Integrating Houston’s Other Schools (1955-1980, Section 6)
School integration at all levels proved a constant struggle across the nation and in Houston. The University of Houston, which became the most diverse college in the nation by 2007, only admitted its first African-American student in 1961, despite the fact that the black population had reached almost 216,000 and represented nearly a fourth of the city. In 1964, the University of Houston made history as the first major southern school to integrate intercollegiate athletics, paving the way for Elvin Hays, Don Chaney, and later Clyde Drexler to become heroes to Houstonians of all races.
Rice University, a nationally known private college in Houston, faced a different integration challenge. William Marsh Rice founded the Rice Institute, as it was originally known, in 1891, but he was murdered nine years later and the school did not open until 1911. The original charter dictated that the university admit and educate, tuition free, the white inhabitants of Houston and Texas. For five decades, Rice did not admit African-Americans or people of Jewish ancestry. In 1961, faculty, undergraduates, and graduates students voted to integrate their school. Two years later, Rice’s governing body sued to amend the charter to admit students of all races and to charge tuition, despite opposition from some alumnae. In 1965, the federal court ruled in its favor and Rice began to integrate its student body.
Progress was slower at the elementary and high school level. The U.S. Supreme Court ruled in 1955, in the second Brown v. Board of Education case, that desegregation needed to occur with all deliberate speed. Nonetheless, the Houston Independent School District (HISD) remained reluctant to enforce integration policies. Dr. Robert Bacon, who arrived in Houston in 1953, had attended integrated schools in a Chicago suburb as a child, but periodically visited family members in Mississippi. “I began to see the subtleties of segregation. . . . [N]ow, in Mississippi, it was blunt trauma almost. But here [in Houston], it was a rapier, fine-tuned, and a lot of it came through the school system.” 1
HISD, Dr. Bacon recalls, offered African-American students a limited curriculum and outdated textbooks in the 1950s and early 1960s. Because of their own poor educational experience, some black Houstonians initially assumed African-American physicians received similar educations, and thus, it took time for each new doctor to build the trust and confidence of his or her constituents.
In 1960, federal Judge Ben C. Connally ordered a gradual integration of one grade per year until 1971, when the final integration would be complete. Many Houstonians found his remedy inadequate in theory and in its implementation. In May 1965, some 85 percent of African-American students within HISD boycotted their schools to protest the absence of significant progress. Houstonians who supported integration faced a backlash from white parents who resisted the prospect, including threatening letters and economic reprisals. Given the sluggish pace, the federal court again called for more immediate compliance with its earlier order. The court only found that HISD had complied substantially with the desegregation order in 1980. By that time, while no schools were completely segregated, most black students attended predominantly black schools. Their parents remained primarily concerned with the quality of their education.
Citations
- Dr. Robert Bacon, Interview by Kathleen A. Brosnan, March 28, 2007, Houston, TX.