Educational Justice

Block: City of Chicago

Time Period: Post WWII - 1966

Issue: School desegregation, Willis Wagons, White flight

Parties Involved:

Federal and State governments

Board of Education

School Superintendent Benjamin C. Willis

Community organizers

The Scoop:

After World War II, school desegregation became an issue in Chicago as school officials adjusted boundary lines as black neighborhoods expanded. Unlike the South, school segregation in Chicago was sustained not by explicit legal regulations but by traditional commitment to neighborhood schooling. The city’s residential segregation was well reflected in the demographics of the schools. By 1960 at over 800,000, African-Americans were almost a quarter of the Chicago population. But even as the African-American population grew and their schools became overcrowded and dilapidated, Superintendent Benjamin C. Willis refused to transfer black students to nearby white schools with empty classrooms. Instead, he accommodated the black students by shortening the school day and creating double-shift schedules, and by installing temporary mobile classrooms units to avoid busing students to other neighborhoods.

The Struggle:

For decades community organizers had been demanding that schools be integrated and for funding disparities to be addressed. Their pleas had been largely ignored by city officials, including the Board of Education. The approval of School Superintendent Willis’s plan to buy aluminum mobile units and install them next to overcrowded schools in December 1961 spurred the emergence of stronger local, grassroots movements. They scornfully labeled the mobile units “Willis Wagons” and countered with sit-ins, boycotts, and marches.

In 1963 and 1964 neighborhood organizers, teachers, parents, and students staged massive demonstrations protesting public Fight School Segregation, 1963                             school policies. Then in 1965                                                                                   more than 100,000 students violated an injunction by staying home to protest the renewal of a four-year contract for Willis. While the boycott marked the beginning of a sustained protest movement for equal opportunities in education and housing in Chicago, the mobile units and segregation both outlived Willis’ administration. As new school leaders came in they were continually greeted by board members and local politicians reluctant to anger those opposed to integration.

Failure to end segregationist policies resulted in a 1980 consent decree and court-mandated desegregation plan. But plans to achieve integration contributed to white migration from the city and a shift to private and parochial school education for many white students.

Current view: 

By the early 1980’s when the Chicago Public Schools finally undertook a court-ordered desegregation plan, there were few white students left in the public school system making meaningful desegregation impossible across the city. In the 1990’s some integration was achieved in magnet schools, however, overall school desegregation has been limited across Chicago as only a third of white students attended public schools. The achievement of Chicago public school students still lags behind their suburban peers as they continue to suffer from severe inequalities between schools and school districts. The city’s public schools are now substantially divided between majority black and Hispanic students. In the past decade charter schools have been presented as an alternative to Chicago’s public schools, but they remain controversial among many community organizers. Recently schools closings and displacement have become the new threat to many children’s education as the city plans on closing over a hundred schools, most that consist of majority black student population.