Horton v. Lawrence County Board of Education, Civ. A. No. 66-445.

• Decision Date: 30 December 1970
• Docket Number: Civ. A. No. 66-445.
• Parties: Patricia Ann HORTON, Brenda Jeanette Horton, Sherry Yvonne Horton, Jacquelyn Horton, and Walter Renay Horton, by their father and next friend, Walter Horton, Plaintiffs, v. The LAWRENCE COUNTY BOARD OF EDUCATION, L. P. Hopkins as Chairman of the Lawrence County Board of Education, Silas B. Cross, as Supt. of the Lawrence Cty. Bd. of Educ., John M. Roberts, Robert W. Terry, Ernest Guest, and Paul Montgomery as members of the Lawrence Cty. Bd. of Education, and their successors in office, Defendants.
• Court: U.S. District Court — Northern District of Alabama

320 F. Supp. 790

Patricia Ann HORTON, Brenda Jeanette Horton, Sherry Yvonne Horton, Jacquelyn Horton, and Walter Renay Horton, by their father and next friend, Walter Horton, Plaintiffs, v. The LAWRENCE COUNTY BOARD OF EDUCATION, L. P. Hopkins as Chairman of the Lawrence County Board of Education, Silas B. Cross, as Supt. of the Lawrence Cty. Bd. of Educ., John M. Roberts, Robert W. Terry, Ernest Guest, and Paul Montgomery as members of the Lawrence Cty. Bd. of Education, and their successors in office, Defendants.

Civ. A. No. 66-445.

United States District Court, N. D. Alabama, Northeastern Division.

December 30, 1970.

Solomon S. Seay, Jr., of Gray, Seay & Langford, Montgomery, Ala., Oscar W. Adams, Jr., Birmingham, Ala., Norman C. Amaker, and Jack Greenberg, New York City, for plaintiffs.

Gene Lentz, of Brewer & Lentz, Decatur, Ala., for defendants.

MEMORANDUM OF DECISION AND ORDER

POINTER, District Judge.

It is appropriate at the outset to summarize those matters of record in this case which form the background for this hearing.

June order. On June 12, 1970, Judge C. W. Allgood of this court entered an order respecting the Lawrence County school system under the Fifth Circuit's mandate contained in Singleton v. Jackson Municipal Separate School Dist., 419 F.2d 1211 (1970). With only slight variations from the Singleton language, the order contained provisions indicated therein for "desegregation of faculty and other staff," "majority to minority transfer policy," "transportation," "school construction and site selection," and "attendance outside system of residence." In directing the conversion from a dual system, the order established six attendance zones for students, closed two schools (Moulton High and Midway Elementary), changed the grade structures at several schools, and required non-discriminatory class assignments at the county Vocational and Technical School.

Board proposal. On July 15th, the County Board filed objections to the student desegregation portion of the June order, the principal complaint being the "termination of the Freedom of Choice Plan under which the public schools of Lawrence County, Alabama, have operated." Coupled with its objections, the Board requested modifications in the following order of preference: (1) authorization of student freedom-of-choice to attend any school within the county on a space-available basis; (2) re-opening Moulton High and Midway Elementary, re-structuring grades at a number of schools, thereby creating in a couple of the attendance zones more than one school offering the same grades, with authorization then for students to select which school within their zone they wanted to attend; and (3) reopening Midway Elementary, and pairing of two or three schools in several of the attendance zones into a single "administrative unit" to give greater flexibility in providing adequate space. The proposal for administrative units was accompanied by the representation that none of the "buildings or facilities shall have a racial composition which indicates that either facility was intended for one race or the other," and it was stated that the "defendants recognize that the judicial mandates of the higher courts require `unitary' systems, and it is felt that the foregoing alternatives will * * * create such."

August order. On August 13th Judge Allgood entered an order overruling the Board's objections, but amending the June order regarding student desegregation along the lines of the Board's third alternate: allowing specified combinations of schools into a single administrative unit, and also permitting re-opening of the Midway Elementary School. It provided, as regards these multiple-facility, single-administrative units that no facility should have a racial composition indicating it was intended for one race; and the order also directed that a report be furnished to the court by October 15th showing the racial composition of students and faculty at each school in the system.

Plaintiffs' Motions. On September 1st the plaintiffs filed a "Motion for Expedited Hearing," complaining that the faculty and staff assignment provisions of the June order had been ignored, and that reopening of the Midway School would frustrate desegregation within its attendance zone. On the following day they filed a "Motion to Cite for Contempt for Failure to Obey Judgment" against Silas Cross as Superintendent, asserting that, through establishing similar grades in two or more schools within the same "administrative unit" and then assigning students to classrooms on the basis of color, the Board had perpetuated a segregated dual school system.

Board's Motion. On September 9th the defendants filed a "Motion for Relief of Rigidity of Zoning Requirements," seeking authority to allow pupils to attend, on a space-available basis, a school located in another attendance zone if they had attended that school in the preceding year and provide their own transportation.

A hearing on the three motions was scheduled by Judge Allgood for October 1st, but had to be continued until November 16th. Due to Judge Allgood's being engaged in the trial of another case on that date, evidence on the motions (along with that in another case involving the same attorneys and the same defendants) was taken ore tenus before Judge Sam C. Pointer, Jr. The case was thereafter transferred from Judge Allgood to Judge Pointer for all further proceedings, including a decision on the pending motions.

Appearing on behalf of plaintiffs were Oscar W. Adams and U. W. Clemon, Attorneys, Birmingham. Appearing for defendants was Gene H. Lentz, Attorney, Decatur.

I. STUDENT DESEGREGATION

It is clear that the "multi-campus single-administrative-unit" label has been employed as a device to continue a dual school system in parts of Lawrence County. The facts are without substantial dispute:

Town Creek zone. In the Town Creek attendance zone the June order provided for grades 1-4 to be at Hazelwood Elementary and grades 5-6 at Town Creek Elementary. Under the August order the two were combined into a single administrative unit, along with the high school serving the zone. Now grades 1-6 are being taught at each of the two schools. Approximately two-thirds of the Negro pupils of elementary age in the zone are attending Town Creek— there are no white students at Town Creek, for they are all attending Hazelwood.

Courtland-Hillsboro zone. Hillsboro Elementary and Tennessee Valley have this semester, under the label of a single administrative unit, been providing the first six grades to pupils of this zone, with the same six grades also being offered in this zone at Central High and Courtland High—four elementary schools in the same zone. Tennessee Valley and Central have no white students, while more than 90% of the student body in the elementary grades at the other two schools is white. Moreover the four high school grades are being taught at both Central and Courtland about a mile apart, with Central having an all-black student body and Courtland being over 70% white.

According to Superintendent Cross, "We just delegated the responsibility for desegregation to the two principals in each community, and said, `Now do as much as you can.' And there was no explicit amount that they were told to do." About the most that can be said is that there is but one football team and one band for Central-Courtland, and that for one period a day (physical education) black girls are bussed from Central to Courtland and white boys are bussed from Courtland to Central. On being asked whether the fiction of a single administrative unit constitutes a return to freedom-of-choice, Cross candidly stated, "I think it is fair to assume that it amounts to that. We are not calling it that."

Defendants have totally defaulted in the representations previously made by them to this Court, namely, that authorization of administrative units would not result in any facility becoming identified as a school for one race or another. The concept of multi-facility single-administrative units has been a subterfuge for perpetuating a dual school system in portions of Lawrence County which cannot be tolerated or condoned by this Court.

Accordingly, the authorization granted by the August order to combine schools into administrative units is due to be— and is hereby (effective with the commencement of the next semester of school, and in no event later than February 1, 1971)—revoked and rescinded. It is the order of this court—directed to the defendants, their agents, servants, employees and attorneys (and any others who may be in active concert or participation with them)—that by such date:

(1) Hazelwood Elementary and Town Creek Elementary schools shall provide grades which are mutually exclusive of one another. Whether the structuring shall be as was provided in the June order (Hazelwood, grades 1-4, and Town Creek, grades 5-6) or in some other combination is a matter for determination by the Board of Education.

(2) Hillsboro Elementary and Tennessee Valley schools shall provide grades which are mutually exclusive of one another. Whether the structuring shall be as was provided in the June order (Hillsboro, grades 1-2, and Tennessee Valley, grades 3-6) or in some other combination is a matter for determination by the Board of Education.

(3) Central and Courtland schools shall provide grades which are mutually exclusive of one another. Whether the structuring shall be as was provided in the June order (Central, grades 7-12, and Courtland, grades 1-6) or in some other combination is a matter for determination by the Board of Education.

(4) Where in any school in the Lawrence County system there is more than one section or class of the same grade, there shall be no discrimination on the basis of race or color in the selection of which pupils shall be assigned to a particular section or class. The Board shall require the preservation (for inspection by

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