United States v. School District 151 of Cook County, Illinois

286 F. Supp. 786, 1968 U.S. Dist. LEXIS 9145
CourtDistrict Court, N.D. Illinois
DecidedJuly 8, 1968
Docket68 C 755
StatusPublished
Cited by31 cases

This text of 286 F. Supp. 786 (United States v. School District 151 of Cook County, Illinois) is published on Counsel Stack Legal Research, covering District Court, N.D. Illinois primary law. Counsel Stack provides free access to over 12 million legal documents including statutes, case law, regulations, and constitutions.

Bluebook
United States v. School District 151 of Cook County, Illinois, 286 F. Supp. 786, 1968 U.S. Dist. LEXIS 9145 (N.D. Ill. 1968).

Opinion

*788 MEMORANDUM OF DECISION

JULIUS J. HOFFMAN, District J udge.

This matter is before the court this morning for the disposition of the plaintiff’s motion for a preliminary injunction under the provisions of Rule 65 of the Federal Rules of Civil Procedure. The cause has been fully tried, briefed and argued and the court has had the benefit of a transcript of the evidence together with all of the documentary and physical exhibits offered by the parties and admitted into evidence by the court.

The action involves alleged school segregation and is brought under the provisions of Title IV of the Civil Rights Act of 1964, 42 U.S.C. § 2000c et seq. The court has determined that the plaintiff is entitled to the relief sought based on the facts as they have been found by the court and the applicable law and an injunction will issue against the defendants which will insure that no longer will there be discrimination on the basis of race in the operation of School District 151 for the 1968-1969 school year and thereafter.

It is more than fourteen years since the Supreme Court ruled that “in the field of public education the doctrine of ‘separate but equal’ has no place.” It is more than thirteen years since the Court said that desegregation should proceed “with all deliberate speed.” Too often there has been deliberation but no speed. There has not even been a beginning in some cases, despite increasing and well documented evidence showing that racial segregation in the schools has been detrimental to the Negro child, the white child, and to the United States.

School segregation, whatever the cause, has the effect of stigmatizing Negro pupils and retarding their educational development. The mere fact of separation encourages invidious comparison; and the false conclusion that the Negro pupil is inferior to the white pupil is tragically forced on the black child himself through constant elaboration and repetition. He sees white parents removing their children from his vicinity as if to protect them from contagion, and he sees school boards and administrators creating separate isolation wards to contain him. The absence of white teachers is an added affront. If poverty has prevented him from obtaining cultural and educational experiences that promote the development of children who have economic and social advantages, he generally scores below the average in standard achievement tests. Unless he receives significant remedial instruction he continues to limp along one, two, or three years behind his grade level, not expected to catch up and therefore not motivated to do so. Robbed of incentive, self-confidence, and self-esteem, he is in grave danger of becoming another battered child, for just as physical abuse batters the body, so psychological injury can batter the personality.

Not unnaturally, a child so afflicted becomes a drop-out and a drifter. Even the one who finishes school has been conditioned to believe that the future holds nothing better for him than a menial job. This represents an unconscionable theft of a child’s birthright and a waste of human resources which could be of great value to the nation.

Though integration does not automatically raise the Negro student’s grades, it provides an atmosphere in which he finds that they can be raised and that there is good reason for raising them. He is stimulated and motivated by contact with teachers who expect him to succeed and with pupils who know by example, as many Negro children do not, that education leads to job opportunity and a chance of a good life.

The white opponents of pupil and faculty integration, on the other hand, are doing a disservice to their own children when they deprive them of the opportunity to know members of another race and to be saved from the ignorant, arrogant belief that a white skin is proof of preeminence. The white child’s education is woefully inadequate if it does not illuminate those dark corners of the mind in which prejudice lurks. Both *789 white and black children are being misled when they are told, directly or by implication, that it is best for them to be taught only by members of their own race. They are being cheated when they are deprived of the experience of working together and learning about one another in school as preparation for life in an inter-racial world of adults.

Barriers to understanding not only cripple the individual but also endanger the nation. Clearly, the future of the United States depends in no small part on education — not the education of white children but the education of all children. We do not need another fact-finding commission to tell us that something must be done to prevent a school situation which produces apathy and hopelessness that cause a life to be wasted, or frustration and anger that cause it to be risked in public disorders. It is not rational to maintain a situation which is conducive to the kind of behavior that we must prevent or to expect schools to produce law-abiding citizens in a school system that flouts the law. School boards and school administrators have a moral and civic duty as well as a legal duty to end segregation. To fail the Negro child would be to fail the nation.

An order providing that the defendants, their agents, officers, employees and successors, and all those in active concert and participation with them, be preliminarily enjoined from discriminating on the basis of race or color in the operation of School District 151 and in the assignment of teachers or students in the district will be entered. This order will be based on the findings of fact and conclusions of law filed here today by the court in accordance with the provisions of Rule 52 of the Federal Rules of Civil Procedure.

FINDINGS OF FACT AND CONCLUSIONS OF LAW

FINDINGS OF FACT

1. School District 151 is an elementary public school district organized and existing under the laws of the State of Illinois. It is located in Cook County, Illinois, and consists of portions of the communities of Phoenix, Thornton, Harvey, and South Holland. Appendix A to these findings is a map of School District 151. (Tr. 153 (Kingsland); Govt. Ex. P-4; Answer, para. 3)

2. Charles Watts is Superintendent of School District 151. Richard Graf, Wallace Davis, Louis Wiersma, Gerald Bennett, James Hendrix, Donald McGee and Hobart Krillic are the members of the Board of Education of School District 151. Under the laws of the State of Illinois and the Policy Manual for District 151, the members of the Board of Education and the Superintendent are charged with the responsibility of operating the public schools of District 151. (Answer, para. 6; Ill.Ann.Stat., Ch. 122, Sec. 10-21.4; Policy Manual for District 151.)

3. The following table lists the schools located in School District 151, the dates of their initial utilization, and their locations:

Date of Schools Initial Use Location

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Bluebook (online)
286 F. Supp. 786, 1968 U.S. Dist. LEXIS 9145, Counsel Stack Legal Research, https://law.counselstack.com/opinion/united-states-v-school-district-151-of-cook-county-illinois-ilnd-1968.