The 1954 Brown v. Board of Education decision may have made the “separate but equal” doctrine unconstitutional, but it did not change the reality of segregated schooling for many Black children in Delaware. In the fall of 1954, 11 African American students, known as the Milford Eleven, were the first to integrate Milford High School. Their first two days were uneventful, but by the third day hundreds of parents and community members had assembled at the school to express their anger by throwing objects at the African American students and calling them names. The local police refused to protect the children from the growing crowds and the Delaware State Police were called in to escort the students to school. Many white families then began pulling their children out of school in protest, and less than a month after the start of school the Milford Board of Education decided to disenroll the Milford Eleven. Ten of the 11 students’ families brought suit against the school district, and early in 1955 Delaware Supreme Court decided that the Milford School district had acted illegally by attempting to integrate schools before the state of Delaware developed an integration plan.
In 1956 the U.S. District Court found that the Clayton School District (now part of Smyrna School District) was discriminating against Black students by not admitting them into the all-White school system. In the 1957 Evans v. Buchanan decision, which combined six similar cases, the Court ordered the district to admit the students, and ordered the Delaware State Board of Education to develop a desegregation plan for all schools that had not yet desegregated.
The State Board of Education drew up a desegregation plan that would fully integrate schools over the course of 12 years, on a grade-by-grade basis beginning in the fall of 1959 and finally finishing in 1971. This plan was rejected by the legislature, and the court demanded a plan that would fully integrate Delaware schools by the fall of 1961. After extensive litigation a state desegregation plan was approved by the Court in 1961. The plan was implemented, and by 1967 the last all-Black school district had been phased out. Every formerly all-White school was admitting local Black students, but Howard High School in Wilmington remained essentially segregated. In response to these desegregation efforts, white families began moving out of Wilmington in increasing numbers,in the same kind of white flight that was seen across the nation, to avoid the prospect of their children going to the same schools as Black children.
In April of 1968 Rev. Martin Luther King Jr. was assassinated in Memphis, Tennessee. Four days later, what began as a peaceful march to Rodney Square in Wilmington devolved into riots, and led to the National Guard occupying the city for nine months. It was during this time that the Delaware State Legislature introduced the Educational Advancement Act, which would consolidate Delaware’s 49 school districts into just 26, but crucially, prohibited the consolidation of large school districts including Wilmington, Newark (now part of Christina School District), and Alfred I. DuPont (now part of Brandywine School District). By excluding these large districts it ensured that White children would not be forced to attend schools in predominantly-Black Wilmington in the name of desegregation.
By 1971 the population of Wilmington had dramatically shifted due to White people’s fears over integration and the riots. Wilmington was 73% white at the time of Brown v. Board of Education in 1954 and by 1971 Wilmington was 79% Black. It was clear that the Educational Advancement Act was resegregating New Castle County schools by preventing Wilmington from merging with predominantly white suburban school districts. This was the argument used to reopen the Evans v. Buchanan case in 1971. The decision rendered in that case in 1974 determined that the Educational Advancement Act was unconstitutional and demanded that the State Board of education formulate a new plan for desegregating schools in New Castle County.
White residents of New Castle County knew that this ruling would lead to the merging of school districts and busing to integrate schools because these tactics were being used all over the country. After the ruling there was a surge of white flight and many families rushed to enroll students in private schools. Some people went as far as forming the Positive Action Committee Inc., which argued against the consolidation of suburban school districts with Wilmington schools.
The refusal of the General Assembly and State Board of Education to act in creating a full integration plan for New Castle County led to the appointment of Judge Murray Schwartz to take over the remedy phase of the Evans v. Buchanan case in 1976. Judge Schwartz ordered that the 11 school districts in the county consolidate into one - the New Castle County School District, led by the New Castle County Planning Board of Education. In 1977 the board was tasked with working out the details of how to integrate the schools via busing, and the board came up with the “9-3 Plan”. Every child in New Castle County would be required to spend nine years attending schools in suburban districts and spend three years attending school in the City of Wilmington. The implementation of this plan would mark the highest point in Delaware’s efforts to integrate its schools.
In our next piece, how integration efforts fell apart.
Read our previous piece in this series
Read first hand accounts of school desegregation in Delaware:
Ten Years of Desegregation: Then and Now
Read more about school desegregation in Delaware:
The 40-year legacy of Evans vs. Buchanan: A struggle over education, race, power
School Desegregation in New Castle County, Delaware
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