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Monday, Oct. 13, 2008

Bibb's desegregation case nears end after 45 years

Soon, the 10 boxes of reports and other legal filings in the basement of the federal courthouse will be sealed tight and sent away for archiving.

Bibb County's school desegregation case - 45 years in the making - is winding down.

In March, a federal judge ruled that the school system had met its obligation to integrate black and white students, and he lifted a 1970 desegregation order.

As a last requirement, the judge told the school system to submit its final annual report on racial progress by Wednesday and do one last round of majority-to-minority transfers this school year to complete the historic case.

"This is it... the last report due," said Warren Plowden, the school system's attorney, who has worked on the case himself for three decades.

After they're submitted, the case files will be checked by the Department of Justice and shipped to a north Georgia archive center for preservation.

"A significant case like a federal desegregation order will never get destroyed," said Greg Leonard, court clerk for the U.S. District Court in Macon.

Among the files to be shipped out is a 1984 report on racial progress in schools.

It contains more than 400 names of Bibb County public school students, mostly black, who transferred from their neighborhood, majority-black school to one with a more diverse student population.

There are school enrollments by race and notations on whether schools had a diverse balance of faculty, such as Central High School, which had 49 white and 39 black teachers at the time. School Superintendent Sharon Patterson said that although the court is ending its oversight of the school system, officials will carry that role forward.

"The case closes, but it still signals the school system to be responsive for the concerns of our community," she said.

Conditions should never deteriorate to the point that a community feels the need to find a remedy in court, she said.

The program, which emerged from the desegregation suit filed in 1963, allowed students in the majority race at one school to transfer to a school where their race was in the minority. Thelma Dillard, the daughter of Hester Bivins, the woman who filed the original lawsuit to prevent segregation of students based on race, says she's sad to see the case close.

Her mother filed suit on behalf of Dillard's sister Shirley, who attended Ballard-Hudson High School. The school, for black students, had inadequate school facilities and made students study from used books, Dillard said.

"I hope they will continue to monitor the resurgence of segregated schools," Dillard said. "I would love to see that we continue to treat all our children equal regardless of race, creed or color. I hope this will be what's carried out as the books are closed."

After that original suit was filed, there were several court orders to remedy segregation in Bibb schools. Among them were redrawing attendance zones, upgrading facilities - and starting the majority-to-minority transfer option.

In 2006, Judge Wilbur D. Owens Jr. modified the desegregation order after a group of white parents filed suit. The parents said that their children's school was overcrowded because of M-to-M transfers, and their children were learning in mobile classrooms.

Owens ultimately lifted the order entirely last year.

In his ruling, he said that this school year would be the last time the system filed its annual report and grant M-to-M transfers, although students can remain at their transfer school until completing the school's highest grade.

This school year there were 42 new students and 128 on a continuing M-to-M transfer.

The desegregation case has been time-consuming and costly to the school system.

The Bibb County school system paid attorneys' fees of $93,153 for four plaintiff attorneys in the case last year and at least $20,000 to attorneys representing the school system.

And there's another footnote: The case is also likely the longest-running case in the Middle Georgia federal court district.

"I would say if it's not the oldest case under court supervision, it's very close to it," Leonard said.

Through the years, 109 of the state's 180 public school systems have been sued in federal court to eliminate racial segregation, the Georgia Advisory Committee to the U.S. Commission on Civil Rights reported.

As of their December 2007 report, 35 school systems that were once under a federal desegregation order have been declared "unitary" by the court, while 74 school systems remain under court supervision.

To contact writer Julie Hubbard, call 744-4331.