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Joliet school desegregation meant frustrating fight, long wait

JOLIET — Many schoolchildren don't think twice about sitting next to someone whose skin color differs from their own. But 50 years ago — when many of their grandparents were students — it was uncommon for a white child to attend school with a black child. Racial segregation was the norm across America, with "separate but equal" schools. ...

  Only 26 years ago, after multiple lawsuits were filed by civil rights organizations, and the federal government threatened to take over school districts failing to comply with the Civil Rights Act of 1964, did Joliet eliminate its remaining single-race schools.

  It was an emotional time for Joliet. Authorities were so suspicious of blacks that they raised every bridge in 1968 to keep blacks from storming white neighborhoods when the Rev. Martin Luther King was assassinated, said David Evans, a lifelong Joliet resident.

  "We have made a lot of progress" since then, Evans said. He remembers a time when blacks were declined service at some Joliet restaurants, and high school students were permitted to participate in golf tournaments at the country club only if they were white.

  Hoping to spare his own children the same humiliation and injustice he experienced as a youth, Evans joined the district's desegregation committee in 1976.

  The committee's mission was to integrate the district's 9,800 black, white and Hispanic students.

  The task was monumental as several of the district's schools were primarily black. Two schools — Eliza Kelly and McKinley Park — were peopled entirely with black children while Forest Park School was 99.7 percent black.

Trying to blend the schools proved so frustrating for Evans he resigned from the desegregation committee before it presented its final recommendation to the school board later that same year.

  "I did not agree with the solution," said Evans, who thought the plan placed an unfair burden on black students — forcing many of them, and not white students, to change schools.

  "The whites were being voluntarily bused to Forest Park and Eisenhower," said Evans, while black students were being forced to board buses to Sheridan and Raynor Park schools.

  "Everybody should have to bear the burden," he argued. "No particular segment should be singled out."

Slow process

  The district's desegregation effort began nearly 20 years after the U.S. Supreme Court ruled in Brown v. Board of Education that state-imposed segregation in public schools is unconstitutional.

  School districts were ordered to integrate their facilities, making sure no school had a minority population greater than 15 percent of the district's total minority population.

  That meant Joliet grade schools, which were about 48 percent black at the time, could not operate a school with 63 percent — or greater — minorities in attendance.

  But like many other school districts at the time, Joliet grade schools were slow to act, neglecting to respond to a notice from the Illinois Office of Education in 1972 that they were still out of compliance with the desegregation regulations.

  Only after the NAACP filed a suit in federal court in 1975 asking the Department of Health, Education and Welfare to investigate 48 school districts in the nation — including Joliet grade schools — did the district step up its effort to come up with an acceptable desegregation plan.

  And even then, it took the threat of financial repercussions to bring the district into total compliance.

  In February 1976, the state asked the federal Department of Health, Education and Welfare to impound funds from school districts that did not comply with the state's desegregation guidelines.

  Joliet grade schools implemented a desegregation plan the following September.

  It called for magnet schools, programs for the academically gifted and cross-busing for Sheridan and Eliza Kelly students. It also called for some Lincoln School students to attend Raynor Park School, where bilingual programs were introduced, and an all-day kindergarten for high-risk students.

  It was one of the toughest decisions Carol Pritz, who served on the school board at the time, ever made.

  "The whole city was in turmoil," she recalled. "It wasn't just the school district. It was the whole city. It was one side against the other."

  Newspaper articles from the time indicate that 218 students changed schools voluntarily, while 420 were forced.

  The majority of those who had to change schools were black — a fact that angered many black leaders, including the Rev. Isaac Singleton, the Rev. James Walton, and NAACP chapter President Raymond Bolden, who all described the district's desegregation plan as involuntary for blacks and voluntary for whites.

  "You don't start out a plan by saying some persons will be immune to the plan," Bolden told the Herald-News in 1977. "It's obvious the only white students being bused involuntarily are at Sheridan. The rest are voluntary."

  "Poor whites and poor blacks are being forced, that's what this plan means," added Walton.

  Their claims were reinforced when school officials decided to close McKinley School — an all black school — the following year.

  "They closed McKinley (School) mid-term to avoid having any white kids bused to the East Side," said Singleton, who was president of Operation PUSH — People United to Save Humanity — at the time.

  While Pritz could not remember the board's reason for closing McKinley, she did agree with Singleton's assessment that more black students were forced to change schools than white students.

  "That was the whole point," she said. "Bringing (the black students) into the white schools."

  She dismissed claims the district "dragged its feet," however.

  "We had a period of time to build a plan and submit it," she said. "You could either do it voluntarily or (have the federal government) implement a plan for the whole city. ... It was not a friendly mandate."

Today's outlook

  Whether the district's desegregation plan — which is still in effect today — was worth the effort and turmoil is still under debate.

  While Evans, who now serves on the Joliet Grade School Board, says it has helped bridge race relations in the city, Singleton said he's not so sure the desegregation plan should get all the credit.

  Neither is Joliet City Councilman Warren Dorris, who was born and raised here.

  "Sitting next to a black child is not going to solve our problems with race," he said, adding that racism is taught, not inherited.

  "If we really want to kill racism, it has to start with those of us who know better," Dorris said.

  For that reason, Dorris said he would rather see the schools return to a neighborhood concept, which was still in place when he attended Joliet grade schools 40 years ago.

  "I thought it was the greatest thing," said Dorris, who remembers going home for lunch every day and getting to know the neighborhood children and their families really well.

  "I thought that was absolutely outstanding," he added.

  The neighborhood school concept is something Pritz argued for 26 years ago.

  Just before voting on the district's desegregation plan in 1976, Pritz told the community: "I feel the federal government is in a sorry state when it places more importance on having the right quantity of race or sex in each school than it does to having quality education in every school for every child regardless of where he attends. It is a shame children must be used as political pawns."

  It's a belief Pritz still holds today.

  "I wouldn't want my kids put on a bus and shipped across town," she said recently. "They should be in neighborhood schools with the kids they play with after school. It's a better situation."

  Even still, Evans said he has seen a marked improvement in race relations and racial equality during the last 26 years.

  Not only are there black firefighters, police officers and office managers today, but also black city councilmen and school board members.

  "Twenty-five years ago, I wouldn't be sitting in the city council chair," agreed Dorris, "because that opportunity wasn't available to me."

  "We've come a long way," agreed Singleton, but he added there is still room for improvement.

  "There are still people who don't want to go to public schools because of the blacks," he said. "That's not the way it ought to be now."

  Charla Brautigam can be reached at (815) 729-6079, or via e-mail at cbrautigam@scn1.com.