African American reaction to Lafayette Parish School desegregation order: From Delight to disenchantment

Journal of Negro Education, The, Winter 2002 by Caldas, Stephen J, Growe, Roslin, Bankston, Carl L III

The uncertainty of the 1970s, however, reversed a trend of White students moving out of the parochial school system and into the public school system (Caldas & Bankston, 2001b). Research on public attitudes at the time offers some insights as to why. A survey of a sample of 64 White Lafayette High School students, conducted in 1978, indicated that a majority felt that a return to "freedom of choice" was the best way to end segregation, and that court-ordered desegregation did not enhance the quality of education (Courville, 1978). The same survey of an admittedly small number of nine Black Lafayette High students, however, indicated 67% (6) felt integration had improved their education. These divergent attitudes, however, roughly follow national trends wherein Whites tend to be more disenchanted with coercive school integration than do African Americans (Armor, 1995). This divergence of opinion continued to be the case in Lafayette, Louisiana in 2000.

Recent Desegregation Developments

The courts and justice department adopted a "hands-off" attitude in the Lafayette Parish public schools until 1998, right after the board had largely completed building four new schools to accommodate a growing school population-for which it did not seek court approval. The new schools necessitated redrawing school attendance boundaries. Though court approval for the new schools was not obtained, the board tried to remain in compliance with earlier court-ordered desegregation by the board creating a "bi-racial" committee to make recommendations to the board regarding rezoning. This was a process that had to consider school racial concentrations as a criterion in drawing boundary lines. Thus, during the later part of the 1998-99 school year and in the face of much opposition from some parent groups, the Lafayette Parish School Board redrew the attendance zones of several elementary and middle schools. Many were dissatisfied with the new attendance zones and some (e.g., the NAACP) complained that the new attendance zones were in violation of the desegregation court order (Billiot, 1998).

In fact, more than three decades after the first desegregation order was handed down in 1967, the racial composition of at least 22 of the parish's 39 schools were still "racially identifiable" (either White or Black) in 1998. On the other hand, rezoning changes would have forced some parents who had their children in the highest performing schools in the parish, which were predominantly White, to send their children to schools with the lowest performing students in the parish, which were predominantly Black. Moreover, the board decided to move the popular French immersion program from a largely White, high achieving suburban school in south Lafayette to a school in a Black neighborhood in the northern part of the parish with a much higher percentage of African American students.

These two moves prompted angry parents of affected families-almost all White-to pack into standing-room-only school board meetings (attended by the authors) dedicated to discussing these issues. Several irate White parents hired a lawyer and petitioned the school board to return to the original school boundaries that would have allowed them to keep their children in the high performing schools. However, under threat from the NAACP and the original plaintiffs in the 30-year-old desegregation suit, the board decided not to adjust school attendance zones to please the parents. Affected parents at one board meeting in May 1999 threatened to pull their children out of the system and enroll them in a Catholic school rather than send them to their newly assigned school (J. Miller, personal communication, May 14, 1999). One White parent told the authors that if school board rezoning would force her daughter to attend a predominately Black high school, she would take out a second mortgage on her house to buy land in the predominately White school zone she had been expecting to attend (R. Boyer, personal communication, December 2, 1999). If she could not do that, she said she would "definitely" put her daughter in a Catholic school. She hastened to add, however, that she was not "prejudiced" and even had a Black godchild. With the help of their attorney, some of these parents filed a motion with the federal judge overseeing school desegregation asking for a return to the original school-zone boundaries. The motion was unsuccessful.