Morrilton School Dist. No. 32 v. U.S., 39
| Decision Date | 30 August 1979 |
| Docket Number | D,No. 79-1293,No. 39,39,79-1293 |
| Citation | 606 F.2d 222 |
| Parties | CA 79-3281 MORRILTON SCHOOL DISTRICT NO. 32, Terry A. Humble, Superintendent, W. O. Byrd, Dr. H. B. White, Hugh C. Jones, W. C. Maxwell, Earle Love, William Cheek, Members, Plumerville School Districtoyle Border, Superintendent, William P. Evans, Jack Gordon, Frank Deaver, Charles Townsley, Billy Garrett, Members, Appellants, v. UNITED STATES of America, Appellee. |
| Court | U.S. Court of Appeals — Eighth Circuit |
Robert V. Light, Friday, Eldredge & Clark, Little Rock, Ark., for appellant Morrilton.
Felver A. Rowell, Jr., Morrilton, Ark., for appellant Plumerville.
Frank D. Allen, Jr., Civil Rights Division, U. S. Dept. of Justice, Washington, D. C., argued; W. H. Dillahunty, U. S. Atty., Little Rock, Ark., Drew S. Days, III, Asst. Atty. Gen., and Allen and Walter W. Barnett, Washington, D. C., on brief for appellee U. S.
Before GIBSON, Chief Judge, LAY, HEANEY, BRIGHT, ROSS, STEPHENSON and McMILLIAN, Circuit Judges, en banc.
The United States brought this civil action on December 27, 1972, pursuant to Section 407 of the Civil Rights Act of 1964, 42 U.S.C. § 2000c-6, to desegregate the public schools of Conway County, Arkansas. Named as defendants were the State of Arkansas, the Arkansas State Board of Education and its members, the Director of Education of Arkansas, the Conway County Board of Education and its members and secretary, and each of the six school districts of Conway County 1 and their governing boards and chief administrative officers.
Conway County is a predominantly rural county. At the time the complaint was filed, total enrollment of the County's schools was 3,915 students. The racial composition of the student body and faculty of each of the six school districts was as follows:
Student Body Faculty
# White # Black # White # Black
---------------- ----------------
Morrilton 2,076 315 96 5
East Side 1 313 1 17
Plumerville 235 151 13 2
Conway County 79 93 6 5
Nemo Vista 282 26 13 0
Wonderview 314 39 18 0
------- ------- ------- -------
2,978 937 147 29
Of the 172 Conway County District students, eighty-one black and four white students attended the Center School and were taught by four black and two white teachers. The government alleged that the East Side School District and the Center School of the Conway County District were established by the State of Arkansas as black components of a dual school system in Conway County and had been maintained as all-black vestiges of that dural system.
The District Court agreed. Relying primarily on the history of the development of the school districts, and on the nature of the boundaries of each school district, it concluded that the racial segregation present in the East Side District and the Center School of the Conway County District
is a continuing result of State imposed racial segregation, and that its present existence is the result of inertia and of lack of State machinery to bring about a change in the situation in a context other than consensual.
The court ordered immediate correction of the racial segregation of the Conway School District. 2 It further ordered the defendants to file a plan, or plans, for the elimination of the unconstitutionality of the East Side District.
The Morrilton, Plumerville, East Side and Nemo Vista School Districts filed proposed plans. After analysis of those plans, and upon compilation of additional information, the United States submitted alternate plans.
A hearing was held by the District Court on the merits of the various proposals on March 1 and 2, 1979. The court entered an order on March 6, 1979, adopting the basic outline of Government Plan B, which provides for the retention of the Wonderview and Nemo Vista Districts with little change and the consolidation of the Morrilton, Plumerville and East Side Districts. Morrilton and Plumerville appealed.
The first issue on appeal is the correctness of the District Court's finding of purposeful segregation and the propriety of its order of interdistrict relief to remedy that segregation. Morrilton and Plumerville argue that the all-black condition of the East Side District is not the result of discriminatory action. They further argue that, even assuming the unconstitutionality of the segregation is the East Side District, since the government made no showing that either Morrilton or Plumerville participated in the development of the East Side District as a segregated district, the District Court's imposition of interdistrict relief was unwarranted.
At one time, there were over 3,000 school districts in Arkansas. The state gradually required smaller districts to consolidate in an effort to eliminate inefficiency and to insure every child a twelfth-grade education. The school districts of Conway County are the result of a series of three major consolidations, the first occurring in the 1920's, the second in the 1930's and the final one in 1949 under the Initiated Act No. 1 of 1948, Ark.Stat.Ann. §§ 80-426 to -429 (Repl. 1960). The last consolidation was designed to eliminate districts having fewer than 350 students.
The Arkansas laws paving the way for consolidations were racially neutral on their face; there was no requirement written into the statutes that districts be consolidated along racial lines. 3 However, from 1868 until the Supreme Court issued its opinion in Brown v. Board of Education, 347 U.S. 483, 74 S.Ct. 686, 98 L.Ed. 873 (1954) (Brown I ), Arkansas law required that separate schools "for white and colored persons" be established by the board of directors of each school district. Ark.Stat.Ann. § 80-509. Prior to the three major consolidations, there were at least ninety-two school districts in Conway County. Most, if not all, were one-school districts and had to be either white or "colored." The requirement that districts maintain separate schools clearly influenced the consolidations which occurred in Conway County in the 1920's, 1930's and 1940's. Black districts tended to consolidate with black districts, and white with white, at least in part to avoid the expense of maintaining separate schools. 4 The influence of § 80-509 is starkly visible on the map showing the boundary lines of the six school districts as they existed in 1972.
The District Court based its finding of purposeful segregation in large part on those boundary lines, saying
(t)he geographical arrangement of the Conway County districts resembles a crazy quilt, and the resemblance results from the gerrymandering of district lines in years past in deference to the requirement of segregation; there can be no other explanation for it.
The school district map introduced in evidence shows that the Menifee District (East Side), while centered at Menifee, is scattered in fragments all over the eastern and central parts of the County. Parts of it are surrounded by the Nemo Vista, Morrilton, and Plumerville Districts. At one point it is cut in two by Morrilton. The fragments of the Menifee District surrounded by parts of other districts are enclaves of Negroes residing in generally white neighborhoods, and the predecessors of Menifee students residing in those enclaves were explicitly assigned to Menifee on the basis of the fact that they were Negroes.
We agree that the pattern of consolidations shows the impact of § 80-509. The Nemo Vista District was the result of the consolidation of fourteen all-white school districts; Wonderview of the consolidation of seventeen all-white districts. East Side was the product of the consolidation of twelve all-black districts. That race was a factor in the pattern of consolidation is evident in the history of one of the older districts: in 1924, S.D. # 5 split into four sections, the all-black Union Special # 87 consolidated with East Side, while the all-white Austin # 72 and Center Ridge # 2 consolidated with Nemo Vista, an all-white district. As a result of this and other consolidations of the black districts into the East Side District, some black children now travel twenty-five miles by bus in each direction, passing predominantly white schools in the process.
We recognize that consolidations in three of the six school districts did not occur along strictly racial lines: Morrilton was the result of the consolidation of sixteen white districts, ten mixed districts and one black district; Plumerville, the consolidation of four white districts, one black district and one mixed district; and Conway County, the consolidation of seven white districts and two black districts. However, the map clearly shows that absent racial considerations, several areas would have consolidated with Morrilton, Nemo Vista or Plumerville instead of East Side.
The case closest on its facts to this case is Haney v. County Board of Education of Sevier County, Arkansas, 410 F.2d 920 (8th Cir. 1969). There, fourteen school districts consolidated in 1949 to form one black district (Sevier County) and one mixed district (Lockesburg). Black children from the Lockesburg District attended the Sevier County schools until 1954 and 1955, when, at the initiative of the Superintendent of the Lockesburg District, the Sevier County Board of Education approved the transfer of the property of black property owners to the Sevier County District. This resulted in the Sevier School District having irregularly shaped and noncontiguous areas. We held under the circumstances that
(s)chool district reorganization took place under the color of state law that then required segregated schools. Under these circumstances, when the resulting...
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