Waiting on the Promise of "Brown"

Abstract

Bridge JN o tDavis School "pirng pan 150 tuens oud e rnsoredacos SuhSrigeeaholho DELTAVILLE by certain elements of the white community, about 100 black children were enrolled rn the Davis School under this plan. In 1972, however, the court ruled that the freedomof-choice plan was inadequate to disestablish the dual school system and ordered the board to pair the two schools so that Davis would serve all students in grades one through six while Bledsoe would serve all students in grades seven through twelve. Under this pai frng" plan, 1,500 students would be transported across South Bridge each school day. There was tremendous opposition in the white community to this plan, and the board exhausted all available judicial appeals. In September 1974, on the night before the plan was to go into effect, South Bridge-the only crossing over Barrier River in the proximity of the two schools-was mysteriously blown up. Despite continued requests from the black community, neither state nor federal officials have been able to finance reconstruction of the bridge. Both have concluded that the cost, estimated at ten million dollars, cannot be appropriated before late 1976. Even when funding is obtained, engineers expect that because of construction difficulties, the new bridge will not be completed until 1979. Destruction of South Bridge did not seriously disrupt business, most of which flows to neighboring counties. But the loss of the bridge has greatly affected the county's school integration plans: a. When South Bridge was destroyed, the school board petitioned the district court

Retreat Into Legalism: The Little Rock School Desegregation Case in Historic Perspective

“…New black voices were being heard, many of them unsympathetic to the desegregation project. Some black leaders had come to reject integration in favor of black-run schools (Levin 1970;Fantini, Gittell and Magat 1970), even as others grew impatient while waiting, seemingly forever, for the promise of Brown to be realized in their communities (Bell 1978). Anyplace where desegregation landed on the agenda, it became the issue, demanding massive amounts of time, energy and money.…”