Historical Perspectives II Segregation and Inequality Overview of Secondary Sources: Jim Crow Moves North Davison Douglas • Following the Civil War, African Americans enjoyed increasing political influence that led to anti-segregation legislation and greater civil rights. This faded by the end of the 19th Century. • White school officials in the North increasingly insisted on racial separation in the early 20th Century, in spite of anti-segregation legislation, and segregation became more extensive by WWII. • In spite of historical narratives that consider segregation to be a problem of the Jim Crow South, the North was similarly committed to racial separation. “It is a gentle conceit of northern people that race prejudice is a vice peculiar to the South.” Reinhold Neibuhr, 1927. • Black migration and a judicial system that undermined Reconstruction gains, led to education policy increasingly focused on racial segregation. Secondary Sources: The American Dream and the Public Schools, Hochschild and Scovronick • School desegregation was, on balance, an educational success – it improved the chances of children of color and did not diminish the chances for white children. • Courts have required desegregation when it has been de jure, but not when it has been de facto • The problem of desegregation has been political – it has failed politically. • Advocates: segregation promotes collective goals by enhancing equal opportunity and full participatory citizenship’; it challenges prejudice and racial hierarchies and requires us to rethink how education is organized. • Critics: it undermines the collective goals because it is unconstitutional and it promotes racial disharmony. We should focus on better schools for all and quit worrying about placement. Small Group Discussions • Study each of the charts. What do we learn about segregation from each? • What is a question you might ask of a historian in order to understand better both the data and the arguments made in the secondary sources? Guiding Questions • Why did an interest in racial integration shift during and after Reconstruction and lead to increased segregation in both the North and the South? • How has the historical context shaped education policy with regard to segregation? (e.g. 14th Amendment, failures of Reconstruction, de jure and de facto segregation). • Why has segregation in public schooling (by race/ethnicity and SES level) persisted into the 21st Century in spite of evidence that it is detrimental to educational attainment? • Should policy be directed at racial or class segregation? Or neither? Should the legacy of states’ rights and “local control” affect desegregation policy? Common Schooling: North v. South • The Common School Movement did not affect southern education; southern education progress limited by geographical differences, economic differences, and the racial state • Average year for compulsory schooling: 1870 in the North and 1912 in the South. • The total budget for public schooling was significantly smaller in the South, and then distributed unequally to white schools following Reconstruction. North Carolina Anti-Literacy laws: 1832, Chapter VI and VII Whereas the teaching of slaves to read and write has a tendency to excite dissatisfaction in their minds and to produce insurrection and rebellion…; Therefore, Be it enacted…that any free person, who shall hereafter teach, or attempt to teach, any slave within this State to read or write..or shall give or sell to such slave or slaves any books or pamphlets…if a white man or women, be fined not less than one hundred dollars, nor more than two hundred dollars or imprisoned; and if a free person of color shall be fined, imprisoned, or whipped, at the discretion of the court not to exceed 39 lashes, nor less than 20. Be it further enacted that if any slave shall hereafter teach, or attempt to teach, any other slave to read or write…on conviction shall be sentenced to receive 39 lashes on his or her bare back. 1849: Roberts v. City of Boston • Benjamin Roberts, an African-American residing in Boston, was prohibited from sending his 5 year old daughter to the closest neighborhood school. • Future U.S. Senator Charles Sumner and black abolitionist lawyer Robert Morris argued for plaintiff Roberts, whose five year old daughter sought entry into the elementary school closest to their home. • Arguments: • • • • All persons, regardless of race or color, are equal before the law There cannot be equal education in racially segregated schools Segregation is unconstitutional because it infringes on civil rights Segregation damages the social and emotional development of all students • Ruling: School districts had a right, given local control, to set education policy as they saw fit. • This case, along with 14th Amendment case law, provided a basis for the legal decision in Plessy v. Ferguson; Roberts’ lawyers provided the basis for the legal decision in Brown v. Board of Education. Racial Demographics in the South: 1860 • Number of slaveholding states in 1860: 15 Total population of these slaveholding states in 1860: 12,240,000 Number of enslaved individuals in the US in 1860: 3,953,696 Number of free Blacks in slaveholding states in 1860: 251,000 Enslaved individuals as a percentage of the total population in the South: 32% • Number of slaveholders in the South in 1860: 383,637 More than 75% of Southerners did not own slaves. 10,000 Southern families were considered large slaveholders. Thirteenth Amendment: The Abolition of Slavery Section 1. Neither slavery nor involuntary servitude, except as a punishment for crime whereof the party shall have been duly convicted, shall exist within the United States, or any place subject to their jurisdiction. Section 2. Congress shall have power to enforce these article by appropriate legislation. December 6, 1865. African American Education • The racial state limited black educational opportunity; illegal during slavery and discouraged throughout the first half of the 20th Century. • Four million slaves freed by the Emancipation Proclamation and then the 13th Amendment. • Education was seen by freed blacks as the antithesis to slavery • Education was denied to blacks in the South, but also segregated and unequal in both the North and the South. Reconstruction Challenges • How would the South rejoin the Union – governance, citizenship, economy? • How would the southern economy recover sufficiently to rebuild the South, pay off war debts, and continue agricultural production without a slave population? • What did the country owe to the former enslaved people? • Many in both the North and the South were uncomfortable with equality of the races. What would be the rights of these new citizens? Radical Republicans • Mostly from New England: Strong commitment to free labor and a moral commitment to abolitionism • Reconstruction is an opportunity to create a utopian nation whose citizens enjoyed equality of civil and political rights, secured by a powerful and beneficent national state, based on competitive capitalism of the North “The whole fabric of southern society must be changed, and never can it be done if this opportunity is lost. Without this, this Government can never be, as it has never been, a true republic…How can republican institutions, free schools, free churches, free social intercourse exist in a mingled community of nabobs and serfs? If the South is ever to be made a safe republic let her lands be cultivated by the toil of the owners or of the free labor of intelligent citizens.” Republican Senator Thaddeus Stevens Johnson’s Plans: Outcomes • Southern states acted quickly in order to take seats in the U.S. Congress before it reconvened in December • Thousands of pardons handed out in routine fashion, enabling most members of the old planter class and many Confederate leaders to reemerge in power at the state level • Historiographical interpretations: 1. 2. 3. 4. 5. he was a profound racist; he enjoyed having the Confederate planter class beg for pardon; he was committed to the 10th Amendment; he hoped for an electoral constituency, composed of conservative democrats and republicans for a presidential bid in 1868; he was concerned that the black vote would be controlled by white planters and the middling whites would continue to be marginalized • Some states defiantly refused to reject secession; many enacted “Black Codes” • Joint Committee in Congress is formed to develop plans that reflect Radical Republicanism Virginia Black Codes, May 31, 1865 • 1st Resolved that we unanimously agree and bind ourselves under no circumstances to employ or cause in any way directly or indirectly employment to be given any Negro freed by Federal authority, without a written pass or recommendation from his former master or employer. • 2. Resolved, that we will not rent or cause to be rented to any such Negro any land or House, unless such Negro has a written recommendation from his former master or employer for that purpose • 3, Resolved, that no freedman be permitted to visit or pass through any plantation except upon a written pass from his employer, and that we will in no case give such permission at night except upon business. • 4, Resolved that the Maximum rate of hire for no one freedman without encumbrance, shall be five dollars per month in currency and food during the time hired. • 5, Resolved. that any person or persons in this community violating these obligations by harboring, employing or delivering any negro from the protection or assistance of his former Master against his wish or consent, shall for such conduct receive the contempt of all good Citizens. • 6, Resolved, that these resolutions be signed by those present, at this meeting and that they be presented to the farmers of the Neighbourhood not present for their approval and signature. Civil Rights Act of 1866 • Defined as citizens all persons born in the U.S. (except Native Americans) • Defined citizen rights (e.g. to testify in court, own property, make contracts, and enjoy the “full and equal benefit of all laws” and due process). • Authorized federal officials to bring suit in federal courts rather than state courts for civil rights violations. President Johnson vetoed the Act to appeal to anti-black sentiment in the North; first congressional override of a presidential veto Joint Committee proposed the 14th Amendment so that the Supreme Court could not rule the Civil Rights Act to be unconstitutional 14th Amendment Section 1. All persons born or naturalized in the United States and subject to the jurisdiction thereof, are citizens of the United States and of the State wherein they reside. No State shall make or enforce any law which shall abridge the privileges or immunities of citizens of the United States; nor shall any State deprive any person of life, liberty, or property, without due process of law; nor deny to any person within its jurisdiction the equal protection of the laws. Section 2. Representatives shall be apportioned among the several States according to their respective numbers, counting the whole number of persons in each State, excluding Indians not taxed. But when the right to vote… is denied to any of the male inhabitants of such State, being twenty-one years of age, and citizens of the United States, or in any way abridged, except for participation in rebellion, or other crime, the basis of representation therein shall be reduced… Section 3. No person shall be a Senator or Representative in Congress, or elector of President and Vice President, or hold any office, civil or military, under the United States, or under any State, who, having previously taken an oath, as a member of Congress, or as an officer of the United States, or as a member of any State legislature, or as an executive or judicial officer of any State, to support the Constitution of the United States, shall have engaged in insurrection or rebellion against the same, or given aid or comfort to the enemies thereof. But Congress may by a vote of two-thirds of each House, remove such disability. Section 4. The validity of the public debt of the United States, authorized by law, including debts incurred for payment of pensions and bounties for services in suppressing insurrection or rebellion, shall not be questioned. But neither the United States nor any State shall assume or pay any debt or obligation incurred in aid of insurrection or rebellion against the United States, or any claim for the loss or emancipation of any slave; but all such debts, obligations and claims shall be held illegal and void. Section 5. The Congress shall have power to enforce, by appropriate legislation, the provisions of this article. July 9, 1868 Group Discussions: th 14 Amendment • What issue is addressed in each section of the 14th Amendment? • What rights does it grant to citizens that were not granted before? th 14 Amendment • Defined national citizenship • Authorized the federal government to protect the rights of U.S. citizens • Revoked the 3/5th Clause in the Constitution • Provided for a proportionate reduction in representation when a state denied suffrage to a male citizen, except those who participated in rebellion or other crimes. (Provides a basis for limiting civil rights to felons). • Most southern States rejected the Amendment; the Joint Committee made its acceptance a condition of a state rejoining the Union Fifteenth Amendment: 1870 SECTION 1 The right of citizens of the United States to vote shall not be denied or abridged by the United States or by any State on account of race, color, or previous condition of servitude. SECTION 2 The Congress shall have power to enforce this article by appropriate legislation. Slaughterhouse Cases, 1873 • Slaughter House Cases (1873): Facts 1. 2. Local slaughter houses were leaking dead animal matter into the Mississippi River and drinking water system; 1.5 miles up the river 1,000 butchers gutted 300,000 animals/year. A grand jury recommended moving the slaughter houses, but they had no jurisdiction on the house area north of the City. The legislature passed an Act to centralize all slaughterhouse operations in a central corporation, as other states had done, to prevent water contamination. The butchers sued, using the 14th Amendment, because the corporation would be a monopoly and deprived butchers the right to exercise their trade. Lower courts sided with the city ordinance and against the butchers. Outcome: Slaughterhouse • 5-4 Finding: 14th Amendment only applies to citizens’ rights under the national government (i.e. those laws guaranteed by the federal government) not those granted by individual states, so includes only access to ports, ability to run for federal office, and not what we believe are “civil rights”. “It is quite clear, then that there is a citizenship of the United States, and a citizenship of a state, which are distinct from each other, and which depend upon different characteristics or circumstances in the individual.” Slaughterhouse: 83 U.S. 36, 77-78 (1873) • The butchers’ 14th Amendment Rights had not been violated. • Precedent made the Civil Rights Act of 1875 unconstitutional • 1887: Florida becomes the first state to require segregation • Civil Rights Act of 1964: federal government again protected voting rights for African Americans Historical Perspectives II, Part 2 Segregation and Inequality Civil Rights Act of 1875 • Enacted to protect against civil rights violations against African Americans: "to protect all citizens in their civil and legal rights", giving them equal treatment in public accommodations, including transportation, and to prevent exclusion from jury service. • The Supreme Court, in an 8–1 decision, declared sections of the act unconstitutional – because of the Slaughterhouse Case. The federal government cannot prohibit discrimination by private individuals and organizations. The court stated in the opinion that the 13th Amendment eliminated slavery, but did not prohibit racial discrimination in public accommodations. • Last civil rights bill to be signed into law by the federal government until the passage of the Civil Rights Act of 1957 and 1964. The End of Reconstruction: Compromise of 1877 Political Party Nominee VP Nominee Electoral College Popular Vote Republican Rutherford B. Hayes William A. Wheeler 185 4,033,497 Democratic Samuel J. Tilden Thomas Hendricks 184 4,288,191 • Electoral votes in the three southern states of Florida, Louisiana, and South Carolina were disputed. • Southern Democrats agreed to give electoral votes to Hayes if Republicans agreed to withdraw federal troops occupying the last two states (Louisiana and South Carolina). • Ended Reconstruction and signaled the end of the Republican Party’s explicit commitment to equal civil and political rights Booker T. Washington on Black Education ”First, it must be borne in mind that we have in the South a peculiar and unprecedented state of things…What are the cardinal needs among the seven millions of colored people in the South, most of whom are to be found on the plantations? Roughly, these needs may be stated as food, clothing, shelter, education, proper habits, and a settlement of race relations. The seven millions of colored people of the South cannot be reached directly by any missionary agency, but they can be reached by sending out among them strong selected young men and women, with the proper training of head, hand, and heart, who will live among these masses and show them how to lift themselves.” Booker T. Washington, “The Awakening of the Negro,” in The Atlantic Monthly, 1896. W.E.B. DuBois • Full suffrage -- leads to “freedom, manhood, the honor of our wives, the chastity of our daughters, the right to work, the chance to rise.” • End discrimination in public accommodations – it’s un-American, undemocratic and silly • Educate our children, and “when we call for education, we mean real education…work is not necessarily education. Education is the development of power and ideal...we will fight for all time against any proposal to educate our children as servants and underlings…They have a right to know, to think, to aspire. • If we educate Negroes to work they may get sense enough to want to vote and even to know how to vote. Therefore, "industrial" training without the training of intelligence… Niagara Movement Speech, W.E.B. Du Bois, 1905. Public Schooling: South • State governments and northern foundations supported Booker T. Washington’s education ideals for southern blacks. • Most southerners were unwilling to give up individual liberty and local control in order to reform society; the primary concern was sustaining the racial state. • The Cardinal Principles of Secondary Education (1918) justified tracks and often unequal education across the United States; southern education was a far more extreme version. • “I notice that about one-third of your [Mississippi] counties spend less on Negro education than they receive from the state for Negro education.” Rosenwald Foundation Administrator, 1930 • “At the end of the first quarter of the century …whites represent 55 per cent of the total enrollment but receive 95 percent of the total appropriation for current expenses leaving 5 per cent for the Negro enrollment constituting 45 per cent.” Report on South Carolina, 1930 • “The cause for this very disadvantageous situation has been attributed to various reasons, but the principal one is that the available funds for school purposes are too limited to maintain the dual system of schools up to the standard the whites desire for themselves and neither the legal injunctions nor the common justice involved is sufficient to protect the interests of the politically powerless group of Negroes.” The Durham Fact-Finding Conference, April 17, 18, and 19, 1929,” Folder 983, Box 97, Series 3.8, RAC-GEB, 7-11 Court Phases on Segregation • Phase I: Court affirms segregation by prioritizing the 10th Amendment over the 14th Amendment. • Phase II: Court begins to chip away at Plessy and Phase I cases by addressing the meaning of “Equal” • Phase III: Effort to speed the pace of desegregation • Phase IV: Recognition of de facto segregation as a separate issue and effort to evaluate remedies against local rights. Phase I: Plessy v. Ferguson • Civil Rights Act of 1875 prohibited barring people from public accommodations on the basis of race, but was declared unconstitutional with the Slaughterhouse Cases • Upheld a Louisiana law requiring passenger trains to have “equal but separate” accommodations for whites and blacks • “Separate but Equal” became the law of the land and reversed Reconstruction gains for blacks • Prioritizes the 10th Amendment over the 14th Amendment, which refers to political, not social equality, and cannot be enforced by the federal government. • Justice Harlan’s dissent provided the basis for Brown v. Board of Education Supreme Court: Pre-Brown -- Phase I Court affirms segregation by prioritizing the 10th Amendment over the 14th • Roberts v. City of Boston (1850): affirmed segregated schools in Boston • Plessy v. Ferguson (1896): allowed a racially divided society • Cummings v. Richmond County Board of Education (1899): Affirmed ”separate but equal” in education – the racially divided society extended to high schools because the state is responsible for education and its decisions in the face of limited financial resources did not infringe on 14th Amendment rights. • Gong Lum v. Rice (1927): Denied admission of a Chinese student to a white schools system --considered the meaning of segregation, made clear what it meant to be white, and made these decisions the responsibility of states. Phase II: Changing Conceptions of Rights and Equality • Missouri ex rel. Gaines v. Canada (1938): Missouri did not have a law school for black students, but provided black students with the opportunity to go to law school in an adjacent state. Policy invalidated on the basis of equal rights. • Sipuel v. Oklahoma (1948): Court said that a black student must be admitted to the only law school in the state. • McLaurin v. Board of Regents (1950): Student denied admission to doctoral program in education, but district court ordered admission. He was required to sit at a separate table in the library and sit apart from other students in class. Court said that these practices denied equal protection. • Sweatt v. Painter (1950): invalidated white-only admissions at UTexas law school. Significance of Phase II • Gaines, Sipuel, McLaurin and Sweatt included a reconsideration of “equal” in the context of “separate but equal” • Sweatt was an important departure because the Court considered the tangible and intangible aspects of the legal education offered at the black law school versus that offered at the white law school in Texas and determined that the Equal Protection Clause required admission to the white law school. Departure from Plessy. Brown v. Board of Education: 1954 • Set of cases named for Linda Brown, an African American student in Topeka, Kansas. • Board of Ed argued that segregation was beneficial because it prepared black students for the segregation that they would face in society. • Relied on Justice Harlan’s dissent in Plessy v. Ferguson • Prioritized the 14th Amendment over the 10th Amendment Phase III: Brown v. Board of Education and Enforcement • Brown v. Board of Education (1954): Eliminated “separate but equal” ruling in Plessy • Brown v. Board of Education II (1955): required desegregation “with all deliberate speed.” • Cooper v. Aaron (1958): Response to integration efforts at Little Rock. District court asked for 2+ years to implement Brown but on appeal the Supreme Court ruled that a delay in integration infringed upon 14th Amendment rights. • Goss v. Board of Education (1963): Black students sued because desegregation plans included an option for any student to be transferred solely on the basis of race. The plans were approved by the District Court and the Court of Appeals. • McNees v. Board of Education (1963): Waived a requirement that all state remedies must be exhausted before seeking relief in federal court. Phase III Continued: • Griffin v. County School Board of Prince Edward County (1964): Schools closed doors rather than integrate, but then provided tuition grants and credits to white students to go to private schools. Court disallowed it and gave district court authority over the schools. • Green v. County School Board of New Kent County Virginia (1968): Court invalidated a freedom of choice plan implemented as a remedy because it had no effect on segregation. Court claims that future remedies will be judged based upon results, not plans. Phase III: Swann v. Charlotte-Mecklenburg Board of Education, 1971 • Court offered broad guidelines to federal district judges to formulate and review plans. • Court said that ratios could be used to achieve racial balance; claimed that one race schools in any system was evidence of insufficient efforts at desegregation; allowed drastic gerrymandering of districts to enforce integration; upheld court ordered busing as a tool to achieve desegregation. Busing in Boston Eyes on the Prize: Volume 7, Part 1: 1974 – 1980 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EcDhI6nF7gE Phase IV: But what about local rights? • Milliken v. Bradley (1974): Invalidated district court busing plan that would bus children among 54 districts in three Detroit Counties. Ruled the district had gone too far and clarified distinction between de jure and de facto segregation in terms of remedies. • Board of Ed. V. Dowell (1991): Districts did not have to bus students if they could demonstrate that elements of past discrimination had been effectively removed and the school board had made a good faith effort. • Freeman v. Pitts (1992): lower courts could end judicial control of desegregation, even if full compliance with Brown had not been achieved. Schools after Phase IV • Ending of explicit efforts to desegregate schools based on court defined plans and the end of desegregation gains • Segregation by SES level has increased relatively • Decline in racial segregation, but perhaps for reasons that are separate from efforts to promote racially integrated schools: changing demographics, increase in black middle class, etc. • Racial segregation in schooling associated with concentration of poverty • Peer effects on students typically greater than resource effects (Coleman 1966) Contemporary Policy Issue: NYC District 3 1. Upper West Side of Manhattan – District 3 – wealthy and white, with some housing projects at the top and bottom of the neighborhood 2. Elementary school in white neighborhood is oversubscribed; school serving the projects is undersubscribed. The district rezones the schools to make enrollments more even and racially/socio-economically mixed 3. Middle school choice means that middle schools have ended up segregated by race and class. Desegregation at for middle schools to be achieved by putting aside 25% of all seats for underprivileged students. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GT_dg5O1HTs NYC School Districts • Colored spaces are current neighborhood school zones • Black lines reflect new zoning NY1: Parent Meeting to Protest Integration Efforts in the Middle Schools https://youtu.be/3Jk6TI6nM1M Seattle/Louisville 2006 • Meredith v. Jefferson County Board of Ed in Louisville: • Parents Involved in Community Schools v. Seattle School District • The Constitution should be “color blind” says Chief Justice John Roberts. “The way to stop discrimination on the basis of race is to stop discriminating on the basis of race.” • Kennedy joined Roberts, Alito, and Scalia, but also argued that the other four justices in the majority were “too dismissive” of the validity of “avoiding racial isolation” and addressing the “problem of de facto resegregation in schooling”, both of which he perceived as “compelling interests.” Breyer’s dissent • Decision was a “radical” step away from settled law and would strip local communities of tools they need to prevent resegregation • The Chief Justice’s invocation of Brown was a “cruel irony” “’Redlining’ Home Loan Discrimination Re-emerges as a Concern for Regulators” New York Times: October 30, 2015 https://www.nytimes.com/2015/10/31/nyregion/hudson-city-banksettlement.html?_r=0