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

FULL COMPLIANCE
Three basic types of plan for implementing desegregation have emerged:
(i) free choice of school (all schools in the system are open to any
eligible pupil without regard to race or residence); (2) rezoning of
attendance areas for all schools, white and Negro (all pupils living
within a delineated area are automatically assigned to the school
therein); (3) individual pupil assignment (each pupil is judged by
established criteria and assigned to the school found to be appropriate).
Free choice of school
Baltimore is the only city known to have adopted the free choice of school
method as a means of abandoning segregated schools, but even Baltimore's
plan includes elements of rezoning and pupil assignment. Only
two limitations are placed on the pupil's free choice of school: First,
where there are overcrowded schools, attendance is limited to residents
of the neighborhood—a limitation removed as soon as the crowded condition
is relieved; second, there are certain special-purpose schools with
scholastic admission requirements. In the absence of gerrymander of
attendance zones, or discriminatory administration of admission requirements
for the special-purpose schools, neither of which is suggested to
exist in Baltimore, these two variations on the free-choice-of-school plan,
like the plan itself, seem constitutionally sound.
The Baltimore desegregation was initiated throughout the city in
September 1954; its impact has been considerable. In October 1954,
there were 53 schools attended by whites only, 61 attended by Negroes
only, and 49 in which both white and Negro pupils were enrolled. 9 In
other words there were 114, or 69 percent, of all schools attended only
by white or Negroes. Six years later there were 100 schools attended
only by whites or Negroes and 93 biracial schools. 10 The percentage
of all schools attended by members of one race had dropped to 52. Does
the fact that this kind of racial segregation persists in over 50 percent of
the schools after 6 years of desegregation make the free-choice-of-school
plan constitutionally vulnerable? It would seem not. The persistence
of segregation under any plan certainly may place the burden on the
school authorities to prove that all of their administrative practices are
in fact nondiscriminatory; but, as many courts have said, 11 a free, private
choice of segregation does not violate the Constitution. In Baltimore
most pupils choose to attend the school in the neighborhood of their
homes and, therefore, to a large extent the enrollment of the schools
reflects residential patterns. Since there is no legal compulsion in their
choice of schools, no constitutional question as to the desegregation plan
I?