1961 US Commission on Civil Rights Report Book 2 - University of ...

that about one-fifth of the New York City elementary and junior high
schools enrolled 85 percent or more Negro and Puerto Rican pupils,
while 48 percent of the elementary and 44 percent of the junior high
schools enrolled 85 percent or more white pupils. Philadelphia reported
that 14 percent of its schools had an enrollment of 99+ percent
Negro. 10 In Pittsburgh in 1959, half of the Negro children in public
schools attended schools which had 80 percent or more Negro enrollment.
Sixty percent of all white children in public elementary schools
and 35 percent of those in public secondary schools attended schools
which had less than 5 percent Negro enrollment. 11
At its California hearings, the <strong>Commission</strong> heard of minority-group
concentration exceeding 85 percent in the public schools of Los Angeles,
Pasadena, Compton, Monrovia, Enterprize, and Willowbrook. 12 Similarly,
"overwhelming Mexican-American student enrollment" was said
to exist in 34 elementary schools in East Los Angeles. 18 In describing
the San Francisco program of districting elementary schools so that
children may attend schools within reasonable walking distance of their
homes, the superintendent said: "Naturally, a number of schools are
predominantly of one race or another, reflecting the racial characteristics
of that immediate neighborhood . . ." 14 An official report on the
Berkeley, Calif., system shows that two of its elementary schools have a
Negro enrollment in excess of 90 percent. 15
Testimony at the <strong>Commission</strong>'s Detroit hearings revealed that the 28
elementary schools in that city's Center District have an almost entirely
Negro enrollment. 10 Other nonsouthern cities with high racial concentrations
in public schools include Boston, Chicago, Indianapolis, and
Cleveland and Youngstown, Ohio. 17 There are, no doubt, many others.
Segregation in the public schools of the urban North and West results
to a large extent from the familiar system of neighborhood schools in
combination with residential concentrations of minority groups. These
"ghettos" were not explicity created by law. They arose largely because
of the inability of minority-group members to find housing elsewhere. 18
That is why the resulting segregation in schools is generally called de
facto, to distinguish it from de jure, segregation. 19
Of course only the latter is unconstitutional. For, as already indicated,
20 the 14th amendment prohibits only such racial segregation as is
imposed by governmental action (or inaction in the face of a legal duty
to act). Thus, the de facto segregation that results from free private
choice, or from residential patterns based on purely private discrimination
is apparently not forbidden.
School authorities, usually the board of education or the superintendent
of schools, designate the particular public school each child
shall attend. This power is generally exercised by establishing attendance
zones. Transfers to schools, other than those so assigned, are
officially controlled. The sites of new schools ordinarily are selected
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