2r : En7lewood, New

iersql* a Case

Study in De FactoSugre7ation

Faul tr{*pe

Suburban Englewood-quiet, tree-lined, wealthy, and }rlorthern-isbecomirg, Iike Birmingham, a symbol of the Negro's stepped-upintegration movement. While there hasn't been the violenCe thathas attended the Southern demonstrations, the Englewood move-ment has been a long and intense one. It has been marked by Negrosit-in's at a predominantly white school, 3n unsuccessful attempitoboycott downtown stores, a sit-in at the school superintend-ent'soffice, picketit g of the governor's office in Trenton by Englewoodsympathizers, and periodic rallies featuring well-known Negroes.

The . . demonstrations [ir M"y of ry6il started . . . whensome thirty Negro students from a predominantly Negro elemen-tary school began sitting in classes at a predominantly white school.School authorities have refused to register them but have let themsit in rather than provoke possible violence by keeping them out.

L4L A Case Study in De Facto Segreg ation

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 cotn-

munity. 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.Nor is the Negro community completely united behind thc Pro-

test 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

desegregated but in fact t.nily 99 per cent Ncgro. 'l-he reason for

tlris dn forfo segregation is that elementary schools are set up on a

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.Mr. Hope is a reporter for the Washington, D.C., 'Washington Evening Star.

L42SOUITCES OF THE CIVIL-RIGHTS PROTEST

"Lincoln School is iust the manifestation of the problem in thcNorthr" said Paul B. Zuber, a hlegro attorney from New York whnhas been a leader in the direct-action movement. "We're lookingfor dignity, a new approach, a new respect. Englewood has forceclitself to become the symbol of what is wrong with racial relationsin the l{orth."

Mr. Zuber was attorney for a group of Negroes who won a courtdecision forcing New Rochelle, New York, school authorities toallow the transfer of students from a predominantly lrlegro school.In that case, however, the court found an obvious gerrymanderingof school boundaries to maintain maximum segregation, a situationwhich has not been shown in Englewood.

"This is the battleground of the Northern suburbs," said Vin-cente Tibbs, the lone Negro on the Englewood City Council. "Wehave here the subtle (segregation) line. It's in housing, employment,government. There are people here who won't even admit there'sa problem."

Englewood, lying iust across the Hudson River from New York,has been primarily a commuter town for many decades. Even be-fore the advent of the auto, it developed as the bedroom com-munity for a wealthy class from New York who could commute totheir offices by rail and ferry. The first Negroes were mostly domes-tics employed by the wealthy whites. The Negroes at first livedwith white neighbors in what is known as the fourth ward. As theNegro population grew, the whites moved out of the section andthe fourth ward became almost entirely Negro. The Negro popula-tion has grown rapidly since Lgzo and now accounts for 27.3 percent of the city's z6,ooo population. During the decade of ther95o's there was almost no change in the number of white resi-dents, but the hlegro figure iumped from gtTz to 7,ooo.

Englewood schools were desegregated before the LgS4 SupremeCourt decision. But since, there have been protests, off and on,from the Negroes about segregation brought about by school-dis-trict lines. The school population is about jT per cent Negro. Thecity eliminated its predominantly Negro junior high school aboutsix years ago and now has one iunior high which is about 40 percent Negro. It has only one senior high school, which is about z6per cent Negro.

143 A Case Study in De Facto Segregation

'I'here are five elementary schools: Lincoln, almost gg Per centNcgro; Liberty, $ per cent Negro; Roosevelt, about L2 Per centNcgro; Quarles, about S per cent Negro; and Cleveland, less thanr per cent Negro. It is at the Cleveland School that the Negroes

:rre sitting in. The siLin demonstrators are boycotting the LincolnSchool, which is several blocks away.

White officials claim there is no intentional segregation in theclementary schools. Mayor Austin N. Volk, an insurance broker inNew 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 tobe assigned by local school boards on a neighborhood basis. Theyare not allowed to transfer outside their district. Mayor Volk said

the Negroes are asking for somethitg the white students are notallowed.

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 thatpupils 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 thatit 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 dis-

advantage" because of defacto segregation.City Superintendent Mark Shedd and former Superintenclent

Harry L. Stearnes, who retired last year, also take thc position thatschools 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 timeafter time have proven effective, the board cannot condone meth-

ods 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 LincolnSchool is not the fault of the school but largely of parents "who

SOURCES OF THE CIVIL-RIGHTS PROTEST 144

don't give a damn." He also said there has been an influx of Negroesfrom Southern areas which has tended to pull down the

"uemgeachievement level at Lincoln School.

_ The mayor and city council have put out a fact sheet, declarit g

that Englewood "is one of the most fully integrated communitieiin the Nation." The mayor claims the demonstrations are not sup-ported by the Negro comrnunity but are the result of "resentmentby

^ small group of people." He said outsiders like Representative

Adam Clayton Powell and other national Negro leaders are broughtin periodically "to keep up interest in the movement." Th.y notethere are Negroes on the school board, the city council, and otherboards and commissions and that the fire and police departments,city parks, churches, civic organizations, restaurants, and stores areintegrated.

htregro Councilman Tibbs says, however, that this is mostly forshow and that the Negroes have very little voice in city government.

|ohn H. Perry, Negro president of the school board, agrees withMayor Volk that the tactics being used by the sit-in demonstratorsare supported by "^ minority of the Negro community. Alt the lrtre-groes want a fuller, better, richer Iife," said Mr. Perry, who teachesschool in New York. But he said he believes in using "regular chan-nels and regular procedures" to achieve the goals. The demonstra-tion leaders say this takes too long and is subiect to too many ob-structionist tactics by patronizing whites. They say Mr. Perry is atool of white officials.

Byron Baer, a leader of the recently organi zed Bergen CountyCongress of Racial Equality, which is active in the sit-in movement,said Mr. Perry is doing a disservice to his race. Mr. Baer, a thirty-three-year-old white man, was arrested in Mississippi as a freedomrider and said he served forty-five days in the Mississippi peniten-tiary.

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

State Commissioner of Education Frederick M. Raubingerhanded down a ruling fin May of ry6il in an Orange, New fersey,

145 A Case Study in De Facto Segregation

case in which he held that a situation similar to that in Englewoodshould be corrected. Mr. Raubinger said that a gg per cent Negroschool in Orange "constitutes . . a deprivation of education oP-

portunity for the pupils compelted to attend the school." MostEnglewood officials expect a similar ruling to be handed downshortly for that city.

White residents who have organi zed a Committec to Save

Neighborhood Schools may try to upset the commissioncr's rulingthrough 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.One of the solutions proposed by the school boarcl was to sct up

a single school for fifth and sixth graders. It was expcctccl this wouldbe the first step toward gradually eliminating Lincoln School and

distributing the remainirrg pupils among the other schools. '[.he citycouncil turned down a request for funds to set up thc so-called

intermediate school. The plan also was soundly rejectcd in an ad-

visory 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 be-

gin to move to other areas. "This is a situation in which nobody

can really win," said August I. Weisner, fr., vicc prcsiclcnt attcl cdi-

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

tinue.tt

FREEDOM

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America

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The Civil-Rights Struggle in

ALAN F. WESTIN

Basic Boofts, Inc., Publishers

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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

INTRODTICTION

The Ur{oldin{lCiYil-Rights Strugglein America

In 1963, the Negro's demand for genuine equality and first class

citizenship in the American democracy finally broke through to themoral consciousness of the general American public. Not only did1963 shatter all existing ground-rules as to the "proper place" forNegroes in North and South, but it also saw the beginnirg of a newera in terms of the techniques by which Negroes and their whiteallies would press for civil rights. After ry63, it became clear that atevery level of American life-in government and politics, in officesand on construction sites, in housing proiects and suburban devel-opments, in the churches and the clubrooms2 and in the subtle pri-vate forums in which community policies are so often arrived at

-the issue of entry and fair oppottnrrity for the American Negro hadbeen raised to the top of the agenda. "There is no power like thepower of an idea whose time has come," Tom Paine observed at thebeginnirg of the American and French revolutions, and in ry63,the idea whose timeliness swept all other domestic issues before itlike a flood was the civil-rights movement.

Freedorn Nowl explores, hopefully in all its complex facets, themoral dimeruion of the civil-rights struggle. An issue of "publicpolicy" such as the "civil-rights question" must be discussed care-

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