segregation impacts a number of life-opportunities

Impacts on Health

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http://faculty.washington.edu/reskin/�

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Barriers-Segregation

Education

50 years after the Brown Decision, America’s schools have re-segregated into affluent White districts and poor under-funded African American and Hispanic districts

Which community would you choose?

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►School Composition layered over census tract data in Montclair, NJ

►Maps illustrate how residential segregation can manifests in schools

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►Magnet school policy counteracts effects of neighborhood segregation

DeRolph Decisions

►Four times the Ohio Supreme Court has held that the current school funding formula is unconstitutional. In particular, the Court found that the state

overlies on local property taxes.

In 1997, the district funding for schools was about 56.2%, and the state provided 43.8%.

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Williams-Bolar Case

►Kelley Williams-Bolar, an Akron, Ohio, woman was convicted with the felony crime of falsifying documents to get her children into a high-performing district and jailed for 9 days.

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Desegregation Goes North: Getting Around Brown

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