Private Schools: As Hard as ABC

"Do you have any Negro students?" a visitor asked the headmaster of a celebrated Eastern prep school. "Certainly," came the reply—or so the story goes. "There's one of them now. I don't know where the other is, but he's around here somewhere."

Some of the top private schools in the U.S.—Mount Hermon, Exeter, Andover— have had Negro students for nearly a century. Others, neighborhood schools like Chicago's Francis W. Parker and Germantown (Pa.) Friends, have been admitting Negroes when they move into the neighborhood. For most of the rest, the Negro on campus—if there was one—was the showcase star athlete,...