Desegregation Response to the NAACP Lawsuit Ruling of 1976
by Alice Belcher on 01/15/18
The Impact of Milwaukee Schools Desegregation Response to the NAACP Lawsuit Ruling of 1976
I lived through the era of Milwaukee Public School pre-desegregation mandatory busing and I have keenly watched the consequences and repercussions of the post-desegregation response for decades now.
I am a product of the City of Milwaukee Public School System. As a student, I attended Milwaukee Public Schools from kindergarten, through high School: Brown Street School, Twentieth Street School, Robert Fulton Junior High School, Garden Homes and graduated from Rufus King High School, and immediately went to college that same year.
During my years attending Milwaukee Public Schools, all junior and high schools offered music classes that also provided instruments to students for wind, string, and percussion instruments. All high schools were ‘college prep’ and in addition, also offered vocational career path training in high schools for: office education (typing, transcription, filing, etc.), distributive education (retail sales & management); hospitality education (hotel services and management); home economics (sewing, tailoring, cooking), shop (carpentry, wood & metal working), and some schools, mechanics (auto, etc.), subjects you now have to attend vocational college to obtain.
I walked to my neighborhood schools each school day and enjoyed the community pride and family involvement in school activities, athletic events, and enjoyed being mentored by my teachers who had a strongly invested interest in my success because when they looked at me through their lens, they saw their legacy for progressive achievement. I was among the fortunate to graduate high school before mandated busing took effect.
In 1965 the NAACP and Milwaukee attorney Lloyd Barbee filed a lawsuit charging that the Milwaukee school board practiced and allowed discrimination, setting off a decade-long legal struggle to integrate the city's public schools. In January of 1976, Federal Judge John Reynolds ruled that Milwaukee Public Schools were indeed segregated unlawfully. In response, the Wisconsin Legislature enacted a program to aid in the implementation and promotion of integration in Milwaukee schools. The plan was approved by Judge Reynolds in 1979. U.S. Commission on Civil Rights (1992).
From this 1976 NAACP lawsuit ruling and the 1979 Wisconsin Legislature planned program to integrate Milwaukee Public Schools, what Black families got was Black children bused all over the Milwaukee Public School District (other children were not bused, the exception being “specialty schools” of their choosing). Black children lost their ability to walk to their neighborhood schools or take a bus short distances to school. Their parents and community lost the same, and with this loss, also their capacity for meaningful involvement in their children’s local schools (transportation remains an issue). Further, this lawsuit helped fan the flames of charter and choice schools and ultimately, the closing of MPS neighborhood schools.
The 1976 NAACP lawsuit ruling and the 1979 Wisconsin Legislature planned program to integrate Milwaukee Public Schools, did little to positively impact the education of Black children in Milwaukee. Black children and their families and communities didn't win with this NAACP lawsuit. Black children, their families, and their neighborhood communities lost, and a lot, because of it.
The demographics (race) of the children attending neighborhood schools in Milwaukee was reflective of the neighborhoods. The finding of the Milwaukee Public Schools being segregated is because the neighborhoods in Milwaukee were segregated, and the system for MPS education was that children attended neighborhood schools.
The segregation in Milwaukee housing at the time this lawsuit was filed in 1965 was the fundamental issue. It was this fundamental issue of unequal access to housing in Milwaukee that impacted what was being seen in Milwaukee Public Schools as children attended neighborhood schools. It was this fundamental issue of segregated housing that created segregated neighborhoods that created segregated schools in Milwaukee, which was not addressed with this NAACP lawsuit of 1965.
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