Swann v. Charlotte-Mecklenburg Board of Education

311 F. Supp. 265
CourtDistrict Court, W.D. North Carolina
DecidedFebruary 5, 1970
DocketCiv. A. No. 1974
StatusPublished
Cited by13 cases

This text of 311 F. Supp. 265 (Swann v. Charlotte-Mecklenburg Board of Education) is published on Counsel Stack Legal Research, covering District Court, W.D. North Carolina primary law. Counsel Stack provides free access to over 12 million legal documents including statutes, case law, regulations, and constitutions.

Bluebook
Swann v. Charlotte-Mecklenburg Board of Education, 311 F. Supp. 265 (W.D.N.C. 1970).

Opinion

311 F.Supp. 265 (1970)

James E. SWANN et al., Plaintiffs,
v.
The CHARLOTTE-MECKLENBURG BOARD OF EDUCATION et al., Defendants.

Civ. A. No. 1974.

United States District Court, W. D. North Carolina, Charlotte Division.

February 5, 1970.

*266 J. Levonne Chambers and Adam Stein, Charlotte, N. C., for plaintiffs.

Brock Barkley, William J. Waggoner, Weinstein, Waggoner, Sturges & Odom, and Benjamin S. Horack, Ervin, Horack & McCartha, Charlotte, N. C., for defendants.

ORDER

McMILLAN, District Judge.

On December 2, 1969, this court appointed Dr. John A. Finger, Jr., of Providence, Rhode Island, to study the Charlotte-Mecklenburg school system and advise the court how the schools could be desegregated. The defendant school board, by order of December 1, 1969, had been extended a fourth opportunity to submit a plan if they wished. Dr. Finger went to work; the school staff worked with him; and they have produced some extremely useful information and reports, which will be referred to in this order as the Board plan and the Finger plan.

Hearings on the plans were conducted on February 2 and February 5, 1970.

The board plan, prepared by the school staff, relies almost entirely on geographic attendance zones, and is tailored to the Board's limiting specifications. It leaves many schools segregated. The Finger plan incorporates most of those parts of the Board plan which achieve desegregation in particular districts by re-zoning; however, the Finger plan goes further and produces desegregation of all the schools in the system.

Taken together, the plans provide adequate supplements to a final desegregation order.

The court would like again to express appreciation to Dr. Finger for the intelligence, *267 resourcefulness and tact with which he has pursued his difficult assignment, and to Dr. William Self, Superintendent of the schools, and to his able staff, for the excellent work done by them in their difficult role of helping prepare one plan to comply with what the court believes the law requires, and simultaneously preparing another plan to suit the majority of the School Board who, at last reckoning, still did not appear to accept the court's order as representing the law of the land.

The court is also grateful to the Board's outside consultant, Mr. Weil, of Systems Associates, Inc., whose two hundred days of work and whose computer studies formed the building blocks, or points of departure, for much of the work of the others.

Recent appellate court decisions have hammered home the message that sixteen years of "deliberate speed" are long enough to desegregate tax supported schools. On October 29, 1969, in Alexander v. Holmes County, 396 U.S. 19, 90 S.Ct. 29, 24 L.Ed.2d 19, the Supreme Court ordered numerous Deep South school districts to be completely desegregated by January 1, 1970; schools in Atlanta, Miami and parts of Chicago have been ordered totally desegregated; the Supreme Court in January ordered February 1, 1970, desegregation of 300,000 pupils in six Gulf Coast states; the Fourth Circuit Court of Appeals in Nesbit v. Statesville, 418 F.2d 1040 (December 2, 1969), ordered elimination by January 1, 1970, of the racial characteristics of the last black schools in Durham, Reidsville and Statesville, North Carolina; and in Whittenberg v. Greenville, South Carolina, 424 F.2d 195, the Fourth Circuit Court of Appeals, in an opinion by Chief Judge Clement F. Haynsworth, Jr., has just last month ordered the desegregation by February 16, 1970, of the 58,000 students in Judge Haynsworth's own home town. Judge Robert Martin of Greenville, pursuant to that mandate, on February 2, 1970, ordered all the Greenville schools to be populated by February 16, 1970, on a basis of 80% white and 20% black.

In the Greenville opinion the court said:

"These decisions leave us with no discretion to consider delays in pupil integration until September 1970. Whatever the state of progress in a particular school district and whatever the disruption which will be occasioned by the immediate reassignment of teachers and pupils in mid-year, there remains no judicial discretion to postpone immediate implementation of the constitutional principles as announced in Green v. County School Board of New Kent County, 391 U.S. 430, 88 S.Ct. 1689, 20 L.Ed.2d 716; Alexander v. Holmes County Bd. of Educ., 396 U.S. 19, 90 S.Ct. 29, 24 L.Ed.2d 19 (Oct. 29, 1969); Carter v. West Feliciana Parish School Bd., 396 U.S. 1032, 90 S.Ct. 611, 24 L.Ed.2d 530 (Jan. 14, 1970)."

These decisions are binding on the United States District Court for the Western District of North Carolina. Unless that were true, the Constitution would mean whatever might be the temporary notion of whichever one of 340-odd federal judges happened to hear the case. This is a matter of law, not anarchy; of constitutional right, not popular sentiment.

The order which follows is not based upon any requirement of "racial balance." The School Board, after four opportunities and nearly ten months of time, have failed to submit a lawful plan (one which desegregates all the schools). This default on their part leaves the court in the position of being forced to prepare or choose a lawful plan. The fairest way the court knows to deal with this situation was stated clearly in the December 1, 1969 order, as follows:

"In default of any such plan from the school board, the court will start with the thought, originally advanced in the order of April 23, that efforts *268 should be made to reach a 71-29 ratio in the various schools so that there will be no basis for contending that one school is racially different from the others, but to understand that variations from that norm may be unavoidable."

Therefore, and in accordance with the specific, detailed, numbered guidelines of this court's order of December 1, 1969, it is ordered:

1. That the defendants discontinue the operation of segregated schools.

2. That the defendants take such action as is necessary to desegregate all the schools—students and faculty.

3. That desegregation of faculty be accomplished, as previously ordered, by assigning faculty (specialized faculty positions excepted) so that the ratio of black and white faculty members of each school shall be approximately the same as the ratio of black and white faculty members throughout the system.

4. That teachers be assigned so that the competence and experience of teachers in formerly or recently black schools will not be inferior to those in the formerly or recently white schools in the system.

5. That no school be operated with an all-black or predominantly black student body.

6. That pupils of all grades be assigned in such a way that as nearly as practicable the various schools at various grade levels have about the same proportion of black and white students.

7. That transportation be offered on a uniform non-racial basis to all children whose reassignment to[1]

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Related

Belk v. Charlotte-Mecklenburg Board of Education
269 F.3d 305 (Fourth Circuit, 2001)
Terry Belk Dwayne Collins, on Behalf of Themselves and the Class They Represent, William Capacchione, Individually and on Behalf of Christina Capacchione, a Minor Michael P. Grant Richard Easterling Lawrence Gauvreau Karen Bentley Charles Thompson Scott C. Willard v. The Charlotte-Mecklenburg Boardof Education Eric Smith, Superintendent, in His Official Capacity Arthur Griffin, Chairman of the Charlotte-Mecklenburg School Board, in His Official Capacity, United States of America North Carolina School Boards Association National School Boards Association, Amici Curiae. William Capacchione, Individually and on Behalf of Christina Capacchione, a Minor Michael P. Grant Richard Easterling Lawrence Gauvreau Karen Bentley Charles Thompson Scott C. Willard, and Terry Belk Dwayne Collins, on Behalf of Themselves and the Class They Represent v. The Charlotte-Mecklenburg Boardof Education Eric Smith, Superintendent, in His Official Capacity Arthur Griffin, Chairman of the Charlotte-Mecklenburg School Board, in His Official Capacity, United States of America North Carolina School Boards Association National School Boards Association, Amici Curiae. William Capacchione, Individually and on Behalf of Christina Capacchione, a Minor Michael P. Grant Richard Easterling Lawrence Gauvreau Karen Bentley Charles Thompson Scott C. Willard,plaintiffs-Appellees, and Terry Belk Dwayne Collins, on Behalf of Themselves and the Class They Represent v. The Charlotte-Mecklenburg Boardof Education Eric Smith, Superintendent, in His Official Capacity Arthur Griffin, Chairman of the Charlotte-Mecklenburg School Board, in His Official Capacity, United States of America North Carolina School Boards Association National School Boards Association, Amici Curiae. William Capacchione, Individually and on Behalf of Christina Capacchione, a Minor Michael P. Grant Richard Easterling Lawrence Gauvreau Karen Bentley Charles Thompson Scott C. Willard, and Terry Belk Dwayne Collins, on Behalf of Themselves and the Class They Represent v. The Charlotte-Mecklenburg Boardof Education Eric Smith, Superintendent, in His Official Capacity Arthur Griffin, Chairman of the Charlotte-Mecklenburg School Board, in His Official Capacity, United States of America North Carolina School Boards Association National School Boards Association, Amici Curiae
269 F.3d 305 (Fourth Circuit, 2001)
Belk v. Charlotte-Mecklenburg
Fourth Circuit, 2001
Capacchione v. Charlotte-Mecklenburg Schools
57 F. Supp. 2d 228 (W.D. North Carolina, 1999)
Vaughns v. Board of Education of Prince George's County
355 F. Supp. 1051 (D. Maryland, 1972)
Harvest v. Board of Public Instruction
312 F. Supp. 269 (M.D. Florida, 1970)

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