The Southwestern Historical Quarterly, Volume 95, July 1991 - April, 1992 Page: 44
598 p. : ill. (some col.), maps, ports. ; 23 cm.View a full description of this periodical.
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Southwestern Historical Quarterly
and "white flight," the white avoidance of bus transportation to deseg-
regated schools, experienced in some other Texas school districts.
Although the struggle for an integrated Hamilton Park ended sat-
isfactorily, the struggle itself produced anxiety, frustration, delays, and
defeats for its participants. No matter what position each took on the
issues, all were caught up in the dynamic process as court decisions,
the Civil Rights Act of 1964, and administrative action moved the fed-
eral thrust from tolerating noncompliance with the Brown decisions,
through accepting color-blind desegregation, through mandating
mixed black-and-white schools, to requiring bus transportation, if nec-
essary to achieve mixed-race schools on a districtwide basis.
The immediate origins of Texas public school desegregation lay, of
course, in the landmark Supreme Court Brown and Brown II decisions
of 1954 and 1955. The first ordered an end to using race as a criterion
for pupil assignment, while the second urged timely compliance under
the direction of the federal district courts. In 1964 Congress passed its
comprehensive assault on segregation, which, however, declared that
desegregation did not include "the assignment of students to public
schools in order to overcome racial imbalance." In other words, the
Brown decisions and the 1964 act were racially neutral, insisting only
that race not be a standard for establishing school attendance policies.
The Brown decisions required no racial quotas for each school, while
the 1964 act expressly forbade them. Later court decisions extended
Brown I and Brown II, and then circumvented the Civil Rights Act of
1964 by demanding evidence of desegregation based on racial ratios.
Regulations from the Department of Health, Education, and Welfare
(HEW) led the integrative thrust until late in 1966, when the courts
seized and retained the initiative.'" White opposition to these develop-
ments included deliberate delays and unconscionable evasions of the
courts' desegregation requirements, tumultuous confrontations threat-
ening violence, and actual violence. There was little violence in Texas,
2For a brief look at the background of Hamilton Park and a review of the Pacesetter pro-
gram, see Robert Tomsho, "The Pride and 'Times of Hamilton Park," Dallas Life Magazine
[magazine of the Dallas MormnngNews], Mar lo, 1985, pp 14-16, 26-28. For the community
and school, see Hamilton Park Hzgh School Community Study Report (A Summary) (Dallas. Hamilton
Park High School, 1966). For a closer look at the origins of Hamilton Park, see William H
Wilson, "Private Planning for Black Housing in Dallas, Texas, 1945-1955," in Proceedings of the
Second Natzonal Conference on American Planning History, comp and ed Laurence C. Gerckens
(Hilhard, Ohio" Society for American City and Regional Planning History, 1988), 67-84
3Brown v Board of Educatzon of Topeka, May 17, 1954, Supreme Court Reporter, LXXIV (St. Paul,
Minn.: West Publishing Co., 1954), 686-693, and Brown v Board of Educatzon of Topeka [Brown
II], May 31, 1955, ibid., LXXV (1955), 753-757. Public Law 88-352, July 2, 1964, United States
Statutes at Large, 1964, LXXVIII (Washington, D.C.: Government Printing Ofhce, 1965),
241-245, 246 (quotation), 247-268. For the "HEW guidelines" and related issues, see nn. 9
and 12 below.
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Texas State Historical Association. The Southwestern Historical Quarterly, Volume 95, July 1991 - April, 1992, periodical, 1992; Austin, Texas. (https://texashistory.unt.edu/ark:/67531/metapth117153/m1/72/?rotate=90: accessed April 25, 2024), University of North Texas Libraries, The Portal to Texas History, https://texashistory.unt.edu; crediting Texas State Historical Association.