Arthur v. Nyquist

Historical Background

Like so many other cases (e.g., in Georgia, Kentucky, and Ohio), this one began early in the 19th century. African American parents in Buffalo sought better education for their children by petitioning for desegregated schools as early as 1840. The unsuccessful petitions eventually resulted in superintendent-decreed desegregated schools in Buffalo by 1872 that were not, however, executed by the school board. A number of schools had been desegregated after the Civil War in the South and North. These included Phillips School, the first in Boston, which was desegregated by legislation passed in 1855; some schools in Georgia in 1865; many in Alton, Illinois, from 1873 through 1897; some in Ohio in 1890; some in Kentucky in 1898; and some in Tennessee in 1901.

In cities where school systems had been desegregated or integrated, these schools resegregated under The Black Codes, the ending of Reconstruction, Jim Crow, and legalized second-class citizenship of African Americans (including housing covenants to promote segregated public schools became the tools for resegregation in the North and South).

In New York State, efforts to desegregate the public school system became official policy in 1947. That is, New York had state laws by which the New York State Department of Education and the State Board of Regents mandated desegregated public schools throughout the state. The ineffectiveness of the mandates was obvious when, almost 20 years later, in 1965, African American parents appealed to the State Commissioner of Education, claiming Buffalo maintained segregated schools. These parents pointed to the school system's factual segregation realities, demonstrated at the elementary school level and in the system's discriminatory policies in recruiting and placing African American teachers. Notwithstanding the commissioner's ruling in favor of the African American parent plaintiffs in 1966, the assigning of teachers based on race never changed in Buffalo.

Shortly after this ruling, the Buffalo school system began a voluntary desegregated program of one-way busing. The school board initiated a policy of busing African American junior high school students to White schools, but not a policy of busing White students to African American schools. By 1968, Buffalo schools were still not desegregated because less than 10% of the 27,000 students were in desegregated schools. The impact of that 10%, or 2,700 African Americans in desegregated schools, was nullified when the Buffalo Board of Education essentially allowed the same number of White students to transfer from desegregated schools to White schools. Then, in 1972, some 7 years after the state commissioner of education officially ordered the Buffalo schools to desegregate, the commissioner acknowledged that these schools were more segregated than they had been in 1968. In fact, out of 96 schools, 20 were 90% African American and 29 were 90% White. The Buffalo Board of Education ignored the state commissioner's request for a revised desegregation plan because of the findings of more segregation in the Buffalo public school system. Within 2 months, the Buffalo Board of Education replied that it could not comply. The state commissioner then sent a special task force to Buffalo with the goal of creating a plan that was submitted to the board in 1973; the plan was summarily rejected.

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