For decades, this newspaper has covered the many developments in the desegregation effort that officially began in 1976, when a lawsuit from the NAACP resulted in court-ordered desegregation for Dayton Public Schools.
In 1986, the Dayton Daily News did a 10-year “report card” on the status of the desegregation order and found the progress to be mixed. The report card featured a profile on John Harewood, a retired Dayton Public Schools teacher of 36 years who wrote about his experience living and working in the segregated schools:
“At the time, there were very few opportunities for blacks to do anything. If we had to overcome, we had to do it by education,” Harewood said.
Harewood, who retired in 1974 after spending part of his time as an administrator, provided key testimony in Dayton’s school-desegregation trial because of his knowledge of the segregation practices in the district.
Blacks were not allowed to teach whites when Harewood started as a teacher in the district in 1936. Before court-ordered desegregation 40 years later, Dayton’s segregated school system was a way of life.
“You could feel the racism in those days. You could go to the meetings and feel it. It’s eased up a bit today, but it’s still there,” Harewood said.
For example, black sports teams had to play other black teams. There were no black referees, blacks dressed in separate locker rooms, and they attended separate proms. In school assemblies, blacks sat in the rear of the class.
Blacks and whites in Dayton were strongly divided along racial and neighborhood lines in Sept. 1976, when the district was ordered to desegregate, according to Harewood.
What became clear to educators such as Harewood and black parents was that their children would attend an all-black school if they lived in West Dayton, Harewood said.
Students living in DeSoto Bass and Homeview courts, both black housing projects in predominantly black neighborhoods, would create schools near their homes, creating a case of economic and racial isolation, Harewood said.
Harewood said one way to correct the isolation was to change the mix of students attending the neighborhood schools.
“Transporting kids is not the only way, but busing has helped provide education programs for all students in the district,” he said.
Black schools were important to teach black students a sense of history, Harewood said.
“Nothing in a school should say to a student that you aren’t as important or as good as any other student, he added. “Slowly we’re moving in that direction, but we’re not there yet.”
In 2002, following the courts lifting the desegregation order, Dayton Daily News reporter James Cummings reflected on the decision in a column:
I’m not blaming the leaders who negotiated an end to busing for racial desegregation. It’s painfully obvious busing didn’t work.
I’m blaming the kids who chased my oldest brother home from school every day in the late 1950s when our family was among the first blacks to attend Westwood. I’m blaming the parents of those kids, because there’s no doubt it was the parents who taught their children to hate.
I blame the white families who fled the neighborhood in the early 1960s and the real estate agents who steered in the black families to replace them.
I blame my black classmates who jumped at the chance when they became the majority to return the torment they received when they were the minority. I blame their parents who failed to teach their children to turn the memory of pain into compassion instead of anger.
But most of all I blame all of us: Every adult, black or white, who chose to take his child out of the district. Every person who opted not to move to Dayton “because of the school situation.” Every person not willing to do anything even remotely uncomfortable in the name of desegregation.
In today’s Ideas & Voices, hear from two contemporary perspectives on the status of segregation in the Dayton region - and what can be done to address it for future generations:
Alex Lovit is a Senior Program Officer and Historian with the Charles F. Kettering Foundation:
Restricting the desegregation plan to city limits had consequences. Between 1970 and 2010, while the city’s Black population held relatively steady, the white population was cut in half. Overall, the city’s population fell by more than 40 percent between 1970 and 2010. Some of this was due to a regional economic decline, but much of it was also due to out-migration to the suburbs. The metropolitan region’s population declined by a much more modest six percent over the same period. Avoiding racially integrated schools was not the only motivation for people to leave Dayton for the suburbs, but it was a significant factor.
By 2002, several state and local agencies, including the local chapter of the NAACP, signed an agreement ending the desegregation order in Dayton. By that point, 73 percent of students in Dayton Public Schools were Black. US District Court Judge Walter Rice, who oversaw the agreement, explained his decision: “There simply weren’t enough white children.”
In effect, the Dayton region never desegregated its schools. Today, 78 percent of Dayton public school students identify as minority, and total enrollment is less than a quarter of what it was at the district’s pre-desegregation peak. The eight largest suburbs in the region have majority-white enrollment. According to Ohio School Report Cards, each of them has higher average teacher salaries, higher test scores, and a higher graduation rate. Prior to Brown, Dayton’s schools were segregated and unequal; they remain so today.
The Brown decision provided the prying wedge needed to begin the dismantling of institutional structures that oppressed students of color: Black, Native and Hispanic. However, what cannot be remedied by the courts is the attitudes and beliefs of those who want whiteness to remain at the center. This centering of whiteness can be seen in the insidious events and practices of white flight, redlining, and the capturing and reconfiguring of school vouchers to benefit the privileged.
Yes, it’s clear there has been a de facto resegregation of the schools in Dayton, due to a multitude of factors, which many believe is detrimental to the students and community. But, I propose that we not miss an element that always has and always will sustain the Black community: Social cohesion. The shared sense of identity in the community around our collective needs, challenges, and triumphs is what continues to make Dayton priceless and full of potential. The people in this community have not given up on Dayton. Across racial, economic, religious and political boundaries, Daytonians have taken responsibility for one another. They problem solve. They develop coalitions across all sections: non-profits, churches, business & industry, city government and education to meet the needs of our most vulnerable community members: students, families in need, immigrants, those suffering from and impacted by addiction. The social cohesion in this region is remarkable and deserves recognition for the many organizations that are rising to nurture and rebuild this community.