All Deliberate Speed: Segregation and Exclusion in California Schools, 1855-1975

By Charles M. Wollenberg

This title is part of UC Press's Voices Revived program, which commemorates University of California Press’s mission to seek out and cultivate the brightest minds and give them voice, reach, and impact. Drawing on a backlist dating to 1893, Voices Revived makes high-quality, peer-reviewed scholarship accessible once again using print-on-demand technology. This title was originally published in 1978.

• Language: English
• Publisher: University of California Press
• Release date: Apr 28, 2023
• ISBN: 9780520317048

Charles M. Wollenberg

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CHARLES WOLLENBERG

All Deliberate Speed

Segregation and Exclusion in California Schools, 1855-1975

UNIVERSITY OF CALIFORNIA PRESS

Berkeley Los Angeles London

University of California Press

Berkeley and Los Angeles, California

University of California Press, Ltd.

London, England

Copyright © 1976, 1978 by

The Regents of the University of California

First Paperback Printing 1978

ISBN: 0-520-03728-6

Library of Congress Catalog Card Number: 75-46047

Printed in the United States of America

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Contents

Contents

Introduction

1.Separate but Equal in California

2.Yellow Peril in the Schools (I)

3.Yellow Peril in the Schools (II)

4.The Tragedy of Indian Education

5.The Decline and Fall of Separate but Equal

6.All Deliberate Speed in California

7.Segregation and Exclusion in California Schools 1855-1975: Observations

Epilogue

Bibliographical Note

Index

Introduction

In 1872, after the regular Oakland schools were opened to black children for the first time, a black parent noted that it was the happiest day of my life to see our children received with the same equality with the Anglo Saxon… I think by children going to school and growing up together, the prejudice that has been so long in existence will be blotted out.1 Today, over a century later, that statement still expresses the unfulfilled dream of school integrationists, that public school attendance can be used as a major force to blot out racism and discrimination in America. This book is in part a narrative history of that dream and the attempts to make it a reality in California. But the study also covers the sustained efforts to exclude minorities from the public education system and to segregate them in the public schools. My aim is to create a usable history that will place the current controversies over busing and ethnic balance in historical perspective. I hope to expose and explore a largely ignored past record in order to better understand a present problem.

The book is often concerned with an inter-relationship between two supremely important American institutions: the schools and the courts. Both institutions have sometimes been instruments of ethnic oppression and discrimination, yet both also have been perceived by minorities as potential allies in the struggle against racism and segregation. Educational opportunity is important to all Americans, but particularly so to minorities. They not only hope that education will reduce the general level of ignorance and prejudice, but they also see schooling as a vehicle for social mobility, a means by which their children can escape or ameliorate conditions of poverty and discrimination.

During the past century, the courts have become the major field of battle in the struggle against school segregation. Ethnic minorities usually have had little economic power or political clout with which to fight discrimination, and their relatively small numbers have made successful armed insurrection impossible. But since the ratification of the Fourteenth Amendment to the Constitution in 1868, the courts have been a place where significant victories against institutional racism can be won. Court cases are used as the core of this study, then, not because I wish to write a legal history, but because the judicial system so often has been the battlefield for proponents and opponents of school segregation. In California, key court decisions have both determined and reflected the realities of ethnic experiences and relationships in the schools. The decisions have caused dramatic educational policy changes and reflected the intellectual, moral and political currents of the times. This book provides a social context for the judicial history of school segregation in California; the book seeks to explain what caused particular conflicts to arrive in court, why the court made particular decisions, and what effect those decisions had on the schools and ethnic groups involved.

There are several reasons why California was chosen as the subject of this study. First, although the state has the nation’s largest and the far west’s oldest public school system, its educational history has been almost ignored by scholars. There is no acceptable institutional history of public education in California, let alone any challenging, interpretive studies.2 In recent years, some excellent historical work has been published on school systems on the east coast, but there is no reason to assume that California’s educational history has always conformed to eastern models. David Tyack has noted that Some writers imply that urban education is New York or Boston writ large; but any resident of Portland, Oregon, could testify that such is not the case.3 The same could be said for residents of Los Angeles, San Francisco and San Diego. It is hoped that this book will stimulate further interest in the field of California educational history.

California also has the nation’s largest population of ethnic minorities and, next to Hawaii, the nation’s most ethnically diverse population. The term ethnic minority is neither precise nor satisfying, but for purposes of this study, let us assume that in California it means people of Asian, Latin American and Polynesian descent, as well as blacks and American Indians. By this definition, nearly one-third of the state’s population is minority, including as many as 3.5 million people of Latin American (mostly Mexican) descent, at least 1.5 million blacks, almost 600,000 Asians and approximately 100,000 American Indians.

During the past decade, a fair amount of historical material about these peoples’ experiences has been published, as some California writers have attempted to reverse the overwhelmingly Anglo emphasis of the state’s earlier historians. But sometimes these attempts have resulted in works written simply to prove that non-whites were present at a particular time and place, and minorities often have been pictured only as passive, helpless victims of society. Much the same could be said for some recent works of educational history.⁴

This study will treat minorities as active participants in a social process. There is no doubt that all of the ethnic groups covered here have been victims of discriminatory and oppressive practices in the schools and the society at large, but at various times each group has rebelled against such conditions and won at least limited victories. Some groups also have been able to use the public education system to gain substantial economic and social mobility, though often at considerable cultural and psychological cost.

It must be emphasized that we are dealing with several, separate minorities, each with its own unique heritage and experience. The amount of prejudice and ill- treatment each group has suffered has varied greatly according to time and place and according to what degree the rest of California society regarded the group as a physical, cultural or economic threat. General social and economic conditions, political conflicts, even diplomatic rivalries have affected the position of different minorities at different times. Moreover, the minority’s own culture and heritage helped determine the way it responded to discrimination and the group’s degree of success or failure within the schools. This study cannot deal with all the various minorities in California society, but it does cover groups which, taken together, comprise the great bulk of the state’s non-white population.

The book not only reflects my scholarly interests, but also some of my personal experiences and concerns. I am a product of California public schools and a resident of Berkeley, a community which has gone further in the direction of school integration than any other city of its size in the United States. I teach at an Oakland community college with a diverse, multi-ethnic student body. From time to time, I have been involved in what used to be called Civil Rights activities, as well as other liberal-to-radical causes. As might be expected from this background, I am a social integrationist who believes that multi-ethnic schools are generally a good thing, and I have no particular objection to the use of buses to achieve school integration, providing that the busing costs and distances are within reason.

In spite of these beliefs (some might call them prejudices), I have resisted the temptation to treat this subject as a morality play pitting the good integra- tionists against the evil segregationists. In fact, some of those supporting integration have displayed attitudes as racist and repugnant as the most unreconstructed segregationist. Integration has been proposed as a means of enforced assimilation and conformity of recalcitrant minorities, and it has been supported on the grounds that non-whites can learn only when in classrooms with Anglos. On the other hand, some of those arguing for separate schools have had the best of motives: to maintain a valuable heritage or to prevent the break-down of a positive sense of community or neighborhood.

Perhaps the terms integration and segregation have become too loaded with subjective and emotional connotations to portray correctly the controversies which have raged over the role of minorities in Cali-

fornia schools. It may be more accurate to say that throughout the state’s history there has been a conflict between those who have seen the schools as universal and unifying institutions and those who have seen the schools as particularist and separated institutions. The former may wish to create tolerance and equal opportunity or to achieve enforced conformity and assimilation, while the latter may seek to protect valid community or cultural values or to promote discrimination and oppression. The current concepts of community control and neighborhood schools are consistent with the particularist model, while busing and attempts to achieve ethnic balance coincide with the universalist ideal. One side emphasizes the importance of local values and the maintenance of local power, the other emphasizes national values and appeals, usually through the courts, to the power of national institutions.

Such a formulation has the virtue of showing that neither side has a monopoly on good or bad motives, but it does not communicate the strong passions that the issue of school integration has created throughout California history. Parents see integration affecting the lives and futures of their children. It is an issue that touches on profound fears and conflicts within the American psyche; it can affect property values, business prospects, professional status, and the next election. Integration sometimes pits the highest idealism of the American political value system against the direct self-interest of the individual citizen.

But the passionate proponents and opponents of school integration share at least some common convictions. They are united in their belief that the schools do make a difference, that their children’s values, associations, and futures are changed by the schools, for better or for worse. And in California both sides have accepted the courts rather than the streets as the arena in which the battle will be waged. In an age when the public is

supposedly losing faith in the ability of American institutions to function effectively, it should be noted that there is no reduction in the number of school segregation cases making their way through the judicial system. Ironically, the continued courtroom debates about busing and racial balance may be a sign that Americans have not lost their belief in the potency of the schools and the courts and the ability of these institutions either to save the nation or cause social havoc.

1 Pacific Appeal (San Francisco), July 20, 1872.

2 Even the most comprehensive existing histories of California education are in need of massive revision. See William Warren Ferrier, Ninety Years of Education in California 1846-1936 (Berkeley, 1937) and Roy W. Cloud, Education in California: Leaders, Organizations and Accomplishments of the First Hundred Years (Stanford, 1952).

3 David Tyack, The One Best System: A History of American Urban Education (Cambridge, 1974), 5.

4 For an excellent analysis of recent trends in the writing of the ethnic history of California and the west, see Lawrence B. De Graff, Recognition, Racism, and Reflections on the Writing of Western Black History, Pacific Historical Review (Feb., 1975), 52-67. Many of the recent revisionist educational historians have exposed the racism and oppression non-white and immigrant minorities have been subjected to in American schools but the revisionist emphasis on the evils of social control often results in a picture of minorities as helpless, if saintly victims. See Joel Spring, Education and the Rise of the Corporate State (Boston, 1972) and Clarence Karier, Paul Violas and Joel Spring, Roots of Crisis: American Education in the Twentieth Century (Chicago, 1975).

1.Separate but Equal in California

ON AN EVENING in July 1872 a small group of black parents met in the basement of Bethel African Methodist Episcopal Church in San Francisco to discuss attempts earlier that day to register their children in the city’s regular (white) public schools. As expected, all the children were turned away. For example, Harriet Ward had taken her daughter Mary Frances to Broadway School, but Principal Noah Flood refused to let the child enroll. He politely informed Mrs. Ward that the San Francisco Board of Education required that black students attend separate, all-black institutions and suggested that she take Mary to one of the city’s two public colored schools.1

That brief encounter at Broadway School was the basis of California’s first school segregation court case. On September 22, 1872 the Wards’ attorney appealed to the State Supreme Court to allow Mary to enter Broadway School and to end the practice of segregation of black school children throughout California. Eighteen months later the court handed down a decision, upholding Principal Flood’s action and establishing the principle of separate but equal in California school law. Ward v. Flood was thus the beginning of more than a century of litigation over the issue of school segregation in Cali-

fornia. It was also part of a remarkable effort by black parents to win equal educational opportunity for their children. To understand both of these stories, we must go back to the 1850s and the origins of California Jim Crow laws.

JIM CROW, CALIFORNIA STYLE

In 1852 there were only 2,206 black people in the state, about 1 percent of the total population, but already California had accumulated a considerable body of discriminatory legislation.2 Mixed marriages were forbidden by law and people with as little as one-sixth African blood were denied the right to vote, hold public office, and testify in court against white persons. The legislature had passed a tough fugitive slave law providing for the apprehension of escaped bondsmen and their return to the South, and Governor Peter Burnett was calling for a ban on immigration of free blacks into the state. It is true that in 1849 Californians had approved a state constitution that abolished slavery, but according to a contemporary observer, the voters were not concerned with slavery in the abstract… not one in ten cares a button for its abolition, nor the Wilmot Proviso either; all they look at is their own position; they must themselves swing the pick, and they won’t swing it beside Negro slaves.3

Although many California blacks were still swinging picks in the mining regions, by the mid-1850’s most were probably living in urban centers such as San Francisco, Sacramento or Stockton and were engaged in service or laboring occupations. The bulk of the states’ black population originally had come from the northeastern United

States, and in California they probably enjoyed a higher per capita income than blacks anywhere else in the country. In 1870 the number of paupers per 100 Negroes in California was less than half that of whites. California blacks were generally literate, fairly prosperous people, and they were not willing to accept a status of civil or legal inferiority. Under the leadership of newspaper editors and other small businessmen, they organized meetings and circulated petitions to protest against discriminatory legislation. Annual conventions of black residents were held in the middle 1850’s, primarily to urge repeal of the limitations on legal testimony, and in 1857 a successful court battle was fought to free Archy Lee, who had been arrested as a fugitive slave. But the restrictive laws remained on the books throughout the fifties, and in 1858 only a disagreement between the State Assembly and Senate over formal wording prevented the proposed ban on free black immigration from becoming law.'4

COLORED SCHOOLS

No specific mention of race was included in the state’s earliest school laws, but in 1854, when San Francisco black parents appealed for public schooling for their children, it was assumed by all parties that such schooling would take place in a segregated, all-black institution. On May 22, 1854, the city’s Board of Education established the state’s first public colored school in the basement of St. Cyprian Church near the corner of Jackson and Virginia Streets.5 Forty-five children registered in the new

institution, a figure that grew to about 100 by 1860. In that year, San Francisco School Superintendent George Tait told the board that the room occupied by this school for the past few years is disgraceful to any civilized community. The board accepted Tait’s recommendation to construct a new building for the school, and when it was finished in 1864, Tait claimed that the colored children richly deserve their present comfortable and neat school house after having endured unmurmuringly for many years in their squalid, dark and unhealthy quarters.6

Other California communities soon followed San Francisco’s lead in forming colored schools. In 1855 Sacramento’s school board extended financial aid to a previously private school for black children, and in 1856 the city built a new school house for the institution. Similar actions were taken by other school boards, so that by 1873 there were twenty-one public colored schools in the state and a few private institutions, including Phoenixonia Institute, a secondary level boarding school in San Jose.7

The growth of the colored school system in California produced a small body of influential black teachers. Whites sometimes were hired in the segregated schools —Sara Brown, daughter of the abolitionist leader John Brown, was the teacher in Red Bluff’s colored school— but most often black educators were employed.8 Probably the most notable was Jeremiah Sanderson, born of Scottish and Negro parents in New Bedford, Rhode Island, and a colleague of Frederick Douglass in the New England abolitionist movement during the 1840s. After

coming to California in 1854, Sanderson was active in the fight against discriminatory legislation. He served as the teacher in Sacramento’s colored school and later moved to San Francisco to take