Hart v. Community Sch. Bd. of Brooklyn, NY Sch. D.# 21
| Decision Date | 02 April 1974 |
| Docket Number | No. 72 C 1041.,72 C 1041. |
| Parties | Jeffrey HART, as a minor by his parent and next friend Doris Hart, et al., Plaintiffs, v. The COMMUNITY SCHOOL BOARD OF BROOKLYN, NEW YORK SCHOOL DISTRICT #21, a body corporate, et al., Defendants. The COMMUNITY SCHOOL BOARD OF BROOKLYN, NEW YORK SCHOOL DISTRICT #21, By its President and Member, Evelyn J. Aquila, et al., Defendants and Third-Party Plaintiffs, v. John V. LINDSAY, Mayor of the City of New York, et al., Third-Party Defendants. |
| Court | U.S. District Court — Eastern District of New York |
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James I. Meyerson, Asst. Gen. Counsel, NAACP Special Contribution Fund, New York City, for plaintiffs.
Elliot Hoffman, New York City, for defendant Chancellor Scribner and third-party defendants Mayor of the City of New York, The City of New York, The Housing and Development Administration of the City of New York, Administrator, Housing and Development Administration of the City of New York.
Hyman Bravin, New York City, for defendants and third-party plaintiffs.
Edward J. Boyd, V, Acting U. S. Atty. E. D. N. Y., by Cyril Hyman, Asst. U. S. Atty., for third-party defendants U. S. Dept. of Housing and Urban Development.
Louis J. Lefkowitz, Atty. Gen., Christine A. Flynn, Asst. Counsel, New York State Urban Development Corp., New York City, for third-party defendants New York State Urban Development Corp., Division of Housing and Community Renewal, Executive Dept., State of New York; Robert Hammer, New York City, of counsel.
Jeanne Hollingsworth, New York City Housing Authority, New York City, for third-party defendant New York City Housing Authority.
This first New York City school desegregation case to reach a federal court is a class action on behalf of children attending Coney Island's Mark Twain Junior High School, Number 239. Defendants are the Community School Board of Brooklyn, New York, School District Number 21, its members and the Chancellor of the Board of Education of the City of New York. Claiming that defendants are maintaining Mark Twain as an unconstitutionally racially segregated and underutilized school, plaintiffs seek declaratory and injunctive relief. The defendant Board and its members contend that segregation, if it exists, is due to housing patterns fostered and maintained by the city, state, and federal authorities who have been impleaded as third-party defendants.
The evidence shows that Mark Twain is segregated. That segregation was brought about partly through the ghettoization of the core of Coney Island. It is also due to deliberately zoning out of the school white middle-class children, enhancing segregative tendencies and leading to gross underutilization of Mark Twain's physical facilities.
Both the Community School Board of District 21 and responsible city educational officials recognize that they have the power to desegregate Mark Twain. They have refused to do so because they believe that such action might cause white children from District 21 to leave the public school system by moving to the suburbs, or by transferring to private schools, or by various forms of subterfuge, increasing segregation in the schools of District 21. On the local level there is fear — substantially unjustified — for the safety of white children who would be transferred to Mark Twain, concern over the teaching environment in a school where average reading and mathematics levels are much lower than those in any other school in the district; and some latent concern at the prospect of children attending a ghetto school.
Public officials responsible for new housing in the area have exacerbated the situation by applying housing policies mechanically, discouraging integrated occupation of new housing by child-rearing families of a variety of socio-economic levels. Persons now moving into the thousands of publicly assisted new apartments in this area are overwhelmingly black and Hispanic. The whites are primarily persons beyond child-bearing age. The result has been to insure that local schools zoned to the immediate neighborhood will be segregated.
Housing and school patterns feed on each other. The segregated schools discourage middle class whites from moving into the area and the segregated housing patterns lead to segregated schools.
Nevertheless, this area of Coney Island remains fundamentally attractive as a place for all kinds of people to live and to raise and educate children. It is being almost completely rebuilt at a cost to the taxpayers of the city, state and nation of tens of millions of dollars.
Mark Twain, a school in excellent physical condition, is located in one of the potentially most attractive settings in the city. It is served by an experienced staff devoted to effective education and has a fine program. It can easily accommodate in safety, and educate well, hundreds of children from other parts of District 21 whose presence will eliminate unconstitutional segregation.
If ever there were a school and an area in New York City where desegregation could be accomplished with benefits to all the children who will attend the school and to the community, it is here. Educational, housing and other officials at all levels of government are required by the Constitution to cooperate in promptly eliminating the effects of segregation at Mark Twain Junior High School.
The history of Mark Twain can be characterized as reflecting neither de jure segregation — required by law and custom, typical of southern and border-state schools of the recent past — nor de facto segregation, due to segregated neighborhoods arising from purely private decisions of residents without any interference by government, said to be typical of many metropolitan areas in the north. Rather, it reflects both these characteristics. Demographic trends have been accentuated by government choices. Decisions have been made knowing they would encourage segregation and failure to take available steps to reverse segregative tendencies have made a bad situation worse. Whether denominated de facto or de jure, the segregation of Mark Twain is unconstitutional.
In fairness to the devoted officials from every level of government involved in some way in education and housing, it must be noted that racism was not a significant factor in what occurred in Coney Island. There was no conspiracy to deprive minorities or to enhance the...
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