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58 Nw. U. L. Rev. 1 (1963-1964)
Segregation Litigation and the Schools-Part I: The New Rochelle Experience

handle is hein.journals/illlr58 and id is 13 raw text is: MNrkwesterlb':frnie& j LAW                      REVIEW
VOLUME 58        MARCH-APRIL         NUMBER i
SEGREGATION LITIGATION AND THE
SCHOOLS-PART I: THE NEW
ROCHELLE EXPERIENCE*
John Kaplant
INTRODUCTION
N the first eight years after Brown v. Board of Education, the vast ma-
jority of litigation brought by Negro groups occurred in the South.
Over most of the area which had enforced school segregation before
Brown, the principle that racial classification in the school system is un-
constitutional has been accepted at least in the abstract. Nonetheless, the
great majority of Negro students are still attending the same schools they
would have attended if Brown had never been decided. There are many
reasons for this. In some areas a shortage of plaintiffs willing to challenge
generations of tradition exists. Local authorities, although acknowledging
that the courts will hold their activities violative of the Constitution when
the question is presented, have taken the view that they have no duty until
a suit is brought. In other areas the courts permitted school authorities
to employ racial classification as a transitional measure. Until this term
of the Supreme Court,' plans allowing free transfers out of a school to the
members of the race which is in the minority there, had been approved.
Until very recently the previous segregation was maintained over much of
the South by initially classifying students by race and allowing transfer of
those Negroes who came forward to ask for it-in those grades already
desegregated. In these cases Southern communities have also been per-
mitted to rely upon the administration of pupil placement plans and other
devices which, depending upon how one looks at it, either ease the impact
or thwart the purposes of desegregation.
In the North, especially in the large cities, a superficially similar pat-
tern has emerged. With the tremendous migration of the Negro from the
South in the past two decades whole areas of most large Northern cities
have become overwhelmingly Negro. So long as the number of Negroes
* This is the first part of a two-part article concerning the problem of school segrega-
tion in the North. The second part will appear in 58 Nw. U.L. Rv. 157 (1963). Much
of the material in this part was originally published as a Report to the United States
Commission on Civil Rights. The editors of the Law Review, believing that this document
had a public importance which made appropriate its circulation to an audience somewhat
different from that of the Commission's publications, asked Professor Kaplan to modify
the Report and bring it up to date.
J-Associate Professor of Law, Northwestern Univ.
I Goss v. Board of Educ., 31 U.S.L. WEEK 4559 (U.S. June 3, 1963).

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