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Desegregating Chicago S Public Schools Policy Implementation Politics and Protest 1965 1985 1st Edition Dionne Danns (Auth.)
Desegregating Chicago S Public Schools Policy Implementation Politics and Protest 1965 1985 1st Edition Dionne Danns (Auth.)
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Historical Studies in Education
Dionne Danns
DESEGREGATING CHICAGO’S PUBLIC SCHOOLS
Copyright © Dionne Danns, 2014.
Softcover reprint of the hardcover 1st edition 2014 978-1-137-36091-5
All rights reserved.
First published in 2014 by
PALGRAVE MACMILLAN®
in the United States—a division of St. Martin’s Press LLC,
175 Fifth Avenue, New York, NY 10010.
Where this book is distributed in the UK, Europe and the rest of the world,
this is by Palgrave Macmillan, a division of Macmillan Publishers Limited,
registered in England, company number 785998, of Houndmills,
Basingstoke, Hampshire RG21 6XS.
Palgrave Macmillan is the global academic imprint of the above companies
and has companies and representatives throughout the world.
Palgrave® and Macmillan® are registered trademarks in the United States,
the United Kingdom, Europe and other countries.
ISBN 978-1-349-47210-9 ISBN 978-1-137-35758-8 (eBook)
DOI 10.1057/9781137357588
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
Danns, Dionne.
Desegregating Chicago’s public schools : policy implementation,
politics, and protest, 1965–1985 / Dionne Danns.
pages cm.—(Historical studies in education)
Includes bibliographical references and index.
Introduction 1
1 Redmond’s School Desegregation Plan and Reactions 19
2 Faculty Desegregation, 1969–1981 57
3 State Involvement with Student Desegregation,
1971–1979 91
4 Federal Involvement with Student Desegregation 119
5 Chicago Desegregates Predominantly White Schools 155
Conclusion 187
Maps
0.1 Chicago communities 6
1.1 Austin and Northwest Side sending and
receiving schools 29
1.2 Southeast Side sending and receiving schools 30
3.1 Ashburn community 102
5.1 New City and Fuller Park 166
Tables
0.1 Student enrollments 1963–2011 8
0.2 City demographics 1960–2010 8
1.1 Racial change in school membership 1967–1970 54
2.1 Faculty desegregation 72
2.2 Teacher demographics 1970–2012 76
This page intentionally left blank
Ser ies For e wor d
created the maps for the book; and Richard Seidel at the Chicago
Board of Education Archives was the most helpful, friendly, and sup-
portive archivist I have had the pleasure to meet. He will be missed.
My family has shown me unconditional love and support through-
out this project. Danda and Melissa Thomas provided me with hospi-
tality (BTT), as I completed research at the National Archives. Some
family members have been so supportive that they have been put to
work. My aunt, Joan Elcock, read chapters and provided editorial feed-
back. My mother, Ann Danns, read the entire manuscript, provided
editorial assistance, and served as a sounding board as the project
developed. My father, George (Ken) Danns, read the manuscript sev-
eral times while teaching numerous classes. His guidance was essen-
tial in developing the larger arguments for this book. I could not have
done this without my parents. My daughter, Najerie, gave up her time
with me so that I could complete various drafts of this book. Her
sacrifices did not go unnoticed. She also provided valuable editing for
the final draft of the book. This book is dedicated to my mother and
father, my daughter Najerie, and my sister Tamara Bramlett.
Portions of this book were previously published in articles including
“Northern Desegregation: A Tale of Two Cities,” History of Education
Quarterly 51 (1) (2011); “Chicago School Desegregation and the Role
of the State of Illinois, 1971–1979,” American Educational History
Journal 37 (1) (2010): 55–73; and “Racial Ideology and the Sanctity
of the Neighborhood School Policy in Chicago,” Urban Review
40 (1) (2008): 64–75.
Introduction
“We charge that the Board of Education of the City of Chicago oper-
ates a public school system that is, in fact and by its own statistics,
segregated and discriminatory on a racial basis and that the educa-
tion offered Chicago’s Negro children is not only separate from, but
inferior to that offered white children.”1 In 1965, the Coordinating
Council of Community Organizations (CCCO), a coalition of
civil rights, civic and religious groups, accused the Chicago Board
of Education of willful segregation of its students in a compelling
and detailed Title VI complaint sent to the United States Office of
Education in the Department of Health, Education, and Welfare
(HEW). The federal government created the 1964 Civil Rights Act
to end segregation, especially in the South. Title VI of the act stipu-
lated that programs or activities receiving federal funding could not
discriminate against individuals based on race, color, or national ori-
gin. This empowered HEW to withhold federal funds from federally
funded groups for noncompliance.
According to Gary Orfield, since the law was mostly designed for
southern school districts, challenging a northern city with a power-
ful mayor was a serious miscalculation made by bureaucrats largely
“insensitive” to the political ramifications of their actions.2 HEW
officials had debated about which cities to target. Detailed evidence of
segregation in Chicago’s schools made it seem like a suitable location.
Therefore, the agency deferred Chicago’s Elementary and Secondary
Education Act funds. HEW took this course of action without the
prior knowledge of President Lyndon B. Johnson.
This action set the stage for a classic contest between federal gov-
ernment policy articulation and the conflicting reactions and resis-
tances to its implementation by the State of Illinois and the City of
Chicago, the Chicago Board of Education and its superintendents,
Chicago Teachers Union, and community interest groups. The mul-
titude of reactions highlighted the politics, protests, and other pro-
cesses that are ignited in utilizing policy to create social change and
transform entrenched institutional interests in a democratic society.
2 DESEGREGATING CHICAGO’S PUBLIC SCHOOLS
Chicago was perhaps one of the least suitable locations for federal
government action largely because Mayor Richard J. Daley’s “con-
centrated” political power was unrivaled at the time. His biographers
have called him “Boss” and “American Pharaoh” and documented his
stronghold on the city. Daley was not an advocate of school desegre-
gation but understood the importance of political symbolism. Mayor
Daley often worked behind the scenes when dealing with educational
issues. Members of his political machine often spoke for or against
school desegregation when it suited Daley’s needs.3 No meaningful
desegregation occurred in the city during his administration, which
provides evidence that it was not one of his priorities. When Chicago
Public Schools faced desegregation protests in the early 1960s, only
limited permissive transfer plans were offered in an attempt to rebuff
a more concerted effort. Permissive transfers allowed students from
overcrowded schools to seek permission to transfer to other schools
for the purpose of desegregation and that had limited impact in
desegregating schools. More aggressive desegregation efforts would
mean a lessening of Daley’s support from white ethnic groups who
could decide not to vote for him or leave the city altogether. Though
Daley said little publically, his record on housing segregation and the
lack of significant desegregation during his reign spoke volumes.
As Adam Cohen and Elizabeth Taylor argued, segregation was “an
unstated foundation” on which Daley redeveloped Chicago. While
segregation had long been a condition in the city, Daley’s admin-
istration thrived on intensified housing segregation through the
use of urban renewal. With federal funds, he revitalized downtown
and solidly white neighborhoods and built high rise public housing
projects to contain blacks in black communities. By constructing the
Dan Ryan Expressway, he erected barriers between the dense hous-
ing projects along the State Street Corridor and white working class
neighborhoods on the Southwest Side of the city. His segregation
efforts helped him maintain a delicate coalition of blacks in ghettos
whose votes could more easily be controlled and ethnic whites satis-
fied with separation from blacks.4
When Chicago’s federal funds were deferred in 1965, Chicago pol-
iticians from the local, state, and federal levels were outraged. Some
of President Johnson’s political allies in Congress came from Chicago
and Illinois and had helped pass the Civil Rights Act. Northern poli-
ticians supported the Civil Rights Act presuming that it would not be
applied in northern states and certainly not in the City of Chicago.5
Eventually the influential Mayor Daley met with President Johnson
and the funds were released, demonstrating his political reach. This
INTRODUCTION 3
far distances. With there already being over 70 percent of black and
Latino students in the district in the 1970s, ambitious enforcement
of desegregation plans would lead to further loss of whites from the
city. State officials lacked the political will or clout to implement the
sanctions for its policies in such an atmosphere.7
Federal, state, and local officials interacted over the years to imple-
ment student and faculty desegregation policies with varying levels of
success. Each group encountered political pressures and protest actions
from stakeholders at local levels. Their political will or lack thereof,
impacted their efforts to implement public policy. As federal and
state officials pursued student and faculty desegregation, Chicago’s
school officials dragged their feet and continually issued voluntary
plans calculated to stymie rather than promote desegregation. The
most successful Chicago desegregation efforts occurred when federal
officials applied sanctions during President Jimmy Carter’s admin-
istration in the mid- to late 1970s. Unlike Johnson and other presi-
dents, Carter did not have to deal with Mayor Daley’s resistance to
desegregation because Daley had passed away by December 1976,
as the federal government conducted procedures to withhold federal
funding for faculty desegregation and forced the city into a consent
decree for student desegregation. Prior to federal government sanc-
tions, Chicago continued to evade meaningful desegregation efforts
through the administrations of three school superintendents. By the
time the Justice Department filed suit against the Chicago Board of
Education in 1980, the percentage of white students had decreased
from to 47.7 in 1965 to 18.6. The loss of white students in the school
system minimized the impact school desegregation would have had.
The enforcement of policies finally occurred just as the flight of
whites from the city and the school system had rendered any success-
ful plan moot.
Generally, policy formulation and implementation are heavily
influenced by politics, and the case of the development and enact-
ment of school desegregation is no different. While school desegrega-
tion policies largely emanated from federal statutes and court cases,
officials working in federal agencies were responsible for carrying out
these policies. These federal officials soon found that zealous enforce-
ment would lead to political difficulties for the administrations they
served. Their actions were constrained or empowered based on the
presidential administrations, their personal level of commitment to
desegregation, the larger political environment in which they oper-
ated, and the resistance or support of school and political leaders in
the states, cities, and districts they targeted.
INTRODUCTION 5
HOWARD
9 1
2 DEVON
12
10 13 77
11 FOSTER
76 4
14 3
15 16
17 5 BELMONT
6
21
18 19 FULLERTON
CUMBERLAND
20 22 7
NORTH
HARLEM
23 24 8 CHICAGO
25
MADISON
26 27 32
28 ROOSEVELT
AUSTIN
24 West Town
65 West Lawn 138TH
HALSTED
25 Austin
26 West Garfield Park 66 Chicago Lawn
STATE
TORRENCE
Source : Chicago Public School Racial Ethnic Surveys and Stats and Facts.
describes the actions of the government. The Civil Rights Act used
the word desegregation and defined it in Title IV in the following
manner: “Desegregation means the assignment of students to public
schools and within such schools without regard to their race, color,
religion, or national origin.”13 The federal government favored the use
of desegregation as did Chicago school officials who defined integra-
tion as something that occurred naturally. In official reports, schools
were integrated when the school attendance area was already racially
mixed. Desegregation referred to the changes the school board made
in order for racial diversity to occur in schools.
School desegregation is often discussed without a clear numerical
sense of what desegregation means. In the South, one black student
attending a formerly segregated school was considered desegregation.
For Chicago, the definition shifted based on who studied the city or
who demanded desegregation. Some efforts for desegregation used
a 90–10 definition. A school with fewer than 90 percent of one race
was considered desegregated. The state’s definition called for individ-
ual schools to be within 15 percent of the city’s student demograph-
ics. The Chicago Board of Education eventually decided that a school
with fewer than 70 percent of one race would be stably desegregated.
Proponents and opponents of desegregation disliked each of these
ratios, yet the definition continually varied based on who was discuss-
ing it. The changing definition was an area of conflict between the
school officials and the federal and state government.
The Civil Rights Act covered more than school desegregation,
yet the focus on schools as sites for transformation is fundamental
to understanding the American society. As historian Tracy Steffes
argues, Americans have used schooling as a “social policy choice.”
While European nations invested in social welfare in the progressive
era, Americans funded schools in an effort to promote equal edu-
cational opportunity. Americans have had undeniable reliance on
schools to solve social problems without enough consideration for
the larger social, economic, and political entities that limit the trans-
formative power of schools. Meritocratic rhetoric “about the demo-
cratic opportunity of schooling obscured these barriers and presented
schooling as a project of individual effort and merit; failures were
individual rather than structural.”14 Since schools have historically
been an instrument for social policy and have long considered the
“great equalizer,” they were as logical a place as any for the federal
government to focus their desegregation efforts. The Brown v. Board
decision was a classic example of the reliance on schools as sites to
solve social problems. The decision became a powerful symbol of
INTRODUCTION 11
The competition for housing plus the fact that blacks were unwanted
in new areas led to racial conflicts between the 1940s and 1960s.
Blacks expanded not only into areas adjacent to the Black Belt, but
also into the West Side and far South Side of Chicago. Their expan-
sion was typically block-by-block and contiguous. Residential segre-
gation remained for the most part with integration occurring only as
neighborhoods changed quickly from white to black.17
The migration of black southerners to Chicago precipitated school
segregation. Much of the early activism around schools was to relieve
overcrowding and to have new schools built.18 After the Brown deci-
sion, the NAACP immediately placed their focus on the de facto
segregation occurring in the North. In April of 1958, The Crisis
published “De Facto Segregation in Chicago Public Schools,” which
was an excerpt from the Chicago Branch of the NAACP’s statement
to a Chicago Board of Education meeting in December 1957.19 The
report estimated that 91 percent of Chicago’s elementary schools
and 71 percent of the high schools were de facto segregated. While
the elementary school segregation seemed to be a factor of housing
segregation, high school segregation was largely caused by policy
decisions. Students coming from feeder schools in many cases were
assigned to high schools based on race rather than their distance to
the nearest high school. Segregated black schools tended to be more
overcrowded with double shift assignments.20 Mixed race schools did
not remain mixed for long as neighborhoods transitioned from white
to black. The report also highlighted the underutilization of class-
rooms in predominantly white schools, the concentration of inexperi-
enced teachers in black schools, and the planned segregation based on
school site selection, instruction quality, and time spent in school.21
This and other reports highlighted the inequality in Chicago’s segre-
gated schools that resulted from official school policies.
There were a variety of desegregation initiatives that took place
in the early 1960s in individual Chicago communities and citywide
in an effort to desegregate schools. The NAACP was collecting data
so that they could build a strong school desegregation case, but a
Chicago Defender editorial writer and some black leaders believed that
the NAACP was moving too slowly. The NAACP and the Chatham-
Avalon Park Community Council, a black professional community
organization, invited attorney Paul Zuber to Chicago. Zuber served
as the lawyer for the plaintiffs in the Taylor v. Board of Education
(1961) case where a judge ruled that the schools in New Rochelle,
New York, had to desegregate its schools regardless of the segregation
being de facto or de jure. Zuber’s invitation was in hopes of pulling
INTRODUCTION 13