Abstract
At first appearance James Redmond may not have seemed all that different from the previous Chicago superintendent Benjamin Willis, whom Redmond replaced in 1966. Both were older, white, clean-shaven men with neatly trimmed hair. But Redmond’s entrance into the superintendent’s office marked a symbolic shift in the handling of the city’s schools—at least in regard to the city’s image of desegregation. While Willis had been praised for increasing resources in some of the city’s schools, his record regarding desegregation and the inequalities between black and white schools had come under vehement public attack. As black schools became increasingly overcrowded, Willis merely responded by installing mobile units, which his critics called “Willis Wagons.” Willis had stubbornly maintained that outcries regarding desegregation and inequality were unwarranted—despite federal reports that acknowledged such inequalities.1 Redmond replaced Willis upon Willis’s retirement in 1966 giving civil rights activists high expectations for the city’s desegregation efforts.
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Notes
See Alan B. Anderson and George W. Pickering, Confronting the Color Line: The Broken Promise of the Civil Rights Movement in Chicago (Athens: University of Georgia Press, 1986)
John L. Rury, “Race, Space, and the Politics of Chicago’s Public Schools: Benjamin Willis and the Tragedy of Urban Education,” History of Education Quarterly 39 (Spring 1999): 117–142.
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See Michael W. Homel, Down from Equality: Black Chicagoans and the Public Schools, 1920–1941 (Urbana: University of Illinois Press, 1984).
Allen H. Spear, Black Chicago: The Making of a Negro Ghetto, 1890–1920 (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1967), 212–216
Gabriela F. Arredondo, Mexican Chicago: Race, Identity, and Nation, 1916–1939 (Urbana: University of Illinois Press, 2008), 38.
Arnold R. Hirsch, Making the Second Ghetto: Race and Housing in Chicago 1940–1960 (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1983), 68–98.
Beryl Satter, Family Properties: Race, Real Estate, and the Exploitation of Black Urban America (New York: Metropolitan Books, 2009), 5.
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The Chicago Fact Book Consortium, Local Community Fact Book Chicago Metropolitan Areas Based on the 1970 and 1980 Census (Chicago: Chicago Review Press, 1984), 69.
Each community is made up of a group of census tracks. The Local Community Fact Books, cited in this study, used the information from the census tracks to create the neighborhood census. The Chicago Fact Book Consortium, Local Community Fact Book, 68–69; Evelyn M. Kitagawa and Karl E. Taeuber, Local Community Fact Book, Chicago Metropolitan Area 1960 (Chicago: Chicago Community Inventory, University of Chicago, 1963), 65.
William Anton Vrame, A History of School Desegregation in Chicago since 1954 (PhD Diss., University of Wisconsin, 1970), 120–124; Rury, “Race, Space, and the Politics of Chicago’s Public Schools,” 122–123.
See Arnold R. Hirsch, “Massive Resistance in the Urban North: Trumbull Park, Chicago, 1953–1966,” The Journal of American History 82 (September 1995): 522–550
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Ronald P. Formisano, Boston against Busing: Race, Class, and Ethnicity in the 1960s and 1970s (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 2004), 20
Ronald P. Formisano, “Redmond’s Career Shows Meteoric Rise,” Chicago Tribune, May 11, 1966, 5.
Henry De Zutter, “Redmond Victory: Busing OKd; Could Start Jan. 29,” Chicago Daily News, December 28, 1967
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Loraine Green and Warren Bacon are black board members. Paul E. Peterson, School Politics Chicago Style (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1976), 156–157.
Gary Orfield, The Reconstruction of Southern Education: The Schools and the 1964 Civil Rights Act (New York: Wiley-Interscience, 1969); Peterson, School Politics Chicago Style, 154.
Vern K. Richey, “Northwest Side: Pupil Busing Backed by 3 PTA Heads,” Chicago Daily News, January 4, 1968, 3
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Christopher Chandler, “4 More Schools Added to Bus Plan,” Chicago Sun-Times, January 5, 1968, 3
Christopher Chandler “Rival Busing Proposal For South Shore Bared,” Chicago Sun-Times, January 6, 1968, 4
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Christopher Chandler, “Redmond Discloses the Details of Plans for Busing 1,035 Pupils,” Chicago Sun-Times, January 9, 1968, 4; Vrame, “A History of School Desegregation,” 183, 187.
Ibid., 116–119; Peterson, School Politics Chicago Style, 165; Harvey Luskin Molotch, Managed Integration: Dilemmas of Doing Good in the City (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1972), 44; Vrame, “A History of School Desegregation,” 197–198.
“at N.W. Side Rally Map Busing Demonstration,” Chicago Sun-Times, January 9, 1968, 16; John Linstead, “Northwest Side: 1,000 Delegates Set Protest of Busing,” Chicago Daily News, January 9, 1968, 1.
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Joel Havemann, “Protest school Busing Plan,” Chicago Sun-Times, January 11, 1968, 1, 32; Chandler, “Board Delays Decision on Plans to Bus Pupils,” 1, 32; De Zutter, “Daley,” 8.
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“School Bus Politics,” Chicago Daily News, January 12, 1968, 6; “Busing Delays School Budget,” Chicago Daily News, January 17, 1968, 3; Christopher Chandler, “School Tax Levy OK Deferred by Council,” Chicago Sun-Times, January 18, 1968, 5
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See Vanessa Siddle Walker, Their Highest Potential: African American School Community in the Segregated South (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 1996)
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Carlos Muñoz Jr., Youth, Identity, Power: The Chicano Movement (London: Verso, 1989).
See Stephen Kendrick and Paul Kendrick, Sarah’s Long Walk: Free Blacks of Boston and How Their Struggle for Equality Changed America (Boston: Beacon Press, 2004)
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Rod Sellers, Chicago’s Southeast Side Revisited (Chicago: Arcadia, 2001), 120, 122
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Richard P. Schnettler, “Status Report: Robert A. Black School South Shore Busing Proposal,” 1974, 1–2, Municipal Reference Collection, HWLC.
For racial violence associated with housing, see Hirsch, Making the Second Ghetto; Hirsch, “Massive Resistance in the Urban North,” Chicago Commission on Race Relations, The Negro in Chicago: A Study of Race Relations and a Race Riot (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1922); Spear, Black Chicago.
Gregory S. Jacobs, Getting Around Brown: Desegregation, Development and the Columbus Public Schools (Columbus: Ohio State University Press, 1998) 30.
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Karen Anderson, Little Rock: Race and Resistance at Central High School (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2010), 56
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Casey Banas, “School Board Rejects Austin Bus Plan, Wants 2d Revised,” Chicago Tribune, February 29, 1968, 1
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George Connelly, “The Austin Area Project: A Pupil Busing Program in District Four, an Evaluation,” 1968, 1–2, Municipal Reference Collection, Harold Washington Library Center (HWLC).
Ray C. Rist, Invisible Children: School Integration in American Society (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1978), 151, 248.
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Danns, D. (2014). Redmond’s School Desegregation Plan and Reactions. In: Desegregating Chicago’s Public Schools. Historical Studies in Education. Palgrave Macmillan, New York. https://doi.org/10.1057/9781137357588_2
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