Englewood School Bias Charges Aired in Public Hearing

    te 

PRESS RELEASE 

NAACP LEGAL DEFENSE AND EDUCATIONAL FUND 
107 WEST 43 STREET © NEW YORK 36, N. Y. © JUdson 6-8397 

ARTHUR B. SPINGARN THURGOOD MARSHALL 
President Director and Counsel 

WALTER WHITE ROBERT L. CARTER 
Secretary Assistant Counsel 

ALLAN KNIGHT CHALMERS ARNOLD DE MILLE 
Treasurer Press Relations 

October 22, 195) 

ENGLEWOOD SCHOOL BIAS CHARGES 
AIRED IN PUBLIC HEARING 

TRENTON, N. J. = The first public hearing under the New Jersey 

Anti-discrimination law, since the Supreme Court decision outlawing 

Jim Crow schools, began here Wednesday with the airing of complaints 

of two Negro parents against the Englewood Board of Education. 

The parents charged the Engleweod school board with fixing the 

school zone boundries to include most of the city's Negro population 

in one zone, thereby forcin: the Negro pupils to attend a segregated 

school. 

The hearing is being conducted by State Commissioner of Education. 

Dr. Frederick Raubinger, and held in the State House Annex. 

The parents, Mrs. Susan Anderson and Mrs. Mary Walker, are being 

represented by Mrs. Constance Baker Motley and Jack Greenberg of the 

NAACP Legal Defense staff, and Leonard Williams, NAACP attorney of 

Trenton, New Jersey Deputy Attorney General Thomas Cook is pre- 

senting the case for the state and the parents. 

Witnesses for the Negro parents testified that the newly drawn 

boundary lines segregate the Negro school population into one school, 

the Lincoln School, located in the lth ward where the majority of the 

city's Negro population lives. 

Dr. John Milligan, Deputy Commissioner of Education and Director 

of the New Jersey Division Against Discrimination, held that the new 

boundary lines were not drawn in the best interest of the anti- 

segregation policy of the New Jersey Anti-discrimination law. He 

testified that there is only one white student in the Lincoln Junior 

High School of one hundred thirty Negro students. The Engle Street 

‘Junior High School has more than 500 students of which about 10 per 

cent are Negro. 

Dr. Milligan pointed out that if the whole population in the 

area was white there would not be two junior high schools since it 



would be "uneconomical to have two junior high schools so close to 

each other, one of which had a very small student body. A single 

Junior high school, accommodating 1,000 pupils, could very well take 

care of the community, he said. 

The Lincoln elementary school is under capacity. The Cleveland 

elementary school is overcrowded. The boundary lines were drawn, 

the school board attorney, former Judge Thomas J. Brogan, argued, to 

relieve the Cleveland school. He pointed out that last year the 

Cleveland enrollment was 702 and 622 this year. 

Dr. Milligan testified that while the new lines reduced the 

enrollment at the Cleveland school, the enrollments of the Roosevelt 

and Franklin school, both all-white, were increased. The Lincoln 

school was left with six vacant classrooms. It is possible to 

"eliminate a racially segregated school", the director of the Division 

of Discrimination said, if the lines were different. He testified 

that he tried to get the Englewood Board to change the lines last 

August, but he was unsuccessful. 

He said he regretted having to be the first Director of the 

Division Against Discrimination to call a public hearing on charges 

of discrimination against a school board. "I regret what has been 

done here", Dr. Milligan asserted, "and I regret I failed at con- 

ciliation." 

Dr. H. Harry Giles, Professor of Education at New York University 

and Director of the Center for Human Relations, who has mde a 6-year 

study of the Englewood situation, testified that the present zones 

make it impossible for the school population to get the best possible 

use out of the existing school facilities and at the same time reduce 

the present predominance of Negroes in the Lincoln school. He recom= 

mended that the Lincoln and Liberty zones be consolidated into one. 

All pupils from kindergarten through the 3rd grade could attend one 

school and those from the {th to the 6th atténd the other. 

A State witness, Carl W. Glatt, who investigated the complaints 
of the two Negro parents, testified that despite the state law which 
prohibits the identification of pupils according to race, a small "c" 
was placed on the enrollment cards of Negro children in the superin= 
tendent's office. 

The hearing will continue on Tuesday, October 26, 195). 

=30>