When talking about the Civil Rights movement, traditional teachings tend to focus on the regional South where racism was pervasive and abundant. However, history, and the present, tends to omit the equally abundant and pervasive racism in the North. A history that persists today, as Northern cities continue to have the most segregated schools in the country.
In New York City (a metropolitan area that is generally regarded as “liberal and open”) political leaders, journalists, and white families coalesced against desegregation efforts. Rather than the belligerent and open racism in the South, Northern liberal elites disguised their racist practices using coded language. Rather than saying they were opposed to “desegregation,” the Board of Education (and its supporters) framed the issue as one of “separation” and not “segregation” (Theoharis). Additionally, New Yorkers opposed to desegregation were framed as parents committed to “neighborhood schools” and opposed to “forced busing” (Theoharis). Most importantly, after the Brown decision, de jure (by law) segregation was ruled unconstitutional and required state action to remedy segregated practices.. In a strategic move, Northern liberal elites reasoned that segregation in schools (which they acknowledged) were merely the case in fact (or, de facto) rather than in law. This was a calculated move as the North opposed desegregation efforts as not based on their own racist beliefs, but as an issue that was merely the result of “natural” causes and not, say, the targeted efforts of city officials in racial gerrymandering of school districts. Despite the parallels in racist laws aimed at maintaining school segregation—such as racial gerrymandering in housing and school district boundaries, and the placement of higher-qualified teachers in white schools—the history of the civil rights movement and Black activism for desegregated schools in the North is rarely told. As Theoharis states, the civil rights narrative “frames racial injustice as a regional sickness rather than a national malady.” White liberals in the North found convenient loopholes in the law (re: de facto segregation) and used distorted language (re: separation, forced busing, neighborhood schools) to uphold segregation in schools.
Unfortunately, the history of racial injustices committed in the North are not surprising to me. I believe that when the Civil Rights Movement is viewed in a national context rather than solely as a Southern issue, it becomes clear that racial injustice and white resistance to desegregation were not exclusive to the South. I was surprised, however, to learn about the Harlem Nine, Bostonian antidesegregationist organization ROAR (Restore Our Alienated Rights), and the New York school boycott (which was larger than the March on D.C.!). As the author points out, there were similarities between the Little Rock Nine and the Harlem Nine; both were efforts by black students and parents to fight against segregation in schools and demand quality education for all black children. Yet, the historical narrative focuses on only one of these stories, overlooking the equally important struggle of Black mothers in the North who fought for better education and equality for their children. The persistence of highly segregated schools in many Northern cities today is evidence that true desegregation never occurred in the first place.
Will Wright 