Houston After Brown
A roundtable discussion on the impact of Brown v. Board of Education of Topeka,
Kansas on the past, present and future of education in Houston

This roundtable was organized by the Houston Bar Association and conducted as part of the 50th Anniversary Symposium on Brown v. Board of Education, held May 17, 2004 at Rice University. The symposium was presented by the Education Foundation of Harris County, the Harris County Department of Education, the Jesse H. Jones Graduate School of Management, Rice University, and Congressman Chris Bell.

PANEL MEMBERS:
Mr. Michael Connelly, Moderator
Mr. Kelly Frels
Dr. Billy R. Reagan
Mr. David T. Lopez
Ms. Carole Pinkett

MR. CONNELLY: The Houston Bar Association is proud to be one of the sponsors of this symposium. Let me introduce you to our panelists. The young lady here in the bright salmon-colored jacket is Ms. Carole Pinkett. Ms. Pinkett is a product of the Philadelphia school system, but she moved to Houston and was one of the founding members of Citizens for Good Schools, which played an important role in supporting public education in this community. Ms. Pinkett was not a teacher or a school board member; she was what there are too few of — a concerned citizen who was actively involved in education in this community. The gentleman next to her is Mr. David Lopez who, in addition to being a skilled and competent attorney, also had the unique opportunity to serve as a member of the Houston Independent School District Board of Directors from 1972 until 1975. Mr. Lopez has a very interesting perspective to share with us. To his left is Dr. Billy Reagan who, as you all know, served as superintendent of the Houston Independent School District from 1974 to 1986 and is truly a professional educator. And last but not least, on the far right is Mr. Kelly Frels. Mr. Frels is a practicing attorney with special expertise in school law. In fact, his law firm, Bracewell & Patterson, represented the Houston Independent School District in much of the desegregation litigation. He was personally involved in many of those cases. In June he will take office as the president of the State Bar of Texas. We are very pleased to help sponsor this distinguished panel.
Kelly, how was the Brown decision received and implemented in Houston in educational circles?

MR. FRELS: The Houston desegregation case was first filed in December of 1956, which was after the second Brown decision. The case remained in active litigation for 28 years. It was followed by a five-year period of time when the district operated under a settlement agreement, so the total involvement of the courts in the Houston case was 33 years.
The first real meaningful desegregation in Houston took place in 1960, when it was implemented in one grade a year, starting with first grade, moving on to second grade the next year, and so on. In 1967, HISD started what they called “Freedom of Choice,” after the Justice Department intervened in this lawsuit. The original lawsuit was filed by the NAACP Legal Defense and Education Fund, and Weldon Berry and Francis Williams were the two local lawyers. “Freedom of Choice” was a program developed by school districts throughout the South. It meant you could go to any school that you wanted. But really, nobody encouraged students to go to any other schools other than the schools they were already attending. In 1968, the Supreme Court did away with the concept of “with all deliberate speed,” and said that school districts must develop and move forward with a realistic desegregation plan that worked. In 1969 and 1970 the Justice Department became very active in the Houston lawsuit. And it was in 1969 that the Citizens for Good Schools was formed and a reform group was elected to the HISD school board. Their commitment was to desegregate schools and to reform school management. In 1970, U.S. District Court Judge Ben Connally ordered a comprehensive desegregation plan for the school district. That plan then was appealed to the Fifth Circuit, which added the concept of “pairing schools,” or school bussing. The problem was that they were bussing black students — one black school to one black school, one Hispanic school to a black school. Also during that time of change, the whole housing pattern changed in Houston, so the statistics were really not relevant by the time the case got to the Fifth Circuit. The idea of pairing was that you take a white school and a black school and you mix them so that you have an integrated school. I started with the case in 1971, so I didn’t go through the period of opposition, but came in at the time when people were wanting to move forward with desegregation.

MR. CONNELLY: The idea that it took 15 or more years to accomplish desegregation may be hard for many people to believe. Was there resistance on the part of the community? Was there a lack of commitment on the part of school boards?

MS. PINKETT: I would say all of the above. We had a community that was segregated. The problem wasn’t quality of education; it was the comfortableness of being with your own, because communities were like that. In time the demographics changed and, naturally, things were supposed to change, but they did not. We had some problems with the fact that minorities, African-Americans and then Hispanics, became distinctive in a sense. Since Hispanics were no longer considered Anglos, they wanted some of the same benefits that, seemingly, the African-Americans were going to encounter, by virtue of minority status. A lot of positive things happened around the 1964 Civil Rights Act. Had it not been for that, I probably would not have come to Houston in 1968 to work for Exxon.

MR. LOPEZ: In order to understand, historically, I think you have to look back before Brown. There is no doubt that we were not committed to desegregation. I think a major change came around World War II, the racism that the Nazis exhibited, a lot of African-Americans going into the service. Right after World War II, things began to change. But even going into the time that the Supreme Court originally took up Brown, which was in 1952, there was a very strong split on the court. Justice Douglas said, “Well, it looks to me like it’s 5-4 to maintain the ‘separate but equal doctrine,’” of Plessy v. Ferguson. Justice Frankfurter was also calling it 5-4 the other way. Interestingly enough, before he was nominated for the Supreme Court, Chief Justice Earl Warren, as governor of California, had pushed through the principle that abolished segregated schools in California. Back in 1947, there was a case called Mendez v. Westminster in which the Hispanics in California were able to get a federal judge to declare separate schools for Hispanics because Hispanics were not admitted in white schools. That was ruled unconstitutional back in 1947. While that was on appeal, then Governor Earl Warren acted to abolish the segregated system. I think it was the Civil Rights Movement coming after the 1954 decision that really brought about the changes that we see today.

MR. CONNELLY: Dr. Reagan, you came on the scene as superintendent of HISD around 1974. At that time, what was the pulse of the community and the school board toward desegregation?

DR. REAGAN: It was a very divided community. The reform group, Citizens for Good Schools, was making strong efforts
to try to bring about desegregation from court orders. Then we had another group called “C.A.R.E.,” and their mission was to return to a much more conservative approach. And the C.A.R.E. group won control of the school board. During that period of time, we were dealing with the matter of the bussing, as Kelly has laid out, which was very, very emotional and a very, very major mistake, everyone in the community agreed. So, we tried to heal the community and we tried to get people working together. We did everything we could to shift from the word “desegregation” to “integration.” Let’s now move toward the integration of the community to schools. Kelly can correct me here, if he needs to, but in order to de-pair those schools, we had to go back to the judge with a plan that would assure him that whatever we did would bring about a higher degree of integration than we had at that time. Therein, we took an idea that had been in place 100 years. A lot of people talk about the magnet school program. Well, the grandparent of magnet schools was the old technical school. Every city had a tech school, and pulled students from all over the city. Dr. Garver and the HISD board took the leadership and created the High School for the Performing Arts, the High School for Health Professions, the Vanguard program for the gifted. I believe we had 10 or 11 schools in operation. We had a model that we knew was working. Parents and students were not concerned about the bus ride, as long as they were getting something at the end of the bus ride that met their needs. We expanded the magnet program to 70 or 80 schools, and the judge accepted that. We moved into the mode of integration as quickly as we could. At the same time, we had this dramatic movement of “white flight” taking place and dramatic movement of the Hispanic population. That created the dynamics of where we are today, with nine percent Anglo students in HISD. Now, we talk about how can you integrate and by which means can you integrate to get the interaction between the races?

MR. CONNELLY: In the 1970s, was segregation the only barrier to quality education in this community, or were there other factors?

DR. REAGAN: One of the major factors was and is the ability to recruit and hold qualified teachers. When we went through the crossover during the integration plan, our black and our white teachers also had to cross over. When that happened, most of the senior black teachers stayed where they were. It was done by seniority. And that left the younger, white teachers moving into the black inner-city schools. It created massive turnover and instability among the faculty on both sides, particularly in the black schools. So, yes, that was a serious problem. The second serious problem was that because there was resentment, anger, and all of these emotional feelings, no bond issue had been passed. The facilities were rapidly deteriorating. We went about 10 years in which we had no bond issue to help that. So, other significant factors came to bear on the quality of education.

MR. CONNELLY: In the Brown case, as we all know, Thurgood Marshall argued that the “separate but equal” doctrine in public education was inherently unequal. He argued that equality under the 4th Amendment of the Constitution required integration of the schools. The implication of that argument is that integration in public schools would give all students the same opportunity. Did it?

MS. PINKETT: No. A lot of blacks said the same thing. If my kid goes to an integrated school or a white school, he or she will be better educated. There was another faction of folks who said, “That’s not true.” So, there was some confusion and disbelief in my community. Equal does not necessarily mean that someone is going to get the same level of education. So, where are we now? We are right back to where we were as far as some of the demographics of having minority schools, or segregated schools, I should say.

MR. LOPEZ: Some of the problems inherent in the separate school idea was that the minority schools also were poor schools, which, you can still argue, probably is true today. I attempted to simply try to get available funds for kids that really needed to have that extra help in order to even attend school. One of the motions I made that eventually passed was simply to use some of the federal funding to buy shoes for kids who were not going to school because they didn’t have any shoes to wear. Of course, all of that is addressed when you say “separate but equal.” The principle was framed around the Constitution, but the reality was separate but unequal, very much unequal.

MR. CONNELLY: We know that the Brown decision rejected the “separate but equal” precedent from the past, but have we gone back to that today? Are there separate but equal facilities that have developed over time, in spite of our efforts of integration?

MR. LOPEZ: The real value of Brown was to say that a government cannot, by virtue of a law, declare that a group cannot enjoy some of the benefits of the government because they are somehow inferior or different. From that flowed the idea that in order to overcome that, you had to remove that badge of inferiority as a matter of law. Well, that has been removed. Our schools now are again pretty much segregated. Most minority students in the Houston district attend overwhelmingly minority schools. What we are now arguing is the quality and availability of resources. Assuming that could be achieved — and we’re still a long way from that — we are back to “separate but equal.” We have segregated schools, and now we are trying to get equal resources. In a way, I think you can argue that we are back 102 years ago to the Plessy v. Ferguson decision that said “separate but equal” was okay.

MR. CONNELLY: Dr. Reagan, how do you feel about that?

DR. REAGAN: I’ve spent many years down this long road searching for equality, and I’m still searching. I don’t know that “equality” has ever been defined. It’s in the eyes of the beholder. And I think that’s still a problem we’re faced with. What is true equality? What does that mean, and how can we quantify it?

MS. PINKETT: You bring up all of the schools to the same level: the same buildings, the same resources, the same books in the library, the same computers. That’s equal. That’s the start of equality. But to start with an inferior building that had inadequate materials and compare that to another school, that’s not equal. You’re not even starting off on the same base.

DR. REAGAN: A very significant issue, shown in study after study, is that we’re putting our least-experienced, least-trained teachers into our most needy schools, and that’s got to stop.

MR. LOPEZ: I think what you are looking at are two different things that don’t necessarily depend one on the other. When we’re talking about equality, I think, as a practical matter, we depart from the idea of equality under the law, that we have the same recognition under the law. We’re not equal. I can’t play basketball as well as Michael Jordan. I can’t deal with relativity as well as Albert Einstein. We’re all different. What we have to look at is from a public policy standpoint. When you look at what is happening to African-Americans and Hispanics in terms of accomplishments and standardized testing, dropout rates, the ability to go on to college, there is something inherently unequal in there. In order to address that, I think that we have to have some inequality going the other way. We talked about the newer teachers going to some of the poor schools. Well, that’s because the teachers that are in higher demand are not going to want to go there. How do we get them there? We have to give them incentives. Generally, that means money. How do we address the idea that children, in order to be able to qualify to go to college, now have to be computer literate? And the ones that don’t have computers at home or parents that know anything about computers, how do we make up for that? Again, it’s money.

MR. CONNELLY: When we think about integration efforts, we tend to think largely about those cases involving black students. What is the history of integration efforts through litigation on behalf of the Hispanics, and how does it compare to cases like Brown?

MR. LOPEZ: As I said earlier, the Mendez case in California in 1947 predated Brown by a number of years. There were others, but generally the problems are somewhat different. In many areas of the country, there was a very definite consideration of Hispanics in pretty much the same way as African-Americans were being considered. But that was not the case all the way around. It is, undoubtedly, easier for Hispanics to come across the divide and get into a situation where they are considered more on an equal footing. I think that perhaps we got started, at least in Houston, somewhat late. And it took the pairing of schools and the idea that, for purposes of desegregation, we were going to be considered white so that the Hispanics and African-Americans bore the brunt of desegregation while the whites were left untouched. It took some of that. But when I got a resolution passed that considered Hispanics a separate but equal minority, amazingly, I got the most static from the Hispanics.

MR. CONNELLY: Two of you have mentioned the effect of the Civil Rights Movement. What role did that play in helping to achieve integration in our schools that perhaps Brown didn’t accomplish on its own?

MR. LOPEZ: From the Brown decision in 1954 to 1964, the first 10 years, the number of African-American children that started going to desegregated schools was less than two percent. It started with the Civil Rights Movement in the ‘60s, leading to the adoption of the Civil Rights Act in ‘64, the Voting Rights Act in ‘65. By 1974, the percentage was around 30 percent. So, certainly the pressure of the Civil Rights Act brought about a lot more movement than the original Brown decision. There were some tremendously courageous judges in the Fifth Circuit. Judge Tuttle was the chief judge at the time, along with Judge Brown from Houston, Judge John Minor Wisdom, and Judge Rives from Alabama. They were on the forefront of bringing about desegregation in the Fifth Circuit, which went all the way from Florida down here to Texas. They really took the brunt of the criticism. They were the called “The Four,” as in the four horses of the apocalypse. They were getting death threats, their families were getting threatened, but they stood there and they made it possible. So it was a combination of factors, but I think it was the pressure of the Civil Rights Movement that brought about the effective change.

MS. PINKETT: During sessions earlier today in the symposium, several students talked to the audience about their accomplishments and feelings, and I think that’s great. But maybe we should have heard from students who have dropped out of school in the 9th or 10th grade, so we could ask them, “What could we have done differently? What is it that we missed with you that we should be doing now?” Because we are spending a lot of time on what was. We can’t change what was. The question is: What are we going to do now? We need to look at the quality of teachers and try to identify this “no child left behind” business. That program is going to be left behind if we don’t do something. We have to define what is best for our students. But I would like to know from students who have dropped off the edge, where did we go wrong? Have them come and talk to us instead of educators talking to educators or interested people talking to other interested people.

MR. CONNELLY: I think that’s an excellent point because we want to focus on the future of education, and how we address and solve some of the problems that exist. What changes do we need to make?

DR. REAGAN: First and foremost, we have to put an effort equal to putting a man on the moon around the teacher issue, getting teachers today recognized and rewarded for the work that they are doing. I’ve never seen people work so hard in my life, with what they are trying to accomplish now. Then we need to go after young people, get them into the teaching profession, and train them and equip them with the skills that they are going to need. Reading is basic to everything. If we don’t have children who can read by the third or fourth grade, the chances are we have lost them. We have got to have the teachers in the early childhood system to get these youngsters and move them along.
I also feel that unless we make technology available to every student, we’re going to see an achievement gap in the next 10 years that’s going to be beyond anything we’ve ever seen in this country. We’ve got to give a lot of attention to technology utilization and its availability to every child in every home.
I would like to make one point about the Civil Rights Movement. From my vantage point, the Civil Rights Move-ment provided us with a lot of well-trained, motivated people who really knew how to become advocates. They knew how to take an issue and move with it.

MS. PINKETT: I found in this community that once a group of advocates attains something, they sort of sit back. They exhale. We have made it. Well, maybe they have made it, but the total community has not made it. That’s what I experienced in the Citizens for Good Schools. We did a lot of work. We got those four people elected to the school board. We said, “Whew,” and sat back. And we needed to keep on advocating quality education for everyone and ensuring that those school board members had the kind of support they needed for re-election or whatever it may be. We reach a certain level of attainment and then we say, “Okay, I will go on to my next project.” We have lost something. And I don’t see the same degree of enthusiasm in our community about schools, other than in these kinds of sessions. I think more effort, more collaborative effort with parents, will need to be invoked.

MR. CONNELLY: There are times in our history when landmark decisions like Brown are necessary and helpful. There are times in our history when charismatic civil rights leaders like Martin Luther King are necessary. But when you break down some of those barriers and get to the point where we are now, don’t we need a groundswell of enthusiasm from the community for education? Isn’t that really what we need, that the community refuses to accept unequal and incomplete education for its society? How do we build that enthusiasm in the rest of the community?

MR. LOPEZ: I think we have to get out and communicate that idea. We know what good education takes. We know that a child by the age of six has 90 percent or so of the intellectual development that it’s going to have in a lifetime. We don’t have them in school yet. We need to catch them earlier than that. I was talking about that 25 to 30 years ago on the school board; but we still haven’t done it. When I was elected, we made a point that we cared about education, not politics. I think politics have become too embroiled in education. We need to separate that. We need to make a commitment just simply because it’s what’s going to save all of us. It’s what’s going to make it possible for us to really accomplish what we need to do and to stop being afraid of the future. That’s a matter of communication, and it’s going to take a lot of work.

MR. CONNELLY: Isn’t there still a lot of debate among concerned people in the community about what educational policies really work best?

MR. LOPEZ: I would hope we are beyond that. One of the things that I found curious when I was on the school board is that every so many years the district says, “Oh, we have to have a great study and we have to set our goals” and so forth. We do that time and time again. Like I said, we know what it’s going to take. And I think that there is a consensus. Where you get controversy is when people are trying to spin some of that into their own political agenda. That’s where it goes off the road.

MR. FRELS: Mike, I think the greatest threat to equality and to progress is that we’re losing a lot of our opinion leaders and our political leaders to types of schools other than public schools. There are the opinion leaders — and I’ve seen it happen in Houston year in and year out — who could really make a difference in the school if they and their children would remain there. Instead, they are going to private schools. They go because they don’t think that their child is going to get the best education in that public school. Secondly, some of them say, although they may not admit it, that it’s socially better for them to go to a private school. Third, it may be for religious reasons. For whatever reasons, a lot of the leaders are leaving public schools with their children. They could be leading this charge. They used to lead the charge years ago for funding in Austin and in Washington. Because we don’t have adequate funding for our public schools, we are going to lose more and more of the leaders, of all races and ethnic backgrounds, to private schools. We will become more and more like the system they have in Louisiana, where they have private school systems and public school systems.

MS. PINKETT: What would happen if you had five buses of parents going to Austin confronting the legislature about funding? Don’t you think they would listen? We don’t have that. What would happen if parents were here today?

DR. REAGAN: I see less advocacy now than at any time in my career. I’m not out there as superintendent, but I’m still in touch with what’s going on. One of the great problems we’ve got right now is that parents do not really understand how serious this problem is. About 20 years ago we learned a good lesson from business and industry. They got us involved in partnerships, and we started looking around at what they were doing. Every one of them had a major public relations department. So, we decided that if we had a good public relations department and we belonged to an association, we could get a better image of our schools out. In my old school district, we had one PR person. Today there are, I’m told, between 20 and 38. So, we have launched a major PR campaign to put forth the very best foot that we can, and that’s fine. But in doing that, there have been some things that should have been covered that are not.
For example, when we had two newspapers in Houston, they were on us every single day, the Post and Chronicle. It was tough, but looking back over it, it was good. They forced us to deal with a lot of issues that, truthfully, I don’t know whether or not we would have. I would hope that we could prevail upon the media to be a little bit more vigorous in looking at education and helping us communicate. Maybe that would help to get people more involved. Take the issue of teachers. I have been to probably 50 different individuals that are, quote, leaders or opinion makers. Except for two or three, I haven’t found anyone that’s really concerned about teachers. Some of these are state leaders. I’m not trying to indict them; I’m just going on their actions. Their priorities are somewhere else.

MR. CONNELLY: We are going to have to wrap it up because of the time. Thank you all for attending, and we thank our panel for their participation.

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