Charlotte-Mecklenburg School Integration
Thomas Allen
The desegregation-integration of the Charlotte-Mecklenburg school system is a good example of the greed of the New South Southerner and the hypocrisy of the Northerner. Their attitude toward integration well illustrates this greed and hypocrisy. (For those who do not know the geography of North Carolina, Charlotte is the largest city in North Carolina and the county seat of Mecklenburg County. Mecklenburg County had one school system that included the city of Charlotte.)
In the 1960s, Charlotte-Mecklenburg had desegregated schools yet by 1968 only 28 percent of Blacks attended majority-White schools, which was more race-mixing than most other large cities had achieved. Nevertheless, the integrationists were not satisfied.
In 1971, three years after the Supreme Court legalized forced busing to achieve substantial integration, Judge James McMillan imposed forced busing on Charlotte-Mecklenburg to achieve the equal distribution of Black and White students. His ruling, which the Supreme Court supported, initially received some protests. Parents who lived in the suburbs objected to busing. They accepted desegregation, which required assigning students to schools without considering race. However, they opposed integration, which required assigning students to schools based on race. Although he did nothing to alleviate forced busing to achieve racial balance, President Nixon endorsed their opposition. Even the Supreme Court seemed to agree with the protesters in a 1974 ruling and especially after 1990.
Nevertheless, community leaders decided not to oppose integration because they feared opposition would stifle Charlotte-Mecklenburg’s economy. Consequently, they supported integration. Thus, they placed wealth above everything else. If they placated the integrationists, especially the Northern integrationists, most of whom wanted integration in the South but not in the North, the result would be an economic boom. Therefore, they not only promoted the mild climate, low taxes, and low cost of living in Charlotte-Mecklenburg, they also promoted its progressive racial policies.
Although Whites preferred neighborhood schools, they surrendered to force busing to achieve racially balanced schools. Naively, the liberal leaders sought to prove that racially balanced integrated schools could achieve a high-quality education, which they never have. (Integrated schools lead to lower educational standards.) For the liberal leaders of Charlotte, integration was a source of great pride.
When President Reagan opposed taking children out of neighborhood schools and using them as pawns in a social experiment, the Charlotte Observer objected. It declared that the integration of Charlotte-Mecklenburg schools was Charlotte’s greatest achievement. Integration of the Charlotte-Mecklenburg schools led to a strong, growing economy.
Whether cause or coincidence, growth did accompany school integration. Between 1970 and 1997, Charlotte’s population grew more than 70 percent, the second greatest rate among American cities with a population greater than 500,000. Moreover, Charlotte became a major banking city.
A major cause of the integrationists’ praise for Charlotte-Mecklenburg’s integrated school system was that the school system was countrywide. Consequently, Whites could not avoid integration by fleeing to the suburbs as they did in the North. Thus, Charlotte-Mecklenburg was an excellent example of the success of court-ordered forced busing — from the integrationist perspective.
With the economic growth came the Northern migrant. These Northern Whites settled in predominantly White communities. (Northerners and White leaders may preach integration, but most prefer not to live in integrated communities.) As a result of Whites living in predominantly White communities, Blacks became disproportionally concentrated in Charlotte.
As White moved out of Charlotte, students, both Black and White, spent more time on buses so that racial balance could be achieved. Nevertheless, school authorities refused to build new schools in predominantly White communities. Busing to achieve integration led to a growth in private schools. By 1997, about 25 percent of White students in Charlotte-Mecklenburg attended private schools, which was 10 times the number in 1970, just before forced busing began, and which was more than 10 times the national average.
Not only was busing causing Whites to flee public schools, so was the decline in the quality of education in public schools. The poor behavior of Blacks was another cause for leaving public schools.
Charlotte-Mecklenburg’s progressive policies had brought many new businesses and people to the county. Many of these newcomers were from the North. Most Northerners had avoided integrated schools by moving to suburbs that had their own school systems. This was not an option in Charlotte-Mecklenburg because the county had one school system that covered the whole county including Charlotte. When Northerners came to Charlotte-Mecklenburg, they demanded schools like the ones that they had left behind. They wanted to send their children to predominately White schools. They did not want to sacrifice quality education on the altar of integration. Although Yankees did not mind and generally favored forced busing Southerners to Black neighborhoods to achieve racial balance, they were not going to allow their children to be bussed to Black neighborhoods.
By 1990, Charlotte-Mecklenburg began to realize that forced integration was making Charlotte-Mecklenburg less attractive to new businesses. That is, forced integration was hurting the recruitment of new businesses. Consequently, business leaders, whose god is wealth, abandoned force busing, which previously they had promoted.
Bowing to these business leaders, the school board sharply reduced forced busing in 1992. To achieve integration, the school board instituted magnet programs. However, because many magnet schools were in Black neighborhoods, many Blacks were bused elsewhere to make space for White students. To maintain integration, the school board resorted to a quota system to ensure an adequate number of Black students in the magnet schools. Still, many Blacks did not want to attend magnate schools. Consequently, spaces reserved for Blacks remained empty while Whites remained on waiting lists.
Apparently, the school board thought magnate schools, many of which were in Black neighborhoods, would make Black neighborhoods palatable to Whites. Moreover, the school board seemed to believe that White parents would voluntarily send their children halfway across the county to attend a magnet school. Nevertheless, the magnet programs did succeed in placating many Whites.
The quota system led to a lawsuit in 1997. A White plaintiff claimed that the quota system amounted to racial discrimination. Being dominated by integrationists, the school board objected. It declared that desegregation of its schools had not been achieved. After 30 years of trying, it had failed to desegregate its schools. One of its chief arguments that desegregation had not been overcome was the racial gap in academic achievement between Blacks and Whites.
Judge Robert Potter ruled against the school board in favor of the plaintiff. He declared that Charlotte-Mecklenburg had eliminated the last vestige of past discrimination and that it had complied in good faith with the federal court desegregation orders. Thus, he prohibited the Charlotte-Mecklenburg school board from assigning students to schools based on race and from allocating educational opportunities through race-based lotteries, preferences, and set-asides.
After this court ruling, most Whites abandoned schools in predominately Black neighborhoods, and White enrollment in the suburbs soared. By 2007, more than half the Charlotte-Mecklenburg elementary schools were either predominantly (90 percent) White or predominately Black. Being relieved of having to achieve racial balances, the school board could now focus on improving the quality of education for both Whites and Blacks. The shift of resources from busing to achieve a racial balance to improving the quality of education improved the overall academics of Blacks.
When the federal court ordered Charlotte-Mecklenburg to implement integration using forced busing, the leaders of Charlotte-Mecklenburg adopted forced busing with fervent enthusiasm. Forced busing became their pride about which they boasted. They believed that integration would lead to economic growth, which did occur. Along with economic growth came the Northern transplant. These Northerners cared little about integration for themselves. Integration was solely for Southerners. These Northerners ardently opposed forced busing to achieve integration when it involved their children. Eventually, Northerners pressured the Charlotte-Mecklenburg leaders to kill their pride, forced busing. Thus, ended forced busing to achieve racial integration in Charlotte-Mecklenburg.
Reference
Wolters, Raymond. Race and Education, 1954-2007. Columbia, Missouri: University of Missouri Press, 2008.
Copyright © 2022 by Thomas Coley Allen.
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