Clark Hits Integration Plan at Mark Twain JHS
Clark hits integration plan at Mark Twain JHS
Dr. Kenneth Clark, the only Black member of the State Board of Regents has released a report which sharply criticizes a proposed desegregation plan for Mark Twain Junior High School in Coney Island.
In the 14-page report which was submitted to The NAACP Special Contribution Fund, Legal Division, Dr. Clark charged that Master Curtis J. Berger’s plan for racial balance at the Brooklyn school “seeks to evade the politically explosive issue of desegregation by offering a political plan for the development of a ‘special’ type of school for ‘special students.’”
Defiance
Clark accused the Special Master of pandering to and reinforcing “the fears and prejudices of whites” who persist in their defiance of orders for desegregation."
“The Berger Plan,” Clark wrote, “argues against educational tracking even as it strongly proposes the establishment of a school which is the embodiment, the institutionalization of tracking up to the point of educational elitism in the presecondary schools…”
In a telephone interview with the Amsterdam News, Berger expressed disappointment with the Clark report. “I think that his (Dr. Clark’s) rhetoric is unfortunate because it is inflammatory and makes it difficult for any type of integration at the school. I believe that it is the only plan that can succeed.” Berger said.
A Magnet
Berger, who submitted his proposal, a 73-ppage report, to Federal District Court earlier this month, proposed that racial balance at the school be achieved by making Mark Twain a “magnet” school with a wide ranging curriculum to encourage voluntary white enrollment rather than through forced busing.
Clark, he said, dwelled on the ‘special student,’ ‘special schools’ aspects of the proposal but “misstates what the plan is.” The plan, he continued, “would bring together both Blacks and whites.”
Unconstitutional
Morover, Berger said, “It’s impossible to integrate that school and make it a community school” because there “is no way to have the same ratio or racial balance without having large number of children going to other schools.” He said that approximately 600 whites would be needed to integrate the school.
Testying before Federal Judge Jack B. Weinstein who ordered desegregation of the school, Dr. Clark, last Wednesday, labelled the Berger plan “obscene, immoral, illegal and unconstitutional.”
He noted in the report that… “whatever is decided for Mark Twain will have far-reaching effects not only for the entire New York School system but, far beyond the borders of the city, to the nation as a whole.”
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