Abstract
At first appearance James Redmond may not have seemed all that different from the previous Chicago superintendent Benjamin Willis, whom Redmond replaced in 1966. Both were older, white, clean-shaven men with neatly trimmed hair. But Redmond’s entrance into the superintendent’s office marked a symbolic shift in the handling of the city’s schools—at least in regard to the city’s image of desegregation. While Willis had been praised for increasing resources in some of the city’s schools, his record regarding desegregation and the inequalities between black and white schools had come under vehement public attack. As black schools became increasingly overcrowded, Willis merely responded by installing mobile units, which his critics called “Willis Wagons.” Willis had stubbornly maintained that outcries regarding desegregation and inequality were unwarranted—despite federal reports that acknowledged such inequalities.1 Redmond replaced Willis upon Willis’s retirement in 1966 giving civil rights activists high expectations for the city’s desegregation efforts.
Keywords
These keywords were added by machine and not by the authors. This process is experimental and the keywords may be updated as the learning algorithm improves.
This is a preview of subscription content, log in via an institution.
Buying options
Tax calculation will be finalised at checkout
Purchases are for personal use only
Learn about institutional subscriptionsPreview
Unable to display preview. Download preview PDF.
Notes
See Alan B. Anderson and George W. Pickering, Confronting the Color Line: The Broken Promise of the Civil Rights Movement in Chicago (Athens: University of Georgia Press, 1986)
John L. Rury, “Race, Space, and the Politics of Chicago’s Public Schools: Benjamin Willis and the Tragedy of Urban Education,” History of Education Quarterly 39 (Spring 1999): 117–142.
Chicago Board of Education, “Increasing Desegregation of Faculties, Students and Vocational Education Programs,” August 1967, 1.
See Michael W. Homel, Down from Equality: Black Chicagoans and the Public Schools, 1920–1941 (Urbana: University of Illinois Press, 1984).
Allen H. Spear, Black Chicago: The Making of a Negro Ghetto, 1890–1920 (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1967), 212–216
Gabriela F. Arredondo, Mexican Chicago: Race, Identity, and Nation, 1916–1939 (Urbana: University of Illinois Press, 2008), 38.
Arnold R. Hirsch, Making the Second Ghetto: Race and Housing in Chicago 1940–1960 (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1983), 68–98.
Beryl Satter, Family Properties: Race, Real Estate, and the Exploitation of Black Urban America (New York: Metropolitan Books, 2009), 5.
Amanda I. Seligman, Block by Block: Neighborhoods and Public Policy on Chicago’s West Side (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2005).
The Chicago Fact Book Consortium, Local Community Fact Book Chicago Metropolitan Areas Based on the 1970 and 1980 Census (Chicago: Chicago Review Press, 1984), 69.
Each community is made up of a group of census tracks. The Local Community Fact Books, cited in this study, used the information from the census tracks to create the neighborhood census. The Chicago Fact Book Consortium, Local Community Fact Book, 68–69; Evelyn M. Kitagawa and Karl E. Taeuber, Local Community Fact Book, Chicago Metropolitan Area 1960 (Chicago: Chicago Community Inventory, University of Chicago, 1963), 65.
William Anton Vrame, A History of School Desegregation in Chicago since 1954 (PhD Diss., University of Wisconsin, 1970), 120–124; Rury, “Race, Space, and the Politics of Chicago’s Public Schools,” 122–123.
See Arnold R. Hirsch, “Massive Resistance in the Urban North: Trumbull Park, Chicago, 1953–1966,” The Journal of American History 82 (September 1995): 522–550
Thomas J. Sugrue, “Crabgrass-Roots Politics: Race, Rights, and the Reaction against Liberalism in the Urban North, 1940–1964,” The Journal of American History 82 (September 1995): 551–578.
Ronald P. Formisano, Boston against Busing: Race, Class, and Ethnicity in the 1960s and 1970s (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 2004), 20
Ronald P. Formisano, “Redmond’s Career Shows Meteoric Rise,” Chicago Tribune, May 11, 1966, 5.
Henry De Zutter, “Redmond Victory: Busing OKd; Could Start Jan. 29,” Chicago Daily News, December 28, 1967
Christopher Chandler, “School Busing for Austin and S. Shore OKd,” Chicago Sun-Times, December 28, 1967, 20.
Loraine Green and Warren Bacon are black board members. Paul E. Peterson, School Politics Chicago Style (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1976), 156–157.
Gary Orfield, The Reconstruction of Southern Education: The Schools and the 1964 Civil Rights Act (New York: Wiley-Interscience, 1969); Peterson, School Politics Chicago Style, 154.
Vern K. Richey, “Northwest Side: Pupil Busing Backed by 3 PTA Heads,” Chicago Daily News, January 4, 1968, 3
Vern K. Richey, “Board Under Fire: Bridge Parents Plan Negro Busing Protests,” Chicago Daily News, January 5, 1968, 3
Christopher Chandler, “4 More Schools Added to Bus Plan,” Chicago Sun-Times, January 5, 1968, 3
Christopher Chandler “Rival Busing Proposal For South Shore Bared,” Chicago Sun-Times, January 6, 1968, 4
Christopher Chandler “‘We Don’t Want Integration’: 1500 Protest Busing Plan,” Chicago Sun-Times, January 7, 1968, 3, 19.
Christopher Chandler, “Redmond Discloses the Details of Plans for Busing 1,035 Pupils,” Chicago Sun-Times, January 9, 1968, 4; Vrame, “A History of School Desegregation,” 183, 187.
Ibid., 116–119; Peterson, School Politics Chicago Style, 165; Harvey Luskin Molotch, Managed Integration: Dilemmas of Doing Good in the City (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1972), 44; Vrame, “A History of School Desegregation,” 197–198.
“at N.W. Side Rally Map Busing Demonstration,” Chicago Sun-Times, January 9, 1968, 16; John Linstead, “Northwest Side: 1,000 Delegates Set Protest of Busing,” Chicago Daily News, January 9, 1968, 1.
Edmond J. Rooney, “Hundreds Protest in Corridors,” Chicago Daily News, January 10, 1968, 1
Christopher Chandler, “Board Delays Decision on Plan to Bus Pupils,” Chicago Sun-Times, January 11, 1968, 1.
Henry De Zutter, “Daley: ‘Let Those in Affected Areas Decide,’” Chicago Daily News, January 11, 1968.
Rury, “Race, Space, and the Politics of Chicago’s Public Schools,” 134–135; Roger Biles, Richard J. Daley: Politics, Race, and the Governing of Chicago (Dekalb: Northern Illinois Press, 1995), 96–101.
Joel Havemann, “Protest school Busing Plan,” Chicago Sun-Times, January 11, 1968, 1, 32; Chandler, “Board Delays Decision on Plans to Bus Pupils,” 1, 32; De Zutter, “Daley,” 8.
Joel Havemann, “Civic Groups Rally Behind Busing,” Chicago Sun-Times, January 13, 1968, 3
Joel Havemann, “U.S. Watching Fate of Busing Here,” Chicago Tribune, January 13, 1968, 2
Henry De Zutter; “Busing Fight Perils U.S. Aid,” Chicago Daily News, January 12, 1968, 1.
“School Bus Politics,” Chicago Daily News, January 12, 1968, 6; “Busing Delays School Budget,” Chicago Daily News, January 17, 1968, 3; Christopher Chandler, “School Tax Levy OK Deferred by Council,” Chicago Sun-Times, January 18, 1968, 5
Christopher Chandler, “School Tax Levy OKd a Busing Foes March,” Chicago Daily News, January 30, 1968, 1.
Hope Justus, “Angry Reaction Delays, May Kill School Bus Plan,” Chicago American, January 11, 1968, 4.
Chicago Board of Education, “Transcript of Hearings at South Shore High School,” February 5, 1968, 3, 4, Cyrus Hall Adams Papers, box 35–4, Chicago History Museum (CHM).
James T. Patterson, Brown v. Board of Education: A Civil Rights Milestone and Its Troubled Legacy (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2001), 42–43.
See Vanessa Siddle Walker, Their Highest Potential: African American School Community in the Segregated South (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 1996)
David S. Cecelski, Along Freedom Road: Hyde County, North Carolina, and the Fate of Black Schools in the South (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 1994)
Scott R. Baker, Paradoxes of Desegregation: African American Struggle for Educational Equity in Charleston, South Carolina, 1926–1972 (Columbia: University of South Carolina Press, 2006).
Edwardo Bonilla Silva, White Supremacy and Racism in a Post Civil Rights Era (Boulder: Lynne Rienner, 2001).
Carter G. Woodson, The Mis-education of the Negro (Trenton, New Jersey: African World Press, 1993), xiii.
See Dionne Danns, Something Better for Our Children: Black Organizing in Chicago Public Schools (New York: Routledge, 2003)
Jakobi Williams, From the Bullet to the Ballot: The Illinois Chapter of the Black Panther Party and Racial Coalition Politics in Chicago (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 2013)
Elizabeth Shana Todd-Breland, To Reshape and Redefine Our World: African American Political Organizing for Education in Chicago 1968–1988 (PhD Diss., University of Chicago, 2010)
Gael Graham, Young Activists: American High School Students in the Age of Protest (DeKalb: Northern Illinois Press, 2006)
Carlos Muñoz Jr., Youth, Identity, Power: The Chicano Movement (London: Verso, 1989).
See Stephen Kendrick and Paul Kendrick, Sarah’s Long Walk: Free Blacks of Boston and How Their Struggle for Equality Changed America (Boston: Beacon Press, 2004)
Hilary J. Moss, Schooling Citizens: The Struggle for African American Education in Antebellum America (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2009), 164–189
Carl F. Kaestle, Pillars of the Republic: Common Schools and American Society, 1780–1860 (New York: Hill and Wang, 1983) 176
W. E. B. Du Bois, “Does the Negro Need Separate Schools?” Journal of Negro Education 4 (July 1935): 328–335
Davison M. Douglas, Jim Crow Moves North: The Battle over Northern School Segregation, 1865–1954 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2005).
Dionne Danns, “Racial Ideology and the Sanctity of the Neighborhood School Policy in Chicago,” Urban Review 40 (2008): 64–75.
Rod Sellers, Chicago’s Southeast Side Revisited (Chicago: Arcadia, 2001), 120, 122
Dean Geroulis, “East Side Shows Its Still Made of Steel,” Chicago Tribune, November 2009, http://articles.chicagotribune.com/2003–11–09/business/0311090359_1_youth-center-affordable-housing-mills.
Richard P. Schnettler, “Status Report: Robert A. Black School South Shore Busing Proposal,” 1974, 1–2, Municipal Reference Collection, HWLC.
For racial violence associated with housing, see Hirsch, Making the Second Ghetto; Hirsch, “Massive Resistance in the Urban North,” Chicago Commission on Race Relations, The Negro in Chicago: A Study of Race Relations and a Race Riot (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1922); Spear, Black Chicago.
Gregory S. Jacobs, Getting Around Brown: Desegregation, Development and the Columbus Public Schools (Columbus: Ohio State University Press, 1998) 30.
John P. Spencer, In the Crossfire: Marcus Foster and the Trouble History of American School Reform (Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press 2012).
Daniel P. Moynihan, The Negro Family: The Case for National Action (Washington, DC: Office of Policy Planning and Research, US Department of Labor, 1965)
William Julius Wilson, More than Just Race: Being Black and Poor in the Inner City (New York: W. W. Norton, 2009), 109–111.
Frank Riessman, The Culturally Deprived Child (New York: Harper and Row, 1962), 2–3
Hilda Taba and Deborah Elkins, Teaching Strategies for the Culturally Disadvantaged (Chicago: Rand McNally, 1966), 1.
Kevin Fox Gotham, “Urban Space, Restrictive Covenants and the Origins of Racial Residential Segregation in One U.S. City,” International Journal of Urban and Regional Research 24 (September 2000): 617–618.
Jim Carl, Freedom of Choice: Vouchers in American Education (Santa Barbara, CA: Praeger, 2011), 9.
Kevin Kruse, White Flight: The Making of Modern Conservatism (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2005), 9.
Chicago Board of Education, “Transcript of Hearings at Steinmetz High School,” February 19, 1968, 40–41.
Chicago Board of Education “Transcript of Hearings at Steinmetz High School,” February 15, 1968, 43–46.
Chicago Board of Education, “Transcript of Hearings at Steinmetz High School,” February 19, 1968, 14–16.
Karen Anderson, Little Rock: Race and Resistance at Central High School (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2010), 56
Formisano, Boston against Busing, 8, 89. Jill Ogline Titus, Brown’s Battleground: Students, Segregationists, and the Strugglefor Justice in Prince Edward County, Virginia (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 2011) 100–102.
Casey Banas, “School Board Rejects Austin Bus Plan, Wants 2d Revised,” Chicago Tribune, February 29, 1968, 1
Christopher Chandler, “Reject School Busing Plans: Board Orders Redraft of S. Shore Proposal,” Chicago Sun-Times, February 29, 1968, 3.
George Connelly, “The Austin Area Project: A Pupil Busing Program in District Four, an Evaluation,” 1968, 1–2, Municipal Reference Collection, Harold Washington Library Center (HWLC).
Ray C. Rist, Invisible Children: School Integration in American Society (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1978), 151, 248.
Copyright information
© 2014 Dionne Danns
About this chapter
Cite this chapter
Danns, D. (2014). Redmond’s School Desegregation Plan and Reactions. In: Desegregating Chicago’s Public Schools. Historical Studies in Education. Palgrave Macmillan, New York. https://doi.org/10.1057/9781137357588_2
Download citation
DOI: https://doi.org/10.1057/9781137357588_2
Publisher Name: Palgrave Macmillan, New York
Print ISBN: 978-1-349-47210-9
Online ISBN: 978-1-137-35758-8
eBook Packages: Palgrave Education CollectionEducation (R0)