Public Schools: The Spreading Boycott

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"A fizzle!" scoffed James B. Donovan, president of New York City's Board of Education. "A whoopee success!" cried a Negro leader. Such were the wildly opposing verdicts last week as almost half of New York's 1,000,000 public-school children—464,362, to be exact—stayed home during a one-day boycott protesting de facto segregated schools. Allowing for hooky players and the normal 100,000 absentee rate, it was still the biggest civil rights demonstration in U.S. history.

But what did it gain? Can such huge protests really improve Negro education? What are the prospects for new boycotts in other Northern cities?

Rising Offensive. By short-term accounting, boycotts have won nothing whatever. The Boston boycott last June was sparked by the refusal of the city's school-committee chairwoman even to recognize the existence of segregation. Result: whites overwhelmingly re-elected her last November. Chicago's huge (225,000 absentees) boycott last fall was aimed, for similar reasons, at removing School Superintendent Benjamin C. Willis. Result: white-supported Willis is stronger than ever. New York's boycott protested the supposed shortcomings of the schools' extensive new integration plan. Result: the plan stands unchanged.

Nevertheless, the rousing numerical success of New York's boycott fueled a rising Negro offensive throughout the North. In Cleveland, after a week of racial violence, 800 bussed-in Negroes were fully integrated at some mostly white schools, and a threatened boycott called off. Negro militants—many of them wildcatters opposed by oldline Negro organizations—scheduled more boycotts in Chester, Pa., Cambridge, Md., and Wilmington, Del. The big targets later this month are Boston and Chicago, to be coupled with a possible second boycott in New York. Although some Negro politicians oppose the proposed boycott in Chicago, the nation's most visible Negro leader, Martin Luther King, last week gave the boycotters "my moral support and deepest sympathy."

Pressure & Progress. Most whites in New York deplored the boycott as a misguided pressure tactic, likely to backfire. But New York Negroes contend that pressure has won them impressive gains since 1955, when the

Board of Education began retreating from the "neighborhood school" to the recognition that a concentration of Negro pupils, although caused by housing patterns, is of itself an educational handicap.

By "permissive zoning" and other measures, New York has since bussed or shifted thousands of Negro children to mostly white schools. The new plan aims to pair about one-fifth of the city's mostly Negro schools with nearby mostly white schools, so that all children of some elementary grades attend one school and all children of other elementary grades attend another. Moreover, it envisions smaller classes, more Negro teachers, more pre-school instruction to give Negro children a better start, and an end to culture-biased IQ tests and to the short class days caused by multiple sessions. In short, it will put New York ahead of any other major city.