Journal of Negro Education
A Bittersweet Victory: Public School Desegregation in Memphis
Author(s): Roger Biles
Source: The Journal of Negro Education, Vol. 55, No. 4 (Autumn, 1986), pp. 470-483
Published by: Journal of Negro Education
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Journal of Negro Education
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A Bittersweet Victory: Public School
Desegregation in Memphis
Roger Biles, Department of History, Oklahoma State University
The 1954 United States Supreme Court ruling on school desegregation sent southern white supremacists in search of means to resist
or at least delay implementation. Their tactics varied. Some states
invoked the aged doctrine of interposition, along with the implied
threat of secession; others sought simply to ignore the decision and
its call for compliance "with all deliberate speed." Organizations
like the Ku Klux Klan and the Citizens' Councils sprang to life to
lead the counteroffensive. To some, "massive resistance" meant
boycotts, picketing, even violence. In the most celebrated case of
southern recalcitrance, President Dwight D. Eisenhower dispatched federal troops to Arkansas to ensure the peaceful desegregation of Little Rock's Central High School. In countless other
locations, from New Orleans, Louisiana, to Clinton, Tennessee, the
absence of such restraining action led to widespread rioting.
Throughout the South, by word and by deed, citizens and their
political representatives gave stern notice that public school deseg-
regation would not pass quickly and quietly from the scene.1
In recent evaluations of post-Brown public school desegregation
in the South, historians have noted the remarkable ability of many
of the region's communities to thwart the Supreme Court's ruling.
In The Burden of Brown, Raymond Wolters traced the progress of
change in five school districts involved in the 1954 decision. (In
'On the southern reaction to the Brown decision, see: Numan V. Bartley, The Rise of Massive
Resistance: Race and Politics in the South During the 1950s (Baton Rouge: Louisiana State University
Press, 1969); Benjamin Muse, Ten Years of Prelude: The Story of Integration Since the Supreme Court's
1954 Decision (New York: Viking Press, 1964); Reed Sarratt, The Ordeal of Desegregation: The First Decade
(New York: Harper and Row, 1966); James W. Vander Zanden, Race Relations in Transition: The
Segregation Crisis in the South (New York: Random House, 1965); James W. Ely, Jr., The Crisis of
Conservative Virginia: The Byrd Organization and the Politics of Massive Resistance (Knoxville: University
of Tennessee Press, 1976); and Neil R. McMillen, The Citizens' Council: Organized Resistance to the
Second Reconstruction, 1954-1964 (Urbana: University of Illinois Press, 1971).
Journal of Negro Education, Vol. 55, No. 4 (1986)
470 Copyright ? 1986, Howard University
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addition to the suit against the Topeka, Kansas, school system, the
Court considered jointly appeals from Delaware, Virginia, and South
Carolina; a fifth case, decided the same day, found segregation
unacceptable in Washington, D.C.) With the exception of Topeka,
where compliance was relatively painless due to a tiny black population of roughly eight percent, conditions changed more haltingly. "In the other districts where blacks constituted between 25
and 90 percent of the students," Wolters said, "there was protracted
litigation as the communities struggled to comply with-or in some
cases to evade-the Court's ruling." Similarly, J. Harvie Wilkinson's chronicle of public-school integration in the South from Bro
to Bakke noted that compliance came grudgingly and only after the
painstaking exposure and destruction of myriad tactics of resistance. And even as the final barriers to "massive integration" fell,
a new phase-that of "resegregation"-began to emerge in many
southern localities. These historians highlighted the painfully slow
pace of change and the fruitful attempts at avoiding actual school
desegregation in southern communities.2
In some southern cities, by contrast, a more moderate temper
seemed to prevail. Notable for its success in desegregating its public
schools was the Mississippi River town of Memphis, Tennessee.
Though situated in the heart of Dixie, Memphis escaped the donnybrooks over public-school integration that plagued so many of
its neighboring communities. In September, 1962, for example, only
fifty miles to the south in Oxford, Mississippi, violence erupted and
U.S. marshals intervened to protect James Meredith as he became
the first black student to matriculate at "Ole Miss." One year earlier,
President John F. Kennedy had lauded Memphis for its peaceful
toppling of segregation in the schools, noting that the city "reflected
credit on the United States throughout the world." In the following
years, as integration proceeded apace, first haphazardly and later
stimulated by court-ordered busing, Memphis continued to avoid
the disorder rampant elsewhere. For all intents and purposes, the
2Raymond Wolters, The Burden of Brown: Thirty Years of School Desegregation (Knoxville: University
of Tennessee Press, 1984); J. Harvie Wilkinson III, From Brown to Bakke: The Supreme Court and School
Integration, 1954-1978 (New York: Oxford University Press, 1979). Historian William H. Chafe found
that Greensboro, North Carolina "opted for stability of school assignments over wholesale redistricting" and the result was a more effective and tranquil desegregation process. William H. Chafe,
Civilities and Civil Rights: Greensboro, North Carolina, and the Black Struggle for Freedom (New York:
Oxford University Press, 1980), p. 344. In examining the role of businessmen in desegregation,
Elizabeth Jacoway, David R. Colburn, and their fellow co-contributors found a mixed bag: in Norfolk,
New Orleans, Birmingham, and Jackson, businessmen acted as obstructionists. In other locations,
such as Tampa, Columbia, and Dallas, they took the lead in preparing for change. Elizabeth Jacoway
and David R. Colburn, eds., Southern Businessmen and Desegregation (Baton Rouge: Louisiana State
University Press, 1982).
The Journal of Negro Education 471
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Bluff City seemed a model of peaceful integration, a genuine success
story, and a triumph of moderate leadership.3
And yet, a closer examination reveals a less satisfying picture.
Passive, not massive, resistance unfolded with a most effective
result: whites avoided integration by fleeing the public schools.
Once integration became a genuine threat, the majority of white
students took to their heels and left behind an almost totally black
student population. By the 1970s the successes of the 1950s and
1960s merely constituted Pyrrhic victories. Moderate leadership
paved the way for only token changes, and the Supreme Court's
goal of an integrated student populace went unrealized.
The forces for moderation in Memphis surfaced almost immediately after the landmark Brown v. Board of Education decision. Both
daily newspapers called for restraint. The day after the Court
announced its decision, the Commercial Appeal urged its readers to
"approach this issue with calmness, reason, and a genuine spirit
of cooperation." It concluded: "Whether for good or bad, the Supreme
Court has ruled segregation unconstitutional, and it has been traditional for the American people to respect the dignity of the law."
The Press-Scimitar went even further, arguing that adherence to the
new law would improve America's image abroad. It suggested that
"our preachments on democracy and dignity and equal opportunity
of man will ring truer to Asia's fermenting millions when they learn
that here in America equality was not graded by complexion."4
Mayor Edmund Orgill, a successful businessman elected in 1955
as the reform candidate, similarly staked out a relatively enlightened position. Orgill had campaigned against the stultefying conservatism of the entrenched Democratic machine, whose grip on
the city had been broken with the death of Boss E. H. Crump in
1954, and called for a new progressive image for the city. Recognizing the need for quiescent race relations, Orgill cautioned Memphians against intemperate action. First, he assured them of his
own convictions. "I, along with other members of the present City
Commission," he said, "am on record as being in favor of segregation." Integration in the public schools would be limited, the
mayor promised. Most important, the city must behave with dignity, aspiring to the most vital goals of "keeping the peace, uphold-
3New York Times, March 24, 1962. For an analysis of public school desegregation in Nashville,
another southern city cited for its moderation, see: Don H. Doyle, Nashville Since the 1920s (Knoxville:
University of Tennessee Press, 1985), pp. 234-43, 257-60.
4Memphis Commercial Appeal, May 18, 1954; Memphis Press-Scimitar, May 18, 1954. Also see:
Hugh Davis Graham, Crisis in Print: Desegregation and the Press in Tennessee (Nashville: Vanderbilt
University Press, 1967).
472 The Journal of Negro Education
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ing the law, and remembering that all men were God's children."
Orgill's pacifying efforts succeeded sufficiently for the Tri-State
Defender, the city's black newspaper, to honor him as the man
making the greatest contribution to improved race relations in
Memphis..5
Like Orgill, Tennessee Governor Frank Goad Clement was an
avowed segregationist who counseled restraint. When white
supremacy groups organized motorcades to the state capital from
Memphis and Chattanooga to demand interposition and mandatory
statewide segregation, Clement denounced their "pressure tactics"
and defended the principle of local school autonomy. His veto of a
bill repealing the state's compulsory attendance law led the New
York Times to praise his administration for making Tennessee's
policies the "most moderate in the South." In 1957, however, he
recommended to the state legislature a five-point segregation pack-
age which provided a much more comprehensive locally administered pupil-assignment measure. The general assembly passed it,
a Manifesto of Protest against the Brown decision, and three other
anti-integration bills. Clement signed all eight bills and lent his
support to the manifesto which did not require his signature. In
effect, the pupil assignment legislation gave Memphis educators
the tool to forestall any attempt at altering the racial composition
of the schools.6
For the first few years following the Brown decision, no crisis in
Memphis tested the governor's acquiescence in local opposition to
desegregation. The local National Association for the Advancement
of Colored People (NAACP) branch initially chose to pursue the
integration of Memphis State College and to ignore the inactivity
of the Memphis Board of Education in responding to the desegregation mandate. Meanwhile, civil-rights advocates attacked the
separate-but-equal doctrine in other venues: Attorney H. T. Lockard petitioned to make the city's parks, golf courses, and swimming
pools open to both races; the NAACP filed a suit to desegregate
Memphis Street Railway Company buses; and black college students staged sit-ins at downtown lunch counters, the Brooks Art
Gallery, and the public library. Gradually, movie theaters, restaurants, and other businesses quietly opened their doors to heretofore
5"Mayor Orgill's Statement Regarding Segregation," n.d., Edmund Orgill Papers, Box 16, Folder
"Negroes," Mississippi Valley Collection, Brister Library, Memphis State University (first quotation);
Memphis Press-Scimitar, April 3, 1957 (second quotation); L. Alex Wilson to Edmund Orgill, March
6, 1956, Orgill Papers, Box 16, Folder "Negroes (hate)."
6Bartley, The Rise of Massive Resistance, p. 143; New York Times, January 24, 1956; Lee Seifert
Greene, Lead Me On: Frank Goad Clement and Tennessee Politics (Knoxville: University of Tennessee
Press, 1982), pp. 197, 199-200, 213-8.
The Journal of Negro Education 473
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forbidden black customers, but the public school system remained
untouched. By the end of the decade, only an estimated 6.3 percent
of black pupils in the previously segregated state school systems of
the South attended classes with whites. In Memphis, none did.7
Finally, the NAACP took action, seeking a desegregation order
in Federal District Court. When Judge Marion S. Boyd turned them
down, calling the state's pupil assignment law a "fully adequate
and efficient plan," the organization prepared to take its case to the
Sixth Circuit Court of Appeals. There, Circuit Judge Lester L. Cecil,
speaking for the majority, would comment that "the Pupil Assignment Law might serve some purpose in the administration of a
school system, but it will not serve as a plan to convert a biracial
school system into a non-racial one." But, anticipating a negative
decision, the Board of Education acted months before the circuit
court's ruling. Several weeks after the fall 1961 term began, thirteen
black children, chosen from a pool of thirty-nine applicants who
appealed their previous rejection, quietly and without advance
notice began attending previously all-white public schools. Several
white parents removed their children from the affected schools, but
most, finding no disturbance, yielded to the fait accompli.8
While the admission of but a single black student touched off
firestorms of protest in many southern cities, the total absence of
violence to the breach of the color line in Memphis was due to the
meticulous planning in advance of the event by the community
elite. During September, 1961, the school board secured the support
of the political and civic leadership in secret meetings. Those who
objected, including Orgill's successor, Henry Loeb, quietly went
along. At a press briefing the evening before the event, the board
solicited the cooperation of the news media in withholding coverage
until after black children had entered the schools. Neither reporters
nor spectators were allowed in the schools the first few days, and
the school board operated a press headquarters across the street
from the Board of Education to inform reporters of the latest developments. Admitting that the press joined in what "could doubtless be
called news management," Commercial Appeal editor Frank Ahlgren
7Tri-State Defender, June 11, 1955; Robert A. Sigafoos, Cotton Row to Beale Street: A Business Histor
of Memphis (Memphis: Memphis State University Press, 1979), pp. 333-4; Muse, Ten Years of Prelude,
p. 226; Charles P. Roland, The Improbable Era: The South Since World War Two (Lexington: University
Press of Kentucky, 1976), p. 42.
8Sarratt, The Ordeal of Desegregation, p. 227 (quotation); Southern School News, October 1961;
"Memphis," Newsweek, 58 (October 16, 1981), 29.
474 The Journal of Negro Education
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defended the censorship and voluntary suppression of news as a
means of defusing tensions.9
Significantly, the instigators of the plan made it clear that law
enforcement officers would be generously deployed to discourage
disorder. School board attorney Jack Petree warned: "It's vitally
important that no incident occur, intentionally or otherwise. Police
will be all over the place." Police Commissioner Claude Armour
complied by assigning 160 officers armed with clubs to patrol the
schools. He ordered his charges to arrest "anyone who gets out of
line-I don't care who it is" and sternly admonished them that
"anyone who can't carry out this assignment can hand in his badge."
Police guards, conspicuous during the day, kept vigilance at the
schools at night as well. City officials believed that the high profile
police presence contributed to the absence of violence.10
Flushed with their success at peaceful integration and basking
in the praise of President John F. Kennedy, the Memphis educators
might have thought the business concluded. In March of the following year, the Sixth Circuit Court disabused them of that notion
by demanding a comprehensive desegregation plan that would go
beyond tokenism. District Judge Boyd subsequently approved the
school board's plan for biracial classes in the first three grades and
grade-a-year desegregation for grades four through twelve, noting
that "too much haste is not . .. conducive to the sound solution of
the problem." In doing so, he rejected an NAACP plan for desegregation of all grades within three years, upheld a provision permitting students to transfer from schools where the majority were
of another race, and refused to order faculty integration. In September, 1962, the plan went into effect as eleven blacks entered the first
grade, twenty-one the second grade, and twelve the third grade,
bringing the total number of blacks in formerly all-white schools to
fifty-three. One year later, 258 black students entered the fourth
grade in fourteen predominantly white schools."
The Memphis NAACP branch considered the pace of integration
too slow, and resumed litigation. The circuit court again prodded
the Board of Education, mandating the desegregation of all juniorhigh schools by the start of the 1965-66 term and all high schools
by the fall of 1966. In the following years, however, the pace of
9Muse, Ten Years of Prelude, pp. 226-7; Memorandum, Memphis Board of Education to All News
Media, September 29, 1961, Henry Loeb Papers, Series 1, Box 1, Folder 31, Memphis-Shelby County
Archives; Sarratt, The Ordeal of Desegregation, pp. 261-2 (Ahlgren quotation).
?0Sarratt, The Ordeal of Desegregation, p. 173.
"Ibid., p. 219 (quotation); Benjamin Muse, "Memphis" (Special Report: Southern Regional
Council, 1964), pp. 13-15; New York Times, March 24, 1962; August 31, 1962; May 25, 1963; August
31, 1963.
The Journal of Negro Education 475
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integration failed to quicken, in large part owing to the school
board's adoption of a free-transfer provision which enabled white
students to avoid "undesirable" schools. The bitter garbage workers
strike and the rioting following the assassination of the Reverend
Martin Luther King, Jr., in 1968 spawned a new militancy among
many Memphis blacks who bitterly took note of the continued
separation of students by race in the schools. In November, 1969,
hundreds of blacks marched to demand totally integrated schools
and representation on the five-member Board of Education, and
many broke away from the peaceful gathering to hurl bricks and
bottles at downtown store windows. Police used tear gas to disperse
the rioters and arrested fifty-three, including the Reverend Ralph
Abernathy. Upon his release from jail, Abernathy urged black parents to keep their children out of school until Christmas to protest
segregation. As the decade drew to a close, blacks' dissatisfaction
mirrored the lack of progress made in the previous fifteen years; in
Memphis, as throughout in the South, over eighty percent of black
pupils remained in racially segregated schools.12
The stimulus for change once more came from the judiciary, this
time in a series of U.S. Supreme Court decisions destined to strike
at the heart of the Memphis school board's delaying tactics. First,
the Court ruled freedom-of-choice plans unacceptable if they failed
to desegregate as effectively as other plans would. (The Court noted
that many reasons compelled blacks not to transfer, such as economic and social duress, inconvenience, apathy, fear of violence,
and dread of academic competition with whites.) Next, the Court
held that the Sixth Circuit Court of Appeals had erred in not insisting on more prompt action to aid integration. It did not discuss
possible methods but remanded the case to Federal Judge Robert
M. McRae, Jr. Finally and most ominously for segregation stalwarts,
in Swann v. Charlotte-Mecklenburg Board of Education (1971) the Court
ruled in favor of busing to achieve racial balance in the schools.'3
Judge McRae began reviewing seven new desegregation plans,
six submitted by the school board and one by the NAACP. Although
three of the seven plans involved no busing and McRae gave no
indication which he would choose, the very threat of busing ignited
widespread opposition. Concerned parents formed Citizens Against
Busing (CAB) to lobby against that solution. School board president
Edgar H. Bailey told the CAB that "we will continue to fight busing
"2Sigafoos, Cotton Row to Beale Street, p. 334; New York Times, November 11, 12, 1969; Roland, The
Improbable Era, p. 103.
13Roland, The Improbable Era, p. 103; New York Times, March 10, 1970; April 21, 1971.
476 The Journal of Negro Education
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for racial balance by any means at our disposal." Board member
Hugh Bosworth promised the group that he would "stand in the
schoolhouse door" to block the path of black children bused to allwhite schools. Mayor Loeb, a CAB member, frequently took to the
stump to speak against busing. He implored Judge McRae to choose
another method, and conferred with U.S. Attorney General John
Mitchell, presidential advisor John Ehrlichman, and others in
Washington, D.C., to discuss anti-busing strategy. The panic
engendered by the spectre of busing manifested itself in the exodus
of white students from the schools-from the fall of 1970 to April,
1972, at which time Judge McRae announced his decision, some
4,030 white students left the system.'4
Busing opponents found their fears realized when the judge
rendered his verdict. "The record in this long case shows that the
defendant board and their predecessors have consistently resisted
speedy desegregation," he charged, "and the present board has
contended obstinately that busing is not a proper tool for desegregation in spite of the unanimous decision of the Supreme Court to
the contrary." Consequently, he chose Board of Education Plan A
which prescribed the busing of an estimated 13,800 students citywide. Opponents could take solace in the fact that McRae did not
select the NAACP proposal which called for the busing of 61,530
pupils, but the decision met with immediate disapproval nonetheless. The judge received telephone threats, and guards armed with
carbines were stationed outside his office. Two U.S. marshals guarded
his home.15
School Superintendent John P. Freeman announced that, due
to the complexity of Plan A and the manifest changes it required,
implementation could not come before January, 1973. Given several
months to mount a counterattack, busing opponents moved on
several fronts. Mayor Wyeth Chandler, like his predecessor, Henry
Loeb, a committed segregationist, led the fight in the city council
for amending the city charter to prohibit the use of tax revenues for
busing. In a popular referendum the citizenry approved the amendment and the city council subsequently voted along racial lines to
withhold the money, but since the Board of Education received
adequate funding from state and federal sources, it had little impact.
"4Memphis Press-Scimitar, April 20, 1972; Memphis Commercial Appeal, May 26, 1971 (Bailey
quotation), June 23, 1971 (Bosworth quotation); Henry Loeb to Ron Weston, June 10, 1971, Loeb
Papers, Series 3, Box 9, Folder 47; Henry Loeb to Senator James 0. Eastland, September 27, 1971,
Loeb Papers, Series 3, Box 9, Folder 45; Henry Loeb to Judge McRae, March 16, 1970, Ibid; Henry
Loeb to John Mitchell, September 28, 1971, Loeb Papers, Series 3, Box 9, Folder 48.
"5Memphis Press-Scimitar, November 15, 1972 (quotation), April 20, 1972; Memphis Commercial
Appeal, April 22, 1972.
The Journal of Negro Education 477
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The Sixth Circuit Court ruled against the appeal of Judge McRae's
decision, ordered Plan A implemented "forthwith," and demanded
a timetable established for additional desegregation. Citizens Against
Busing, backed by virtually every white politician in the city, ten of
the thirteen city councilmen, and three members of the school
board, staged protest demonstrations and urged a boycott by white
students-an idea which Mayor Chandler endorsed. Most important, CAB began making plans for a private school system to accom-
modate Memphians unwilling to have their children bused.'6
In the face of such concerted opposition stood a small number
of community leaders committed to peaceful adherence to the court
order. Several members of the Chamber of Commerce formed
IMPACT (Involved Memphis Parents Assisting Children and
Teachers) to mitigate the inchoate crisis. Chamber of Commerce
Executive Director and IMPACT leader David Cooley, placing
emphasis upon utilitarian concerns rather than on any commitment
to integration, argued: "Public education has to be salvaged-it's
vital, essential. Without it, all of our major institutions are threat-
ened. So we have to change." IMPACT got thirty-three of the city's
wealthiest and most influential men to sign a newspaper advertisement urging compliance with the law. The full-page ad implored
all Memphians to "deal with this situation in a calm and rational
way," because "disruptive and unlawful activities are no solution
to the problem." The impressive document carried all the more
weight due to the inclusion of former-mayor Loeb's signature. In
addition, IMPACT launched an extensive public relations campaign
of television commercials, neighborhood meetings, and public forums to spread the gospel of law and order.17
Regarding IMPACT's efforts, NAACP Legal Defense Fund staff
member Richard Fields expressed some displeasure, commenting:
"I keep getting the feeling they aren't really talking about integra-
tion. It's like they're saying, 'We don't like busing either, but we
want to obey the law.' " Whatever its motives, the organization
succeeded in defusing a potentially dangerous situation. When the
January, 1973, date for the beginning of busing came, an atmosphere of calm pervaded. Mayor Chandler threatened to dust off
an obscure forty-year-old transportation ordinance to delay the
16Memphis Commercial Appeal, August 30, October 18, 1972; Memphis City Council Minute Books,
Vol. 17, October 17, 1972, p. 122; Memphis Press-Scimitar, November 15, 1972; John Egerton, Promise
of Progress: Memphis School Desegregation, 1972-1973 (Atlanta: Southern Regional Council, 1973), pp.
9-12.
17Egerton, Promise of Progress, pp. 21-2 (quotations); David M. Tucker, Memphis Since Crump:
Bossism, Blacks, and Civic Reformers, 1948-1968 (Knoxville: University of Tennessee Press, 1980), p.
165.
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busing order, but took no action. In 1961 Memphis accepted token
integration of the public schools quietly, and again, twelve years
later, moderate leadership paved the way for restrained acceptance
of an equally undesired change. The nation's tenth largest public
school system commenced busing without incident. 18
But the absence of turmoil, welcome as it was to school officials,
coincided with a parallel development, a shockingly sparse attendance by white students. Estimates of absenteeism varied; CAB
officials cited a figure of 75 percent, for example, while Superintendent Freeman guessed it to be 40 to 60 percent. In the first month
in which busing operated, 7,532 white students withdrew from the
public schools. Approximately 4,200 enrolled in the 26 newly created CAB "education centers," some transferred to existing parochial schools, and others left town altogether. (Many families moved
into unincorporated parts of Shelby County to attend segregated
schools unaffected by Judge McRae's court order.) Drastic as the
loss of white students seemed, worried observers feared intensified
white flight if additional desegregation resulted as the Sixth Circuit
Court had mandated.19
In May, 1973, Judge McRae ordered a new plan implemented
the following fall which would expand the scope of busing to include
39,904 students. Under the plan, which McRae called Plan Z "in
the hope that this will prove to be the terminal plan," 22,656 black
students, 30 percent of total black enrollment, would remain in allblack or predominantly black schools. Again, McRae rejected a
much more extensive NAACP plan, one that would have necessitated the busing of 57,563 students, but this fact assuaged few
outraged white parents. Enrollment in August of that year reflected
the growing discontent, as 29,000 students failed to register. The
number of private schools in Memphis rose to 90, up from 64 the
previous spring, and 40 in fall 1972. Private-school enrollment ballooned to 33,000 in 1973 and to 35,300 the following year after the
U.S. Supreme Court refused to hear appeals against Plan Z.20
As private schools proliferated, CAB centers disappeared. In
early 1973, 26 operated to teach 4,200 students; the next fall, only
three schools with a total of 650 students remained in operation.
Following its pioneering role in providing alternatives for white
parents at the outset of busing, the organization receded in importance. In the summer of 1974 it announced that all CAB schools
"Egerton, Promises of Progress, p. 25 (quotation); New York Times, January 26, 1973.
"9Memphis Commercial Appeal, January 25, March 20, 1973.
20Ibid., May 4 (quotation), November 14, 1973, April 23, 1974, November 7, 1982; New York Time
August 24, 28, 1973.
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would close in the fall. A spokesman summed up: "Our intent to
begin with was to give people a choice and now they have a choice."
CAB centers usually had leased classroom space from churches.
Eventually, many landlords simply decided to operate the schools
themselves. The burgeoning white-flight academies became the
property of the Protestant churches of Memphis.21
Prior to the desegregation crisis, the city contained a large number of private schools, the majority of which were either elite prepschools or Roman Catholic-supported. While some white students
fleeing the public schools took refuge in these established, prestigious academies, most could not afford the considerable tuition
fees. Moreover, these schools frequently turned such students away.
The headmaster at the swank Lausanne School said: "We are really
not interested in taking advantage of what we call disruption in
public schools. I support public education and believe private education should." Sister Gwen McMahon, superintendent of Catholic
schools for the Memphis Diocese, said that she screened applications to insure that students were not fleeing desegregation. Of the
newly created private schools, she commented: "I believe the witness they are giving to children and adults and parents is very bad.
I think we have to learn to live together and I don't think that setting
up schools at this time in history is too Christian." When ministers
came to her seeking information about how to set up private schools,
she added, she "tried very hard to discourage them."22
These warnings notwithstanding, the private church-affiliated
schools mushroomed across the landscape. Several Protestant
denominations took part including, most prominently, the Baptist,
Church of Christ, and Presbyterian groups. Less affluent congregations continued to use existing facilities, while the more ambitious
built impressive new physical plants complete with sparkling new
athletic complexes. All the while, they strenuously objected to being
labeled "white-flight" or "seg" academies. The pastor-headmaster
of Elliston Baptist Academy explained the reason for the school's
founding: "Integration wasn't it. We've been integrating in Memphis for years. Our kids were the first to be bused, that's what it
was about. I would never have dreamed of starting a school, hadn't
it been for busing." Others refused to admit that any community
changes at all impelled them to action. Rather, they simply sought
to "emphasize the Christian philosophy" in their children's schools.
The director of the Presbyterian Auburndale School maintained:
2"Memphis Commercial Appeal, November 14, 1973, July 24, 1974 (quotation).
'Ibid., August 20, 1972.
480 The Journal of Negro Education
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"This school is not soliciting people fleeing from busing. Whether
there is busing or not is not going to affect us. Really, our students
attend Auburndale because they feel it is the finest school in Memphis. "23
The creation of an extensive private-school network at the time
of mandatory desegregation seemed more than coincidental to many
skeptics, however. An administrator of an old church-affiliated
school remarked: "It seems mighty strange that Christian education
only became important enough during the time of school busing
for these schools to be formed." Louis Lucas, chief counsel for the
plaintiffs in the school desegregation suit, cynically said: "The interest in God generated by busing is phenomenal. It's amazing how
many people opposed to busing have their kids riding buses to
private schools." Maxine Smith, school-board member and executive secretary of the Memphis NAACP, put it bluntly: "It's not the
busing, it's 'the niggers.' " An embittered School Board Superintendent Freeman fixed the blame squarely on the religious institutions. He complained: "If we continue to see the churches-which
have not been very forthright in dealing with the social problemsetting up private schools at a time when public education needs
the support of all segments of the community, then we should
perhaps turn over to education the spiritual welfare of the community and let the churches, which apparently feel they have already
met all the spiritual needs, take over education."24
Integrationists and champions of the embattled public schools
felt betrayed not only by the churches but also by other influential
community groups. True enough, the Chamber of Commerce, and
its surrogate, IMPACT, had acted to meliorate conditions during
the initial busing crisis, but only to avoid a contratemps. IMPACT
did little thereafter to curtail white flight. The business elite was
indeed more interested in order maintenance than in social change.
City hall offered no succor and actually worked openly at times in
defiance of higher-court orders. The city council passed countless
resolutions hostile to busing and although these efforts proved
legally ineffectual, they provided scant incentive for citizens to obey
the law. Maxine Smith concluded: "Unfortunately, those in leadership positions, those who were in a position to set the tone for
the city, sort of cast a whole negative atmosphere which I think is
23David Nevin and Robert E. Bills, The Schools That Fear Built: Segregationist Academies in the South
(Washington D.C.: Acropolis Books, 1976), p. 30 (first quotation); Memphis Commercial Appeal, August
20, 1972 (second quotation).
24Memphis Press-Scimitar, August 23, 1973 (first quotation), January 24, 1978 (Lucas and Smith
quotations); Memphis Commercial Appeal, September 23, 1973 (Freeman quotation).
The Journal of Negro Education 481
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one of the main reasons we lost so many of the young people from
the school system."25
Bereft of support from Memphis officialdom, the beleaguered
Board of Education watched helplessly as the white hegira to the
private academies continued. Within a few years, the net result was
assured: busing, instituted to integrate a school system in which 50
percent of the students attended all-black schools and the other 50
percent all-white schools, created a virtually all-black student population with, therefore, almost as little mixing of the races as before.
Enrollment for the schools peaked at 145,500 in 1971. By fall 1973 it
had plummeted to 119,415. In those two years, the percentage of
white students fell from 50 to 32. By 1981 blacks comprised 76
percent of the system's 107,744 enrollment and whites only 24
percent. A 1979 U.S. Department of Health, Education, and Welfare
survey of 6,000 public school systems ranked Memphis the fiftythird least desegregated. The events of the seventies lent an air of
prescience to this remark Maxine Smith made at the outset of the
busing set-to: "The whites are afraid of majority-black schools. They
can stand a little bit of black, but only a little."26
In the early eighties, Memphis educators sought to lure whites
back into the public schools. Led by the system's first black superintendent, Dr. Willie Herenton, they tried to dispel the notion that
whites, as a minority, would be unsafe and argued forcefully that
the quality of education they offered exceeded that proferred by
private schools. In 1982 the Board of Education revised Plan Z,
reducing busing in some parts of the city, increasing it in others
(most notably in the Raleigh neighborhood), and cutting transportation costs by roughly one million dollars-all, board members
proudly proclaimed, without decreasing desegregation. Raleigh
parents responded by filing suit in the Sixth Circuit Court, and a
new organization called SOS (Save Our Schools) sued Herenton
and the board for failure to "seek proper relief from continued
federal court jurisdiction." As a result, the number of white students decreased again in 1982-3. Ten years after the initiation of
busing, the controversy seemed no closer to resolution.27
In the generation following the breach of the color line in Memphis public schools, much changed but much more remained the
25Memphis City Council Minute Books, Vol. 14, March 21, 1972, p. 276; Vol. 18, January 9, 1973,
pp. 5-7; Vol. 20, September 11, 1973, p. 191; Memphis Commercial Appeal, January 2, 1983 (quotation).
Frances Coe, a school board member from 1956 to 1980, concurred with Smith's assessment. Interview
with Frances Coe, May 16, 1984.
26Sigafoos, Cotton Row to Beale Street, p. 334; Memphis Commercial Appeal, November 1, 1981;
Memphis Press-Scimitar, December 13, 1979; Egerton, Promises of Progress, p. 31 (quotation).
27Memphis Commercial Appeal, January 2, 1983.
482 The Journal of Negro Education
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same. The goal of integrated education seemed no less a chimera.
The assertion of moderate leadership in 1961 and again in 1973
received encomiums for ensuring adherence to law and order and,
indeed, compared to the upheavals endured in other communities,
this was a considerable achievement. But moderate leadership could
not deflect the determination of the white majority to maintain
racially separate schools, as witnessed by the fact that Memphis
possessed one of the nation's largest private school enrollments by
the 1980s. Obeying the letter of the law, but not its spirit, segregation-minded whites left the city's schools no closer to a realization
of the goal espoused in the Brown decision. The absence of violence
and the relative ease with which modest change occurred gave
Memphis the undeserved reputation of a city that effectively handled the mandate for desegregation. In truth, events in the Bluff
City reinforced the observation of Wolters, Wilkinson, and other
historians that many southern communities proved highly successful in their efforts to circumvent the Brown decision.
The Journal of Negro Education 483
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