Boykins v. Fairfield Board of Education

• Decision Date: 07 April 1972
• Docket Number: No. 71-3028.,71-3028.
• Citation: 457 F.2d 1091
• Parties: George Robert BOYKINS et al., Plaintiffs-Appellants, United States of America, etc., Plaintiff-Intervenor, v. FAIRFIELD BOARD OF EDUCATION et al., Defendants-Appellees.
• Court: U.S. Court of Appeals — Fifth Circuit

457 F.2d 1091 (1972)

George Robert BOYKINS et al., Plaintiffs-Appellants United States of America, etc., Plaintiff-Intervenor, v. FAIRFIELD BOARD OF EDUCATION et al., Defendants-Appellees.

No. 71-3028.

United States Court of Appeals, Fifth Circuit.

February 23, 1972.

Rehearing and Rehearing Denied April 7, 1972.

Demetrius C. Newton, Birmingham, Ala., Norman C. Amaker, Sylvia Drew, Norman Chachkin, New York City, for plaintiffs-appellants.

Maurice Bishop, Birmingham, Ala., for defendants-appellees.

Before WISDOM, COLEMAN, and SIMPSON, Circuit Judges.

Rehearing and Rehearing En Banc Denied April 7, 1972.

WISDOM, Circuit Judge:

Once again we are faced with the school desegregation problems of the City of Fairfield, Alabama.¹ On June 28, 1971, this Court remanded an appeal in this case to the district court for reconsideration in light of the Supreme Court decision in Swann v. Charlotte-Mecklenburg Bd. of Education, 1971, 402 U.S. 1, 91 S.Ct. 1267, 28 L.Ed.2d 554:

We think that the district court, because of its familiarity with local conditions, should have the first opportunity to determine whether the school desegregation plan the court approved for the Board of Education of the City of Fairfield, Alabama, complies with the principles established in the Swann decision.

We remand this cause therefore to the district court for it to determine forthwith the acceptability of the school board\'s student assignment plan. In making this determination the court should consider the feasibility and advantages of clustering schools or non-contiguous zoning. The district court should also consider whether the school board is in compliance with the Singleton requirements for faculty ratios and whether the location of a high school complex in a black neighborhood will tend to promote segregation as alleged by plaintiffs-appellants.

Boykins v. Bd. of Education of City of Fairfield, 5 Cir. 1971, 446 F.2d 973.

On August 31, 1971, the district court held a hearing to consider this Court's mandate and two motions filed by the plaintiffs. The subject of the plaintiffs' first motion, an attempt to enjoin the proposed transfer by the school board of a formerly all-black junior high school to the Jefferson County School System for use as a trade school, was mooted when the school board abandoned the plan. The plaintiffs' second motion sought to enjoin the school board from allegedly operating segregated classes at Fairfield High School and from continuing to operate Robinson Elementary School as an all-black facility. On September 16, 1971, the district court entered an order, accompanied by a detailed opinion, denying the plaintiffs' motions and concluding that "under all the circumstances the School System is in compliance with Swann v. Charlotte-Mecklenburg Board of Education."

I. Elementary Schools

The appellants contend that the continued operation of Robinson Elementary School as an all-black facility violates the mandate of the Supreme Court, repeatedly reaffirmed by this Court, that racial discrimination in public schools be "eliminated root and branch". Green v. County School Bd. of New Kent County, Va., 1968, 391 U.S. 430, 438, 88 S.Ct. 1689, 20 L.Ed.2d 716, 723.

The Fairfield school district covers approximately three square miles. There are 1193 white students and 1760 black students in the system; 363 whites and 641 blacks attend high school, and 830 whites and 1119 blacks attend elementary school. Under the school desegregation plan currently in effect, the school system has four elementary schools, and the city is divided into four zones which feed the schools. Glen Oaks is at the Western end of the city; Forest Hills is east of Glen Oaks and west of Wiebel Drive, a main street dividing the city; Robinson is east of Wiebel Drive and east of Forest Hills; and Donald is at the eastern end of the city. The district court, in its order, found that the enrollments of the elementary schools at the end of the 1970-1971 school year were as follows:²

                White Black
                  Glen Oaks        359       48
                  Forest Hills     284       97
                  Robinson           0      776
                  Donald           189      198
                

As is apparent, almost 70 percent of the black elementary school children in the system attend Robinson Elementary school where no white children are in attendance.³

We hold that the continued maintenance of Robinson as an all-black school violates the school district's responsibility to "terminate dual school systems at once and to operate now and hereafter only unitary schools". Alexander v. Holmes County, 1969, 396 U.S. 19, 90 S.Ct. 29, 24 L.Ed.2d 19. See Swann v. Charlotte-Mecklenburg Bd. of Education, 1971, 402 U.S. 1, 91 S.Ct. 1267, 28 L.Ed.2d 554; Griffin v. County School Bd., 1964, 377 U.S. 218, 84 S.Ct. 1226, 12 L.Ed.2d 256; Green v. County School Bd., 1968, 391 U.S. 430, 88 S.Ct. 1689, 20 L.Ed.2d 716.

Prior to this Court's remand for reconsideration in light of Swann, the Department of Health, Education, and Welfare had suggested that Robinson be paired with Forest Hills to achieve a greater degree of integration. The district court rejected this suggestion. When, after remand, the plaintiffs sought pairing of Robinson with Forest Hills or Glen Oaks or both, the district court again rejected the idea, stating:

The Court is of the clear and certain conviction that to pair Robinson with Forest Hills or Glen Oaks, or both of these schools, would be a very dangerous undertaking. This Court is not willing to hazard the lives of the children who would be involved merely to achieve integration at Robinson.

The district court rejected pairing because Robinson is separated from Forest Hills and Glen Oaks by Wiebel Drive, a heavily traveled four-lane highway bisecting the city.⁴ Wiebel Drive, however, cannot stop school desegregation in Fairfield. See Davis v. Bd. of School Commrs., 1971, 402 U.S. 33, 91 S.Ct. 1289, 28 L.Ed.2d 577; Pate v. Dade County, 5 Cir. 1970, 434 F.2d 1151. Both black and white students have, in past years and under the present plan, crossed Wiebel Drive to attend school. Whites cross Wiebel Drive to attend Forest Hill, and blacks currently cross the Drive to attend Forest Hill and Glen Oaks under the majority to minority transfer plan. There are safety measures that may be taken to overcome the hazards of crossing Wiebel Drive. For instance, the city could install traffic lights, build a pedestrian overpass (as it has previously done), or station crossing guards or policemen on Wiebel Drive.⁵ Because the distance from Robinson to Forest Hill is only 1.1 miles, bussing may be an appropriate and relatively inexpensive method for transporting students to and from school; the system does in fact use a school bus. In many cases, the distance would be far less than 1.1 miles, because students live between the two schools.

By whatever means the district court deems appropriate in the exercise of its equity powers, see Brown v. Bd. of Education, 1955, 349 U.S. 294, 75 S.Ct. 753, 99 L.Ed. 1083, Robinson must be disestablished as a one-race school. Although we do not require use of any particular method nor approve in advance use of a particular device, we suggest that pairing appears to be the most feasible way to accomplish this goal. Robinson could be paired with Forest Hills or Glen Oaks or with both.

In Swann, supra, the Supreme Court said:

The record in this case reveals the familiar phenomenon that in metropolitan areas minority groups are often found concentrated in one part of the city. In some circumstances certain schools may remain all or largely of one race until new schools can be provided or neighborhood patterns change. Schools all or predominately of one race in a district of mixed population will require close scrutiny to determine that school assignments are not part of state-enforced segregation.

In light of the above, it should be clear that the existence of some small number of one-race, or virtually one-race, schools within a district is not in and of itself the mark of a system which still practices segregation by law. . . .

402 U.S. at 25-26, 91 S.Ct. at 1280-1281. The district court relied heavily on this language in sustaining the continued operation of Robinson as a one-race school. Although there may be situations where one-race schools are constitutionally acceptable, Fairfield is not the place. The school district has not satisfied this Court that "genuinely nondiscriminatory", 402 U.S. at 26, 91 S.Ct. 1267, reasons exist why Robinson cannot be integrated. A school system with fewer than two thousand elementary school students, encompassing an area of only three square miles is not the type of "metropolitan area" the Supreme Court envisioned when, in Swann, it said that one-race schools may, in some circumstances, be acceptable because of segregated housing patterns. This Court has spoken to the issue of the continued existence of one-race schools.

In the conversion from dual school systems based on race to unitary school systems, the continued existence of all-black or virtually all-black schools is unacceptable where reasonable alternatives exist. And it is clear that one acceptable way to achieve reasonable alternatives is by pairing schools. The tenor of our decisions is unmistakable: where all-black or virtually all-black schools remain under a zoning plan, but it is practicable to desegregate some or all of the black schools by using the tool of pairing, the tool must be used.

Allen v. Bd. of Public Instruction, 5 Cir. 1970, 432 F.2d 362, 367. See also Pate v. Dade County, 5 Cir. 1970, 434 F.2d 1151; Henry v. Clarksdale Municipal Separate School District, 5 Cir. 1970, 433 F.2d 387; Singleton v. Jackson Municipal Separate School District, 5 Cir. 1970, 432 F.2d 927; Bradley v. Bd. of Public Instruction, 5 Cir. 1970, 431 F.2d 1377; Wright v. Bd. of Public Instruction, 5 Cir. 1970, 43a F.2d 1200; Mannings v. Bd. of Public Instruction, 5 Cir. 1970, 427 F.2d 874. We do...