IN 1960 most of the 77,000 citizens of New Rochelle, N.Y., viewed school segregation as a disease confined to the distant likes of Little Rock, Ark. The town's ethnic mix—14% Negro, 30% Jewish, 45% Irish and Italian Catholic —was so faithfully reflected in the high school that the Voice of America once touted it as a shining example of integrated education. Only a year later, New Rochelle became the "Little Rock of the North," convicted in a federal court of gerrymandering to promote segregation. Case in point: Lincoln Elementary School, 94% Negro.
More in hurt than anger, New Rochelle defended Lincoln as a typical "neighborhood school" that, like Topsy, just grew that way. The trial told a different story. Back in 1930, the school board redrew lines to make the Lincoln district match the Negro area. It also allowed whites to transfer out —and they did. By 1949 the school was 100% Negro.
The board tried to bring resident whites back to the school by revoking transfers. Instead, whites switched to private and parochial schools or moved away, making the district more Negro than ever. By 1960 Lincoln's pupils in general were academically behind every other elementary school in town. The board, nobly it thought, got a city-wide vote to build a fine new Lincoln on the same spot. Negro parents countered with a federal suit on then-novel grounds: it is just as unconstitutional to compel Negroes to attend a de facto segregated school in the North as a de jure segregated school in the South.
Federal Judge Irving R. Kaufman did not decide that question (nor has any other federal court so far). He ruled only that gerrymandering had violated equal protection under the 14th Amendment. The outcome jogged white minds all over the North. Given free access to other schools, Lincoln's pupils on the whole did better, except for some who landed in a white school that overwhelmed them. Because two-fifths of Lincoln's pupils chose to remain, New Rochelle is now closing the 65-year-old building, assigning the children to balanced schools, and launching an extensive bus service to help keep the entire city desegregated.
On the Attack. The experience of New Rochelle is a case history in a development that is spreading across the Northern U.S.: a movement against de facto segregation of schools. Victory in New Rochelle spurred the N.A.A.C.P. to a successful attack on de facto school segregation last year in a dozen Northern communities, from Coatesville, Pa., to Eloy, Ariz. This summer it is "mobilizing direct action" in 70 cities throughout 18 Northern and Western states. School boards are responding, and many a change will have been made by September. All kinds of tools are being tried. Samples:
— OPEN ENROLLMENT. The most widely used method so far, it modifies the neighborhood-school concept enough to let students of mostly Negro schools transfer to mostly white schools that have sufficient room. Open enrollment was pioneered in New York City, is used or will be starting in some form next September in Baltimore, Detroit, Pittsburgh, Buffalo, San Francisco and many smaller cities. Usually only a fraction of the eligible Negro students take advantage of it.