Carr v. Montgomery County Board of Education

• Decision Date: 02 March 1968
• Docket Number: Civ. A. No. 2072-N.
• Parties: Arlam CARR et al., Plaintiffs, v. MONTGOMERY COUNTY BOARD OF EDUCATION; James W. Rutland, Jr., Fred Bear, George A. Dozier, Dr. J. Edward Walker, Isabelle B. Thomasson and Dr. Robert Parker, Members of the Montgomery County Board of Education; and Walter McKee, Superintendent of Education of Montgomery County, Alabama, Defendants, United States of America, Amicus Curiae.
• Court: U.S. District Court — Middle District of Alabama

289 F. Supp. 647

Arlam CARR et al., Plaintiffs, v. MONTGOMERY COUNTY BOARD OF EDUCATION; James W. Rutland, Jr., Fred Bear, George A. Dozier, Dr. J. Edward Walker, Isabelle B. Thomasson and Dr. Robert Parker, Members of the Montgomery County Board of Education; and Walter McKee, Superintendent of Education of Montgomery County, Alabama, Defendants, United States of America, Amicus Curiae.

Civ. A. No. 2072-N.

United States District Court M. D. Alabama, N. D.

February 24, 1968.

Order March 2, 1968.

Fred Gray and Solomon S. Seay, Jr., of Gray, Seay, Langford & Pryor, Montgomery, Ala., and Jack Greenberg and Charles H. Jones, New York City, for plaintiffs.

Stephen J. Pollak, Asst. Atty. Gen., Civil Rights Division, U. S. Dept. of Justice, Washington, D. C., Frank D. Allen, Jr., and Charles W. Quaintance, Attys., U. S. Department of Justice, Washington, D. C.; Ben Hardeman, U. S. Atty., Montgomery, Ala., for defendants.

MEMORANDUM OPINION

FRANK M. JOHNSON, Jr., Chief Judge.

This cause is now submitted upon the motions of the United States filed August 17, 1967 and February 7, 1968, in both of which the United States requested this Court to require defendants to take further steps designed to disestablish the dual school system in Montgomery County, Alabama. Each of these motions seeks further faculty desegregation and the motion of February 7, 1968, asks this Court to require defendants to cease operation of their athletic program on a racially segregated basis and to take other steps designed to insure that certain new schools that have been and are being constructed as a part of the Montgomery County School System are operated on a desegregated basis. The plaintiffs join the United States in each of said motions.

This Court conducted a hearing on the Government's motion of August 17, 1967, in September, 1967. No formal findings or conclusions were made at that time by reason of the fact that the 1967-68 school year had already commenced, and the matter was therefore held in abeyance. On February 9, 1968, a hearing was conducted on the Government's second motion and the motion of the plaintiffs filed the same date wherein the plaintiffs seek more specific relief concerning transportation to the new schools.

Upon consideration of the evidence and the several exhibits thereto, this Court now makes the appropriate findings of fact and conclusions of law, embodying the same in this memorandum opinion. The original decree requiring desegregation of the public schools in Montgomery County, Alabama, was entered by this Court on July 31, 1964, D.C., 232 F.Supp. 705. After making appropriate findings and conclusions to the effect that the Montgomery County Board of Education was operating a segregated school system based upon race, this Court entered an injunction that enjoined the defendants from failing to provide public school education for Negroes, and other members of their class, in a school or schools that were not operated on a racially segregated basis, and from failing to take immediate steps, to be effective for the school term commencing September, 1964, to desegregate the 1st, 10th, 11th and 12th grades in the public schools of Montgomery County, Alabama. In this decree, this Court approved a freedom-of-choice plan that had been proposed by the defendants as a means for discharging the affirmative duty placed upon them. Brown v. Board of Education of Topeka, 347 U.S. 483, 74 S.Ct. 686, 98 L.Ed. 873 (1954), and Brown v. Board of Education of Topeka, 349 U.S. 294, 75 S.Ct. 753, 99 L.Ed. 1083 (1955). On March 22, 1966, this Court by formal order required the Montgomery County Board of Education to file a more formal and comprehensive plan for desegregation of the public school system in Montgomery County. D.C., 253 F.Supp. 306. This plan provided for complete desegregation of the schools for each grade in each school commencing with the September, 1967 school term; the plan also provided with regard to services, facilities, activities and programs:

A student shall have full access to all services, facilities, activities, and programs (including transportation, athletics, and other extracurricular activities) that may be conducted or sponsored by, or affiliated with the schools of the system. A student attending school for the first time on a desegregated basis may not be subject to any disqualification or waiting period for participation in activities and programs, including athletics, which might otherwise apply because he is a transfer student.

Further, the plan provided with regard to faculty and staff:

Race or color will henceforth not be a factor in the hiring, assignment, reassignment, promotion, demotion, or dismissal of teachers and other professional staff, with the exception that assignments shall be made in order to eliminate the effects of past discrimination. Teachers, principals, and staff members will be assigned to schools so that the faculty and staff is not composed of members of one race.

In the recruitment and employment of teachers and other professional personnel, all applicants or other prospective employees will be informed that Montgomery County operates a racially integrated school system and that members of its staff are subject to assignment in the best interest of the system and without regard to the race or color of the particular employee.

The Superintendent of Schools and his staff will take affirmative steps to solicit and encourage teachers presently employed to accept transfers to schools in which the majority of the faculty members are of a race different from that of the teacher to be transferred.

Teachers and other professional staff will not be dismissed, demoted, or passed over for retention, promotion, or rehiring on the ground of race or color. In any instance, where one or more teachers or other professional staff members are to be displaced as a result of desegregation or school closings, they shall be transferred to any position in the system where there is a vacancy for which they are qualified.

At the time this Court entered its order in July, 1964, there were in attendance approximately 15,000 Negro children and approximately 25,000 white children in the Montgomery County School System. The system was completely segregated by reason of race. No faculty desegregation was ordered until the commencement of the 1967 school year.¹ The evidence now presented reflects that during the current school year the student population continues to be about the same as in 1964 and there are now approximately 550 Negroes attending through the freedom-of-choice procedure, traditionally white schools. No white children are attending traditionally Negro schools. As of February 9, 1968, 32 classroom teachers in this system were teaching pupils in schools that are predominantly of the opposite race. Defendants employ approximately 550 Negro teachers and approximately 815 white teachers in the system. Practically all the faculty desegregation in the system has occurred in the high schools. While there is some faculty desegregation in the elementary schools in the system, it is extremely small. There has been very little, if any, faculty desegregation in the schools located outside the City of Montgomery.

Since the order of this Court of June 1, 1967, defendants have assigned or transferred approximately 75 new teachers to faculties where their race was in the majority. Since the opening of school in September, 1967, defendants have hired approximately 32 new teachers —26 white and 6 Negro. Of the 26 new white teachers, only six or seven have been placed in predominantly Negro schools. All six Negroes were assigned to predominantly Negro schools. The evidence further reflects that the defendants have failed to take any appropriate steps to insure that substitute teachers are placed on a nonracial basis. No Negro has yet been a substitute teacher in a traditionally white school in Montgomery County. Negro substitutes were used over 1,500 times in Negro schools during the first semester of the 1967-68 school year. During the same period, white substitute teachers were employed over 2,000 times—only 33 of them in traditionally Negro schools. There are approximately 162 white substitute teachers and 63 Negro substitute teachers available for use in the Montgomery County School System. Twenty-eight of the white substitute teachers whose names are on this list have, with defendants' permission, limited themselves to working only in predominantly white schools.

Defendants have adopted no adequate program for the assignment of student teachers on a desegregated basis. None of the approximately 150 student teachers used in the Montgomery County School System in the fall of 1967 were assigned to schools predominantly of the opposite race. Four Negro student teachers have very recently been assigned to predominantly white schools. There has been no faculty desegregation in the night schools operated by the Montgomery County School System.

The evidence does not reflect any real administrative problems involved in immediately desegregating the substitute teachers, the student teachers, the night school faculties, and in the evolvement of a really legally adequate program for the substantial desegregation of the faculties of all schools in the system commencing with the school year of 1968-69.

The evidence in this case reflects that the athletic programs are an integral part of the operation of the public schools in the Montgomery County School System. The Alabama High School Athletic Association is an association made up of approximately 357 Alabama high schools traditionally maintained for white students and the Alabama Interscholastic Athletic Association is an association made up only of Alabama high schools traditionally maintained for Negro students. Each of these athletic associations has adopted rules for the scheduling of athletic contests by its members which have the...