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Hart v. Community School Board 21, excerpt 1
Date: Apr 2, 1974
Caption: In 1974, Judge Jack Weinstein ruled that Mark Twain Junior High School was a segregated school, violating the US Constitution. In this opinion, he explained what actions by the school board had helped create school segregation.
Jeffrey Hart was a student at Mark Twain Junior High School in Brooklyn. Hart’s mother and her attorneys brought a suit against the local school board, arguing that the school was unconstitutionally segregated.
In court, they demonstrated the intentional segregation of the school by the local Community School District 21, often with the tacit if not explicit approval of the city’s Board of Education. They made their case by showing how the school board determined school zones and feeder patterns in ways that intentionally produced segregation.
As this excerpt from his opinion shows, the judge found this evidence compelling. In this portion of the opinion, Judge Weinstein describes how school zoning helped change Mark Twain’s student population from 81 percent “white” and 19 percent “nonwhite” in 1962 to the reverse: 18 percent white and 81.9 percent “nonwhite” in 1973. The judge concluded that “The various actions of the Community Board… helped bring about the severe racial imbalance” at the school.
Categories: Brooklyn, K-12 organizing
Tags: racist segregation, zoning and student assignment, Black people, Latinx people, white people, school facilities, housing, court cases
This item is part of "School Zones" in "How Did New York City Segregate its Schools?"
Item Details
Date: Apr 2, 1974
Creator: US District Court for the Eastern District of New York
Source: Hart v. Community Sch. Bd. of Brooklyn, NY Sch. D. 21, 383 F. Supp. 699 (E.D.N.Y. 1974)
Copyright: Government Document
How to cite: “"Hart v. Community School Board 21, excerpt 1,” U.S. District Court for the Eastern District of New York, in New York City Civil Rights History Project, Accessed: [Month Day, Year], https://nyccivilrightshistory.org/gallery/hart-v-community-school-board-21-1."
Questions to Consider
- According to Judge Weinstein, what decisions did the school board make that led to segregation in District 21 and at Mark Twain?
- How does “underutilizing” or “overutilizing” a school space impact students’ experiences in a school?
- What do you notice about how Judge Weinstein speaks about students and schools in this excerpt? Why do you think that Judge Weinstein uses the term “racial imbalance” interchangeably with segregation? What does that term illuminate? What does it hide?
- If you were fighting for educational equity, like Jeffrey Hart’s mother Doris Hart, would you focus on school segregation like she did?
- How does the last paragraph of the excerpt help us understand why the school district encouraged segregation at Mark Twain?
References
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