Gilliam v. School Board of City of Hopewell, Virginia, 9625
| Decision Date | 07 April 1965 |
| Docket Number | No. 9625,9626.,9625 |
| Citation | 345 F.2d 325 |
| Parties | Renee Patrice GILLIAM and Reuben Lemuel Gilliam, Jr., infants, by Reuben L. Gilliam and Joy T. Gilliam, their father and mother and next friends, and all others of the plaintiffs, Appellants, v. SCHOOL BOARD OF the CITY OF HOPEWELL, VIRGINIA, and Charles W. Smith, Division Superintendent of Schools of the City of Hopewell, Virginia, Appellees (two cases). |
| Court | U.S. Court of Appeals — Fourth Circuit |
Henry L. Marsh III, and S. W. Tucker, Richmond, Va., for appellants in No. 9625 and appellees in No. 9626.
Frederick T. Gray, Richmond, Va. (Williams, Mullen & Christian, Richmond, Va., on brief), for appellees in No. 9625 and appellants in No. 9626.
Before SOBELOFF, Chief Judge, and HAYNSWORTH, BOREMAN, BRYAN and J. SPENCER BELL, Circuit Judges, sitting en banc.
These are cross appeals from an order of the District Court approving Hopewell's geographic plan for the assignment of pupils to its schools and refusing to require the retransfer of certain Negro pupils attending schools outside of their geographic zones under a previous order of the Court. Finding no error on either appeal, we affirm.
Hopewell, Virginia, is an industrial city located at the confluence of the James and Appomattox Rivers. It is roughly bisected by the Norfolk and Western Railroad, which runs from Hopewell's southwestern border roughly northeasterly to the James River, while the Seaboard Airline Railroad divides the city in an approximately east-west direction. Except in the southwestern portion of the city, the Norfolk and Western Railroad is bounded on its southeastern side by many factories, and there are long reaches of that railroad which are uncrossed by streets. These railroads, and the industrial sections which bound them, constitute obvious and natural geographic boundaries between residential areas, some of which are made remote from each other by the intervening industrial, nonresidential sections which abut the railroads.
The School Board adopted a geographic zoning plan. The zone boundaries were drawn along natural geographic boundaries, particularly the railroads. The schools are centrally located in each zone, except for two zones in areas annexed to the City of Hopewell after those two schools had been constructed.
Some Negroes live on the northwestern side of the Norfolk and Western railroad. They are in an elementary school zone in which the majority of the residents are white. Pupils from the elementary school in that zone are fed automatically to a high school in which the majority of the pupils are white.
The great majority of the Negro residents of Hopewell live on the southeastern side of the Norfolk and Western Railroad. With an exception to be mentioned presently, the residential areas in which they live are separated from residential areas inhabited principally by white people by the railroad and by industrialized, nonresidential sections. One elementary school is located centrally in the area it serves, as is another combined elementary and high school attended entirely by Negroes. A third elementary school attended solely by Negroes is located at the extended city limits, this being one of the schools which came into the Hopewell City School System by annexation after it had been constructed.
When this action was first commenced and before the court approved Hopewell's geographic zoning plan, it ordered the admission of the then infant plaintiffs into the schools of their choice. They were admitted, after which the School Board took an appeal to this Court. We held that the question was moot, since the order required their admission only for the current year and the School Board had fully complied with the order.1
Thereafter, after some modification of the plan, principally the addition of a provision giving any child who lived nearer to a school outside of the zone in which its residence was located a right to attend that school, the District Court approved the plan. It refused, however, to require, or permit, the involuntary retransfer of the original plaintiffs transferred pursuant to the earlier order of the Court.
The plaintiffs concede, in general, that the elementary school zone boundaries were drawn along natural geographic boundaries and barriers. They contend as unreasonable only the boundary between Arlington and Woodlawn School zones. That boundary, however, runs along a main arterial highway, and the plaintiffs can suggest no other boundary between those zones of geographic significance. Use of that boundary incorporates in the Woodlawn zone certain areas which are closer to Arlington School. However, any transfer to Arlington of any readily divisible portion of that part of the Woodlawn School zone lying closer to Arlington School would result in a transfer to Arlington School of far more pupils than it could receive, leaving Woodlawn School greatly under-populated.
These are the two schools which Hopewell acquired by annexation of adjacent territory. Neither is centrally located in the zone it serves, but the main highway along which the School Board has drawn the boundary which separates those two zones is patently the most logical and reasonable. Such an artery is a natural boundary to choose in the absence of any other significant geographic feature. The fact that a portion of Woodlawn zone lies closer to Arlington School than Woodlawn School is not a valid objection to the plan when incorporating a portion of that area into the Arlington School zone would leave Arlington overwhelmed with pupils, for which it could not care, and Woodlawn greatly underpopulated. Arlington zone's other boundaries are the limits of the City, the Seaboard Airline Railroad and industrial areas, so that there are no feasible compensating adjustments by which portions of the Arlington zone might be shifted to permit it to include a portion of Woodlawn zone.
Under these circumstances, the District Court was abundantly justified in concluding that the zone boundaries were reasonably drawn in accordance with natural geographic features and not on racial lines.
Assignments to the high schools are made in accordance with a feeder system. We find nothing objectionable in this when the primary school zoning is on a nonracial basis, for the result is, in effect to create reasonable zones for the high schools. The zones of those primary schools which feed each high school are collectively the zone for the high school. So viewed, the high school zones are as compact and reasonable as the primary...
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...847, 88 S.Ct. 39, 19 L.Ed.2d 114; Springfield School Committee v. Barksdale, Supra, 348 F.2d 261, 264; Gilliam v. School Board of City of Hopewell, Virginia, 4 Cir., 345 F.2d 325, 328; Downs v. Board of Education of Kansas City, Supra, 336 F.2d 988, 995, cert. denied 380 U.S. 914, 85 S.Ct. ......
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...have ruled that de facto segregation is not unconstitutional. Deal v. Cincinnati Bd. of Educ., 6 Cir., 369 F.2d 55 (1966); Gilliam v. School Bd., 4 Cir., 345 F.2d 325, vacated, Bradley v. School Board, 382 U.S. 103, 86 S.Ct. 224, 15 L.Ed.2d 187 (1965); Downs v. Board of Educ., 10 Cir., 336 ......
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...or neutrally administered freedom of choice plans were accepted in fulfillment of the duty to desegregate. Gilliam v. School Board of City of Hopewell, 345 F.2d 325 (4th Cir. 1965); Bradley v. School Board of City of Richmond, 345 F.2d 310 (4th Cir.), rev'd. on other grounds, 382 U.S. 103, ......
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Brinkman v. Gilligan, Civ. A. No. C-3-75-304.
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