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Desegregation got off to a good start in Washington, although its first days were not without incident. There was a two-day student strike at McKinley High School, where whites complained about blacks cursing and requesting the telephone numbers of white girls….
Beneath the general tranquility all was not well. Many of the problems that beset the District’s desegregated schools were brought to general attention in 1956 when a congressional subcommittee, a majority of whose members were southerners, investigated the situation. Spokesmen for the NAACP warned that there was “a real danger” of “a scurrilous attack … on Negroes of Washington and the process of desegregation”; they characterized the inquiry as a “preconceived” sally by men who believed from the start that desegregation was a catastrophe.
The investigators’ motives may have been questionable, but testimony given by more than fifty Washington teachers and school administrators nevertheless pointed to grave problems. The investigators may have run advance checks to find witnesses who would confirm the case against desegregation, but, as even the liberal New Republic acknowledged, the disturbing evidence that came out during the hearings is not made less disturbing merely because of the prejudice and ulterior motive of … Southerners."
The black students’ use of vulgar language bothered many whites. John Paul collins, who had worked in the District’s schools for thirty-four years and had been principal of Anacostia and Eastern high schools, declared that he “heard colored girls at the school use language that was far worse than I have ever heard, even in the Marine Corps.” Eva Wells, the principal of Theodore Roosevelt High School, believed vulgar language was the greatest cause“ of fights at her school. She said that ”so many remarks" had been made to Roosevelt’s girl cheerleaders during the basketball season of 1954 that it had been necessary to switch to boy cheerleaders the next year.
Nor was vulgarity confined to language. Arthur Storey, the principal at McFarland Junior High school, testified that in crowded corridors “boys would bump against girls” and “put their hands upon them but discipline was difficult to administer because ”a boy could say, ‘I was pushed.’ White girls at Anacostia High School complained about “being touched by colored boys in a suggestive manner when passing … in the halls,’, and the situation at Wilson High School got to the point where the student newspaper, The Easterner, published an editorial under the title ”Hands Off."
Admitting that the decorum of students left something to be desired even before desegregation, Dorothy Denton, a teacher at Barnard Elementary School, said that behavior was “going from good, or medium-good, to bad, in my opinion.” John Paul Collins said there had been “more thefts at Eastern [High School] in the last two years than I had known in all my thirty-odd years in the school system.”
When it came to disciplinary policies, many teachers believed they faced a difficult transition. Hugh Stewart Smith of Jefferson Junior High School said that before desegregation white teachers expected students to “do the right thing because it was the right thing to do.” Most black teachers, on the other hand, were said to insist on “rigid discipline,” for they had more experience dealing with children who thought that you got what you wanted by fighting.“ Katherine Reid, a veteran white teacher at the Tyler School, admitted that she initially found it ”very hard to make colored children do what I told them.“ One day when she was having trouble with a black girl, ’one of the colored boys said, ‘Miss Reid, why don’t you stop talking to her and bat her over the head the way her last teacher did?’”
Some teachers said their authority had been undermined. Katherine Fowler, who taught at McKinley High School, had an unpleasant experience after she scolded black students who were singing in the hall and disturbing others. The students said she was picking on them because of their race. An official of the NAACP discussed the matter with Fowler’s principal, who warned the teacher to “be careful” in disciplining black students.
One teacher expressed the view of many of her colleagues when she said she was “shocked at the low achievement of the Negro children who have been in the schools of Washington.” In twenty-two pre- dominantly white elementary schools the average I.Q. was 105, while the average in predominantly black schools was 87.
Whatever the cause of the low scores, classroom teachers clearly were confronted with serious problems associated with teaching students of varying abilities in the same class. Ruth Davis, a veteran teacher with 41 years’ experience in the classroom, said it was difficult to teach when students of widely varying abilities were placed in the same classes. “It was hard on everyone concerned. It was hard on the boys and girls who needed the special help. It was hard on the ones who could have gone ahead. And it was very discouraging for the teacher who had no means of serving every one.” Helen Ingrick of the Emery School also found teaching “very difficult, because you had to have so many groups and so many age levels and so much preparation for the different range of abilities.” Dorothy Denton of the Barnard School thought that her better studenrs were suffering educationally because she had “to put so much time on discipline and on low ability that I haven’t the time to give to the children who are able to go on.” After nine days of testimony, the congressional subcommittee concluded, “The evidence, taken as a whole, points to a definite impairment of educational opportunities for members of both white and Negro races as a result of integration, with little prospect of remedy in the future.” The subcommittee recommended that the schools be formally resegregated, but its chairman, James C. Davis of Georgia, predicted that even if this were not done the departure of whites and the immigration of blacks would accomplish the same end – segregated schools.
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After the Bolling decision, the rate of white withdrawal from the public schools tripled. Between 1949 and 1953 white enrollments had declined by about 4,000 students; between 1954 and 1958, white enrollments declined by almost 12,000 students. The District abandoned segregation, but white parents and students then abandoned the District.
