This article explores the efforts of school desegregation proponents as they forwarded a metropolitan challenge to discrimination in school and housing policies that explained the concentration of black students in Wilmington, Delaware and white students in the surrounding suburbs.Their efforts proved successful in securing the nation’s first court-mandated interdistrict, metropolitan desegregation remedy. This black political insurgency was accompanied, however, by a concomitant white backlash to a two-way busing program that was designed to overcome the racial divide. White opponents mobilized to exert a profoundly conservative influence on the outcomes of school desegregation policies and managed to shape the outcomes of reforms that demanded the dismantling of predominately black educational institutions and transferred the burdens of reform, in terms of both years and distances bused, onto black students. In this way, this article concludes that opponents of reform established themselves as indispensable, if counterproductive, figures in the Long Civil Rights Movement.
Quoted in Raymond Wolters, The Burden of Brown (Knoxville: University of Tennessee Press, 1984), 205.
2.
Ibid., 205-6.
3.
Harwick’s remedy to the flight of white residents from Wilmington represented a version of Anthony Downs’s proposed remedy for segregation that was becoming increasingly endemic to many of the nation’s cities. See Anthony Downs, "Alternative Futures for the American Ghetto," Daedalus97, no. 4 ( 1968): 1331-78.
4.
Wolters, Burden of Brown , 206-7.
5.
Irving Morris , "The Role of Delaware Lawyers in the Desegregation of Delaware’s Public Schools: A Memoir," Widener Law Symposium Journal9, no. 1 (2002): 24.
6.
Ibid., 26; Wolters, Burden of Brown, 207; State Board of Education, "Fact Sheet on Suit for Racial Integration in New Castle County," Desegregation Suit Facts Sheet, no. 2, September 1972, University of Delaware Library, Newark, DE.
7.
The literature on African American urban history is far too expansive to cite in its entirety here. A number of excellent essays, however, describe the contours of this vibrant historiography. Joe W. Trotter, Earl Lewis, and Tera W. Hunter, "Introduction: Connecting African American Urban History, Social Science Research, and Policy Debates," in Joe W. Trotter, Earl Lewis, and Tera W. Hunter , eds., The African American Urban Experience: Perspectives from the Colonial Period to the Present (New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2004), 1-20; Kenneth W. Goings and Raymond A. Mohl, "Toward a New African American Urban History," in Kenneth W. Goings and Raymond A. Mohl, eds., The New African American Urban History ( Thousand Oaks, CA: Sage, 1996), 1-16; Kenneth Kusmer, "The Black Urban Experience in American History," in Darlene Clark Hine, ed., The State of Afro-American History: Past, Present, and Future (Baton Rouge: Louisiana State University Press, 1986), 91-122. On the literature on migration, see James R. Grossman, Land of Hope: Chicago, Black Southerners, and the Great Migration (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1989); Carole Marks, Farewell, We’re Good and Gone: The Great Black Migration ( Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1989); Joe William Trotter, Jr., ed., The Great Migration in Historical Perspective: New Dimensions of Race, Class, and Gender ( Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1991).
8.
A sampling of urban history historiography that locates the points of contact primarily within the context of the city itself: Matthew Countryman, Up South: Civil Rights and Black Power in Philadelphia (Philadelphia : University of Pennsylvania Press, 2006); Howard Gillette, Camden after the Fall: Decline and Renewal in a Post-Industrial City (Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 2005); Martha Biondi, To Stand and Fight: The Struggle for Civil Rights in Postwar New York City (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 2003); Arnold R. Hirsch, Making the Second Ghetto: Race and Housing in Chicago, 1940-1960 ( Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1998); Thomas J. Sugrue, The Origins of the Urban Crisis: Race and Inequality in Postwar Detroit (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1996); Ronald H. Bayor, Race and the Shaping of Twentieth-Century Atlanta (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 1996); Kevin Boyle, Arc of Justice: A Saga of Race, Civil Rights, and Murder in the Jazz ( New York: Henry Holt, 2004); Kevin J. Mumford, Newark: A History of Race, Rights, and Riots in America ( New York: New York University Press, 2007); Rhonda Y. Williams, The Politics of Public Housing: Black Women’s Struggles against Inequality, Transgressing Boundaries ( New York: Oxford University Press, 2004).
9.
Carol Anderson, Eyes off the Prize: The United Nations and the African American Struggle for Human Rights, 1944-1955 (Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press, 2003); Brenda Gayle Plummer, Rising Wind: Black Americans and U.S. Foreign Affairs, 1935-1960 (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 1996); Penny M. Von Eschen, Race against Empire: Black Americans and Anticolonialism, 1937-1957 ( Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, 1997).
10.
Matthew D. Lassiter, The Silent Majority: Suburban Politics in the Sunbelt South ( Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press , 2006).
11.
Robert O.Self, American Babylon: Race and the Struggle for Postwar Oakland ( Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 2003), presents a fine model of work that consider the interplay on black urbanites and white suburbanites. On contemporary conservatism, see Lisa McGirr , Suburban Warriors: The Origins of the New American Right, Politics and Society in Twentieth-Century America ( Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 2001); Kenneth T. Jackson, Crabgrass Frontier: The Suburbanization of America (New York: Oxford University Press, 1985); Mike Davis, City of Quartz: Excavating the Future in Los Angeles (London: Verso, 2006).
12.
Baynard Rustin , "From Protest to Politics," in August Meier, Elliott Rudwick , and Francis L. Broderick, eds., Black Protest Thought in the Twentieth Century, 2nd ed. (New York: Macmillan, 1985), 444-60.
13.
Kevin M.Kruse, WhiteFlight: Atlanta and the Making of Modern Conservatism ( Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 2007), 6.
14.
Matthew D. Lassiter , "De Jure/De Facto Segregation: The Long Shadow of a National Myth," in Matthew D. Lassiter and Joseph Crespino, eds., The Myth of Southern Exceptionalism (New York: Oxford University Press, 2009), 25-48.
15.
Gary Orfield, Susan E. Eaton, and Harvard Project on School Desegregation, eds., Dismantling Desegregation: The Quiet Reversal of Brown v. Board of Education (New York : New Press, 1996).
16.
Steven F. Lawson and Charles Payne, Debating the Civil Rights Movement, 1945-1968 (Lanham, MD: Rowman & Littlefield, 2006); Jacquelyn Dowd Hall, "The Long Civil Rights Movement and the Political Uses of the Past," Journal of American History91, no. 4 (2005): 1233-63.
17.
For a broad overview of this phenomenon, see Douglas S. Massey and Nancy A. Denton, American Apartheid: Segregation and the Making of the Underclass (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1993 ).
18.
Charles Tilly , Wagner D. Jackson, and Barry Kay, Race and Residence in Wilmington, Delaware, 37-49, 194-96; Carol E. Hoffecker, Corporate Capital: Wilmington in the Twentieth Century (Philadelphia: Temple University Press, 1983). 109-10, 128-29.
19.
Bureau of the Census, Census of Population : 1950; Bureau of the Census, 1970 Census of Population; Jeffrey A. Raffel, The Politics of School Desegregation: The Metropolitan Remedy in Delaware (Philadelphia: Temple University Press, 1980), 16; John A. Munroe, History of Delaware (Newark: University of Delaware Press, 1984), 272.
20.
Charles Tilly et al., Race and Residence, 60, 64-87, 126.
21.
Hoffecker, Corporate Capital , 197-205; James E. Newton, "Black Americans in Delaware: An Overview," in Carole Marks, ed., A History of African Americans of Delaware and Maryland’s Eastern Shore (Newark : University of Delaware, n.d.), http://www.udel.edu/BlackHistory/overview.html .
22.
Department of Research and Planning, "Wilmington Public School Racial Distribution of Pupil Enrollment," exhibit 22, Evans v. Buchanan Papers, Amistad Research Center, Tulane University, New Orleans, LA. Department of Public Instruction figures were also cited in Wolters, Burden of Brown, 182; the Committee for the School Decision, "Facts about the Wilmington Desegregation Suit," n.d., Wilmington Public Library, Wilmington, DE; Graduate School of Education, Harvard University, "The Wilmington Public Schools: A Preliminary Needs Assessment," April 1973, Delaware Desegregation Papers, Special Collections, Morris Library, University of Delaware, Newark, DE (hereinafter DDP), 17.
23.
Hoffecker, Corporate Capital , 83-84; "Racial Composition of all Public Schools in Delaware," Morning News, November 27, 1971.
24.
Wolters, Burden of Brown, 191-97.
25.
Wolters argued that the lawyers approached the future black plaintiffs for "tactical reasons." Ibid., 207. But as Morris noted, the plaintiff class in Evans were black parents on behalf of their children. The white parents, thus, had no standing as plaintiffs in a desegregation suit. Morris, "Role of Delaware Lawyers," 26.
26.
Jeanne and Clifton Lewis, interview with author, Wilmington, Delaware, August 13, 2003; Wolters, Burden of Brown, 206-8. The fifth original plaintiff, Mary Woods, withdrew from the case because her children were no longer enrolled in Wilmington public schools by the time of the trial. "School Suit Hearings Begin," Evening Journal, December 13, 1973.
27.
Irving Morris to Jack Greenberg, "Re: Wilmington, Delaware, School Case," October 23, 1972, Records of the Center for National Policy Review, Library of Congress, Washington, DC (hereinafter CNPR); "Wilmington NAACP won’t enter desegregation suit," Morning News, October 29, 1973; "NAACP Takes Sideline Role in School Suit," Evening Journal, October 29, 1973; Morris, "Role of Delaware Lawyers," 26; Wolters, Burden of Brown, 210; "Heavies Head Lineup in Desegregation Suit," Morning News, December 14, 1973.
28.
The Wilmington Board of Education was of a split mind when it came to joining the case as an intervening plaintiff. The three white members of the board favored supporting the suit. The black members were split, however. Board member Hermania Garrett did not see the educational imperative for joining the case and believed the suit a cynical attempt to reduce tax rates in the city. Robert Mitchell concurred; he was also concerned about the potential negative impact that a ruling for desegregation would have on the power and authority of the Wilmington Board. Lloyd Casson and Roy Wagstaff were sympathetic to the practical concerns of their fellow black board members, but they were also committed to the cause of integration and, with some reluctance, voted to support the case. Wolters, Burden of Brown, 211; Paul R. Dimond, Beyond Busing: Inside the Challenge to Urban Segregation (Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press, 1985), 291.
29.
Resolution to Intervene in Pending Desegregation Suit; n.d., Evans v. Buchanan Collection, Historical Society of Delaware, Wilmington, DE (hereinafter EvB); "Wilmington School Board Becomes Plaintiff," June 19, 1972, EvB; "Wilmington School Board Becomes Plaintiff," News Release, June 19, 1972, EvB; "Wilmington Deseg Trial Set to Open Dec. 12," Deseg Fact Sheet, September 20, 1973, University of Delaware Library, 3; "City Schools Join Suit for County System," Evening Journal, June 20, 1972; "City Board Joins School Merger Suit," Morning News, June 20, 1972.
30.
Lucas had earlier explained to the president of the state conference of the NAACP, Littleton Mitchell. Louis R. Lucas to Littleton P. Mitchell, May 8, 1973, City of Wilmington Litigation Files, Delaware Public Archives, Dover, DE. The attorneys in the Delaware case did not invent such an approach. In many ways, they emulated metropolitan strategies that marked concurrent Legal Defense Fund, Inc. challenges to school segregation in Charlottesville, Detroit, and Richmond. Lassiter, Silent Majority, 280.
31.
On the legislative history of the Educational Advancement Act, see Alice L. Wilson, Jr., "Consolidation History," Morning News, January 7, 1974; "End of an Era," in Department of Public Instruction, Annual Report for the Year Ending June 30, 1965 (Dover, DE: State Board of Education, n.d.); United Forces for Education of Delaware, "Summary of the Delaware Educational Advancement Act (HB 438)," January 1967, DDP; John G. Parres, "Wolcott Report Application to Local District," Profile 1, no. 4 (January 1967): 1-3, Pauline A. Young Papers, Robert W. Woodruff Library, Atlanta University Center, Atlanta, GA; "Statement for the State Board of Education as it Relates to the Educational Advancement Act of 1967," May 25, 1967, Minutes of the Board, State Board of Education, Delaware Public Archives, Dover DE (hereinafter SBOE), 135-41; "The Educational Advancement Act," June 12, 1967, SBOE; "Educational Advancement Act," May 22, 1968, SBOE; Kenneth C. Madden to Secretaries of Boards of Education and Boards of School Trustees in Delaware School Districts, SBOE, August 15, 1968.
32.
Dimond, Beyond Busing, 293-94.
33.
Wilmington City Council Ordinance 69-0790, June 19, 1969; Wilmington City Council Resolution 69-168, October 2, 1969; City Council Ordinance 70-038, May 21, 1970; Wilmington City Council Resolution 71-128, June 17, 1971; Wilmington City Council Resolution 71-254, November 4, 1971; Wilmington City Council Resolution 72-044, March 3, 1972, Evans v. Buchanan Collection, Amistad Research Center, Tulane University, New Orleans, LA.
34.
"Heckert admits ’68 School Law Ignored Court," Morning News, December 22, 1973; "Heckert Says Segregation Is Not Deliberate," Evening Journal, December 23, 1973; Dimond, Beyond Busing, 298.
35.
Alice J. Nixon to Preston G. Eisenbrey, April 27, 1955, EvB.
36.
Dimond, Beyond Busing, 297; "Black Buys from White by Wearing Olive Drab," Morning News, January 8, 1974.
37.
"Realty Code Brought into School Suit, Morning News, December 15, 1973; "Segregated Housing Surfaced in School Court Case," Evening Journal, December 15, 1973; Dimond, Beyond Busing, 294.
38.
Dimond, Beyond Busing, 295; "Covenants Argued in School Case ," Evening Journal, December 19, 1973.
39.
Evans v. Buchanan, 379 F. Supp. 1218 (1974).
40.
Evans v. Buchanan, 379 F. Supp. 1223 (1974).
41.
Jeffrey A. Raffel and Barry R. Morstain, "Wilmington, Delaware: Merging City and Suburban School Systems," in Charles V. Willie and Susan L. Greenblatt, eds., Community Politics and Educational Change: Ten School Systems under Court Order (New York : Longman, 1981), 95; "Judges Order State to Submit 2 School Desegregation Plans," Morning News, July 13, 1974; "Wilmington Integration Order Poses the Possibility of Busing," New York Times, July 13, 1974.
42.
Milliken v. Bradley, 418 U.S. 717 (1974); Peter H. Irons, Jim Crow’s Children: The Broken Promise of the Brown Decision (New York: Viking, 2002), 237-43; James T. Patterson, Brown v. Board of Education: A Civil Rights Milestone and Its Troubled Legacy (New York: Oxford University Press, 2001), 178-80; "High Court Rejects Detroit Bus Plan," Evening Journal, July 25, 1974. For a broader review of Milliken v. Bradley, see Dimond, Beyond Busing, 21-118; Bernard Schwartz, A History of the Supreme Court (New York: Oxford University Press, 1993), 323.
43.
Milliken v. Bradley, 418 U.S. 744 (1974).
44.
Gary Orfield , "Plessy Parallels," in Gary Orfield, Susan Eaton , and the Harvard Project on School Desegregation , eds., Dismantling Desegregation: The Quiet Reversal of Brown v. Board of Education (New York: New Press, 1996), 30-31; Patterson, Brown v. Board, 181; Derrick Bell , Silent Covenants: Brown v. Board of Education and the Unfulfilled Hopes for Racial Reform ( New York : Oxford University Press, 2004 ), 110-11.
45.
Evans v. Buchanan, 393 F. Supp. 428 (1975); "Supplemental Finding of Facts," CNPR; "Desegregation Plans Are Ordered," Morning News, March 26, 1975; Brief of Plaintiffs and Intervening Plaintiffs, Evans v. Buchanan, January 6, 1975, CNPR.
46.
Evans v. Buchanan, 393 F. Supp. 434 (1975).
47.
Evans v. Buchanan, 393 F. Supp. 437 (1975).
48.
Evans v. Buchanan, 393 F. Supp. 438-46 (1975).
49.
Louis L. Redding to Nathanial Jones, March 3, 1975, Papers of the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (hereinafter NAACP Collection).
50.
Nathanial B. Jones to Louis L. Redding, April 7, 1975, NAACP Collection.
51.
"A Proposal for the Desegregation and Reorganization of School Districts in New Castle County, Delaware," April 10, 1975, attached to Jeffrey A. Raffel, "Compliance with the School Desegregation Order," in Compliance with the School Desegregation Order, Community Survey on Desegregation Issue no. 3 (Newark: University of Delaware, College of Urban Affairs and Public Policy , October 1977), DDP ; " 6-District Merger Favored for Deseg," Evening Journal, April 3, 1975; "State Studying 5-Way Split to Desegregate City Schools ," Morning News, April 3, 1975; " State Readies 5-Zone School Plan," Morning News, July 9, 1975.
52.
Staff of the State Department of Public Instruction, Analysis of Nineteen Desegregation Proposals, 30-31, DDP; " Howell Asks Vouchers to Ease School Shifts," Evening Journal , April 5, 1975; "Vouchers: Parents Offered Pick of Schools," Morning News, April 5, 1975; "5-2 Wilmington OK Sends Deseg Plan to State," Evening Journal, June 12, 1975. For a consideration of the rise of black-led school districts in the wake of white flight, see Jeffrey R. Henig, Richard C. Hula, Marion Orr, and Desiree S. Pedescleaux , The Color of School Reform: Race, Politics, and the Challenge of Urban Education (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1999), 50-55.
53.
"Alfred I. Board Opposes Plan," Morning News , April 5, 1975.
54.
The De La Warr School Board, whose district was located just south of the city and contained a substantial number of black students, proved the exception. It proposed a countywide district with four attendance areas. Staff of the State Department of Public Instruction, Analysis of Nineteen Desegregation Proposals, DDP, 38-39; "De La Warr Plan: County Wide Board to Aid Integration," Evening Journal, June 13, 1975; "Stanton, De La Warr Offer Desegregation Proposals," Morning News, June 13, 1975.
55.
Staff of the State Department of Public Instruction , Analysis of Nineteen Desegregation Proposals, 15-16.
Staff of the State Department of Public Instruction , Analysis of Nineteen Desegregation Proposals, 27-28, 32-33; "Stanton, De La Warr Offer Desegregation Proposals," Morning News, June 13, 1975; "Alfred I Airs ‘Center Concept’ Plan for Busing," Morning News, June 11, 1975 .
59.
New Castle County school officials, in general, welcomed Brown. By the summer of 1955, most of the school districts in northern New Castle County had made arrangements to desegregate their entire school program. "Statement Concerning Desegregation in Schools of the State of Delaware," n.d., SBOE.
60.
On the populist basis of suburban backlash, see Lassiter, Silent Majority.
61.
Jeffrey A. Raffel , "Analysis of Alternative Desegregation Plans and Reports of Meetings and Conferences," June 13, 1975 , DDP, 35-37.
62.
"Wilmington Parents’ Concerns Over Integration Surface ," Morning News, January 23, 1975.
"Angry Crowd Delays Talks on School Suit," Morning News, January 30, 1975; "Angry Parents Harass Panel on Busing," Evening Journal, January 30, 1975.
65.
Delaware Department of Public Instruction , "State Board of Education Meeting of August 4, 1975 ," Board Highlights, Morris Library, University of Delaware , Wilmington, DE (hereinafter BH), 103; Delaware Department of Public Instruction, "State Board of Education Meeting of November 13, 1975," BH, 2; Department of Public Instruction and State Board of Education, "Annual Report," Fiscal1976, University of Delaware Library, Newark, DE, 59-60; State Board of Education , "A Plan for the Integration of Designated School Districts in New Castle County, Delaware: A Modified Zone Transfer Plan," September 16, 1975, DDP; "State Board OKs 3 School Plans," Morning News, August 5, 1975 ; "School Plan Uses Bits of Those Rejected ," Evening Journal, August 6, 1975.
66.
Quoted in "Desegregation Plan Poses Questions to Wilmington Schools," Morning News, May 27, 1976.
67.
"Assembly OKs 13-Member Interim Board," Morning News, June 24, 1976; " Deseg Threats Charged by Lucas," Morning News, June 24, 1976.
68.
"Crowd of 1,000 Debates Pupil Assignment Plans," Morning News, January 28, 1977; "Desegregation: Assigning Pupils Is Tough," Morning News, January 30, 1977.
69.
Evans v. Buchanan, 555 F.2d 379 (1977), emphasis added. Swann v. Charlotte-Mecklenburg Bd. of Ed., 402 U.S. 1 (1971), emphasis added.
70.
Raffel, Politics of School Desegregation, 54-56, 97; Delaware Department of Public Instruction, " Meeting of June 16, 1977," BH, 1-2; "Newest Deseg Plan: 1-Way Busing from City," Evening Journal, June 16, 1977; "New Deseg Plan Would Bus Only Out of City," Morning News, June 17, 1977; "Final Deseg Plan Is Adopted," Morning News, July 6, 1977.
71.
"Views Mixed on Deseg Plan," Evening Journal , July 17, 1977; "Busing Plan Called Aid to Segregation ," Evening Journal, July 20, 1977.
72.
Quoted in "New Deseg Plan Draws More Fire," Morning News, June 18, 1977.
73.
Raffel, Politics of School Desegregation, 55-56, 97.
74.
Students in grades seven through twelve would be transferred in the 1977-1978 school year. The next year, the program would extend to all elementary school students, with the exception of kindergarteners. The State Board estimated that each district would achieve a level of around 19 percent black students. Wilmington would retain around 3,500 students, 44 percent black. In addition, black teachers would be hired in suburban districts according to the number of black students who did not seek exemptions. Disabled and bilingual students were exempted from the plan, as were students at the Howard Career Center, one of the city’s two vocational schools that contained a major concentration of black students. Delaware Department of Public Instruction, "Meeting of July 21, 1977," BH, 8.
75.
"Legislature Offers Own Busing Plan," Morning News, June 25, 1977.
76.
Evans v. Buchanan, 435 F. Supp. 832 (1977).
77.
Evans v. Buchanan, 435 F. Supp. 836-37 (1977).
78.
Delaware Department of Public Instruction, "Meeting of August 18, 1977, BH, 8; Raffel, Politics of School Desegregation, 56-57; "Scarborough Will Lead Court-Ordered New Board ," Evening Journal, August 11, 1977.
79.
The membership was decreased to five-the original number of the Interim Board-and the New Board was freed, for the moment, from some of the particularly sensitive matters that hamstrung its predecessor. Four out of the five members of the New Board were holdovers from the Interim Board, however; the president of the Interim Board continued as the president of the New Board. Delaware Department of Public Instruction, "Meeting of July 21, 1977," BH; "New Board Planning Desegregation," Evening Journal, August 9, 1977; "New Deseg Board Draws Timetable for Finishing Plan," Morning News, August 12, 1977; "Deseg Panel OKs Timetable to Comply with Order," Evening Journal, August 12, 1977; "Planners Skirt Issue of Deseg Tax Shifts," Morning News, September 27, 1977; Raffel, Politics of School Desegregation, 75; "New Five-Member School Panel Sworn In," Morning News, August 11, 1977; "New Five-Member School Panel Sworn In," Morning News, August 11, 1977; "Scarborough Will Lead Court-Ordered New Board," Evening Journal, August 11, 1977; "New Deseg Board Can’t Duck the Old Issues," Morning News, August 14, 1977.
80.
Delaware Department of Public Instruction , "Meeting of September 15, 1977," BH , 4.
81.
"Board OKs Proposals to Close High Schools," Morning News, August 26, 1977; "Board Votes to Shut City, De La Warr Highs," Evening Journal, August 26, 1977; "New Desegregation War: Open the Closed Doors ," Morning News, August 28, 1977; " Board’s Work on Deseg Plan Almost Finished," Morning News, September 25, 1977.
82.
"4 Deseg Areas Are Worked Out," Morning News , September 9, 1977; "Planners Set Up Deseg Assignments ," Evening Journal, September 23, 1977.
83.
"Board Approves Assignment Plan," Morning News, September 23, 1977.
84.
"Wilmington Deseg Plan Upholds All High Schools," Morning News, September 29, 1977; " City to Give U.S. Court Its Own Desegregation Plan," Evening Journal, September 29, 1977; "Fair Deseg Elusive, Black Leader Says, but Plan Still Lacks," Morning News, October 27, 1977.
85.
Quoted in "Fair Deseg Elusive, Black Leader Says, but Plan Still Lacks," Morning News, October 27, 1977 .
86.
Michael Rodak, Jr. to William L. Taylor, "RE: Claymont School District, et. al. v. Brenda Evans, et. al. no. 77-233" October 3, 1977, CNPR; Michael Rodak, Jr. to William Prickett, "RE: State Board of Education, et. al. v. Brenda Evans, et. al., November 7, 1977," CNPR.
87.
"Judge Urges an Out-of-Court Deseg Solution," Morning News, October 22, 1977.
88.
"Court’s Deseg Plan May Split the Difference," Morning News, November 14, 1977.
89.
Delaware Department of Public Instruction , "Meeting on November 17, 1977," BH, 6; "Major Features of Desegregation Plans ," Morning News, November 20, 1977; "Court Gets Compromise Deseg Plan," Morning News, November 23, 1977; "‘Plan’ Is Many-Faceted Diamond in the Rough," Morning News, November 23, 1977.
90.
Evans v. Buchanan, 447 F. Supp. 982 (1978); " ‘9-3’ Pupil Plan Picked for Deseg," Profile4, no. 4 (January 1978 ): 1; "Judge Blueprints ‘9-3’ Deseg Plan," Evening Journal, January 10, 1978.
91.
Evans v. Buchanan, 447 F. Supp. 1001 (1978).
92.
Delaware Department of Public Instruction, "Meeting of February 16, 1978," BH, 1-3; Staff of the State Department of Public Instruction, "A Plan for the Reorganization and Desegregation of Designated School Districts in New Castle County, Delaware: A Four District Reorganization Plan," February 10, 1978, DPP.
93.
Evans v. Buchanan, 555 F.2d 373 (1977); "Deseg Order Upheld on Appeal," Morning News, May 19, 1977; "Deseg Upheld 4-3, Ratios Dropped," Evening Journal, May 19, 1977; "School Plan Gets Backing on Appeal," Washington Post, May 19, 1977.
94.
Dayton Board of Education v. Brinkman, 433 U.S. 406 (1977).
95.
Matthew D. Lassiter and Joseph Crespino, "The End of Southern History," in Matthew D. Lassiter and Joseph Crespino, eds., The Myth of Southern Exceptionalism , 3-22.
96.
"Deseg Plan Is Adopted Virtually Unchanged," Evening Journal, April 14, 1978.
97.
"For Wilmington Board, It’s 144 Years of History," Evening Journal, June 20, 1978.
98.
Researcher Jeffrey Raffel found that nearly half of Wilmington blacks opposed (42 percent) or strongly opposed (43 percent) busing in 1977 and 1978. A majority of blacks also believed that desegregation would lead to increases in disciplinary problems, expose students to undue risk on buses, make it difficult for parents to attend to children if they were sick or injured at school, and have a negative effect on after-school activities. Raffel, Politics of School Desegregation, 28; Jeffrey A. Raffel, "Information about Desegregation: Public Knowledge and Information Sources," Community Survey on Desegregation Issues: Report no. 2 (Newark, DE: University of Delaware, College of Urban Affairs and Public Policy , October 1977), DPP.
99.
Swann v. Charlotte-Mecklenburg Board of Education, 402 U.S. 1 (1971).
100.
Gary Orfield and Chungmei Lee , Brown at 50: King’s Dream or Plessy’s Nightmare? (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University, Civil Rights Project, January 2004), 36.
