
          Focus on School Desegregation: Is the Past Repeating?
          By StaffStaff
          Vol. 13, No. 4, 1991, pp. 17-19
          
          
            Introduction
          
          Perhaps the most important school desegregation case since Brown v. Board of Education was heard by the U.S. Supreme_Court Oct 7, 1991. Freeman v. Pitts examines whether a school system in metropolitan Atlanta, which was officially segregated by law until 1969, can be excused from failing to implement an effective school desegregation plan due to increasing residential segregation. The case will also determine if the school system can be released from court supervision of desegregation in one area of school operations when racially discriminatory practices persist in other areas.
          Looking back to Brown, John A. Griffin recalls that social scientists in Atlanta worked quickly to prepare demographic studies which became known as the Ashmore report. The best-known study in the Brown case by psychologists Kenneth B. Clark and Mamie Clark showed the harmful impact of segregation on black schoolchildren. The Ashmore report documented the extent of segregation, wide funding gaps and other harmful effects of the dual system.
          In August 1991, a group of more than fifty social scientists published School Desegregation: A Social Science Statement, which was filed with the NAACP briefs in the Freeman case and is excerpted on page 19 of this special issue of Southern_Changes. School Desegregation, which was led by Harvard professor of education and social policy Gary Orfield and includes Kenneth Clark among its signers, reviews results of years of study of desegregated schools.
          
            The Harmful Impact of Segregation
            By Griffin, John A.John A. Griffin
            Vol. 13, No. 4, 1991, pp. 17-19
            In the South, it was known by only a very few that a major research project centered in Atlanta provided data which may well have influenced the 1954 Brown v. Board of Education decision and the Court's implementation order thirteen months later.
            Court decisions during the forties and early fifties had made it clear that a Supreme_Court decision on segregated schools was imminent. In thirteen southern states segregated schools were mandated by state law, and de facto segregation was to be found in other regions. These dual school systems were operating under the doctrine of "separate but equal" as set forth in Plessy v. Ferguson, which the Supreme_Court had upheld in 1896. In 1952 the Court had heard oral arguments in five cases challenging the constitutionality  of segregated schools. These cases arose in various regions and were consolidated in the Brown cases.
            There was no doubt that there were separate school systems, but there was insufficient data on the extent to which the separate systems were equal. In response to the need for such data the Ford Fund for the Advancement of Education decided to provide funds for a major study of dual school systems in the South as well as in other regions of the nation. But major universities in the South declined to be involved in a project so politically sensitive. So the Fund decided to bring a team of writers and scholars together and manage the study from its own offices.
            Harry S. Ashmore. executive editor of the Arkansas Gazette of Little Rock. who later was to receive a Pulitzer Prize for his writing about desegregation of the Little Rock schools, was asked to head the project for the Fund for the Advancement  of Education in the summer of 1953. He accepted on the condition that a team of scholars be recruited to conduct field research and to write monographs on various aspects of the dual school system.
            The recruitment of scholars was commenced, and a central committee to be located in Atlanta was selected. Members were: Philip G. Hammer, executive officer of the National Planning Association's Committee of the South. Atlanta; Harold C. Fleming, assistant director, Southern_Regional_Council, Atlanta; Mozell Hill, Professor of Sociology, Atlanta University; Ruth A. Morton, American Friends Service Com-

mittee, Philadelphia; and myself. Hammer was chairman.
            The first meeting of the central staff and scholars recruited from universities, primarily  in the South, was held at the office of the Southern Education Foundation in Atlanta, since biracial meetings were not allowed in hotels. This meeting was in late June, 1953.
            Very quickly the field research was begun.  Members of the research team, which by this time numbered about forty, went into the Southern_states to gather data about the operation of dual school systems. Others visited states outside the South where there was de facto segregation in public_education.
            A number of other scholars were asked to prepare monographs on various aspects of segregated education. This group included such well-known scholars as Howard W. Odum, Professor of Sociology, University of North_Carolina.
            Because cases challenging the constitutionality of segregated schools were already before the Supreme_Court, all of those engaged in this research recognized the urgency of the project and expedited their work.
            By the end of October, only three months from the first meeting of the scholars, research data and monographs began to flow into the Marietta Street office of the central committee, and material was being organized and sent on to Ashmore in Little Rock. By the end of the year the field work had been completed and the monographs finished.
            In January Ashmore was writing his manuscript, and the central committee was preparing the many pages of statistical data for the book. At the University of North_Carolina Press a very fast publication schedule was planned for The Negro and the Schools.
            The research documented the fact that separate but equal schools was a myth. Although Southern_states frequently allocated larger shares of their income to education than did other states, there was a significant gap in the expenditures by race. This gap had been somewhat narrowed, as states began to modify their expenditures as a result of being challenged. Still, the dollars spent on black schools was seventy percent of expenditures for whites. Black schools had fewer books in their libraries, their teachers were paid less, the capital outlays for these schools was substantially less. The story was told in the Ashmore book and in three other volumes reporting the findings of the research project.
            The first book, The Negro and the Schools, was published on May 16, and the Court handed down the Brown decision on May 17. But the findings of the Ashmore report were not unknown to members of the Court. For advance reports of the research findings had been made available to the Court before the decision, according to information given to the central committee. Certainly The Negro and the Schools was in the hands of the Court thirteen months before Brown II, the implementation order of 1955. It was reported that when Chief Justice Earl Warren left Washington for California at the end of the 1954 term he carried under his arm a copy of The Negro and the Schools.
            The Negro and the Schools was distributed widely. Thousands of copies were sent to school superintendents, school_board members and other public officials throughout the South.
            Shortly before the May 17 Brown decision, the Southern_Regional_Council organized a conference in Williamsburg, Va., to discuss the potential impact on the South of the court's decision and discuss action programs that might be taken after the Court's decision. The biracial group of twenty-four who gathered included the renowned President of Fisk University Charles S. Johnson. Will W. Alexander, Southern_Regional_Council, Atlanta University President Rufus E. Clement, Congressman Brooks Hays and Grace Hamilton, who later became a Georgia state legislator, along with representatives of church-related organizations. The Williamsburg Conference, as it came to be known, recom-

mended eleven proposals for action whatever the Court's decision. One of the proposals called for the establishment of a reporting system to provide information about the developments in the breakdown of the segregated school systems, a project that was also recommended by the Ashmore team. Subsequently, Southern School News was established with veteran journalist Pete McKnight as editor and with correspondents in each of the Southern_states affected by the Brown decision. This publication provided an impartial, authoritative source for newspapers and school officials.
            The project was called the Southern Education Reporting Service. In addition to Southern School News, the agency also published the Race Relations Law Reporter. With support from Ford's Fund for the Advancement of Education and other foundations, the agency served as a dependable source of information about what was happening in school desegregation for sixteen years.
            The small group that met in Atlanta in 1953 to plan a study of segregated southern schools little knew that we were commencing an enterprise that would share in bringing about such far-reaching consequences.
          
          
            John A Griffin was a sociologist on the faculty at Emory University at the time of the study and an active participant in the central committee of the Ashmore project. He is a Life Fellow of the Southern_Regional_Council.
          
          
            Excerpts from School Desegregation. A Social Science Statement
            By StaffStaff
            Vol. 13, No. 4, 1991, p. 19
            
              III: Necessary conditions for effective 
desegregation
            
            Assigning minority and white students to the same school is no panacea for education inequality. The creation of racially-mixed rather than racially-segregated schools is just the beginning of the long-term  process of interracial schooling. At both the district level and within the school. strategies to promote rather than decrease racial tolerance and increase rather than alienate community support can be put into place. We summarize some of these strategies here.
            The wide variety of desegregation plans and school district conditions in the United_States has allowed researchers to examine the merits of different desegregation plans. On the district level these studies suggest that successful plans: (1) desegregate as many grades as possible at the same time. concentrating especially on the youngest students: (2) cover as large a geographic area as possible to include a broad spectrum  of socioeconomic classes as well as races; and (3) persevere with the long-range goal of desegregation. despite opposition...
            
              IV. Educational reform and 
desegregation
            
            Desegregation plans have been a leading  source of educational innovation during the  past two decades. As one researcher concludes, there is probably more active educational rethinking and searching for new approaches in desegregated schools than in any other group of American schools." Almost all major desegregation orders since 1980 have included educational changes as part of the remedy.
            The goal of achieving racial equity in a school system has produced development of a wide array of new educational approaches  ranging from magnet schools to new instructional strategies and curricular changes. New desegregation plans often were occasions for creation of new grade structures and usually involved some retraining of teachers. Sophisticated school administrators have often used the advent of the major reorganization involved in a desegregation plan to build public support for reforms that they had been unable to accomplish earlier. The experience shows that desegregation is not a barrier to educational change but, to the contrary, often provides the occasion for it. The federal Emergency School Aid Act in the 1970s and the current magnet school program were explicit congressional recognitions of these linkages, which have become even more common since the Supreme_Court's decision in Milliken v. Bradley, 433 U.S. 266 (1976) ("Milliken II") As the preceding sections have demonstrated, a school district determined to eliminate segregation root and branch "will consciously choose to implement innovative teaching techniques, such as cooperative learning groups, to improve student achievement and increase racial harmony. Magnet schooling, a major educational reform of the last two decades, was first developed as a desegregative tool.
            What is clear from the research summarized  above is that desegregation is as much a school-district led process as a judicially controlled one. Desegregation creates possibilities  and can provide the opportunity for reform and, sometimes, new resources for reform but school authorities must make decisions to create a school system which promotes equal opportunities for students of all races. By exploring possibilities for educational innovation and racial harmony, they can further the process of desegregation: by failing to capitalize on possibilities for positive change, they can derail or postpone the process....
            
              V. Conclusion
            
            Desegregation orders change established patterns of behavior and raise new expectations of a school district. Yet as research of the past three decades has shown, school districts can respond to these changes in a variety of ways. School districts which adopt desegregation in good faith are able to use it as an opportunity to increase the achievement of their students, promote racial harmony in the classroom and the community, experiment with innovative educational reforms, and influence integrated housing patterns. On the other hand, a weak or inadequate plan or local officials opposed to the process of desegregation can resegregate students within the schools, cling to established ways of teaching, speed neighborhood resegregation, foster interracial tensions within a desegregated school or create racially identifiable schools that lack key advantages of desegregation. With appropriate  plans, persistence over time in achieving complex and interdependent changes, and recognition of the new opportunities  for education improvements, desegregation can produce lasting changes with benefits for all students and the community as a whole.
            To obtain a copy of the full study, write:
Gary A. Ortield, Harvard University
Graduate School of Education
Gutman library, 6 Appian Way 
Cambridge, MA 02138
          
        
