L4L

A Case Study in De Facto

Segreg

ation

2r : En7lewood, New
iersql* a Case
Study in De Facto Sugre7ation
Faul tr{*pe

The hlegroes are considered interlopers at the white school and largely are being ignored by teachers. Parents have been fined for violating a state law requiring children to attend school. The cases have been appealed. And the sit-in's go on while the Negro parents picket outside and police keep a watchful eye. The struggle in Englewood is not the salne as in Birmingham, but it could-have great significance in the Negro's fight for more integration in the North. Here, the l.legro is not fighting for 1in5 *u* legal integration. He already has that and more. I{cre, he is fightinglo break out of a containment brought abott by housing p*tterns, tradition, economics, and resistance from the whitc cotnmunity. As one Negro leader put it, they are fighting for "respect, equality, and a full share of community life." 'Many of the white leaders think the Negroes walt morc than equality, that they want favored, special treatment. Some of thcm think Englewood will begin to slide dowt hill if the Negro dcmancls are met. And though some whites, perhaps a large number, are i' sympathy with thebbjectives of the Negroes, the white comnrturity seems to be nearly unanimous in condemning the tactics bcirlg
used.

Suburban Englewood-quiet, tree-lined, wealthy, and }rlorthern-is

becomirg, Iike Birmingham, a symbol of the Negro's stepped-up integration movement. While there hasn't been the violenCe that has attended the Southern demonstrations, the Englewood movement has been a long and intense one. It has been marked by Negro sit-in's at a predominantly white school, 3n unsuccessful attempito

boycott downtown stores, a sit-in at the school superintend-ent's office, picketit g of the governor's office in Trenton by Englewood sympathizers, and periodic rallies featuring well-known Negroes. The . . demonstrations [ir M"y of ry6il started . . . when some thirty Negro students from a predominantly Negro elementary school began sitting in classes at a predominantly white school. School authorities have refused to register them but have let them sit in rather than provoke possible violence by keeping them out.
Mr. Hope is a reporter for the Washington, D.C., 'Washington Evening
Star.

Nor is the Negro community completely united behind thc Protest demonstrations which have kept the community stirrcd up for more than a year. The Negro preJident of the school boarcl, who 6as been called "uncle Tom" by leaders of the sit-in movcrncnt, said he believes Englewood has been picked ancl is bcing "tts9d Py somebody as a sort of guinea pig." He didtt't identify the sornebody. The sore spot with tt . h{egroes is the Lincoln School, ostensibly 'l-he reason for desegregated but in fact t.nily 99 per cent Ncgro. schools are set up on a tlris dn forfo segregation is that elementary neighborhood brris and the Lincoln School is in the heart of a Ne[ro residential area.The Negro demonstration leaders claim, and t6eir contention is supported by the superintenclent of schools, that segregated schools, di facto or otherwise, are clctrimental to the
students attending them. The l{egro leaJers have not laid out a plan they_want the city to follow Uuitt ey want something done to correct what they ca]l the racial imbalance in the schooli. They look upon Englewood as a t.csting ground in the fight to break down de facto segregation in

the North.

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Case Study

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Segregation

"Lincoln School is iust the manifestation of the problem in thc Northr" said Paul B. Zuber, a hlegro attorney from New York whn has been a leader in the direct-action movement. "We're looking for dignity, a new approach, a new respect. Englewood has forcecl itself to become the symbol of what is wrong with racial relations in the l{orth." Mr. Zuber was attorney for a group of Negroes who won a court decision forcing New Rochelle, New York, school authorities to allow the transfer of students from a predominantly lrlegro school. In that case, however, the court found an obvious gerrymandering of school boundaries to maintain maximum segregation, a situation which has not been shown in Englewood. "This is the battleground of the Northern suburbs," said Vincente Tibbs, the lone Negro on the Englewood City Council. "We have here the subtle (segregation) line. It's in housing, employment, government. There are people here who won't even admit there's a problem." Englewood, lying iust across the Hudson River from New York, has been primarily a commuter town for many decades. Even before the advent of the auto, it developed as the bedroom community for a wealthy class from New York who could commute to their offices by rail and ferry. The first Negroes were mostly domestics employed by the wealthy whites. The Negroes at first lived with white neighbors in what is known as the fourth ward. As the Negro population grew, the whites moved out of the section and the fourth ward became almost entirely Negro. The Negro population has grown rapidly since Lgzo and now accounts for 27.3 per cent of the city's z6,ooo population. During the decade of the r95o's there was almost no change in the number of white residents, but the hlegro figure iumped from gtTz to 7,ooo. Englewood schools were desegregated before the LgS4 Supreme Court decision. But since, there have been protests, off and on, from the Negroes about segregation brought about by school-district lines. The school population is about jT per cent Negro. The city eliminated its predominantly Negro junior high school about six years ago and now has one iunior high which is about 40 per cent Negro. It has only one senior high school, which is about z6
per cent Negro.

'I'here are five elementary schools: Lincoln, almost gg Per cent Ncgro; Liberty, $ per cent Negro; Roosevelt, about L2 Per cent Ncgro; Quarles, about S per cent Negro; and Cleveland, less than r per cent Negro. It is at the Cleveland School that the Negroes :rre sitting in. The siLin demonstrators are boycotting the Lincoln School, which is several blocks away. White officials claim there is no intentional segregation in the clementary schools. Mayor Austin N. Volk, an insurance broker in New York, says the Negroes leadirg the demonstration are asking for "special treatment" not accorded other pupils. Uncler a Lg55 ruling of the l{ew }ersey Department of Education, studcnts are to be assigned by local school boards on a neighborhood basis. They are not allowed to transfer outside their district. Mayor Volk said the Negroes are asking for somethitg the white students are not
allowed.

Negro leaders attempt to bolster their case by pointing to tests which show the level of achievement by pupils at Lincoln School to be two years behind that at other city schools. Their clairns that pupils at Lincoln are at a disadvantage are upheld by t cornmittee appointed by the state commissioner of education to stucly the trnglewood situatiorl. The committee said in a report last fall that it could find "no supportable evidence that school atrthorities have maintained segregation by designr" but it said committcc mcmbers had a "strong feelirg that the Negro child is at a psychological disadvantage" because of defacto segregation. City Superintendent Mark Shedd and former Superintenclent Harry L. Stearnes, who retired last year, also take thc position that schools which are almost entirely Negro lead to attitucles among students that affect learning. Dr. Shedcl said, howevcr, that he strenuously objects to the tactics being used by the clcmonstrators. He and the school board issued a statement saying: "Since orderly channels for hearing grievances exist ancl time after time have proven effective, the board cannot condone methods and approaches for obtaining changes that circumvent the law, and which attempt to gain their ends by techniques of intimida-

tion and disruption." Mayor Volk claims the low achievement of pupils at Lincoln School is not the fault of the school but largely of parents "who

SOURCES

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a

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case

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Case Study

in De Facto

Segregation

don't give

from Southern areas which has tended to pull down the

damn." He also said there has been an influx of Negroes

that Englewood "is one of the most fully integrated communitiei in the Nation." The mayor claims the demonstrations are not supported by the Negro comrnunity but are the result of "resentment by small group of people." He said outsiders like Representative ^ Adam Clayton Powell and other national Negro leaders are brought in periodically "to keep up interest in the movement." Th.y note there are Negroes on the school board, the city council, and other boards and commissions and that the fire and police departments,
city parks, churches, civic organizations, restaurants, and stores are
integrated.

"uemge achievement level at Lincoln School. The mayor and city council have put out a fact sheet, declarit g _

in which he held that a situation similar to that in Englewood should be corrected. Mr. Raubinger said that a gg per cent Negro school in Orange "constitutes . . a deprivation of education oPportunity for the pupils compelted to attend the school." Most Englewood officials expect a similar ruling to be handed down shortly for that city.

White residents who have organi zed a Committec to Save Neighborhood Schools may try to upset the commissioncr's ruling through appeals to the state board of education or the courts. Mrs. Louis Pugach, a spokesman for the committee, said thc grouP will "fight with all legal means" to keep the neighborhoocl school
system.

Tibbs says, however, that this is mostly for little voice in city government. |ohn H. Perry, Negro president of the school board, agrees with Mayor Volk that the tactics being used by the sit-in demonstrators are supported by "^ minority of the Negro community. Alt the lrtregroes want a fuller, better, richer Iife," said Mr. Perry, who teaches school in New York. But he said he believes in using "regular channels and regular procedures" to achieve the goals. The demonstration leaders say this takes too long and is subiect to too many obstructionist tactics by patronizing whites. They say Mr. Perry is a tool of white officials. Byron Baer, a leader of the recently organi zed Bergen County Congress of Racial Equality, which is active in the sit-in movement, said Mr. Perry is doing a disservice to his race. Mr. Baer, a thirtythree-year-old white man, was arrested in Mississippi as a freedom rider and said he served forty-five days in the Mississippi penitenhtregro Councilman

show and that the Negroes have very

One of the solutions proposed by the school boarcl was to sct up for fifth and sixth graders. It was expcctccl this would be the first step toward gradually eliminating Lincoln School and distributing the remainirrg pupils among the other schools. '[.he city council turned down a request for funds to set up thc so-called intermediate school. The plan also was soundly rejectcd in an advisory referendum held last fall. One of the fears of some white leaders is that a lrrcakclown in the neighborhood school system will mean white farnilics will begin to move to other areas. "This is a situation in which nobody
a single school

can really win," said August I. Weisner, fr., vicc prcsiclcnt attcl cditor of the city's only newspaper, the weekly Press lourrutl. "If the Negroes appear to win, there will be an outrnigratiort of white resi-

dents.
tinue.tt

If the whites appear to win, the demonstrations will con-

tiary.

There is some evidence that the leaders of the, siLin movement have not been able to muster as much support as they would like. They recently announced plans to conduct sit-in's at the two other predominantly white schools but failed to carry it out. But there is strong evidence that the demonstrations and the turmoil they have
engendered are producing results.

State Commissioner

of Education

Frederick

M.

Raubinger
fersey,

handed down a ruling fin May

of ry6il in an Orange, New

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The Civil-Rights Struggle in America

ALAN
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F. WESTIN

Basic Boofts, Inc., Publishers

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INTRODTICTION
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The Ur{oldin{l

CiYil-Rights Struggle in America

demand for genuine equality and first class citizenship in the American democracy finally broke through to the

In 1963, the Negro's

moral consciousness of the general American public. Not only did 1963 shatter all existing ground-rules as to the "proper place" for Negroes in North and South, but it also saw the beginnirg of a new era in terms of the techniques by which Negroes and their white allies would press for civil rights. After ry63, it became clear that at every level of American life-in government and politics, in offices and on construction sites, in housing proiects and suburban developments, in the churches and the clubrooms2 and in the subtle private forums in which community policies are so often arrived at
issue of entry and fair oppottnrrity for the American Negro had been raised to the top of the agenda. "There is no power like the power of an idea whose time has come," Tom Paine observed at the

-the

Copyright @ 1964 bY Alan F. Westin Library of Congress Catalog Card Number: 64-ry4or Manufactured in the United States of America

DESIGNED BY VINCENT TORRE

beginnirg of the American and French revolutions, and in ry63, the idea whose timeliness swept all other domestic issues before it like a flood was the civil-rights movement. Freedorn Nowl explores, hopefully in all its complex facets, the moral dimeruion of the civil-rights struggle. An issue of "public policy" such as the "civil-rights question" must be discussed care-

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