The Desegregation of DC Public Schools - Report Example

The Desegregation of DC Public Schools The history of D.C schools in Washington has acquired a unique status. As a federal city, it has played significant struggles over the governance of public schools (Danns & Palgrave, 2014). The creation of the school system by congress came in 1804; two years after the creation of the District of Columbia had come into force as the municipal government. After a lapse of almost six years later, the city opened schools for African-American children, a site that was separate from those of the whites (Kafka & Palgrave, 2011). The history of the schools and their relations has for long reflected changes in the city as well as in the region (Hutmacher, 2001). For long, this system of the school has carried on beneath various boards, but congressional oversight has played a big hand and also there has been no sovereign state education bureau. This is how the name Bolling v/s Sharpe: The Desegregation of DC Public Schools came to be, as the case of racism was being determined. The Bolling v/s Sharpe (District of Columbia) history emanates from the separatisms school system in this region. The itinerary of this push and pull came after the establishment of black schools within the Washington, D.C. Free public schools for all black children living within the Washington D.C emerged back then in 1874 (Danns & Palgrave, 2014). Their establishment meant this period to be a radical notion for that time and era. This unique thing starred many, especially the white folks, as nowhere within the south region of D.C were such schools available. The black American schools had long faced segregation, even though initially the schools were near to equaling those of the white counterpart within the Washington D.C area. This could not last since by 1930s, the conditions of the schools had faced a dramatic shift. There was a record of deplorable conditions within the schools, as black schoolchildren suffered many setbacks. This made many of the black American parents from the Anacostia neighborhood, who had their kids in those D.C.’s schools challenge the District’s system of school segregation (Hutmacher, 2001). In 1949, they wanted their kids to be part of the soon to be opened John Phillip Sousa Junior High School. As it was to come out, the school board denied the parents the opportunity despite having empty classrooms, Sousa becomes all white segregated schools (Vile, 2003). There was to be a court case between the black and the majority whites. Their case (black American parents), Bolling v/s Sharpe would face the same line of judgment with Brown v/s Board of Education (Danns & Palgrave, 2014). For these black American parents, they seemed to follow the 1849s ruling of the Massachusetts Supreme Court ruling that segregated schools were permissible under the new state constitution. In reinforcing this, the U.S Supreme Court would later use the basis of the same case to affirm the notion that separate schools ought to be there and but the doctrine were to be equal. This version is what was lacking in the District of Columbia black American schools. The comparison to this case was the 1952 Brown v/s Board of Education case (Caldas, 2003). In this period, the Supreme Court heard the oral argument of the petitioners. The anti-segregation complains had a boost since Thurgood Marshall, the first African American justice in the Supreme Court, led the counsel. He supported the black school children. The two cases compare in such a manner that they all challenged the legitimacy of the same District of Columbia has different and unequal schools for the each race (Vile, 2003). In 1953, Earl Warren got the appointment as the Chief Justice of the Supreme Court to administer the case Brown v/s Board of Education. They proceeded to hear the arguments in Brown v/s Board of Education of Topeka (Danns & Palgrave, 2014). The year 1954 was a sought of reprieve upon the blacks as the court unanimously overturned Plessy to declare that separate schools were unequal. The decision, though did not mention the actions to follow, but rather sought for another round of arguments. In this turn, the court argued that the obligation of the federal government is at the same level with state government, and thus it must desegregate the Washington D.C., schools as in (Bolling v/s Sharpe case). One would recognize that this issue of Brown v/s Board of Education aligns itself with the segregation of Washington black schools, which resulted into the Bolling v Sharpe case/s. The segregation that was happening in Washington, D.C., became a glaring example of the incongruity in American society. Like in the former case, here the black students also faced a complete separation in overcrowded schools. Despite all these challenges, the black American students could not get any new admission in any white schools at all (Caldas, 2003). The separatism sect by the white culture ensured that the well-equipped schools remained for the whites alone. This absolutely had to anger the black American parents and take on the initiative to challenge this schooling system in the District of Columbia (Rossell, Armor & Walberg, 2002). The biggest irony of these unfortunate events in D.C., was that, in this era in 1950s, the city government as well as the schools was under the control of the congress. The members proudly painted the city as the acme of the free world, where democracy and personal freedom available and not like the communist totalitarianism (Duffy & Leeman, 2005). This was the highest contrast as the black American students lived in the new founded totalitarianism society within the District of Columbia. The law segregated most of the city’s schools, facilities, and housing. The push by the black American parents to secure a quality learning ground for their learners got a boost when a local barber also joined in and sparked a protest, a grass roots organization, which aimed at exposing this hypocrisy (Danns & Palgrave, 2014). They also demanded for equal treatment of all school-going children within the District of Columbia irrespective of race. The petitioners in this case were a twelve-year-old Spottswood Bolling, James Nabrit, the NAACP, and four other students from Washington, D.C. The Bolling case was tricky for the equal rights protection clause of the 14th amendment only worked in state laws and not in the federal law that controlled the segregated schools in the District (Hutmacher, 2001). The other reason was that no evidence got a hearing in the court process, despite the plaintiffs forced to attend the inferior black schools. The complainants only stated that the separatism policy was unconstitutional (Caldas, 2003). On may the 17th, the same day as the decision of Brown v/s the Board of Education got its verdict, the supreme court upheld the arguments of the plaintiffs that the segregation of the schools was unconstitutional. The 5th amendment of the law guaranteed the African American what the whites had denied them for so long. The court thus ruled out that there was no legitimate government purpose to assign school attendance based on race and thus the separate schools were blatantly not equal and thus violated the 14th amendment protection clause (Duffy & Leeman, 2005). The District of Columbia schools integrated quickly, a tremendous victory for African American students, even though it was not all that fulfilling. Segregation partly ceased even today. Washington, DC trials came separately because it was not a state (Caldas, 2003). Among the many schools, which struggled with segregation Spottswood Thomas Bolling, v/s C. Melvin Sharpe was one of them in D.C. This was because the District of Columbia was not a state, but a federal territory (Hutmacher, 2001). As a result, the fourteenth amendment arguments, which had applied in other cases could not apply in the cases of Washington, D.C. The Bolling case was tricky because the equal rights protection clause of the 14th amendment only worked in state laws and not in the federal law that controlled the segregated schools in the District. In this case, the lawyers argued for a ‘Due Process Clause’, of the filth amendment (Hutmacher, 2001). This aimed at acquiring a guarantee of equal protection of the law for all, despite the latter legislation not applying in Washington, D.C. Therefore, in order to mount a worthy challenge against these unfriendly policies, the Consolidated Parents Group started a boycott of the black high school in Washington, D.C. The students in the school had out-numbered the space, and the dilapidated condition of these schools (Duffy & Leeman, 2005). James Nabrit took over from the ailing Houston and fellow attorney George E.C Hayes in presenting the arguments for the District of Columbia case. They fought for the legislation to make black schools equal to white schools despite D.C, being not a state but a federal territory. The result of this is the derivative politics that split the house of representative between north and south. Their political stance saw the northern start claiming all the amenities and the services, possessing the business district as the southern part was getting more and uglier with little benefit extending from the political table of the house of the representatives (Danns & Palgrave, 2014). In the south, the political decision made it a place of dense population with shoddy housing projects and developed the worst traffic line due to poor roads. The council members in the house of representative, between south and north were just posturing, as no one could have been so clueless. Despite the Supreme Court opinion in the D.C, school segregation cases, counter arguments on desegregation arose that schools should reflect the neighborhood in which they are located. This came shortly after Brown’s case to end separatisms in public schools (Danns & Palgrave, 2014). There were instances of massive resistance, as being the norm in several southern states and local government. Their claim was that the schools could end the issue of inequality but integrating the races in the same public school compound came as the biggest challenge. This counter opinion is what was seen in Sousa (Duffy & Leeman, 2005). After it resumed its operations, it was still a segregated school because there were no minority students in its compound. The counter arguments on desegregation spilled even to today, the school is still observing the separatism policy in which they changed and left all minority students to occupy it. The issue of integration of status, which appeared as the best policy to end school segregation never worked. The white flight from the district and the concentration of the white district residents in northwest, the attendance rates in private schools become the new move (Clotfelter, 2011). This comes despite the whites occupying 28% of the District of Columbia population. For example, many teachers noted a rise in fighting and petty theft, and some white teachers reported problems disciplining black students. This was a tactic to counter the on-going desegregation of public schools. The attempt to bridge the harsh segregation policy of the whites did little to create the equal opportunities and integration due to the opposing aftermath moves of the white community (Rossell, Armor & Walberg, 2002). Most notably, was the stream of the white student strikes at two area high schools due to the complaint that some black students used improper language and bumped against white girls in the halls, touching them in an evocative manner. Because of this policy of segregation, new schools emerged. The first set of schools to emerge and integrate was the Clinton, and Tennessee (Caldas, 2003). In 1956, Clinton High School in Clinton, Anderson County, and the Tennessee come out as the first post segregation public schools to in the south to be integrated after Brown’s decision. Another school, which emerged, was the Glenn Elementary School in Nashville, previously all white schools that had now integrated black students in their program (Clotfelter, 2011). Most of these integration attempts faced outright abuses from the white students like the 1957 case of a fifteen-year-old Dorothy Geraldine Counts and three other black students in previously all white Harding High School in Charlotte, North Carolina. This assimilation could not have been complete without the inclusion of Anacostia High school, in Washington D.C., and The Little Rock Nine School. The Brown’s decision aligned the school to continue with both black and white students in the same classroom in 1957. The segregation of public schools had a long lasting impact on the black community living in the racist culture of America. In place of integration, politicians, commentators, and public education critics, did little to uphold the rule of the Supreme Court of the Columbia District (Clotfelter, 2011). Segregation continued as black students had no free will to join the previously all white compounds. Today, many black children still attend schools in racially and segregate prone areas in the U.S.A. the racial segregation continued to affect the quality of education that the black community could acquire in their course. The fact that these schools, by the order of the law, were to be equal, though separated, the quality of education differed a lot, with the white counterpart doing better than the struggling black schools. For example, in the District of Columbia, academic opportunities still went on in racial lines (Duffy & Leeman, 2005). Despite the fact that the African American students and the Hispanic students made up the vast majority of the District’s student body, the minority students still received a distressing small share when it came to academic opportunities. This ensured that even when desegregation seemed to be ending, other forms of discrimination came into force, and those disadvantaged most of the black students who could have done much better, where they given an enabling academic background. The District was not serious in mitigating these racism gaps. It offered academic enrichment courses to fewer of its students, predominantly the white counterpart (Clotfelter, 2011). For example, where the District was to provide math and science advanced placement classes, those opportunities went vastly to white students. At the end of the day, the black community celebration of the supreme court ruling only lasted within the corridors of justice, but in the compounds of the learning centers, segregation, even though not directly as before, was the order of the day. This gave birth to inequalities (Stewart, 2013). On another level, the aftermath of desegregation carried a lot of unrest in public integrated schools, as this forbade the friendly learning of black student. This was worse given the fact that they were learning in deplorable conditions previously. A few months within the integrated schools, students, teachers, as well as the administrators realized that schools gained some grave problems as a direct result of integration (Lyons, 2008). Learning was not smooth as was the expectations. The black community continued to languish in unfriendly and unwelcoming school environment culminating to their poor academic performances. Consequently, the attainment test scores varied everywhere between predominately black and predominately white schools. In the predominantly black schools, scores were in the nation’s lowest 5% compared to predominantly white schools where scores were in the nation’s highest 5% (Clotfelter, 2011). This margin of difference in performance resulted from racial tension, where the black carried much impact. That environment of non-committal to integration was the brand of a conduct every day in schools after Bolling vs Sharpe: The Desegregation of DC Public Schools case. In conclusion, The Desegregation of DC Public Schools faced a lot of turmoil. Racism was at its peak and the black students could not study and compete with their white counterpart effective (Kafka & Palgrave, 2011). As a federal territory, Washington, D.C., case faced many challenges as the contradicting amendment differed from those aligned with the provisions of the other states (Clotfelter, 2011). This was the basis as to why the white community gave a stiff-neck in accommodating the blacks in their all white high schools. This segregation would thus present the black community with poor quality education, hence denying them the lucrative position of white-collar jobs (Duffy & Leeman, 2005). All these sprouted from Bolling vs Sharpe: The Desegregation of DC Public Schools subject. References Caldas, S. J. (2003). The end of desegregation?. New York: Nova Science Publ. Clotfelter, C. T. (2011). After "Brown": The Rise and Retreat of School Desegregation. Princeton: Princeton University Press. Danns, D., & Palgrave Connect (Online service). (2014). Desegregating Chicagos public schools: Policy implementation, politics, and protest, 1965-1985. Duffy, B. K., & Leeman, R. W. (2005). American voices: An encyclopedia of contemporary orators. Westport: Greenwood press. Hutmacher, W. (2001). In pursuit of equity in education: Using international indicators to compare equity policies. Dordrecht [u.a.: Kluwer. Kafka, J., & Palgrave Connect (Online service). (2011). The history of "zero tolerance" in American public schooling. New York: Palgrave Macmillan. Lyons, J. F. (2008). Teachers and reform: Chicago public education, 1929-1970. Urbana: University of Illinois Press. Rossell, C. H., Armor, D. J., & Walberg, H. J. (2002). School desegregation in the 21st century. Westport, Conn: Praeger. Stewart, A. (2013). First class: The legacy of Dunbar, Americas first Black public high school. Vile, J. R. (2003). Encyclopedia of constitutional amendments, proposed amendments, and amending issues: 1789 - 2002. Santa Barbara, Calif.: ABC-CLIO. Read More