Taylor v. Board of Education of City School District

• Decision Date: 24 January 1961
• Parties: Leslie TAYLOR and Kevin Taylor, minors, by Wilbert Taylor and Hallie Taylor, their parents and next friends, and Marjorie Williams and Rosylyn Williams, minors, by Rudolph Williams and Marjorie Williams, their parents and next friends, and Cheryl Ann Williams, a minor, by Ula Williams, her mother and next, friend, and Lynn Garland, a minor, by Thomas Garland, her father and next friend, and Benjamin Hall, Lonnie Hall, Michelle Hall and Velma Hall, minors, by Barbara Hall, their mother and next friend, and Marilene Murphy, a minor, by Walter Murphy and Willene Murphy, her parents and next friends, and for these and all others similarly situated and who may become parties to this action, Plaintiffs, v. BOARD OF EDUCATION OF CITY SCHOOL DISTRICT OF CITY OF NEW ROCHELLE, and Herbert C. Clish, as Superintendent of Schools of the City School District of the City of New Rochelle, Defendants.
• Court: U.S. District Court — Southern District of New York

191 F. Supp. 181

Leslie TAYLOR and Kevin Taylor, minors, by Wilbert Taylor and Hallie Taylor, their parents and next friends, and Marjorie Williams and Rosylyn Williams, minors, by Rudolph Williams and Marjorie Williams, their parents and next friends, and Cheryl Ann Williams, a minor, by Ula Williams, her mother and next, friend, and Lynn Garland, a minor, by Thomas Garland, her father and next friend, and Benjamin Hall, Lonnie Hall, Michelle Hall and Velma Hall, minors, by Barbara Hall, their mother and next friend, and Marilene Murphy, a minor, by Walter Murphy and Willene Murphy, her parents and next friends, and for these and all others similarly situated and who may become parties to this action, Plaintiffs, v. BOARD OF EDUCATION OF CITY SCHOOL DISTRICT OF CITY OF NEW ROCHELLE, and Herbert C. Clish, as Superintendent of Schools of the City School District of the City of New Rochelle, Defendants.

United States District Court S. D. New York.

January 24, 1961.

Thomas L. Roberts and Paul Zuber, New York City, by Paul Zuber, New York City, of counsel, for plaintiffs.

Murray C. Fuerst, New Rochelle, N. Y., School Counsel, by Julius Weiss, New York City, of counsel, for defendants.

National Lawyers Guild, New York City, amicus curiæ.

National Association for the Advancement of the Colored People, New Rochelle Branch, amicus curiæ.

IRVING R. KAUFMAN, District Judge.

Plaintiffs in this class action, proceeding through their parents, are eleven Negro infants who were formerly enrolled in the Lincoln School, a public elementary school operated by the defendants, the Board of Education of the City of New Rochelle, and Dr. Herbert C. Clish, that city's Superintendent of Schools.¹ It is admitted by the defendant that approximately 94% of the pupils at Lincoln are Negroes. Plaintiffs contend that the Board has deliberately and intentionally created and maintained Lincoln School as a racially segregated school, and thus has violated the Fourteenth Amendment and the principles enunciated in Brown v. Board of Education, 1954, 347 U.S. 483, 74 S.Ct. 686, 98 L.Ed. 873.

The Board operates the elementary school system in New Rochelle by means of the neighborhood school plan. Under this plan, as it functions in New Rochelle, the city is divided into twelve districts, each of which is served by a centrally located school. Pupils residing within a particular district are required to attend the school within that district, and permission to transfer to other schools is granted by the school authorities only in exceptional circumstances. Thus, as a result of this policy, the plaintiffs have been compelled to attend the Lincoln School. At the start of the 1960 school term, they sought to register in other elementary schools in the city having a more heterogeneous racial composition; permission to so register was uniformly denied, and this action then followed. During the pendency of this action, plaintiffs have withdrawn from the Lincoln School, and are receiving private tutoring.

In the fall of 1959, after much public agitation against the racial imbalance in the Lincoln School, the Board proposed to replace the present Lincoln School building, admittedly antiquated, with a modern facility on the same site to serve the same neighborhood.² Financing for this proposal was approved in a referendum held on May 24, 1960. The plaintiffs view this decision by the Board as the culmination of a course of conduct designed to maintain Lincoln as a racially segregated school. They thus seek an injunction restraining the defendant from proceeding with the construction of the new school. They also seek to enjoin the Board from refusing to allow them to register in schools other than Lincoln which are not racially segregated, and from requiring them to register in the Lincoln School.

The defendant Board vigorously contends that the charge of racial segregation is absurd. Its position is that no child is compelled to attend any school in the City of New Rochelle solely on the basis of race or color. It points out that two-thirds of the Negro elementary school children in New Rochelle attend public schools other than Lincoln, and that the city's two junior high schools and one senior high school are attended by all children regardless of race. It urges that the high proportion of Negroes in the Lincoln School is a result solely of residential patterns, rather than any desire on its part to maintain Lincoln as a segregated school. With respect to its decision to rebuild Lincoln School, the Board contends that it was made only after an exhaustive study undertaken in good faith, which led it to conclude that the course chosen was the only feasible alternative. Thus, the defendant maintains that no constitutional rights of the plaintiffs have been infringed in any way.

After hearing and observing the witnesses, and carefully examining the large amount of documentary evidence submitted, I conclude that the defendant's conduct has violated the Constitution, denying the plaintiffs the right to the equal protection of the laws guaranteed by the Fourteenth Amendment. I find (1) that the Board of Education of New Rochelle, prior to 1949, intentionally created Lincoln School as a racially segregated school, and has not, since then, acted in good faith to implement desegregation as required by the Fourteenth Amendment;³ and (2) that the conduct of the Board of Education even since 1949 has been motivated by the purposeful desire of maintaining the Lincoln School as a racially segregated school.⁴

I am mindful of the recent admonition of Mr. Justice Frankfurter, in Gomillion v. Lightfoot, 81 S.Ct. 125, 128, as to the dangers of an undiscerning application of broad generalizations in a delicate area such as this, when important rights of individuals are so directly affected. Justice Frankfurter re-emphasized what should always have been obvious: that it is the particular facts in each case which are determinative, and thus that it is incumbent upon the court to examine these facts with scrupulous care. He said:

"Particularly in dealing with claims under broad provisions of the Constitution, which derive content by an interpretive process of inclusion and exclusion, it is imperative that generalizations, based on and qualified by the concrete situations that gave rise to them, must not be applied out of context in disregard of variant controlling facts."

In light of this admonition, before discussing what I conceive to be the controlling principles of law applicable to this case, and the legal import of the respective contentions raised by the parties, I will fully elaborate the facts which have impelled me to the conclusion that defendant's conduct has violated the Constitution.

The Facts

In order to comprehend the Lincoln problem, as it has evolved, familiarity with the geographic and racial character of the city of New Rochelle is necessary. The city has an elongated shape, its length from north to south being almost four times its average width. The settling of population started in the southern half of the town; in relatively recent years the northern end of the city has developed. That area, however, is now in the midst of a housing boom, and in the past ten years two new elementary schools—Ward and Davis—have been built to accommodate north end students. There are virtually no Negroes in this area. The north central part of town is served by two schools, Roosevelt in the west and Barnard in the east, with only the latter having a sizeable Negro enrollment. The southern end of the city is also predominantly white in population and is served by two elementary schools—Trinity and Jefferson—which have 5% and 7% Negro enrollment respectively. If a line were drawn east to west across the middle of New Rochelle, the area of predominantly Negro population would be found immediately south of that line, in the south central portion of the city. The Lincoln School District lies in the center of this Negro area. Bordering Lincoln are five other elementary school districts—Mayflower, Stevenson, Washington, Columbus and Webster—all of which contain a substantial Negro population. Washington school has a Negro enrollment of greater than 50%, while the Negro enrollment of the other four schools varies from approximately 17% to approximately 30%.

Lincoln School was built in 1898; there is no evidence as to the Negro population, if any, at that time. Marylynn G. Pierce, a member of the Board of Education, testified that there has been a tradition of a Negro school in New Rochelle for approximately one hundred years, but she did not indicate how this tradition had been inherited by the Lincoln School. Events occurring subsequent to 1930 indicate that by that time the majority of the Negro population of the city was being served by the Lincoln School. In 1930, according to the uncontradicted testimony of Bertha O. White, corroborated in part by the testimony of Mrs. Pierce, and also by official school maps, a policy of gerrymandering was instituted which led to the confining of Negroes within the Lincoln School district by redrawing the district lines to coincide with Negro population movements. (See e. g. Record, pages 131-134, 236-237.) The testimony as to the gerrymandering revealed the following:

(1) In 1930, the Webster School was built, to the northwest of Lincoln, and thus district lines in the area were redrawn. The boundary lines between Webster and Lincoln were so drawn that, in one section, they were extended to a point directly across the street from the Lincoln School. By this arrangement, an irregular corridor, which was of white population, was carved out from Lincoln and placed in the Webster district. The result was that an area containing white students, directly adjoining the Lincoln School, was districted into the Webster School, despite the fact that this area was far closer to the Lincoln School than to Webster. It was testified...