Notes

INTRODUCTION

1. Data for both districts, including school addresses, can be found on the Kansas State Department of Education website, http://ksreportcard.ksde.org/home.aspx?org_no=D0500&rptType=2. About 90 percent of KCK students were labeled “economically disadvantaged,” compared to a little more than a third of Shawnee Mission students. The vast majority of KCK students represented various racial and ethnic minority groups, compared to about a third of Shawnee Mission students.

2. For rankings of local schools see Niche, at https://www.niche.com/k12/rankings/public-school-districts/best-overall/m/kansas-city-metro-area/, which provides a complete list of Kansas City districts on both sides of the state line. For a discussion of similar disparities elsewhere see James E. Ryan, Five Miles Away, a World Apart: One City, Two Schools, and the Story of Educational Opportunity in Modern America (New York: Oxford University Press, 2010), pt. 1.

3. See, for instance, Tiffani Myvett, Rebecca Medley, and Phase 2 Project, “Urban and Suburban School Systems,” at https://sites.google.com/site/susantmichelle/web-text, or “Why Are Suburban Schools Usually Better Than City Schools,” Act for Libraries, at http://www.actforlibraries.org/why-are-suburban-schools-usually-better-than-city-schools/ (both accessed June 10, 2017). For greater context see Peter Dreier, John Mollenkopf, and Todd Swanstrom, Place Matters: Metropolitics for the Twenty-First Century (Lawrence: University Press of Kansas, 2014), chaps. 1–3.

4. On changing dimensions of inequality in the past, for example, see Carl F. Kaestle and Maris A. Vinovskis, Education and Social Change in Nineteenth-Century Massachusetts (New York: Cambridge University Press, 1980), chaps. 5–8. Also see Carl F. Kaestle, Pillars of the Republic: Common Schools and American Society, 1780–1860 (New York: Hill & Wang, 1983), chaps. 7 and 8.

5. Jon C. Teaford, The Metropolitan Revolution: The Rise of Post-urban America (New York: Columbia University Press, 2006), introduction and chaps. 3–5; Kenneth Fox, Metropolitan America: Urban Life and Urban Policy in the United States, 1940–1980 (New Brunswick, NJ: Rutgers University Press, 1985), chaps. 1–3.

6. There were schools in all three settings historically, of course, but the educational center of gravity changed with time. On the early stages of this grand process of change see Kaestle, Pillars of the Republic, chap. 4, and David Tyack, The One Best System: A History of American Education (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1974), pts. 1 and 2. Also see Tracy L. Steffes, School, Society, and State: A New Education to Govern Modern America, 1890–1940 (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2012), chaps. 1 and 2, on the transition from rural to urban schooling and consolidation campaigns. On the shift to suburban schooling see Campbell F. Scribner, The Fight for Local Control: Schools, Suburbs, and American Democracy (Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, 2016), chaps. 1–6.

7. Perceptions of schools in these settings are discussed in Laura Lippman, Shelly Burns, and Edith McArthur, Urban Schools: The Challenge of Location and Poverty (Washington, DC: National Center for Educational Statistics, 1996), introduction. In 1980 there were more than 16 million suburban students, while students in urban and rural settings numbered 24 million altogether, with about 10.5 million in central cities (p. 4).

8. On the history of suburbanization and perceptions attached to it see Kenneth T. Jackson, Crabgrass Frontier: The Suburbanization of the United States (New York: Oxford University Press, 1985), and chaps. 13–15 on the postwar boom. Also see Dolores Hayden, Building Suburbia: Green Fields and Urban Growth, 1820–2000 (New York: Pantheon, 2003), part 1; and Andres Duany, Elizabeth Plater-Zyberk, and Jeff Speck, Suburban Nation: The Rise of Sprawl and the Decline of the American Dream (New York: Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 2000), chap. 3, as well as Fox, Metropolitan America, chap. 2.

9. On images in cinema see Robert C. Bulman, Hollywood Goes to High School: Cinema, Schools, and American Culture, 2nd ed. (New York: Worth, 2015). See also two books by Timothy Shary: Teen Movies: American Youth on Screen (Shortcuts) (New York: Columbia University Press, 2005), chap. 2, and Generation Multiplex: The Image of Youth in American Cinema since 1980 (Austin: University of Texas Press, 2014), chap. 2.

10. On this point see Trevor Thompson, Jennifer Benz, and Jennifer Agiesta, Parents’ Attitudes on the Quality of Education in the United States (Chicago: Associated Press–NORC Center for Public Affairs Research, 2013), 3, which shows that suburban parents express higher levels of satisfaction with their schools, which typically perform a bit higher than rural schools. Also see, for instance, CBS Moneywatch, “What It Costs to Live in the Top 10 School Districts in the U.S.,” September 1, 2015, http://www.cbsnews.com/media/what-it-costs-to-live-in-the-top-10-school-districts-in-the-u-s/.

11. David Baker, The Schooled Society: The Educational Transformation of Global Culture (Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press, 2014), introduction and chap. 1.

12. This is a long-standing question, of course. For a recent popular discussion see Alana Semuels, “Good School, Rich School; Bad School, Poor School: The Inequality at the Heart of America’s Education System,” Atlantic, August 25, 2016, https://www.theatlantic.com/business/archive/2016/08/property-taxes-and-unequal-schools/497333/.

13. Richard Briffault, “The Local School District in American Law,” in Besieged: School Boards and the Future of Education Politics, ed. William G. Howell (Washington, DC: Brookings Institution Press, 2005), 25; “State and Local Government Special Studies: Governments in the United States 1951,” Property Taxation 1941, US Census Bureau, G-SS-No. 29, March 1952, 2.

14. For discussion of this during the postwar era see Arthur E. Wise, Rich Schools, Poor Schools: The Promise of Equal Educational Opportunity (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1968). For a more recent popular account of these questions also see Jonathan Kozol, Savage Inequalities: Children in America’s Schools (New York: Random House, 1991). For a somewhat more positive assessment of school districts in the United States see William A. Fischel, Making the Grade: The Economic Evolution of American School Systems (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2009), chap. 1.

15. Early examples of this literature include Carl. F. Kaestle, The Evolution of an Urban School System: New York City, 1750–1850 (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1973); Stanley K. Schultz, The Culture Factory: Boston Public Schools, 1789–1860 (New York: Oxford University Press, 1973); Marvin Lazerson, Origins of the Urban School: Public Education in Massachusetts, 1870–1915 (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1971); and Selwyn K. Troen, The Public and the Schools: Shaping the St. Louis System, 1838–1920 (Columbia: University of Missouri Press, 1975), along with Tyack’s The One Best System. More recent contributions include William J. Reese, Power and the Promise of School Reform: Grass-Roots Movements during the Progressive Era (New York: Rout-ledge, 1986); Jeffrey Mirel, The Rise and Fall of an Urban School System: Detroit, 1907–81 (Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press, 1993), and Ronald D. Cohen, Children of the Mill: Schooling and Society in Gary, Indiana, 1906–1960 (Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1990).

16. Jack Dougherty, “Bridging the Gap between Urban, Suburban, and Educational History,” in Rethinking the History of American Education, ed. William J. Reese and John L. Rury (New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2008), 245–60.

17. These processes are described in Teaford, Metropolitan Revolution, chaps. 3–5. Also see Jackson, Crabgrass Frontier, chap. 13; and Kevin M. Kruse, White Flight: Atlanta and the Making of Modern Conservatism (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 2005), chap. 9 and epilogue. On black migration and settlement in cities see Leah Platt Boustan, Competition in the Promised Land: Black Migrants in Northern Cities and Labor Markets (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 2017), chaps. 1 and 2; and Isabel Wilkerson, The Warmth of Other Suns: The Epic Story of America’s Great Migration (New York: Vintage, 2010), pt. 1.

18. Richard Rothstein, The Color of Law: A Forgotten History of How Our Government Segregated America (New York: Liveright, 2017), chaps. 3–6; Thomas J. Sugrue, The Origins of the Urban Crisis: Race and Inequality in Postwar Detroit (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1996), pts. 2 and 3; Arnold Hirsch, Making the Second Ghetto: Race and Housing in Chicago, 1940–1960 (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1983), chap. 1; Robert O. Self, American Babylon: Race and the Struggle for Postwar Oakland (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 2003), pt. 2; and Clarence Lang, Grassroots at the Gateway: Class Politics and Black Freedom Struggle in St. Louis, 1936–75 (Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press, 2009), chaps. 3–5.

19. Douglas S. Massey and Nancy A. Denton, American Apartheid: Segregation and the Making of the Underclass (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1993), chaps. 1 and 2; William Julius Wilson, The Truly Disadvantaged: The Inner City, the Underclass, and Public Policy (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1987), pt. 1; Paul A. Jagowsky, Poverty and Place: Ghettos, Barrios, and the American City (New York: Russell Sage Foundation, 1997), chaps. 1–3; Patrick Sharkey, Stuck in Place: Urban Neighborhoods and the End of Progress toward Racial Equality (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2013), chaps. 2–4.

20. Joe R. Feagin, The White Racial Frame: Centuries of Racial Framing and Counter-framing, 2nd ed. (New York: Routledge, 2013), chaps. 1 and 7. On the growth and evolution of racist ideology see Derrick Darby and John L. Rury, The Color of Mind: Why the Origins of the Achievement Gap Matter for Justice (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2018), chaps. 2–5. For discussion of property value loss due to racial bias in housing markets see Chenoa Flippen, “Unequal Returns to Housing Investments? A Study of Real Housing Appreciation among Black, White, and Hispanic Households,” Social Forces 82, no. 4 (June 2004): 1523–51; and Colin Gordon, Mapping Decline: St. Louis and the Fate of the American City (Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 2008), introduction.

21. On these points see Mathew D. Lassiter, “Schools and Housing in Metropolitan History: An Introduction,” Journal of Urban History 38, no. 2 (March 2012): 195–204. His essay provides a very good overview of relevant literature, including essays by Jack Dougherty, Karen Benjamin, and Ansley Erickson published in the same issue of the journal. Also see Bethany L. Rogers, “Integrating Education History and Urban History: The Politics of Schools and Cities,” Journal of Urban History 34, no. 3 (July 2008): 855–69.

22. For an overview of this shift see Argun Saatcioglu and John L. Rury, “Education and the Changing Metropolitan Organization of Inequality: A Multi-level Analysis of Secondary Attainment in the United States, 1940–1980,” Historical Methods 45, no. 1 (2012): 21–40. On portrayals of urban and suburban schools see Jonathan Kozol, Shame of the Nation: The Restoration of Apartheid Schooling in America (New York: Three Rivers, 2005), chaps. 2 and 3.

23. Few books take a metropolitan perspective in considering education, and those that do focus for the most part on desegregation in the South. The most thorough and comprehensive is Ansley T. Erickson, Making the Unequal Metropolis: School Desegregation and Its Limits (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2016), which examines metropolitan Nashville, Tennessee. Richmond, Virginia, is profiled in Ryan, Five Miles Away, a World Apart, which considers particular urban and suburban schools and places them in a national context. A comparative analysis can be found in Genevieve Siegel-Hawley, When the Fences Come Down: Twenty-First-Century Lessons from Metropolitan School Desegregation (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 2016), which assesses desegregation experiences in four metropolitan settings. And a somewhat more schematic and personal study is offered in Gerald Grant, Hope and Despair in the American City: Why There Are No Bad Schools in Raleigh (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 2009).

24. For case studies of urban school districts see note 15 above. Studies of suburban communities are less common, but there are a number of recent examples. Emily Strauss explores a suburban district that shifted to being considered urban, with a racial transition in clientele, in her book Death of a Suburban Dream: Race and Schools in Compton, California (Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 2014). On the other hand, Daniel L. Duke describes the rise of a suburban district to academic prominence in his book Education Empire: The Evolution of an Excellent Suburban School System (Albany: SUNY Press, 2005). Paul Mattingly’s Suburban Landscapes: Culture and Politics in a New York Metropolitan Community (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 2001) deals principally with an earlier period, without focusing specifically on institutionalized education. Along these lines also see Zane Miller, Suburb: Neighborhood and Community in Forest Park, Ohio, 1935–1976 (Knoxville: University of Tennessee Press, 1981).

25. A classic statement of this can be found in Leo F. Schnore, The Urban Scene: Human Ecology and Demography (New York: Free Press, 1966), pt. 1. For a more recent version of this perspective see Bruce Katz and Jennifer Bradley, The Metropolitan Revolution: How Cities and Metros Are Fixing Our Broken Politics and Fragile Economy (Washington, DC: Brookings Institution Press, 2014), chap. 1.

26. Leo F. Schnore, “Metropolitan Growth and Decentralization,” American Journal of Sociology 63, no. 2 (September 1957): 177.

27. Robert E. Stake, The Art of Case Study Research (Thousand Oaks, CA: Sage, 1995), chap. 1.

28. The most comprehensive account of metropolitan Kansas City’s development is James R. Shortridge, Kansas City and How It Grew, 1822–2011 (Lawrence: University Press of Kansas, 2012). Also see Rick Montgomery and Shirl Kasper, Kansas City: An American Story (Kansas City, MO: Kansas City Star Books, 1999).

29. John Simonson, Paris of the Plains: Kansas City from Doughboys to Expressways (Charleston, SC: History Press, 2010), chaps. 1 and 2; Montgomery and Kasper, Kansas City, chaps. 10 (“Thoroughly Modern”) and 11 (“The Town That Tom Ruled”); proposals to append Kansas City to the state of Kansas were made in 1855 and 1879 and are discussed in Shortridge, Kansas City and How It Grew, 8.

30. Jed Kolko, “Normal America Is Not a Small Town of White People,” Five Thirty Eight, April 28, 2016, http://fivethirtyeight.com/features/normal-america-is-not-a-small-town-of-white-people/. The article ranked metropolitan Kansas City tenth among metropolitan areas that most closely resemble the demographic profile of the nation as a whole.

31. Richard Florida, The New Urban Crisis: How Our Cities Are Increasing Inequality, Deepening Segregation, and Failing the Middle Class—and What We Can Do about It (New York: Basic Books, 2017), 100. Florida puts Kansas City among the top twenty American metro areas on inequality overall, but in the top ten for larger metropolises. On local industrial development and socioeconomic differentiation see Shortridge, Kansas City and How It Grew, chap. 5.

32. Robert M. Crisler, “Missouri’s Little Dixie,” Missouri Historical Review 48 (April 1948): 130–39; Jack Dingle, interview by John Rury, March 22, 2014.

33. The growth of the city’s African American population is described in Sherry Lamb Schirmer, A City Divided: The Racial Landscape of Kansas City, 1900–1960 (Columbia: University of Missouri Press, 2002), introduction.

34. These factors, along with racial conflict and transitions, are discussed in Kevin Fox Gotham, Race, Real Estate, and Uneven Development: The Kansas City Experience, 1900–2010, 2nd ed. (Albany: SUNY Press, 2014), chaps. 1–5. Also see Shortridge, Kansas City and How It Grew, chap. 6, and Teaford, Metropolitan Revolution, chaps. 2–4.

35. Douglas S. Massey and Jonathan Tannen, “A Research Note on Trends in Black Hypersegregation,” Demography 52 (2015): 1025–34; see also Douglas Massey and Nancy Denton, American Apartheid: Segregation and the Making of the Underclass (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1993), 67–69. Massey and Denton note that Kansas City had one of the lowest black suburbanization rates in the country during the 1970s. Kansas City also was one of just five metropolitan areas to appear both on the Massey and Tannen list of hypersegregated areas and Richard Florida’s list of the most economically segregated areas in the country. On recent declines in metro-wide racial segregation see Eric Alder, Mará Rose Williams, and Savanna Smith, “KC Area Has Been One of the Most Racially Segregated in America. But Not Any More,” Kansas City Star, January 6, 2019, 1.

36. US Census Bureau, Historical Census Statistics on Population Totals by Race, 1790 to 1900, and by Hispanic Origin, 1790 to 1990, for Large Cities and Other Urban Places in the United States, https://www.webcitation.org/69hd5KAIE?url=http://www.census.gov/population/www/documentation/twps0076/twps0076.html.

37. Shortridge, Kansas City and How It Grew, chap. 4; Charles E. Coulter, Take Up the Black Man’s Burden: Kansas City’s African American Communities, 1865–1939 (Columbia: University of Missouri Press, 2016), chaps. 3–6.

38. Schirmer, City Divided, chaps. 6–8; G. S. Griffin, Racism in Kansas City: A Short History (Traverse City, MI: Chandler Lake Books, 2015), chaps. 3 and 4. On the role of women in local school desegregation battles see Rachel Devlin, A Girl Stands at the Door: The Generation of Young Women Who Desegregated America’s Schools (New York: Basic Books, 2018), chaps. 1, 4, and 5.

39. See the studies cited in note 17 above, along with John L. Rury and Jeffrey E. Mirel, “The Political Economy of Urban Education,” Review of Research in Education 22 (1997): chap. 2.

40. These points are discussed in considerable detail in chapters 2, 4, and 5.

41. Shortridge, Kansas City and How It Grew, chap. 6. Montgomery and Kasper, Kansas City, chaps. 13 (“Big League”) and 14 (“Winds of Change”). On the development of school districts in the West see Fischel, Making the Grade, 203–9.

42. For somewhat different accounts of Jenkins and circumstances leading up to it see Peter William Moran, Race, Law, and the Desegregation of Public Schools (El Paso, TX: LFB Scholarly, 2005) and Joshua M. Dunn, Complex Justice: The Case of Missouri v. Jenkins (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 2008). For a contrary interpretation of the case see Preston C. Green III and Bruce D. Baker, “Urban Legends, Desegregation and School Finance: Did Kansas City Really Prove That Money Doesn’t Matter?,” Michigan Journal of Race & Law 12, no. 1 (2006): 57–105.

43. On the number of school districts and resulting competitive dynamics in metropolitan areas see Fischel, Making the Grade, 186–91.

44. Geo-spatial can be defined as relating to or denoting data associated with a particular location or locations, representing how geography is divided to identify certain spaces as linked to social groups, natural events, or activities of various sorts. See Brian J. L. Berry, Daniel A. Griffith, and Michael R. Tiefelsdorf, “From Spatial Analysis to Geospatial Science,” Geographical Analysis 40, no. 3 (July 2008): 229–38.

45. While this study may thus have some of the limitations of prior historical research on urban education, it features a case that is considerably more representative than many such works. I should add that convenience also played a role in deciding to study this site, since I live and work within fifty miles of downtown Kansas City, Missouri. This, however, does not detract from the many other qualities that make this midwestern metropolitan region a very good candidate for a project such as this. Of course, as a case study this account is necessarily limited with respect to making generalizations about the questions that it addresses, and this would be true even if it was an ideal site. For a discussion of problems associated with recent case studies in the history of education see John L. Rury, “The Power and Limitations of Historical Case Study: A Consideration of Postwar African American Educational Experience,” HSE: Social and Education History (Historia Social y de Educacion) 3, no. 3 (2014): 241–70, doi:10.4471/hse.2014.15 (published online).

46. While Hawley’s original book on human ecology was published in 1950, the final articulation of his ideas found expression in Amos Hawley, Human Ecology: A Theoretical Essay (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1986). For more recent discussions of this perspective see the essays in the collection edited by Markus Nauser and Deter Steiner, Human Ecology: Fragments of Anti-fragmentary Views of the World (New York: Routledge, 1993), and Robert Dyball and Barry Newell, Understanding Human Ecology: A Systems Approach to Sustainability (New York: Routledge, 2015).

47. For further discussion of these questions see John L. Rury and Jeffrey E. Mirel, “The Political Economy of Urban Education,” Review of Research in Education 22 (1997): 49–110. For a broad critique of the human ecology perspective see John R. Logan and Harvey L. Molotch, Urban Fortunes: The Political Economy of Growth (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1987), chap. 1.

48. Steven Conn, American against the City: Anti-urbanism in the Twentieth Century (New York: Oxford University Press, 2014), chap. 6. On questions of uneven distribution of services, an overview is provided by Deirdre A. Oakley and John R. Logan, “A Spatial Analysis of the Urban Landscape: What Accounts for Differences across Neighborhoods?,” in The Sociology of Spatial Inequality, ed. Linda M. Lobao, Gregory Hooks, and Ann R. Tickamyer (Albany: SUNY Press, 2007), 215–32.

49. Jon C. Teaford, City and Suburb: The Political Fragmentation of Metropolitan America, 1850–1970 (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1979). These themes are also evident in many studies of suburban development, beginning with Jackson, Crab-grass Frontier, chap. 15, but also including works such as Kruse, White Flight, chap. 9, and Matthew D. Lassiter, The Silent Majority: Suburban Politics in the Sunbelt South (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 2006), chaps. 4 and 5.

50. This is expressed in Amos H. Hawley and Basil G. Zimmer, Metropolitan Community: Its People and Government (Thousand Oaks, CA: Sage, 1970); also see Katz and Bradley, Metropolitan Revolution, chap. 1.

51. I have derived this term from Basil Zimmer and Amos Hawley in their important but now largely forgotten study of urban and suburban attitudes regarding education, Metropolitan Area Schools: Resistance to District Reorganization (Beverly Hills, CA: Sage, 1968), chaps. 8 and 9. For a more recent use of the term in this light see Kathryn A. McDermott, Controlling Public Education: Localism versus Equity (Lawrence: University Press of Kansas, 1999), chap. 3. Advocates of localism have used a Tiebout frame of analysis to suggest that competition among localities can produce greater efficiency in governance and related services. For critiques of this see Sheryll Cashin, “Localism, Self-Interest, and the Tyranny of the Favored Quarter: Addressing the Barriers to New Regionalism,” Georgetown Law Journal 88, no. 6 (2000): 1985–2048, David D. Troutt, “Localism and Segregation,” Journal of Affordable Housing & Community Development Law 16, no. 4 (Summer 2007): 323–47, Erika K. Wilson, “The New School Segregation,” Cornell International Law Journal 49, no. 3 (2016): 139–210, and Richard C. Schragger, “The Limits of Localism,” Michigan Law Review 100, no. 2 (November 2001): 371–472.

52. Mark Baldassare, Trouble in Paradise: The Suburban Transformation in America (New York: Columbia University Press, 1986), chaps. 3 and 4; Basil G. Zimmer, “Suburbanization and Changing Political Structures,” in The Changing Face of the Suburbs, ed. Barry Schwartz (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1976), 165–202; and Ann Lennarson Greer and Scott Greer, “Suburban Political Behavior: A Metter of Trust,” in Schwartz, Changing Face of the Suburbs, 203–20. Also see Jon C. Teaford, The American Suburb: The Basics (New York: Routledge, 2008), chap. 4. On the role of J. C. Nichols in Kansas City see Rothstein, Color of Law, 79.

53. Tyack, One Best System, pt. 4; David Tyack and Elisabeth Hansot, Managers of Virtue: Public School Leadership in America, 1820–1980 (New York: Basic Books, 1982), chaps. 11 and 12.

54. Charles Tilly, Durable Inequality (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1998), 10. This term has been directly tied to suburban development by Kevin Kruse and Thomas J. Sugrue in the introduction to their edited volume, The New Suburban History (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2006), 6. For a somewhat more systematic analysis see John L. Rury and Argun Saatcioglu, “Suburban Advantage: Opportunity Hoarding and Secondary Attainment in the Postwar Metropolitan Northeast,” American Journal of Education 118, no. 3 (May 2011): 307–42.

1. SUBURBAN AND URBAN SCHOOLS

1. James B. Conant, Slums and Suburbs: A Commentary on Schools in Metropolitan Areas (New York: McGraw Hill, 1961), 1–2. On contemporary conditions that mirror the disparities that Conant described see Linda Lemasters, “Disparities between Urban and Suburban Schools,” Educational Facilities Clearinghouse, June 11, 2015, http://www.efc.gwu.edu/library/disparities-between-urban-and-suburban-schools/. Also see Sarah Butrymowicz, “Struggling Cities and Excelling Suburbs: A Repeated Pattern around the Country,” Hechinger Report, September 28, 2015, http://hechingerreport.org/struggling-cities-and-excelling-suburbs-a-repeated-pattern-around-the-country/. Also see Jon C. Teaford, City and Suburb: The Political Fragmentation of Metropolitan America, 1850–1970 (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1979), chaps. 5–8; and James E. Ryan, Five Miles Away, a World Apart: One City, Two Schools, and the Story of Educational Opportunity in Modern America (New York: Oxford University Press, 2010), chaps. 1 and 2.

2. On this point see Jeffrey E. Mirel, The Rise and Fall of an Urban School System: Detroit, 1907–81 (Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press, 1993), esp. chap. 2. Also see the essays in John L. Rury and Frank Cassell, Seeds of Crisis: Public Schooling in Milwaukee since 1920 (Madison: University of Wisconsin Press, 1993), esp. chaps. 1 and 3–6. Also see David L. Angus, Jeffrey Mirel, and Maris Vinovskis, “Historical Development of Age Stratification in Schooling,” Teachers College Record 90, no. 2 (Winter 1988): 211–36.

3. Jon C. Teaford, The Metropolitan Revolution: The Rise of Post-urban America (New York: Columbia University Press, 2006), introduction; Kenneth Jackson, Crabgrass Frontier: The Suburbanization of the United States (New York: Oxford University Press, 1985), chaps. 9–14; William Frey and Aldon Speare, Regional and Metropolitan Growth andDecline in the U.S. (New York: Russell Sage Foundation, 1988), pt. 2; Robert Bruegmann, Sprawl: A Compact History (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2006), chaps. 3 and 4. See also Kenneth Fox, Metropolitan America: Urban Life and Urban Policy in the United States, 1940–1980 (Oxford: University Press of Mississippi, 1985), chap. 2.

4. Conant, Slums and Suburbs, introduction; Andrés Duany, Elizabeth Plater-Zyberk, and Jeff Speck, Suburban Nation: The Rise of Sprawl and the Decline of the American Dream (New York: North Point, 2000), chap. 1.

5. Howard P. Chudacoff, Judith Smith, and Peter Baldwin, The Evolution of American Urban Society, 8th ed. (New York: Routledge, 2016), chap. 4.

6. David B. Tyack, The One Best System: A History of American Urban Education (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1974), pts. 4 and 5.

7. Ibid. Also see Raymond E. Callahan, Education and the Cult of Efficiency: A Study of the Social Forces That Have Shaped the Administration of the Publi c Schools (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1964), chaps. 3–5; and Samuel P. Hays, “The Politics of Municipal Reform in the Progressive Era,” Pacific Northwest Quarterly 55, no. 4 (October 1964): 157–69. For discussion of the development of the urban school superintendent see David B. Tyack and Elisabeth Hansot, Managers of Virtue: Public School Leadership in America, 1820–1980 (New York: Basic Books, 1982), pt. 2.

8. Claudia Goldin and Lawrence Katz, The Race between Education and Technology (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press 2010), chap. 1; John L. Rury, Education and Women’s Work: Female Schooling and the Division of Labor in Urban America, 1870–1930 (Albany: SUNY Press, 1991), chaps. 2 and 3; Lisa M. Fine, The Souls of the Skyscraper: Female Clerical Workers in Chicago, 1870–1930 (Philadelphia: Temple University Press, 1990).

9. Richard Hofstadter, The Age of Reform (New York: Vintage Books, 1955), 23. Also see David B. Danbom, Born in the Country: A History of Rural America (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1995), iv.

10. James N. Gregory, The Southern Diaspora: How the Great Migrations of Black and White Southerners Transformed America (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 2005), chaps. 2–4.

11. Phillip G. Payne, Crash! How the Economic Boom and Bust of the 1920s Worked (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 2015), chaps. 2 and 3. See slso Richard E. Fogelsong, Planning the Capitalist City: The Colonial Era to the 1920s (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1986), chap. 7.

12. For an overview of urban development at this time see Eric H. Monkkonen, America Becomes Urban: The Development of U.S. Cities and Towns, 1780–1980 (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1988), chaps. 7–9. On the character of city schools during these years see Mirel, Rise and Fall, chap. 2, along with Tyack and Hansot, Managers of Virtue, chaps. 11 and 12. On the treatment of African Americans in city schools see Tyack, One Best System, pt. 3, chap. 5; also see Judy Jolley Mohraz, The Separate Problem: Case Studies of Black Education in the North, 1900–1930 (Westport, CT: Praeger, 1979), chap. 1; and James D. Anderson, The Education of Blacks in the South, 1860–1935 (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 1988), chaps. 5 and 6.

13. Mirel, Rise and Fall, chap. 3; David Tyack, Robert Lowe, and Elisabeth Hansot, Public Schools in Hard Times: The Great Depression and Recent Years (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1987), chaps. 1–3.

14. Dolores Hayden, Building Suburbia: Green Fields and Urban Growth, 1820–2000 (New York: Vintage Books, 2003), chap. 7; Jackson, Crabgrass Frontier, chap. 13; Chudacoff, Smith, and Baldwin, Evolution of American Urban Society, chaps. 7 and 8.

15. Goldin and Katz, Race between Education and Technology, chap. 6. Also see John L. Rury, “Social Capital and Secondary Schooling: Interurban Differences in American Teenage Enrollment Rates in 1950,” American Journal of Education 110, no. 4 (August 2004): 293–320.

16. James B. Conant, The American High School Today: A First Report to Interested Citizens (New York: McGraw Hill, 1959), chap. 3; David L. Angus and Jeffrey E. Mirel, The Failed Promise of the American High School, 1890–1995 (New York: Teachers College Press, 1999), chap. 4. On black experiences see John L. Rury and Shirley A. Hill, The African American Struggle for Secondary Schooling, 1940–1980: Closing the Graduation Gap (New York: Teachers College Press, 2012), chap. 2.

17. On the 1950s as a time of stability and growth see Mirel, Rise and Fall, chap. 5, and 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, no. 2 (Summer 1999): 117–42. For a detailed account of changes in secondary education during this time see David L. Angus and Jeffrey Mirel, The Failed Promise of the American High School, 1890–1995 (New York: Teachers College Press, 1999), chaps. 3 and 4. On minority group exclusion see Kathryn M. Neckerman, Schools Betrayed: Roots of Failure in Inner City Education (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2007), chaps. 3 and 4, and Jack Dougherty, More Than One Struggle: The Evolution of Black School Reform in Milwaukee (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 2004), chap. 1.

18. Two classic accounts of this process are Thomas J. Sugrue, The Origins of the Urban Crisis: Race and Inequality in Postwar Detroit (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1996), chaps. 3 and 4, and Arnold R. Hirsch, Making the Second Ghetto: Race and Housing in Chicago, 1940–1960 (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1983), chap. 1. Also see Kevin Fox Gotham, Race, Real Estate, and Uneven Development: The Kansas City Experience, 1900–2010, 2nd ed. (Albany: SUNY Press, 2014), chaps. 4 and 5; and Fox, Metropolitan America, chap. 6.

19. Teaford, Metropolitan Revolution, chaps. 1–3. On early suburbanization and restrictive covenants see Robert M. Fogelson, Bourgeois Nightmares: Suburbia, 1870–1930 (New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 2005), pt. 2; and Jackson, Crabgrass Frontier, chaps. 10 and 11.

20. On urban and metropolitan development during these years see two books by Jon C. Teaford: The Rough Road to Renaissance: Urban Revitalization in America, 1940–1985 (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1990), chaps. 1–3, and Metropolitan Revolution, chaps. 3–5. Also see Fox, Metropolitan America, chaps. 1–3.

21. Leah Platt Boustan, Competition in the Promised Land: Black Migrants in Northern Cities and Labor Markets (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 2017), chap. 4.

22. A classic account of this can be found in Hirsch, Making the Second Ghetto, chaps. 1–3. On debates about poverty in this era see Michael B. Katz, The Undeserving Poor: America’s Enduring Confrontation with Poverty, 2nd ed. (New York: Oxford University Press, 2013), chap. 3.

23. Janet L. Abu-Lughod, Race, Space, and Riots in Chicago, New York, and Los Angeles (New York: Oxford University Press, 2007), chaps. 5 and 6; Gerald Horne, Fire This Time: The Watts Uprising and the 1960s (Charlottesville: University Press of Virginia, 1995), pt. 2; Malcolm McLaughlin, The Long, Hot Summer of 1967: Urban Rebellion in America (New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2014), chaps. 1 and 2; National Advisory Commission on Civil Disorders, The Kerner Report (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 2016), pt. 2. On white attitudes being influenced by these events see Howard Schuman, Charlotte Steeh, Lawrence Bobo, and Maria Krysan, Racial Attitudes in America, rev. ed. (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1997), 164; the authors suggest that these episodes of mass civil disobedience and destruction contributed to a substantial shift in white opinion about the sources of African American disadvantages.

24. Boustan, Competition in the Promised Land, chap. 4.

25. On these tendencies see Hirsch, Making the Second Ghetto, 216–17; Thomas J. Sugrue, The Origins of the Urban Crisis: Race and Inequality in Postwar Detroit (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1996), chaps. 7 and 8; Kevin M. Kruse, White Flight: Atlanta and the Making of Modern Conservatism (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 2005), chaps. 4–6; and Eric Avila, Popular Culture in the Age of White Flight: Fear and Fantasy in Suburban Los Angeles (Berkeley: University of California Press, 2006), chaps. 1–3.

26. See James W. Loewen, Sundown Towns: A Hidden Dimension of American Racism (New York: New Press, 2005), 5, 10–12; Don Terry, “Chicago Neighborhood Reveals an Ugly Side,” New York Times, March 27, 1997, http://www.nytimes.com/1997/03/27/us/chicago-neighborhood-reveals-an-ugly-side.html; Isabel Wilkerson, “Integration Proves Elusive in an Ohio Suburb,” New York Times, October 30, 1988, http://www.nytimes.com/1988/10/30/us/integration-proves-elusive-in-an-ohio-suburb.html?pagewanted=all. On Wallace see Michael A. Cohen, American Maelstrom: The 1968 Election and the Politics of Division (New York: Oxford University Press, 2016), pt. 2. On racial beliefs see Schuman, Steeh, Bobo, and Krysan, Racial Attitudes in America, 153–66, which demonstrates how white ideas about African American disadvantages differed by levels of education at this time.

27. On the development of the black middle class see Rury and Hill, African American Struggle, 124. Data on changes in poverty rates, which affected both whites and blacks, can be found in Robert G. Mogull, “American Poverty in the 1960s,” Phylon 33, no. 2 (1972): 161–68.

28. A compelling account of such concerns in this period can be found in Preston H. Smith II, Racial Democracy and the Black Metropolis: Housing Policy in Postwar Chicago (Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 2012), chap. 5; Karl Taeuber, “Negro Residential Segregation: Trends and Measurement,” Social Problems 12, no. 1 (Summer 1964): 42–50. Taeuber calculated that Kansas City had a segregation index of 90 in 1970, which was higher than its regional average and similar to cities in the South at the time. See Karl Taeuber, “Racial Residential Segregation, 28 Cities, 1970–1980,” University of Wisconsin, Center for Demography and Ecology, March 1983, https://files.eric.ed.gov/fulltext/ED234107.pdf.

29. Rury and Hill, African American Struggle, chap. 4.

30. Black graduation rates generally remained below white rates, so the city schools usually registered an overall drop with white flight. But even crowded urban high schools in the North were an improvement over the haphazard educational opportunities available to blacks in the southern countryside at this time. See John L. Rury, “Attainment amidst Adversity: Black High School Students in the Metropolitan North, 1940–1980,” in Clio at the Table: Using History to Inform and Improve Education Policy, ed. Kenneth K. Wong and Robert Rothman (New York: Peter Lang, 2009), 37–58.

31. For discussion of urban school desegregation and related problems in this era see Raymond C. Hummel and John M. Nagle, Urban Education in America: Problems and Prospects (New York: Oxford University Press, 1973), chap. 4; on overcrowding see Rury and Hill, African American Struggle, chap. 4.

32. Rury, “Race, Space,” 131–32; Dionne Danns, Something Better for Our Children: Black Organization in the Chicago Public Schools, 1963–1971 (New York: Routledge, 2002), chaps. 3–5; Dionne Danns, Desegregating Chicago’s Public Schools: Policy Implementation, Politics, and Protest, 1965–1985 (New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2014), introduction and chap. 1; and Rury and Hill, African American Struggle, 158. On the Detroit walk-out see Allie Gross, “Detroit ’67: 1966 Student Walkout at Northern a Sign of Things to Come,” Detroit Free Press, July 17, 2017, https://www.freep.com/story/news/local/michigan/detroit/2017/07/17/detroit-67-1966-student-walkout-northern-sign-things-come/483019001/. Also see Barry M. Franklin, “Community, Race, and Curriculum in Detroit: The Northern High School Walkout,” History of Education 33; no. 2 (2004): 137–56.

33. Boustan, Competition in the Promised Land, chap. 4. Also see Sugrue, Origins of the Urban Crisis, pt. 3.

34. Hummel and Nagle, Urban Education in America, 202–3. See chap. 7, “The Financial Condition of Urban Schools,” for a comprehensive discussion of the fiscal problems facing large urban school districts.

35. Ibid., viii; Harvey Kantor and Barbara Brenzel, “Urban Education and the ‘Truly Disadvantaged’: The Historical Roots of the Contemporary Crisis, 1945–1990,” Teachers College Record 94, no. 2 (1992): 278–314; also see Harvey Kantor and Robert Lowe, “Class, Race, and the Emergence of Federal Education Policy: From the New Deal to the Great Society,” Educational Researcher 24, no. 3 (1995): 4–11. Although black graduation rates were on the rise, they still generally lagged the rates of whites who were leaving the cities. On this point see Rury and Hill, African American Struggle, chap. 4.

36. Robert J. Havighurst and Daniel U. Levine, Education in Metropolitan Areas, 2nd ed. (Boston: Allyn & Bacon, 1971), 84.

37. On the origins and evolution of ESEA see Gareth Davies, See Government Grow: Education Politics from Johnson to Reagan (Lawrence: University Press of Kansas, 2007), chaps. 2 and 3; see also Charles S. Benson and Kevin O’Halloran, “The Economic History of School Finance in the United States,” Journal of Education Finance 12, no. 4 (Spring 1987): 495–515. On the question of state aid to districts see John Riew, “State Aids for Public Schools and Metropolitan Finance,” Land Economics 46, no. 3 (August 1970): 297–304.

38. David K. Cohen and Susan L. Moffitt, The Ordeal of Equality: Did Federal Regulation Fix the Schools? (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 2009), 9.

39. Seymour Sacks, City Schools / Suburban Schools: A History of Fiscal Conflict (Syracuse, NY: Syracuse University Press, 1972), chaps. 4 and 7; Arthur Wise, Rich Schools, Poor Schools: The Promise of Equal Educational Opportunity (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1968). Also see Ryan, Five Miles Away, a World Apart, pt. 2.

40. On the Coleman Report see Adam Gamoran and David A. Long, “Equality of Educational Opportunity: A Forty Year Retrospective,” in International Studies in Educational Inequality: Theory and Policy, ed. Richard Tees, Stephen Lamb, Marie Duru-Bellat, and Sue Helme (New York: Springer, 2007), 23–47. See also John L. Rury and Argun Saatcioglu, “Did the Coleman Report Underestimate the Effect of Economic Status on Educational Outcomes?,” Teachers College Record, January 22, 2015, http://www.tcrecord.org, ID no. 17828.

41. The quote can be found in Gene I. Maeroff and Leonard Buder, The New York Times Guide to Suburban Public Schools: Long Island, Westchester and Rockland, Connecticut, New Jersey (New York: Quadrangle / New York Times Book Co., 1976), xvii–xviii.

42. For an overview of these historical issues and relevant research literature see John L. Rury and Jeffrey Mirel, “The Political Economy of Urban Education,” Review of Research in Education 22 (1997): 49–110. Also see Robert P. O’Reilly, Racial and Social Class Isolation in the Schools: Implications for Educational Policy and Programs (New York: Praeger, 1970), chap. 7. The quote is from Sacks, City Schools / Suburban Schools, 172.

43. Mirel, Rise and Fall, chaps. 5 and 6; Rury, “Race, Space,” 129–34. Also see Jack Dougherty, More Than One Struggle: The Evolution of Black School Reform in Milwaukee (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 2004), chap. 4; Jean Anyon, Ghetto Schooling: A Political Economy of Urban Educational Reform (New York: Teachers College Press, 1997), chap. 1; and Daniel H. Perlstein, Justice, Justice: School Politics and the Eclipse of Liberalism (New York: Peter Lang, 2004), introduction.

44. James T. Patterson, Brown v. Board of Education: A Civil Rights Milestone and Its Troubled Legacy (New York: Oxford University Press, 2002), chaps. 6 and 7; John Morton Blum, Years of Discord: American Politics and Society, 1961–1974 (New York: W. W. Norton, 1991), chap. 7.

45. Ira Katznelson and Margaret Weir, Schooling for All: Class, Race, and the Decline of the Democratic Ideal (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1988), chap. 7; Kathryn M. Neckerman, Schools Betrayed: Roots of Failure in Inner-City Education (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2007), chaps. 3 and 4; Diane Ravitch, The Great School Wars: A History of the New York City Public Schools (New York: Basic Books, 1974), chaps. 23 and 24; and Ronald P. Formasano, Boston against Busing: Race, Class, and Ethnicity in the 1960s and 1970s (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 1991), chaps. 5–9.

46. David Rogers, 110 Livingston Street: Politics and Bureaucracy in the New York City School System (New York: Random House, 1968), chaps. 8, 9, and 11; Richard C. Kearney and Chandan Sinha, “Professionalism and Bureaucratic Responsiveness: Conflict or Compatibility?,” Public Administration Review 48, no. 1 (January–February 1988): 571–79; Hummel and Nagle, Urban Education in America, 160–67.

47. Willis D. Hawley, “The New Mythology of School Desegregation,” Law and Contemporary Problems 42, no. 4 (Autumn 1978): 214–33; Lewis M. Killian and Charles M. Grigg, “Community Resistance to and Acceptance of Desegregation,” Journal of Negro Education 34, no. 3, Education and Civil Rights in 1965 (Summer 1965): 268–77; J. Harvie Wilkinson III, “The Supreme Court and Southern School Desegregation, 1955–1970: A History and Analysis,” Virginia Law Review 64, no. 4 (May 1978): 485–559.

48. Hayden, Building Suburbia, chap. 7; Jon C. Teaford, The American Suburb: The Basics (New York: Routledge, 2008), chap. 1; John L. Rury and Argun Saatcioglu, “Suburban Advantage: Opportunity Hoarding and Secondary Attainment in the Postwar Metropolitan North,” American Journal of Education 117, no. 3 (May 2011): 307–42.

49. Herbert Gans, The Levittowners: Ways of Life and Politics in a New Suburban Community (New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 1967), chaps. 1 and 2; Adam Rome, The Bulldozer in the Countryside: Suburban Sprawl and the Rise of American Environmentalism (New York: Cambridge University Press, 2001), chap. 1; Margaret Lundrigan Ferrer and Tova Navarra, Our House: The Stories of Levittown (New York: Scholastic, 1965), chaps. 2 and 3; Barbara M. Kelly, Expanding the American Dream: Building and Rebuilding Levittown (Albany: SUNY Press, 1993), chap. 7; Joseph Bensman and Arthur J. Vidich, “The New Middle Classes: Their Culture and Life Styles,” Journal of Aesthetic Education 4, no. 1 (January 1970): 23–39; Shelley Nickles, “More Is Better: Mass Consumption, Gender, and Class Identity in Postwar America,” American Quarterly 54, no. 4 (December 2002): 581–622.

50. Havighurst and Levine, Education in Metropolitan Areas, chap. 5; Gans, Levittowners, 97–101.

51. On these points see Reynolds Farley, “Components of Suburban Population Growth,” and Larry H. Long and Paul C. Glick, “Family Patterns in Suburban Areas: Recent Trends,” chaps. 1 and 2 in The Changing Face of the Suburbs, ed. Barry Schwartz (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1976), 3–68.

52. Steven Mintz, Huck’s Raft: A History of American Childhood (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 2004), 277.

53. On the tendency of younger families to move to the suburbs at this time see Long and Glick, “Family Patterns in Suburban Areas,” 40–68. For an informative study of a suburban school district see Daniel Linden Duke, Education Empire: The Evolution of an Excellent Suburban School System (Albany: SUNY Press, 2005), chaps. 1–3. Also see Paul Lyons, Class of ’66: Living in Suburban Middle America (Philadelphia: Temple University Press, 1994), chaps. 1 and 2; and Maeroff and Buder, New York Times Guide to Suburban Public Schools, introduction.

54. Frey and Speare, Regional and Metropolitan Growth, chap. 7; Jackson, Crabgrass Frontier, chaps. 13 and 14; David R. Goldfield, Cotton Fields and Skyscrapers: Southern City and Region, 1607–1980 (Baton Rouge: LSU Press, 1982), chap. 6; Kruse, White Flight, chap. 9; Teaford, American Suburb, chaps. 1 and 2.

55. See Kathleen A. Brosnan and Amy L. Scott, introduction to City Dreams, Country Schemes: Community and Identity in the American West, ed. Kathleen A. Brosnan and Amy L. Scott (Reno: University of Nevada Press, 2013), 1–9. Also see David Rusk, Cities without Suburbs (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1993), 31–41.

56. Historically, significant educational differences had long existed between the North, South, and West of the country, as schooling conformed to the social and economic factors that distinguished them. The industrial and highly urbanized Northeast and upper Midwest, for instance, had traditionally invested more heavily in public education than the agricultural South, while the West exhibited the nation’s highest levels of attainment. The development of national markets, however, along with improved transportation and communication networks, contributed to a gradual convergence in these regional characteristics. See John L. Rury, “American School Enrollment in the Progressive Era: An Interpretive Inquiry,” History of Education 14, no. 1 (Summer 1985): 49–67; John L. Rury, Argun Saatcioglu, and William P. Skorupski, “Expanding Secondary Attainment in the United States, 1940–80: A Fixed-Effects Regression Model,” Historical Methods 43, no. 3 (July–September 2010): 139–52.

57. James D. Tarver, “Migration Differentials in Southern Cities and Suburbs,” Social Science Quarterly 50, no. 2 (September 1969): 298–324.

58. Argun Saatcioglu and John L. Rury, “Education and the Changing Metropolitan Organization of Inequality: A Multilevel Analysis of Secondary Attainment in the United States, 1940–1980,” Historical Methods 45, no. 1 (January–March 2012): 21–40; Sukkoo Kim, “Economic Integration and Convergence: U.S. Regions, 1840–1987,” Journal of Economic History 58 (1998): 659–83; F. Caselli and W. J. Coleman II, “The U.S. Structural Transformation and Regional Convergence: A Reinterpretation,” Journal of Political Economy 109 (2001): 584–616.

59. Jackson, Crabgrass Frontier, chap. 8; Fox, Metropolitan America, chaps. 1 and 2; Kent P. Schwirian, F. Martin Hankins, and Carol A. Ventresca, “The Residential Decentralization of Social Status Groups in American Metropolitan Communities, 1950–1980,” Social Forces 68, no. 4 (June 1990): 1143–63; John Fine, Norval D. Glenn, and J. Kenneth Monts, “The Residential Segregation of Occupational Groups in Central Cities and Suburbs,” Demography 8, no. 1 (February 1971): 91–101; Carol A. O’Connor, “Sorting Out the Suburbs: Patterns of Land Use, Class, and Culture,” American Quarterly 37, no. 3 (1985): 382–94.

60. Teaford, American Suburb, chaps. 1 and 2.

61. Frey and Speare, Regional and Metropolitan Growth, chap. 7; Goldfield, Cotton Fields and Skyscrapers, chap. 6. For more on this see Saatcioglu and Rury, “Education and the Changing Metropolitan Organization of Inequality,” 21–24.

62. Douglas Massey and Nancy Denton, American Apartheid: Segregation and the Making of the Underclass (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1993), chaps. 1–3; D. R. James, “City Limits on Racial Equality: The Effects of City-Suburb Boundaries on Public-School Desegregation, 1968–1976,” American Sociological Review 54 (1989): 963–85; S. Welch, M. Combs, L. Sigelman, and T. Bledsoe, “Race or Place? Emerging Public Perspectives on Urban Education,” PS: Political Science and Politics 30 (1997): 454–58. Mark Baldassare, “Suburban Communities,” Annual Review of Sociology 18 (1992): 475–94; J. R. Logan, R. D. Alba, T. Mcnulty, and B. Fisher, “Making a Place in the Metropolis: Locational Attainment in Cities and Suburbs,” Demography 33 (1996): 443–59; V. J. Roscigno, D. Tomaskovic-Devey, and M. Crowley, “Education and Inequalities of Place,” Social Forces 84 (2006): 2121–45.

63. Rury and Hill, African American Struggle, chap. 1. On the importance of parental education see W. Norton Grubb, The Money Myth: School Resources, Outcomes, and Equity (New York: Russell Sage Foundation, 2009), chap. 1.

64. On this point see Nan Marie Astone and Sara S. McLanahan, “Family Structure, Parental Practices and High School Completion,” American Sociological Review 56, no. 3 (June 1991): 309–20; and Sheila Fitzgerald Krein and Andrea H. Beller, “Educational Attainment of Children from Single-Parent Families: Differences by Exposure, Gender, and Race,” Demography 25, no. 1 (May 1988): 221–34.

65. Jackson, Crabgrass Frontier, chap. 7; Hayden, Building Suburbia, chaps. 6 and 7.

66. Caselli and Coleman, “U.S. Structural Transformation,” 584–90; Saatcioglu and Rury, “Education and the Changing Metropolitan Organization of Inequality,” 21–40.

67. Logan, Alba, Mcnulty, and Fisher, “Making a Place in the Metropolis,” 443–53; H. L. Hughes, “Metropolitan Structure and the Suburban Hierarchy,” American Sociological Review 58 (1993): 417–33; M. C. Brazer, “Economic and Social Disparities between Central Cities and Their Suburbs,” Land Economics 43 (1967): 294–302.

68. Teaford, American Suburb, chap. 3.

69. Saatcioglu and Rury, “Education and the Changing Metropolitan Organization of Inequality,” 36–37. Also see John L. Rury and Argun Saatcioglu, “Suburban Advantage: Opportunity Hoarding and Secondary Attainment in the Postwar Metropolitan North,” American Journal of Education 117, no. 3 (Summer 2011): 307–42. In both these studies, enrollment in grade 11 or higher—or having graduated—was interpreted as a proxy for high school success and the likelihood of graduation. Both studies told the same story of a slight urban advantage in 1940 and a larger suburban advantage forty years later. Youth in the study were labeled suburban if they lived within an SMSA (Standard Metropolitan Statistical Area) but outside the central city. Some of these areas may have been rather rural in character in 1940, and much less so twenty years later.

70. On the challenges facing suburban children see Edward A. Wynn, Growing Up Suburban (Austin: University of Texas Press, 1977), chaps. 1 and 2.

71. On anti-city attitudes during this period see Steven Conn, Americans against the City: Anti-urbanism in the Twentieth Century (New York: Oxford University Press, 2014), chaps. 6 and 7; also see Campbell F. Scribner, The Fight for Local Control: Schools, Suburbs, and American Democracy (Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, 2016), introduction. See also Claude S. Fischer and Robert Max Jackson, “Suburbs, Networks, and Attitudes,” in Schwartz, Changing Face of the Suburbs, 279–308.

72. Joseph F. Zimmerman, “The Metropolitan Area Problem,” Annals of the American Academy of Political and Social Science 416 (November 1974): 133–47. For a concise discussion from a sociological standpoint see Amos H. Hawley and Basil G. Zimmer, The Metropolitan Community: Its People and Government (Beverly Hills, CA: Sage, 1970), chap. 1, “The Metropolitan Problem.” On page 2 they noted, “Metropolitan growth has divided among many governmental units what are actually indivisible problems.”

73. Vincent Ostram, Charles Tiebout, and Robert D. Warren, “The Organization of Government in Metropolitan Areas: A Theoretical Inquiry,” American Political Science Review 55 (1961): 831–42; Luther Gulick, The Metropolitan Problem and American Ideas (New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 1962), chap. 1. On schooling see Warner Bloomberg Jr. and Morris Sunshine, Suburban Power Structures and Public Education (Syracuse, NY: Syracuse University Press, 1963), chaps. 5 and 6.

74. Hawley and Zimmer, Metropolitan Community, chaps. 5 and 6.

75. See the discussion of localism and its history, especially with respect to schools, in Scribner, Fight for Local Control, chaps. 1 and 2. Also see Hawley and Zimmer, Metropolitan Community, chap. 4; and Douglas S. Reed, Building the Federal Schoolhouse: Localism and the American Educational State (New York: Oxford University Press, 2014), pt. 2.

76. Basil G. Zimmer, “Suburbanization and Changing Political Structures,” in Schwartz, Changing Face of the Suburbs, 165–202.

77. Robert Havighurst was a major contributor to this perspective. See, for instance, his following works: Education in Metropolitan Areas (Boston: Allyn & Bacon, 1966), “Metropolitan Development and the Education System,” in Education of the Disadvantaged, ed. A. H. Passow (New York: Holt, Rinehart & Winston, 1967), and Metropolitanism: Its Challenge to Education, 67th Yearbook, National Society for the Study of Education, pt. 1 (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1968). See also the discussion of different examples of this in metropolitan Kansas City and Missouri in chapter 4.

78. Basil G. Zimmer and Amos Hawley, Metropolitan Area Schools: Resistance to District Reorganization (Beverly Hills, CA: Sage, 1968), chap. 1.

79. Ibid.; Basil G. Zimmer and Amos H. Hawley, “Factors Associated with Resistance to the Organization of Metropolitan Area Schools,” Sociology of Education 40, no. 4 (Autumn 1967): 334–47. The survey was conducted by the University of Chicago’s National Opinion Research Center to produce a probability sample of about five hundred respondents from urban and suburban zones in each of the six metro areas. The authors decided to focus on the North to avoid the confounding influence of regional variation, and selected metro areas in three size groups: large (total population around one million), medium (around half a million), and small (around 150,000). Some 630 public officials in both urban and suburban settings were interviewed as well, 45 in each city and 60 in each set of suburbs. This sampling strategy reflected Zimmer and Hawley’s expectation that findings would differ across these varied metropolitan contexts.

80. On these points see Hawley and Zimmer, Metropolitan Community, chap. 1. The quote is from Richard E. Wagner and Warren E. Weber, “Competition, Monopoly, and the Organization of Government in Metropolitan Areas,” Journal of Law & Economics 18, no. 3 (December 1975): 663.

81. Zimmer and Hawley, Metropolitan Area Schools, chaps. 7 and 8.

82. Ryan, Five Miles Away, a World Apart, 154.

83. Zimmer and Hawley, Metropolitan Area Schools, chaps. 7 and 8. For somewhat different perspective see Teaford, City and Suburb, chap. 5. Teaford suggested that resistance to unified government in metropolitan areas was greatest among blue-collar workers who feared racial change and higher taxes. Zimmer and Hawley did not explore the question of race, but they too found that less-affluent respondents were most worried about taxes. Unlike their study, however, Teaford’s did not focus on the schools. For a study that mirrored many of the findings of Zimmer and Hawley, even though published six years earlier, see Roscoe C. Martin, Government and the Suburban School (Syracuse, NY: Syracuse University Press, 1962), chap. 4.

84. Zimmer and Hawley, Metropolitan Area Schools, 192. On the preferences of affluent suburbanites in this period see Sylvia F. Fava, “Beyond Suburbia,” Annals of the American Academy of Political and Social Science 422 (1975): 10–24.

85. Patterson, Brown v. Board of Education, chaps. 2–5; Roger Goldman and David Gallen, Thurgood Marshall: Justice for All (New York: Carrol & Graf, 1992), 56–140.

86. Gamoran and Long, “Equality of Educational Opportunity,” 29; Mildred A. Schwartz, Trends in White Attitudes toward Negroes, Report no. 119, National Opinion Research Center, University of Chicago, 1967, 9, http://www.norc.org/PDFs/publications/NORCRpt_119.pdf. American Presidency Project, Lyndon B. Johnson, Commencement Address at Howard University: “To Fulfill These Rights,” June 4, 1965, https://www.presidency.ucsb.edu/documents/commencement-address-howard-university-fulfill-these-rights.

87. Patterson, Brown v. Board of Education, chaps. 6 and 7; Charles T. Clotfelter, After “Brown”: The Rise and Retreat of School Desegregation (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 2004), chap. 1; Rury and Hill, African American Struggle, chaps. 4 and 5.

88. Kantor and Brenzel, “Urban Education and the ‘Truly Disadvantaged,’” 278–314; Mirel, Rise and Fall, chap. 6; Rury and Mirel, “Political Economy of Urban Education,” 73–81. On the misnomer that de facto desegregation represented see Richard Roth-stein, The Color of Law: A Forgotten History of How Our Government Segregated America (New York: Liveright, 2017), xii.

89. Matthew L. Delamont, Why Busing Failed: Race, Media, and the National Resistance to School Desegregation (Berkeley: University of California Press, 2016), chaps. 1–3; Ansley T. Erickson, Making the Unequal Metropolis: School Desegregation and Its Limits (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2016), pt. 2; Gary Orfield, Public School Desegregation in the United States, 1968–1980 (Washington, DC: Joint Center for Policy Studies, 1983), chap. 2; Clotfelter, After “Brown,” chaps. 3 and 4.

90. Joyce A. Baugh, The Detroit School Busing Case: Milliken v. Bradley and the Controversy over Desegregation (Lawrence: University Press of Kansas, 2011); Ryan, Five Miles Away, a World Apart, chap. 2.

91. Rury and Mirel, “Political Economy of Urban Education,” 81–98; Jeffrey Henig, Rethinking School Choice: The Limits of the Market Metaphor (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1995), chaps. 2 and 5.

92. Alejandro Portes and Rubén G. Rumbaut, Immigrant America: A Portrait (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1990), chaps. 1 and 2; Alejandro Portes and Rubén G. Rumbaut, Legacies: The Story of the Immigrant Second Generation (Berkeley: University of California Press, 2001), chap. 1.

93. Barry Bluestone and Bennett Harrison, The Deindustrialization of America: Plant Closings, Community Abandonment, and the Dismantling of Basic Industry (New York: Basic Books, 1982), chaps. 1–5; William Julius Wilson, When Work Disappears: The World of the New Urban Poor (New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 1996), pt. 1; also see Wilson’s earlier work, The Truly Disadvantaged: The Inner City, the Underclass, and Public Policy (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1987). On debates about how to understand and label these developments see Michael B. Katz, The Undeserving Poor: America’s Enduring Confrontation with Poverty, 2nd ed. (New York: Oxford University Press, 2013), chaps. 4 and 5.

94. On media representation of these issues as related to education see this 178-page compilation of articles from one newspaper: Chicago’s Schools: Worst in America (Chicago: Chicago Tribune, 1988). A classic case of battles over desegregation leading to the decline of a city school system can be seen in Kansas City, described in Peter William Moran, Race, Law, and the Desegregation of Public Schools (New York: LFB Scholarly, 2005), chaps. 1–7.

95. The quotes can be found in Wilson, When Work Disappears, 8. See part 1 of the book for a discussion of the changing conditions that contributed to the heightened urban crisis of the 1990s. Also see Wilson’s more recent book, More Than Just Race: Being Black and Poor in the Inner City (New York: W. W. Norton, 2009), chaps. 1 and 2.

96. Boustan, Competition in the Promised Land, 102; William W. Goldsmith and Edward J. Blakely, Separate Societies: Poverty and Inequality in U.S. Cities (Philadelphia: Temple University Press, 1992), chap. 4; Paul A. Jargowsky, Poverty and Place: Ghettos, Barrios, and the American City (New York: Russell Sage Foundation, 1997), chaps. 1 and 2; Kantor and Brenzel, “Urban Education and the ‘Truly Disadvantaged,’” 310–12. On inner-city ghetto communities see Tommie Shelby, Dark Ghettos: Injustice, Dissent, and Reform (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 2016), chap. 3. On overall trends in black standards of suburban living see Deirdre Pfeiffer, “Racial Equity in the Post–Civil Rights Suburbs? Evidence from US Regions 2000–2012,” Urban Studies 53, no. 4 (2016): 799–817.

97. On African American suburbs and federal policy see Andrew Wiese, Places of Their Own: African American Suburbanization in the Twentieth Century (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2004), chaps. 8 and 9; Charles M. Lamb, Housing Segregation in Suburban America since 1960: Presidential and Judicial Politics (New York: Cambridge University Press, 2005), chaps. 2–5.

98. On these points see Nathan Glazer, “The Real World of Urban Education,” Public Interest, no. 106 (1992): 57–75; Paula D. McClain, “Thirty Years of Urban Policies: Frankly, My Dears, We Don’t Give a Damn!,” Urban Affairs Review 30, no. 5 (1995): 641–44; and Lee Sigelman and Jeffrey R. Henig, “Crossing the Great Divide: Race and Preferences for Living in the City versus the Suburbs,” Urban Affairs Review 37, no. 1 (September 2001): 3–18.

99. On these points see Alan Mallach, The Divided City: Poverty and Prosperity in Urban America (Washington, DC: Island Press, 2018), chap. 9.

100. Regarding the low state of public opinion regarding big-city school systems, and perceptions of bureaucratic control, see Dan A. Lewis and Kathryn Nakagawa, Race and Educational Reform in the American Metropolis: A Study of School Decentralization (Albany: SUNY Press, 1995), chap. 1.

101. On lessons to be learned from southern desegregation cases see Erickson, Making the Unequal Metropolis, conclusion; Ansley T. Erickson, “Fairness, Commitment, and Civic Capacity: The Varied Desegregation Trajectories of Metropolitan School Districts,” in The Shifting Landscape of the American School District: Race, Class, Geography, and the Perpetual Reform of Local Control, 1935–2015, ed. David Gamson and Emily Hodge (New York: Peter Lang, 2018), 107–226; Genevieve Siegel-Hawley and Stefani Thachik, “Crossing the Line? School District Responses to Demographic Change in the South,” in Gamson and Hodge, Shifting Landscape, 79–106; and Genevieve Siegel-Hawley, When the Fences Come Down: Twenty-First-Century Lessons from Metropolitan School Desegregation (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 2016), pt. 3.

2. UNITING AND DIVIDING A HEARTLAND METROPOLIS

1. Aaron Tyler Rife, “Shifting Identities in South Kansas City: Hickman Mills’s Transformation from a Suburban to Urban School District” (PhD diss., University of Kansas, 2014), 52.

2. For an overview of the area’s development during this period see James R. Shortridge, Kansas City and How It Grew, 1822–2011 (Lawrence: University Press of Kansas, 2012), chap. 5. For an account of a somewhat similar set of circumstances regarding school districts within city boundaries and its consequences see James C. Owen and Willbern York, Governing Metropolitan Indianapolis: The Politics of Unigov (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1985), chap. 6; and Shaina Cavazos, “Racial Bias and the Crumbling of a City,” Atlantic, August 17, 2016, https://www.theatlantic.com/education/archive/2016/08/indianapolis-school-districts/496145/.

3. Shortridge, Kansas City and How It Grew, chap. 5; on the local history of racial conflict see Sherry Lamb Schirmer, A City Divided: The Racial Landscape of Kansas City, 1900–1960 (Columbia: University of Missouri Press, 2002), chaps. 2–5; and Charles E. Coulter, Take Up the Black Man’s Burden: Kansas City’s African American Communities, 1865–1939 (Columbia: University of Missouri Press, 2006), chaps. 7–9.

4. Growth rates are reported for the Kansas City metropolitan area in the Statistical Abstract of the United States, 1951, 1961, 1971, and 1981 (Washington, DC: Government Printing Office), section 1, population, which lists standard statistical metropolitan area population figures from each decennial census. These are available at https://www.census.gov/library/publications/time-series/statistical_abstracts.html.

5. On these points see Shortridge, Kansas City and How It Grew, chaps. 4 and 5.

6. Bill Gilbert, This City, This Man: The Cookingham Era in Kansas City (Washington, DC: International County Management Association, 1978), chap. 10.

7. Shortridge, Kansas City and How It Grew, 102–5.

8. “Area’s Face Changes with Annexations,” Kansas City Star, January 15, 1958, 1E.

9. Gilbert, This City, This Man, chaps.10 and 11, which note that the referendum to annex the Northland passed by a margin of fewer than two thousand votes, out of nearly eighty thousand votes cast. Initially Cookingham felt the measure had failed, believing it required a two-thirds majority. But he soon discovered that only a simple majority was required. Opponents of annexation were dumbstruck to learn that it had passed despite the close vote. Also see Rick Montgomery and Shirl Kasper, Kansas City: An American Story (Kansas City, MO: Kansas City Star Books, 1999), 277.

10. “The Assembly Can Prevent a Local School Crisis,” Kansas City Star, April 26, 1957, 50.

11. “School Bill Passed in Second Attempt,” Kansas City Times, April 25, 1957, 3.

12. “A School Boundary Bill Passes House,” Kansas City Star, May 9, 1957, 15.

13. Shortridge, Kansas City and How It Grew, 117. “Kansas City’s Scattering of School Districts,” Kansas City Star, September 7, 1958, 8; “No School Changes in Annexation Vote,” Kansas City Times, March 3, 1960.

14. One Hundred and Sixth Report of the Public Schools of the State of Missouri, School Year Ending June 30, 1955, pt. 2, section 4, table A: Enumeration and Enrollment, 1954–55.

15. On the perceived advantages of larger school systems in this period see David L. Angus and Jeffrey E. Mirel, The Failed Promise of the American High School, 1890–1995 (New York: Teachers College Press, 1999), chap. 4. On the advantage that urban high schools represented historically see William A. Fischel, Making the Grade: The Economic Evolution of American School Districts (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2009), 206–9.

16. Shortridge, Kansas City and How It Grew, 117.

17. On this point see ibid., 117 and 141.

18. Ibid., 86 and 87; also see Schirmer, City Divided, chaps. 3 and 4. The organization controlled by Thomas Pendergast dominated Kansas City politics between 1925 and 1939, when he was convicted of tax evasion. For an overview see Lawrence H. Larsen and Nancy J. Hulston, Pendergast! (Columbia: University of Missouri Press, 1997), chaps. 4–6.

19. Campbell Gibson and Kay Jung, Historical Census Statistics on Population Totals by Race, 1790 to 1990, and by Hispanic Origin, 1970 to 1990, for Large Cities and Other Urban Places in the United States, Population Division, Working Paper No. 76, February 2005, US Census Bureau, Washington, DC, http://www.census.gov/population/www/documentation/twps0076/twps0076.html.

20. Kevin Fox Gotham, Race, Real Estate, and Uneven Development: The Kansas City Experience, 1900–2010, 2nd ed. (Albany: SUNY Press, 2014), 98–99. US Census Bureau, General Population Characteristics, 1980; United States Summary (Washington, DC: Government Printing Office, 1983), table 69. At its height, the black population of KCK represented nearly a quarter of the city’s population.

21. Shortridge, Kansas City and How It Grew, chap. 6. On ghetto formation during this period see Mitchell Duneier, Ghetto: The Invention of a Place, the History of an Idea (New York: Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 2016), chaps. 2 and 3.

22. Susan Hilliard, interview with John Rury, March 8, 2012. For other interviews see chap. 3.

23. Gotham, Race, Real Estate, chap. 5. Gotham suggests that school district attendance zones dictated black settlement patterns but also notes that a number of schools west of Troost eventually became integrated. He cites intact busing policies undertaken by the district as maintaining segregation, but these measures operated for a relatively brief time. As pointed out by Peter William Moran, integrated busing started in 1965. Gotham’s analysis thus fails to explain why black residential settlement moved south—where predominantly white schools also existed—rather than west. On integrated busing see Peter William Moran, Race, Law, and the Desegregation of Public Schools (New York: LFB Scholarly, 2005), chap. 2. Also see “‘Troost Wall’ the Product of Kansas City’s Long-Running Racial Plight: Racist Real Estate Practices Leave Urban Decay,” University News: UMKC’s Independent Student Newspaper, March 5, 2013, http://info.umkc.edu/unews/troost-wall-the-product-of-kansas-citys-long-running-racial-plight/. On the influence of real estate agents see Charles Hammer, “Nichols Fountain, ‘Troost Wall,’ Stories to Tell,” Kansas City Star, July 3, 2017, 7A.

24. Moran, Race, Law, 27.

25. Gotham, Race, Real Estate, 97–111; Moran, Race, Law, chap. 4.

26. On racial change in the schools triggering neighborhood change see Moran, Race, Law, chap. 2. According to an examination of census tract data from the area on Social Explorer, in 1970 a somewhat higher proportion of the houses in predominantly white Tract 49, between Thirty-First and Thirty-Fourth Streets west of Troost, were valued below $12,500 than in predominantly black Tract 52 immediately to its east, 97 percent vs. 89 percent. A similar pattern was evident in Tracts 65 and 64 to the south between Thirty-Ninth and Forty-Third Streets. Overall, a majority of residences north of Forty-Seventh Street and west of Troost were valued below this benchmark, comparable to values on the east side of the dividing line.

27. A different set of factors appears to explain the persistence of the wall south of Forty-Seventh Street, where housing values were considerably higher west of Troost. This was Tract 74, which was proximate to the Country Club Plaza and included the local campus of the University of Missouri and affluent housing developments such as Brookside, with active homeowners’ associations. With the assistance of the real estate industry, residents of these areas could more effectively bar African Americans from buying houses, especially those without the means to purchase more expensive homes. “Negroes: Do They Affect Property Values?,” Kansas City Star, April 11, 1967. The Star article noted that the real estate industry itself was racially divided: “Several major firms which serve white home seekers have moved most of their operations out of southeast Kansas City. With a few exceptions, only firms which serve principally Negro buyers consistently show homes in the area.” James Hazlett also recalled that the high price of homes in this area was a barrier to black families: James Hazlett deposition, March 9, 1983, box 109, file 154, 168–69, Arthur Benson Papers, Western Historical Collection, University of Missouri–Kansas City.

28. Stanley West, interview with John Rury, March 15, 2012.

29. Marvin Daniels, interview with John Rury, April 17, 2012.

30. Gotham, Race, Real Estate, chap. 6.

31. Deposition of Jack Casner, Arthur Benson Papers, box 106, file 143, Western Historical Collection, University of Missouri–Kansas City.

32. Hilliard interview, 2012; Shortridge, Kansas City and How It Grew, 143–45. On household income levels see Moran, Race, Law, 47.

33. David H. Klassen, Survey of Black Residential Movement: Final Report, Kansas City Public Schools, December 16, 1983, Part III; also see “Alleged FHA Custom Hurts Racial Shift,” Kansas City Star, January 21, 1964.

34. “Still Barred in Home Buying,” Kansas City Star, August 28, 1967; Daniels interview, 2012.

35. “Real Estate Ordinance Passed by City Council,” Kansas City Realtor, January 30, 1964, 7.

36. Donna M. Davis, Jennifer Friend, and Loyce Caruthers, “The Fear of Color: ‘Webb v. School District No. 90 in Johnson County, Kansas,’ 1949,” American Educational History Journal 37, no. 2 (2010): 331–45. Also see Rachel Devlin, A Girl Stands at the Door: The Generation of Young Women Who Desegregated America’s Schools (New York: Basic Books, 2018), chap. 4; and Donald Bradley, “Before Landmark Desegregation Case, Another Brown Set the Stage,” Kansas City Star, October 16, 2016, 6H. On schools in Independence, Missouri, see William J. Curtis, A Rich Heritage: A Black History of Independence, Missouri (Kansas City, MO: Better Impressions, 1985), 3–4.

37. Kevin Fox Gotham, “Missed Opportunities, Enduring Legacies: School Segregation and Desegregation in Kansas City, Missouri,” American Studies 43, no. 2 (Summer 2002): 5–42.

38. See, for instance, “Negro Lynching (1rst report) Excelsior Springs, Missouri,” New York Times, August 8, 1925, 2. Similar articles appeared in local newspapers, including the Kansas City Star.

39. Kansas City, Missouri, school superintendent James Hazlett observed from many conversations with African American parents that they wanted to send their children to schools where they would be accepted. In his words, “Blacks move into all white communities with feelings of insecurity, wondering how they are going to be accepted, wondering if their next door people are going to be neighborly, wondering if the teachers in their schools are going to really accept them.” James Hazlett deposition, March 9, 1983, vol. 3, 344, Arthur Benson Papers, Western Historical Collection, University of Missouri–Kansas City.

40. Moran, Race, Law, chap. 6; Shortridge, Kansas City and How It Grew, 139–41.

41. A detailed account of this process can be found in Gotham, Race, Real Estate, chap. 5, although he focuses much attention on the influence of school attendance zones during the 1960s. For a more general discussion of neighborhood change see Michael J. White, “Racial and Ethnic Succession in Four Cities,” Urban Affairs Review 20, no. 2 (1984): 165–83. Hoyt was from St. Joseph, Missouri, and graduated from the University of Kansas before going to Chicago for his doctorate. Regarding his sectoral thesis see Homer Hoyt, The Structure and Growth of Residential Neighborhoods in American Cities (Washington, DC: Federal Housing Administration, 1939). In his work for the FHA, Hoyt became one of the architects of housing policies that discriminated against African Americans; see Robert Beauregard, “More Than Sector Theory: Homer Hoyt’s Contributions to Planning Knowledge,” Journal of Planning History 6, no. 3 (2007): 248–71.

42. Poverty rates and income levels were calculated with Social Explorer, which was used to map the location of families living below the poverty line for African Americans and whites in 1970, along with average income at the tract level. The average poverty rate in the eighteen high-poverty African American tracts was 29.2 percent, and the average income was about $5,700 (about $32,000 in 2010 dollars). By comparison, average household income was considerably higher in Raytown (about $13,000, or $73,000 in 2010), North Kansas City (about $12,200, or $68,500 in 2010), and the Shawnee Mission area ($16,800, or $94,600 in 2010). The latter figure included a good deal of inequality too, as the wealthiest six tracts in Johnson County, mainly located in Mission Hills and Prairie Village, registered an average household income in 1970 of more than $27, 500, or about $155,000 in 2010 dollars—more than four times greater than the poorest tracts just a few miles away. Figures provided in table 4.2 represent median income levels and thus are a bit lower for the suburban districts. On the question of slums see Gotham, Race, Real Estate, chap. 4.

43. Ibid., chap. 2. The national poverty level for white families in 1960 was about 10 percent, less than a third of the black rate of 33.5 percent. See Robert G. Mogull, “American Poverty in the 1960s,” Phylon 33, no. 2 (1972): 163. There was variation within census tracts, moreover, so that poverty often was more prevalent in some neighborhoods than others. On changes since the 1960s see Brad Plumer, “These Ten Charts Show the Black-White Economic Gap Hasn’t Budged in 50 Years,” Washington Post, August 28, 2013, https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/wonk/wp/2013/08/28/these-seven-charts-show-the-black-white-economic-gap-hasnt-budged-in-50-years/?utm_term=.bfc53bd91fe2.

44. Robert Neil Cooper, “Kansas City Missouri’s Municipal Impact on Housing Segregation” (MA thesis, Pittsburgh State University, May 2016); see also “Racial Real Estate Steering,” available on Sociology Research at http://sociology.iresearchnet.com/sociology-of-race/racial-real-estate-steering/.

45. Mark Gottdiener, The Social Production of Urban Space (Austin: University of Texas Press, 1987), chap. 3. This represented what Gottdiener described in the title of the book. Drawing on Henri Lefebvre’s conception of social space as productive of class differentiation and conflict, Gottdiener argued that it is essential to studying social change.

46. Shortridge, Kansas City and How It Grew, 102–4; Gotham, Race, Real Estate, 14–22.

47. John L. Rury, “Trouble in Suburbia: Localism, Schools and Conflict in Postwar Johnson County, Kansas,” History of Education Quarterly 55, no. 2 (May 2015): 135–40. Also see Shortridge, Kansas City and How It Grew, 80–85.

48. William S. Worley, J. C. Nichols and the Shaping of Kansas City: Innovation in Planned Residential Communities (Columbia: University of Missouri Press, 1990), chap. 10.

49. On Johnson County growth see Johnson County Profiles, University of Kansas Institute for Policy and Social Research, 2013, 2. For comparison of growth rates in different parts of the metropolitan area see Shortridge, Kansas City and How It Grew, 121 and 149.

50. On this point see Campbell F. Scribner, The Fight for Local Control: Schools, Suburbs, and American Democracy (Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, 2016), chap. 2.

51. Rury, “Trouble in Suburbia,” 144–48.

52. Gotham, Race, Real Estate, 40–47; Shortridge, Kansas City and How It Grew, 122–29.

53. Joshua Dunn, Complex Justice: The Case of Missouri v. Jenkins (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 2008), 2–7.

54. John L. Rury and Shirley A. Hill, The African American Struggle for Secondary Education, 1940–1980: Closing the Graduation Gap (New York: Teachers College Press, 2012), 151–52. On controversy regarding overcrowded schools see “Pupils Boycott Crowded School,” Kansas City Call, November 7, 1952, 1.

55. Moran, Race, Law, chap. 2. See also “Adopt New Plan for Schools,” Kansas City Call, November 6, 1964, 1.

56. Moran, Race, Law, chap. 3; Shortridge, Kansas City and How It Grew, 139–44. On the experience of other cities during this time see Jeffrey E. Mirel, The Rise and Fall of an Urban School System: Detroit, 1907–1981, 2nd ed. (Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press, 1999), chap. 6; and Jean Anyon, Ghetto Schooling: A Political Economy of Urban Educational Reform (New York: Teachers College Press, 1997), chap. 6; Daniel H. Perlstein, Justice, Justice: School Politics and the Eclipse of Liberalism (New York: Peter Lang, 2004), chap. 1.

57. Gotham, Race, Real Estate, 99–103; Shortridge, Kansas City and How It Grew, 190.

58. Edward T. Matheny Jr., The Rise and Fall of Excellence: The Story of Southwest High School—R.I.P. (Leawood, KS: Leathers, 2000), chap. 6.

59. See, for instance, Child Fund International, The Effects of Poverty on Education in the United States, November 11, 2013, https://www.childfund.org/Content/NewsDetail/2147489206/.

60. Data used in this portion of the study were drawn from the published Census of Population and Housing, which provides data in tract reports issued for 1960 and 1980: see US Census Bureau, Census Tract-Level Data, 1960 (Washington, DC: US Department of Commerce, Bureau of the Census, 1971); US Census Bureau, Census of Population and Housing, 1980. Census Tracts, Missouri (Selected Areas) (Washington, DC: US Department of Commerce, Bureau of the Census, 1983).

61. Metropolitan Kansas City, including Johnson County, Kansas, is the principal point of interest. I have thus assembled a dataset to examine the distribution of educated adults across Jackson County in Missouri, which includes much of Kansas City and its southern suburbs, part of Clay County, Missouri, and Johnson County, Kansas. This enables assessment of the extent of geo-spatial inequality on a number of dimensions, with the census tract as the principal unit of analysis. Within the municipal boundaries of Kansas City, Tracts 1 through 96 were generally consistent in 1960 and 1980 census reports. Tracts outside the city that did not generally remain the same were adjusted to create comparable units across time. Tract data are weighted for population size. I have also assembled a 5 percent sample of seventeen-year-old residents of Jackson, Clay, and Johnson Counties in 1980, using US Census data from the Integrated Public Use Micro-data Series (IPUMS) at the University of Minnesota. These data permit consideration of a range of factors affecting educational attainment, including residence in an affluent suburban area or the central city. Together with the tract-level data, this helps to provide a statistical portrait of how educational attainment was distributed unequally across the metropolitan area. The resulting sample included 958 individual cases, weighted to represent local population parameters.

62. This research is summarized in Norton Grubb, The Money Myth: School Resources, Outcomes, and Equity (New York: Russell Sage, 2009), chap. 1.

63. The movement of white families leaving Kansas City schools is discussed in chapter 4. On improving black graduation rates see Rury and Hill, African American Struggle, chaps. 3 and 4.

64. A statistical analysis of census tract data in each of these years reveals that the accumulation of educated adults in SMSD and Sunset Hills was independent of wealth in the area. In other words, more educated adults could be found in these parts of greater Kansas City than could be statistically explained by wealth or income alone. On this point see “Statistical Analysis of Uneven Educational Development,” in the book’s appendix, and the parallel discussion in John L. Rury and Sanae Akaba, “The Geo-spatial Distribution of Educational Attainment: Cultural Capital and Uneven Development in Metropolitan Kansas City, 1960–1980,” Histoire & Mesure 29, no. 1 (2014): 219–46. One finding was the tendency of younger, highly educated families to move to affluent suburbs during this time. On this point nationally see “Trend Cited toward Purchase of Homes by Younger Couples Than Traditionally,” Kansas City Realtor, May 13, 1965, 7.

65. On this point see Derrick Darby and John L. Rury, The Color of Mind: Why the Origins of the Achievement Gap Matter for Justice (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2018), chap. 2.

66. Moran, Race, Law, chap. 6.

67. On the persistence of poverty in segregated urban neighborhoods see Patrick Sharkey, Stuck in Place: Urban Neighborhoods and the End of Progress toward Racial Equality (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2013), chaps. 4–6.

68. See, for instance, John L. Rury and Argun Saatcioglu, “Suburban Advantage: Opportunity Hoarding and Secondary Attainment in the Postwar Metropolitan North,” American Journal of Education 117, no. 3 (March 2011): 307–42.

69. The sample excluded those living in group quarters, such as orphan asylums, other residential institutions or jails, and those living in Wyandotte County, which included Kansas City, Kansas. Consequently, the analysis herein is limited to Jackson and Clay Counties in Missouri (including nearly all of Kansas City) and Johnson County in Kansas. It also excludes those attending private schools, which included many living in the Country Club district, home to the area’s most elite nonpublic institutions. These data thus made it possible to focus on youth attending public schools. Because it is impossible to isolate KCMPS in IPUMS data, the entire city is assessed as a single geo-spatial entity, including annexed areas served by other schools. In the resulting analysis, Kansas City and Johnson County are included as fixed geo-spatial “dummy” variables, with suburb an Jackson and Clay County residents serving as the comparison group. For additional points on this methodology and the data employed see Rury and Akaba, “Geo-spatial Distribution,” 227–28.

70. Numbers are calculated from US Census data available through Social Explorer. In the city’s most impoverished census tract, 45 percent of households were headed by single women. Altogether, an average of 27 percent were in this category across thirty-one predominantly black census tracts in 1980. On the other hand, in fourteen of those tracts more than 40 percent of families reported an annual income in excess of $15,000 ($40,000 in 2010 dollars), and in ten other tracts about 30 percent reported such income. On conditions in inner-city communities linked to family structure and poverty see William Julius Wilson, The Truly Disadvantaged: The Inner City, the Underclass, and Public Policy (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1987), pt. 1. For a somewhat different perspective see Adolph Reed Jr., “The Liberal Technocrat,” Nation, February 6, 1988, 167–70. Regarding the challenges facing single-parent households, James Coleman observed that “we can think of the ratio of adults to children as a measure of the social capital in the family available for the education of any one of them.” In other words, on average, single parents have fewer resources of all sorts to share with their children, and this showed clearly in data that he cited at the time. See James S. Coleman, “Social Capital in the Creation of Human Capital,” American Journal of Sociology 94, Supplement: Organizations and Institutions: Sociological and Economic Approaches to the Analysis of Social Structure (1988): S112. A more comprehensive discussion of the topic can be found in Sara McLanahan and Gary D. Sandefur, Growing Up with a Single Parent: What Hurts, What Helps (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1994), chaps. 1–4.

71. On these differences see Annette Lareau, Home Advantage: Social Class and Parental Intervention in Elementary Education (Lanham, MD: Rowman & Littlefield, 2000), chaps. 1, 6, and 9.

72. On this point see David Harding, Lisa Gennetian, Christopher Winship, Lisa Sanbonmatsu, and Jeffrey Kling, “Unpacking Neighborhood Influences on Educational Outcomes: Setting the Stage for Future Research,” in Whither Opportunity: Rising Inequality, Schools, and Children’s Life Chances, ed. Greg Duncan and Richard Murnane (New York: Russell Sage Foundation, 2011), 277–98.

73. On these points generally see William Julius Wilson, More Than Just Race: Being Black and Poor in the Inner City (New York: W. W. Norton, 2009), chaps. 1 and 2. On the history of policy and academic debates about this issue see Michael B. Katz, TheUndeserving Poor: America’s Enduring Confrontation with Poverty, 2nd ed. (New York: Oxford University Press, 2013), chaps. 3–5.

74. Rury and Akaba, “Geo-spatial Distribution,” 222–23.

3. FALL FROM GRACE

1. “Stresses Education’s Role in the Area,” Kansas City Star, August 31, 1962. As an example of this, in 1958 the Fred Liddy real estate office ran an ad in the Kansas City Star declaring “Johnson County has the tops in schools.” Liddy’s office was in Fairway, and the add appeared on page 29B of the Star on Sunday, May 4.

2. An example of this can be found in an article discussing the district’s ability to attract and hold teachers compared to other districts: “City Is Losing Top Teachers,” Kansas City Star, September 28, 1960.

3. “Stresses Education’s Role in Area.” Years later Hazlett recalled meeting with real estate professionals about these issues. James Hazlett deposition, March 9, 1983, 352–54, Arthur Benson Papers, box 108, file 157, Western Historical Collection, University of Missouri–Kansas City.

4. See, for instance, the following studies: Jeffrey E. Mirel, The Rise and Fall of an Urban School System, Detroit, 1907–1980 (Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press, 1993), chaps. 5 and 6; John L. Rury and Frank Cassell, eds., Seeds of Crisis: Public Schooling in Milwaukee since 1920 (Madison: University of Wisconsin Press, 1993), esp. chaps. 1 and 3–6; and Jean Anyon, Ghetto Schooling: A Political Economy of Urban Educational Reform (New York: Teachers College Press, 1997), chaps. 5–7. Also see 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, no. 2 (Summer 1999): 117–42. For a more recent account see Alan Mallach, The Divided City: Poverty and Prosperity in Urban America (Washington, DC: Island Press, 2018), chap. 9.

5. James Shortridge, Kansas City and How It Grew, 1822–2011 (Lawrence: University Press of Kansas, 2012), 138–41.

6. Peter William Moran, Race, Law, and the Desegregation of Public Schools (El Paso, TX: LFB Scholarly, 2005), chaps. 2–4. Also see Raymond C. Hummel and John M. Nagle, Urban Education in America: Problems and Prospects (New York: Oxford University Press, 1973), chap. 3. On the process of suburbanization see Jon C. Teaford, The Metropolitan Revolution: The Rise of Post-urban America (New York: Columbia University Press, 2006), introduction and chaps. 3–5.

7. John L. Rury and Shirley A. Hill, The African American Struggle for Secondary Schooling: Closing the Graduation Gap (New York: Teachers College Press, 2012), chap. 4.

8. For discussion of the Jenkins case see Joshua Dunn, Complex Justice: The Case of Missouri v. Jenkins (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 2008), chaps. 2–5; and Moran, Race, Law, chap. 9.

9. For an overview of urban-suburban differences in education during this time see Argun Saatcioglu and John L. Rury, “Education and the Changing Metropolitan Organization of Inequality,” Historical Methods 45, no. 1 (January–March 2012): 21–40. The results of this analysis demonstrate that urban youth prior to the Second World War had a higher likelihood of graduating from high school than their suburban counterparts. Forty years later the relative positions of the two groups had reversed.

10. District and population figures taken from One Hundred Third Report of the Public Schools of the State of Missouri, School Year Ending June 30, 1952 (Jefferson City: Missouri Department of Secondary and Elementary Education, 1952), table A: Enumeration and Enrollment.

11. This point appeared in interviews with a number of local respondents.

12. For example, Russian was added to the Southwest curriculum in 1958: “Challenge of Study in Russian,” Kansas City Times, March 18, 1958.

13. Rury and Hill, African American Struggle, 151–57. A sense of particular school strengths can be gleaned from yearbooks: The Centralian, 1950–1960; Paseon, 1950–1960; Sachem, 1950–1960.

14. “Kansas City Parents to Court in Booker T. Fight,” Kansas City Call, December 12, 1952, 13. On inequality in resources in earlier times see Sherry Lamb Schirmer, A City Divided: The Racial Landscape of Kansas City, 1900–1960 (Columbia: University of Missouri Press, 2002), 31.

15. As seen in table 3.1, white enrollments actually went down in KCMPS between 1955 and 1960, despite the baby boom, after increasing somewhat between 1950 and 1955. For a perspective nationally see “Study Shows Extent of School Crowding,” New York Times, November 11, 1953, 29; Robert H. Anderson, “Crowding in the Schools: 1954 to 1961,” Association for Supervision and Curriculum Development, 1961, http://www.ascd.org/ASCD/pdf/journals/ed_lead/el_196104_anderson.pdf.

16. “An Age Bar Down,” Kansas City Times, January 20, 1956.

17. “Push on Schools,” Kansas City Times, May 4, 1956.

18. Moran, Race, Law, chaps. 1 and 2; Rury and Hill, African American Struggle, 151–52. On the loss of jobs see “Reserve Teachers Have a Good Cause,” Kansas City Call, October 14, 1955, 29.

19. Moran, Race, Law, 102–3.

20. “This Is Critical Year for Kansas City Schools,” Kansas City Star, February 7, 1959.

21. “Asks a School Merger: Annexation by Kansas City Sought by Sugar Creek,” Kansas City Times, January 10, 1955; “Sugar Creek In,” Kansas City Times, May 12, 1955. KCMPS would annex the small Pleasant Valley district in 1973, marking an end to its physical expansion in this era. For an overview and list of annexations see Kansas City Public Schools, Kansas City Public School History, https://www.kcpublicschools.org/site/Default.aspx?PageID=4597.

22. “43 Integrated Schools,” Kansas City Call, September 23, 1955, 29. The Call contrasted board policy in Kansas City, Missouri, with developments across the river in Kansas City, Kansas, where parents were blocked from enrolling their children in certain schools. See “NAACP Protests Discriminating School Policy,” Kansas City Call, September 23, 1955, 2nd section, 1, and “Kansas NAACP Sues School Board,” Kansas City Call, November 11, 1955, 13. With respect to the lack of teacher integration see “Reserve Teachers Have a Good Cause.”

23. Rury and Hill, African American Struggle, chap. 5.

24. The Centralian, Central High School, 1956 edition, 10.

25. “Relieve the Load on Central Rolls,” Kansas City Times, July 5, 1959.

26. “Color of the Class: Desegregating Kansas City Schools,” Kansas City Star, May 8, 1990, 1. Kevin Fox Gotham, Race, Real Estate, and Uneven Development: The Kansas City Experience, 1900–2010, 2nd ed. (Albany: SUNY Press, 2014), chap. 5.

27. On this point see Robert J. Havighurst and Daniel U. Levine, Education in Metropolitan Areas, 2nd ed. (Boston: Allyn & Bacon, 1971), 221–39; and Hummel and Nagle, Urban Education, chap. 8.

28. Gotham, Race, Real Estate, chaps. 5 and 6. While map 3.3 appears to show a predominantly African American census tract extending into the Raytown School District in 1980, that portion of the tract is actually a large park that separated that portion of the district from black neighborhoods in KCMPS.

29. Joshua M. Dunn, Complex Justice: The Case of Missouri v. Jenkins (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 2008), 36.

30. School District, Kansas City, Missouri, Office of the Superintendent, “Fifteenth Annual Report on the Progress of Desegregation in the Kansas City Public Schools,” October 17, 1969, unpublished report.

31. Dunn, Complex Justice, chap. 2.

32. For a characterization of this area and the well-paying industrial jobs that sustained it see Shortridge, Kansas City and How It Grew, 117–22.

33. “Fifteenth Annual Report on the Progress of Desegregation in the Kansas City Public Schools.”

34. “Negro Pupil Population Rises, Spreads,” Kansas City Times, November 7, 1963.

35. Gotham, Race, Real Estate, 114–16. On conditions in the South see Rury and Hill, African American Struggle, chaps. 1 and 2.

36. Daniel U. Levine and Jeanie Keeny Meyer, “Level and Rate of Desegregation and White Enrollment Decline in a Big City School District,” Social Problems 24, no. 4 (1977): 451–62.

37. Moran, Race, Law, 70.

38. On enrollment patterns east and west of Troost see Gotham, Race, Real Estate, 99–103. On enrollments at East and West, along with Westport High, see School District, Kansas City, Missouri, Office of the Superintendent, Twenty Second Annual Report on the Progress of Desegregation in the Kansas City Public Schools, School Year, 1976–77, table 1, Enrollment, 1954–1975. West High is not shown on the maps, as it was open for only about a decade, closing in 1980. See Moran, Race, Law, 96–102.

39. District leaders assured parents at Southwest that the school would not be affected by busing; see “Vow No Busing at Southwest,” Kansas City Times, March 1, 1973.

40. There is a growing literature on the ways in which school authorities and other leaders in large cities could help to assuage white concerns about desegregation while also supporting African American desires for greater integration. On these points see Genevieve Siegel-Hawley, When the Fences Come Down: Twenty-First-Century Lessons from Metropolitan School Desegregation (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 2016), chaps. 3–5; and Ansley T. Erickson, “Fairness, Commitment, and Civic Capacity: The Varied Desegregation Trajectories of Metropolitan School Districts,” in The Shifting Landscape of the American School District: Race, Class, Geography, and the Perpetual Reform of Local Control, 1935–2015, ed. David Gamson and Emily Hodge (New York: Peter Lang, 2018), 107–26. Also, for evidence of white racism expressed in response to the racial changes in KCMPS see the discussion of South Kansas City in chapter 4, especially with regard to the Spainhower Commission.

41. Moran, Race, Law, 82–83; Dunn, Complex Justice, 42–43.

42. Susan Hilliard, interview with John Rury, March 8, 2012; Marvin Daniels, interview with John Rury, April 17, 2012.

43. Hilliard interview, March 8, 2012.

44. Stanley West, interview with John Rury, March 15, 2012.

45. Daniels interview, April 17, 2012.

46. Patrick Elard, interview with John Rury, March 27, 2012.

47. On this point see Sylvia L. M. Martinez and John L. Rury, “From ‘Culturally Deprived’ to ‘At Risk’: The Politics of Popular Expression and Educational Inequality in the United States, 1960–1985,” Teachers College Record 114, no. 6 (2012): 1–31. On the less tolerant racial attitudes of individuals with lower levels of education at this time, including ideas about racial differences in ability, see Howard Schuman, Charlotte Steeh, Lawrence Bobo, and Maria Krysan, Racial Attitudes in America: Trends and Interpretations, 2nd ed. (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1997), 164–65.

48. Quoted in Moran, Race, Law, 56. Also see Kansas City Times, October 3, 1964; Kansas Citv Times, October 10, 1964.

49. “Plan to Help Poor Scholars,” Kansas City Star, January 6, 1967.

50. Rury and Hill, African American Struggle, 154.

51. Elard interview, March 27, 2012.

52. “Facing Tough Recruiting Class,” Kansas City Times, January 3, 1963; “Wages Spur Teacher Migration,” Kansas City Times, December 30, 1965; “Hurt by Teacher-Go-Round,” Kansas City Star, January 16, 1967; “Positive School Move on Teacher Integration,” Kansas City Star, September 4, 196; “Pay Not Luring Top Teachers,” Kansas City Star, January 8, 1967; “Will Need 60 More Teachers,” Kansas City Times, July 18, 1969.

53. “Faculty Integration: Teachers, Parents Join the Protest Teacher Shift,” Kansas City Times, July 18, 1973.

54. “Defers School Probe Question,” Kansas City Times, November 30, 1966, 1A.

55. Manny Stevens, interview with John Rury, March 27, 2012; Elard interview, March 27, 2012.

56. “Blacks’ Frustration Growing Steadily,” Kansas City Star, June 30, 1974, 1A; Stevens interview, 2012; West interview, 2012.

57. Moran, Race, Law, 128–29. Changes in extracurricular activities can be seen in comparing editions of The Centralian, published by Central High School (Kansas City, MO) between 1958 and 1966. For instance, see the number of groups presented in the sections on organizations, presented as part 5 in 1958 and part 3 in 1966. On national trends and debates about vocational education for black youth see Rury and Hill, African American Struggle, 133–36.

58. “Vandal Forays Hurt Schools,” Kansas City Times, March 29, 1965; “Great Stone Barrage Rocks Schools,” Kansas City Star, January 29, 1966; “Vandalism Costs High,” Kansas City Star, May 4, 1969.

59. “Thorough Planning for a Special School,” Kansas City Star, June 4, 1968.

60. “Schools Hit Hard by Vandals,” Kansas City Star, December 4, 1968; “Destruction at Schools Carries Huge Price Tag,” Kansas City Star, January 27, 1969; “School Vandalism Down,” Kansas City Star, July 24, 1973.

61. “Students, District Fight Vandalism, Decaying Pride,” Kansas City Star, May 19, 1975.

62. “Statistical Profile for Selected Characteristics of the School District of Kansas City, Missouri, 1980 Census,” KCMPS Memorandum, September 29, 1983, Arthur Benson Papers, box 354.

63. In 1964 city council members complained about housing values being downgraded when African Americans moved into the city’s southeast side. See “Allege FHA Custom Hurts Racial Shift,” Kansas City Star, January 21, 1964. Also see “Real Estate Ordinance Passed by City Council,” Kansas City Realtor, January 30, 1964, 7. On the problem in national terms see “Central City a Problem,” Kansas City Realtor, July 13, 1961, 7.

64. There was a steady drumbeat of discouraging news reported about the district’s budget, beginning in the latter 1960s. See, for instance, “School Money Crisis Feared,” Kansas City Times, March 22, 1968; “The State and Kansas City’s Crisis in the Schools,” Kansas City Star, April 15, 1969; “Senate Bickers While Schools Headed Down the Drain,” Kansas City Times, December 22, 1970; “Public Education Job Tougher,” Kansas City Star, June 28, 1974; “School Here Hurt as Aid Bill Dies,” Kansas City Star, May 14, 1975. On the “decay” of downtown retail enterprise in the later 1960s and the 1970s see Shortridge, Kansas City and How It Grew, 133.

65. “Presents Survey of Area Schools,” Kansas City Times, October 21, 1964.

66. “City of Kansas City, Missouri, ½ Cent Sales Tax Intended for School Purposes,” Arthur Benson Papers, box 444, Finance folder.

67. Moran, Race, Law, 104. The fact that Missouri required a two-thirds majority in such elections did not help matters.

68. “Summer School Disaster,” Kansas City Star, June 5, 1969; “No Summer School in 1973,” Kansas City Star, April 23, 1973.

69. Moran, Race, Law, 108.

70. Human Relations Task Force on Civil Disorder, Three Year Report: The Quality of Urban Life, Kansas City, MO, 1971, II-3.

71. Moran, Race, Law, chap. 1; on the process of neighborhood transition in Kansas City at this time see Schirmer, City Divided, chap. 8.

72. “Meet with 377 New Teachers,” Kansas City Star, August 31, 1967.

73. Moran, Race, Law, chap. 2

74. “Rise in Negro Pupils,” Kansas City Times, October 27, 1965, 1.

75. “Pride in Order at Southwest High,” Kansas City Star, March 23, 1963. The magazine Ladies’ Home Journal named Southwest one of the “25 best” high schools in the country. See also “Centennial Celebration—History of Southwest High,” Wednesday Magazine, December 27, 1967.

76. M. Simon and B. Rodgers, “A High School That Just Lost Its Value,” Pitch Weekly, November 13–19, 1997, 12–16. Rick Montgomery, “Erasing a Tragic History,” Kansas City Star, June 6, 2010, A1, A10.

77. John L. Rury and Jeffrey E. Mirel, “The Political Economy of Urban Education,” Review of Research in Education 22 (1997): 49–110.

78. R. J. Havighurst, “Problems of Integration in the KC Public Schools: A Report to the Board of Education,” November 18, 1965. Among elementary school children, African Americans had become the majority.

79. Moran, Race, Law, 116–17.

80. “City Deprived Pupils Ahead in Reading Capabilities,” Kansas City Star, March 19, 1971; “New Pupil Tests Here Rank Near Other Urban Centers,” Kansas City Star, September 4, 1974; “Students’ Reading Ability Down, New Tests Indicate,” Kansas City Star, May 25, 1975.

81. “Rioting in City Takes Five Lives,” Kansas City Times, April 11, 1968, 1; Mayor’s Commission on Civil Disturbances, Final Report, 1968, Kansas City, MO, 5–32; Douglas E. Kneeland, “5 Die in Kansas City Riots; Snipers Hunted in Slums,” New York Times, April 11, 1968; “And Then It Happened,” KC History, Missouri Valley Collections at the Kansas City Public Library, http://www.kchistory.org/week-kansas-city-history/and-then-it-happened.

82. Brian Burnes and Glenn E. Rice, “Riots of 1968 Were a Watershed Moment for KC,” Kansas City Star, April 6, 2008, A10; Glenn Rice, “Barriers Still Exist between Blacks and Whites,” Kansas City Star, January 8, 1996, G1.

83. Moran, Race, Law, chap. 2; Gotham, Race, Real Estate, 117–18.

84. Human Relations Task Force, Three Year Report: The Quality of Urban Life, II-3.

85. US Commission on Civil Rights, Racial Isolation in the Public Schools (Washington, DC: Government Printing Office, 1967), 59.

86. On the impact of Keyes see James T. Patterson, Brown v. Board of Education: A Civil Rights Milestone and Its Troubled Legacy (New York: Oxford University Press), 161–63.

87. “Blacks’ Frustration Growing Steadily,” Kansas City Star, June 30, 1974, 1A. Gotham, Race, Real Estate, 101–3.

88. Dunn, Complex Justice, 40–41.

89. For example see “Southwest Students Take Integration in Stride,” Kansas City Times, October 18, 1975.

90. Susan White, “Can the Kansas City Schools Be Saved? (or Is It Too Late?),” Kansas City Town Squire, June 1970, 12–20, 69–73.

91. Moran, Race, Law, 110–12.

92. “Desegregation Chronology,” Kansas City Times, September 1, 1977, B4.

93. “Not Too Late to Build an Integrated School System,” Kansas City Call, March 8, 1973, 8.

94. Dunn, Complex Justice, chap. 2.

95. School District, Kansas City, MO, Twenty-Second Annual Report on the Progress of Desegregation, table 1.

96. Moran, Race, Law, chap. 5.

97. Midwest Research Institute, Decision Criteria and Policy for School Consolidation, Final Report, March 15, 1974, 10.

98. “Filing Segregation Appeal a Waste of Taxpayers’ Money,” Kansas City Call, December 30, 1976, 10.

99. “A Moderate Busing Plan Is Adopted in Kansas City,” New York Times, December 7, 1976, 32; Moran, Race, Law, chap. 5; Dunn, Complex Justice, chap. 6.

100. “Bad Day for Desegregation—Plan Takes Its Lumps,” Kansas City Times, April 6, 1977, 34.

101. “Priest Splits with Group in Northwest,” Kansas City Star, March 3, 1977.

102. “Northeast Sees Limited Choice,” Kansas City Times, January 29, 1977, 7a.

103. “Adults Listen, Gripe on Desegregation,” Kansas City Star, April 8, 1977; “Plan to Ease Busing Sought by Mayor King,” Kansas City Star, April 7, 1977, 4.

104. “Grade Split Worries Southwest Patrons,” Kansas City Times, April 13, 1977.

105. School District, Kansas City, Missouri, Office of the Superintendent, Twenty-Sixth Annual Report on the Progress of Desegregation in the Kansas City Public Schools, School Year, 1980–81, table 1; Moran, Race, Law, chap. 6. Only about 20 to 30 percent of the decline in white enrollments could be attributed to the end of the postwar-era baby boom.

106. “City School Survey Released,” Kansas City Times, June 28, 1975.

107. “School Survey Shows Widespread Dissatisfaction,” Kansas City Star, May 11, 1975.

108. Moran, Race, Law, 112–13.

109. “District Pay Hike OK’d,” Kansas City Star, April 10, 1974.

110. “Teacher Strike Sends Parents Here District Hopping,” Kansas City Star, March 1974.

111. “Waiting Lists at City’s Private Schools,” Kansas City Star, April 19, 1977. The Star found that while many parents called private schools to inquire about enrollment, most of these parents were not prepared to pay the relatively high cost of tuition, especially at the city’s most elite institutions. Also see Moran, Race, Law, 109.

112. “Southwest Students Take Integration in Stride,” Kansas City Star, October 18, 1975.

113. On this transition see Edward T. Matheny Jr., The Rise and Fall of Excellence: The Story of Southwest High School (Leawood, KS: Leathers, 2000), chaps. 6 and 7.

114. Twenty-Sixth Annual Report on the Progress of Desegregation in the Kansas City Public Schools, School Year, 1980–81, tables 1 and 10.

115. Rick Montgomery, “Erasing a Tragic History,” Kansas City Star, June 6, 2010, A1, A10.

116. “Mixed Reactions to Area-Wide Desegregation,” Kansas City Call, January 23, 1977, 2.

117. Dunn, Complex Justice, chaps. 3–5; for an alternative viewpoint see Preston C. Green and Bruce D. Baker, “Urban Legends, Desegregation and School Finance: Did Kansas City Really Prove That Money Doesn’t Matter?,” Michigan Journal of Race and Law 12, no. 1 (2006): 57–105.

118. Douglas N. Harris and Carolyn D. Herrington, “Accountability, Standards, and the Growing Achievement Gap: Lessons from the Past Half Century,” American Journal of Education 112, no. 2 (February 2006): 209–38.

119. “Tests of Eighth Graders Shows Few Prepared,” Kansas City Star, September 15, 1978, 1. Some outlying districts scored below 60 percent, such as Excelsior Springs, Grandview, and Missouri City, but these were relatively small and not major competitors with KCMPS.

120. “Inner City and Rural Students Score Lowest on Tests,” Kansas City Star, April 30, 1978, 1a.

121. West interview, 2012.

122. Hilliard interview, March 8, 2012. Her youngest child, Erick, went to a Catholic high school because he wanted to avoid the problems then becoming associated with Southwest. She recalled him having “nothing but” white friends, unlike his sister.

123. On the history of controversy over curricular tracking at the secondary level see Samuel Roundfield Lucas, Tracking Inequality: Stratification and Mobility in American High Schools (New York: Teachers College Press, 1999), chaps. 1 and 2.

124. Daniels interview, April 17, 2012; Elard interview, March 27, 2012.

125. Stevens interview, March 27, 2012.

126. Arthur Benson Papers, SHSMO Research Center–Kansas City, UMKC Archives, box 320, file I.R.2.

127. On the general phenomenon or “white flight” during this period see William H. Frey, “Central City White Flight: Racial and Non-Racial Causes,” American Sociological Review 44, no. 3 (June 1979): 425–48; Christine Rossell and Willis D. Hawley, White Flight from School Desegregation: Magnitude, Sources, and Policy Options, Final Report, US Department of Education, ERIC # ED245024, 1981; and Sarah J. Reber, “Court-Ordered Desegregation: Success and Failure Integrating American Schools since Brown versus Board of Education,” Journal of Human Resources 40, no. 3 (Summer 2003): 559–90. For a cultural analysis of the general phenomenon of white movement see Eric Avila, Popular Culture in the Age of White Flight: Fear and Fantasy in Suburban Los Angeles (Berkeley: University of California Press, 2005). On tipping points see David Card, Alexandre Mas, and Jesse Rothstein, “Tipping and the Dynamics of Segregation,” NBER Working Paper 13052, National Bureau of Economic Research, Cambridge, MA, April 2007.

128. “Waiting Lists at City’s Private Schools,” Kansas City Star, April 19, 1977. As noted earlier, the Star found that parents called private schools about enrollment but were not prepared to pay the high cost of tuition at elite institutions.

129. For a discussion of this see Jeffrey Mirel, “After the Fall: Continuity and Change in Detroit, 1981–1995,” History of Education Quarterly 38, no. 3 (1998): 237–67.

130. Some fifty-six left for Kansas, but most probably went to schools in Wyandotte County, where the Kansas City, Kansas, public schools operated all-black Sumner Academy and also underwent desegregation.

131. Jennifer L. Hochschild, The New American Dilemma: Liberal Democracy and School Desegregation (New Haven, CT: Yale University Press; 1984), conclusion. For more recent accounts see note 40 above.

132. “Filing Segregation Appeal a Waste of Taxpayers’ Money.”

133. Dunn, Complex Justice, 41–42.

134. James Hazlett deposition, March 9, 1983, Arthur Benson Papers, box 108, vol. 3, 283. Hazlett hoped that African Americans could eventually be distributed across the metro area.

135. Levine and Meyer, “Level and Rate of Desegregation,” 451.

4. RACIALIZED ADVANTAGE

1. “Raytown Shows Suburbs’ Fear of School Redistricting,” Kansas City Star, February 5, 1969, 4B. Longtime Raytown school superintendent Joe Herndon testified that a study conducted by the district found that most of its clientele had moved from Kansas City. Joe Herndon deposition, April 18, 1983, p. 159, box 109, Arthur Benson Papers, Western Historical Collection, University of Missouri–Kansas City.

2. James Shortridge, Kansas City and How It Grew, 1822–2011 (Lawrence: University Press of Kansas, 2012), 115–17.

3. On this pattern in the Postwar Era see Delores Hayden, Building Suburbia: Green Fields and Urban Growth, 1820–2000 (New York: Pantheon Books, 2003), chap. 7. Kansas City developed one of the nation’s most extensive systems of freeways to serve its expanded footprint. On this point see Shortridge, Kansas City and How It Grew, 106–9.

4. Kevin Fox Gotham, Race, Real Estate, and Uneven Development: The Kansas City Experience, 1900–2000 (Albany: SUNY Press, 2002), chap. 5; Peter William Moran, Race, Law, and the Desegregation of Public Schools (New York: LFB Scholarly, 2005), chap. 6.

5. On events in 1968 see Donna Gardner and John L. Rury, “Suburban Resistance to District Reorganization: The 1968 Spainhower Commission and Metropolitan Kansas City and St. Louis,” Urban Review 46, no. 1 (2014): 125–45; see also Moran, Race, Law, chap. 6.

6. Shortridge, Kansas City and How It Grew, 116–17.

7. Figures taken from Demographia: US Urbanized Areas, 1950–1990, http://www.demographia.com/dm-uad.htm (accessed March 29, 2016). Overall, greater Kansas City grew from roughly 800,000 to some 1.1 million.

8. On the somewhat complicated history of Kansas City’s core during this period see Shortridge, Kansas City and How It Grew, chap. 6. The fact that KCMPS enrollment figures declined, however, is compelling evidence that families with school-age children were choosing other districts to live in, regardless of where they were moving from.

9. Ibid., 119.

10. While Shortridge lists the population of Raytown in 1970 at 33,306 (p. 121), some 26,280 school district residents lived in Kansas City, 44 percent of its population, according to figures provided by Daniel U. Levine, “Crisis and Opportunity: Education in Greater Kansas City,” unpublished report, 1975, 29.

11. Aaron Tyler Rife, “Shifting Identities in South Kansas City: Hickman Mills’ Transformation from a Suburban to Urban School District” (PhD diss., University of Kansas, 2014), 30–35. Also see Shortridge, Kansas City and How It Grew, 105.

12. Rife, “Shifting Identities,” chaps. 2 and 3.

13. For an overview of the effect of family background and community characteristics on school performance in urban and suburban settings during this period see John L. Rury and Argun Saatcioglu, “Suburban Advantage: Opportunity Hoarding and Secondary Attainment in the Postwar Metropolitan Northeast,” American Journal of Education 118, no. 3 (May 2011): 307–42. Federal free and reduced-price lunch subsidies went to students from households that qualified as below a low-income threshold, not just those in poverty. While poverty levels in the two Kansas City core areas were high, they did not constitute a majority of the student population in either of them.

14. On the development of Independence during this period see Shortridge, Kansas City and How It Grew, 119.

15. Adam Gamoran and David A. Long, “Equality of Educational Opportunity: A Forty Year Retrospective,” WCER Working Paper No. 2006–9, Wisconsin Center for Educational Research, Madison, 2006.

16. Joshua Dunn, Complex Justice: The Case of Missouri v. Jenkins (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 2008), 41–42.

17. “Suburban Schools Form Study Units,” Kansas City Star, October 26, 1962, 4; Ted Warren, interview with John Rury, May 1, 2012; Leslie Wexler, interview with John Rury, May 1, 2012.

18. See, for instance, “Census Shows Increase of Blacks in Suburbs: But White Majority Large,” Kansas City Star, February 18, 1971; and “Blacks Staking Claim to Good Life in Suburbs,” Kansas City Times, May 26, 1976, 1a.

19. “Raytown as a City Is 7,” Kansas City Times, July 17, 1957, 15.

20. “Raytown to Mark Booming Ten Years,” Kansas City Star, September 7, 1960, 2B.

21. Shortridge, Kansas City and How It Grew, 121.

22. Roberta L. Bonnewitz and Lois T. Allen, Raytown Remembers (Clinton, MO: Printery, 1975), 72.

23. Shirley Wurth and Larry Nicholson, Our First One Hundred Years: Raytown Consolidated School District No. 2 (Raytown Consolidated School District No. 2, 2004), 13–52.

24. “This Is Raytown,” Raytown News, June 21, 1962, 1.

25. Ibid., 63; “Schools Opening Tuesday, September 7,” Raytown News, August 26, 1954, 1.

26. Wurth and Nicholson, Our First One Hundred Years, 64–76.

27. “Big Retail Deal on U.S. 50 in Raytown,” Kansas City Star, October 16, 1960, 2.

28. “This Is Raytown,” Raytown News, 1. The rating was largely a measure of financial resources.

29. Barbara Caldwell, Sandy Crowley, and Jeanne Harrison, Raytown Historical Society, interviews with John Rury, March 1, 2012.

30. Caldwell and Crowley interviews, March 1, 2012.

31. Shortridge, Kansas City and How It Grew, 121.

32. Richard Alfred, interview with John Rury, March 1, 2012.

33. Wurth and Nicholson, Our First One Hundred Years, 73.

34. Ted Chitwood and Bud Lathrop were inducted into the Missouri Sports Hall of Fame in 2005 and 2002 respectively. Chitwood’s inductee page can be found at http://mosportshalloffame.com/inductees/ted-chitwood/ and Lathrop’s at http://mosportshalloffame.com/inductees/bud-lathrop/. Information about the stadium is provided on Chitwood’s page.

35. Becky Montague, interview with John Rury, February 23, 2012. Wurth and Nicholson, Our First One Hundred Years, 53.

36. This was a theme in many of the Raytown interviews. On bonds formed between adults through their children and “social closure” see James S. Coleman, “Social Capital in the Creation of Human Capital,” American Journal of Sociology 94, Supplement: Organizations and Institutions: Sociological and Economic Approaches to the Analysis of Social Structure (1988): S95–S120.

37. Caldwell and Harrison interviews, March 1, 2012.

38. Wurth and Nicholson, Our First One Hundred Years, 83.

39. “Student Decline Cited in Cuts,” Kansas City Star, April 9, 1976, 4a; “Raytown School Enrollment Drops for Eighth Consecutive Year,” Kansas City Star, October 4, 1977, 4.

40. Wurth and Nicholson, Our First One Hundred Years, 85–87; Alfred interview, March 1, 2012.

41. Rife, “Shifting Identities,” chaps. 2 and 3; also see Hickman Mills, Missouri: A Study of Conflict between Administrative and Policy-Making Agencies in a School System; Report of an Investigation, National Commission for the Defense of Democracy through Education, Report to National Education Association of the United States and to Consolidated District #1, Hickman Mills (Washington DC: NEA, January 1960).

42. Rife, “Shifting Identities,” 19.

43. “See Gain in Annexing,” Kansas City Times, March 21, 1956.

44. “Grandview OK Anew on Annex,” Kansas City Times, December 24, 1957.

45. Rife, “Shifting Identities, 31.

46. Shortridge, Kansas City and How It Grew, 153.

47. “Bias, Harassment Down, but Some Barriers Remain,” Kansas City Star, January 23, 1977, 8e.

48. Manny Stevens, interview with John Rury, March 27, 2012.

49. Patrick Elard, interview with John Rury, March 27, 2012.

50. “Raytown Schools Announce Refusal to Play Central in State Tourney,” Kansas City Call, January 18, 1973, 9; “Good Example of Poor Sportsmanship,” Kansas City Call, January 18, 1973, 8. A decade later, Herndon acknowledged knowing the district’s reputation for hostility to African Americans; Joe Herndon deposition, April 18, 1983, 154–55.

51. “High Race Barriers Linger,” Kansas City Star, April 27, 1975, 25. This article quoted an assistant superintendent from Kansas City as declaring that suburban school officials worried that “if they allow that, there’s going to be nothing to stop the black people from moving out here to live.”

52. Superintendent Herndon acknowledged that the district had clear policies against outsiders using their schools; Joe Herndon deposition, April 18, 1983, 52. At least one former teacher described being sent to monitor bus stops near the district’s border with Kansas City to observe possible violations of this position; Sandy Crowley, interview with John Rury interview, March 1, 2012.

53. Sally Westbrook, interview with John Rury, March 1, 2012; Caldwell, Alfred, and Harrison interviews, March 1, 2012.

54. Crowley interview, March 1, 2012. This form of surveillance apparently was practiced more frequently in the 1980s, as the African American population edged to the southeast parts of the city.

55. This map is a bit misleading, as it suggests that a large park that was included in the same census tract as an adjacent black neighborhood extended African American settlement into the district at this time. In fact, the park was a natural barrier that delayed the movement of black families into RSD.

56. For an elaboration of these points see John L. Rury and Aaron Tyler Rife, “Race, Schools and Opportunity Hoarding: Evidence from a Post-war American Metropolis,” History of Education 47, no. 1 (January 2018): 87–107.

57. Rife, “Shifting Identities,” 100. As noted in the previous chapter, the “31,000 culturally deprived children” figure came from KCMPS officials testifying at the state capitol, hoping to gain additional funding.

58. Rife, “Shifting Identities,” chap. 4

59. Shortridge, Kansas City and How It Grew, 152–53; Rife, “Shifting Identities,” 156–63.

60. Kansas and Missouri Advisory Committees on Civil Rights, “Crisis and Opportunity: Education in Greater Kansas City,” unpublished report, 1977, appendix B, table B-2. Hickman Mills reported 211 African American students at that point, and Grandview 114, reflecting the movement of blacks into South Kansas City and the number of military families settling in the area. “Blacks Staking Claim to ‘Good Life’ in the Suburbs,” Kansas City Times, May 26, 1976, 1a. Superintendent Herndon testified that Westridge Elementary School, located near African American neighborhoods in Kansas City, had the largest black enrollment for much of his time at the district’s helm; Joe Herndon deposition, April 18, 1983, 205–6.

61. Shortridge, Kansas City and How It Grew, 75–76; Gary Littlefield, interview with John Rury, April 10, 2012.

62. The History of the North Kansas City School District, 1917 to 1995 (Kansas City, MO: North Kansas City School District, 1995), chap. 2.

63. Warren interview, May 1, 2012.

64. History of the North Kansas City School District, chaps. 2, 3–5.

65. Bill Henry, interview with John Rury, May 1, 2012.

66. Littlefield interview, April 10, 2012.

67. History of the North Kansas City School District, chaps. 4 and 5.

68. “Looking Over Progress to the North, the Fast Growing Area of Kansas City,” Kansas City Star, November 2, 1954; “A School Fund Rises: North Kansas City District Revenue Expected to Exceed Estimate,” Kansas City Times, February 9, 1956.

69. “Schooling to New Job,” Kansas City Star, May 11, 1955; “Dr. Schooling’s Five Years,” Kansas City Star, June 18, 1955.

70. Henry interview, May 1, 2012.

71. “The Neighborhoods of Clay County,” Northtowner, June 21, 1962.

72. Shirley Albin, interview with John Rury, May 1, 2012; Warren interview, May 1, 2012.

73. History of the North Kansas City School District, chaps. 5 and 6; Henry interview, May 1, 2012.

74. Littlefield interview, April 10, 2012; Albin interview, May 1, 2012; Wexler interview, May 1, 2012; Henry interview, May 1, 2012.

75. History of the North Kansas City School District, chap. 8; Henry interview, May 1, 2012.

76. Shortridge, Kansas City and How It Grew, 149–50.

77. On the history of residential development and racial exclusion in Clay County see Gotham, Race, Real Estate, 61–62.

78. “State to Probe Lynching,” Kansas City Times, August 10, 1925; “Mob of 1,000 Lynch Negro in Missouri, with Passengers on a Train as Witnesses,” New York Times, August 8, 1925.

79. “Inquiry Ordered in Missouri Mob’s Burning of Negro,” Albany Evening News, November 29, 1933.

80. James Dempsy, interview with John Rury, March 22, 2012; Henry interview, May 1, 2012; clay.county.archives/photos/a.934620379912221.1073741828.111559375551663/934620393245553/?type=1&theater; http://www.civilwaronthewesternborder.org/map/liberty-missouri; http://www.kchistory.org/cdm4/item_viewer.php?CISOROOT=/Mrs&CISOPTR=712&CISOBOX=1&REC=4.

81. Darryl W. Levings, “Blacks Recall Long Trips to Segregated Schools,” Kansas City Star, 1977. “To Transport Liberty High School Students,” Kansas City Call, July 31, 1953. On the African American community in Independence see William J. Curtis, Rich Heritage: A Black History of Independence, Missouri (Kansas City, MO: Better Impressions, 1985), 48. On the southern character of Independence see “Just a Country Town,” Kansas City Times, August 30, 1950.

82. Littlefield interview, April 10, 2012.

83. Warren interview, May 1, 2012; Wexler interview, 2012; Dempsy interview, March 22, 2012.

84. Stevens interview, March 27, 2012.

85. Marvin Daniels, interview with John Rury, April 17, 2012; Susan Hilliard, interview with John Rury, March 8, 2012.

86. Elard interview, March 27, 2012.

87. City Planning Department, Kansas City, Missouri, “Alternatives for Growth: Kansas City North,” unpublished report, November 1966.

88. Shortridge, Kansas City and How It Grew, 104–6.

89. This was also noted in comments by longtime residents in interviews: Warren interview, May 1, 2012; Littlefield interview, April 10, 2012.

90. Henry interview, May 1, 2012.

91. Gardner and Rury, “Suburban Resistance to District Reorganization,” 127.

92. The bulk of the opposition initially came from the mid-north-central part of the state, along the Missouri River, often characterized as “Little Dixie,” together with the southeast, which had the largest African American population outside the major cities. In addition, the commission received hundreds of letters, roughly half of which were received before the report appeared. Principal reasons for opposition were that residents ultimately could not vote to end reorganization, and many did not want to pay for schooling other people’s children. These were familiar points in resistance to school reorganization in other states. See Gardner and Rury, “Suburban Resistance to District Reorganization,” 128; see also David Reynolds, There Goes the Neighborhood: Rural School Consolidation at the Grass Roots in Early Twentieth-Century Iowa (Iowa City: University of Iowa Press, 1998), chap. 6.

93. To establish a rationale for this interdistrict urban solution, Spainhower contracted with Clifford Hooker and Van Mueller from the University of Minnesota to prepare a separate report on the Kansas City and St. Louis area schools immediately after the full commission report was issued. This “urban” study was completed in late January 1969. It contextualized and provided data supporting the commission’s recommendation to create nine local school units in the Kansas City area and sixteen in greater St. Louis crossing county lines and mixing urban and suburban schools. See Clifford Hooker and Van D. Mueller, Equal Treatment to Equals: A New Structure for Public Schools in Kansas City and St. Louis Metropolitan Areas; A Report to the Missouri School District Reorganization Commission (Jefferson City, MO, 1969).

94. Paul Van Osdol Jr., letter to the Honorable James I. Spainhower, January 29, 1969, in the Advisory Committee file, Missouri Department of State, Records Management and Archives Service, box 22070.

95. Hooker and Mueller, Equal Treatment to Equals, 8. Interestingly, the commission appointed to investigate the 1968 civil disturbance in Kansas City also recommended that all public schools in Jackson County be included in the Kansas City, Missouri, Public Schools, which would have meant effectively annexing districts such as Liberty, Raytown, Hickman Mills, Center, Grandview, Blue Springs, Lee’s Summit, and parts of others. See Mayor’s Commission on Civil Disturbances, Final Report, 1968, Kansas City, MO, 58.

96. See, for instance, Arthur E. Wise, Rich Schools, Poor Schools: The Promise of Equal Educational Opportunity (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1968), 199–205.

97. Mrs. Carl L. Tosspon, letter from Kansas City, MO 64138, to Reverend Spain-hower, January 30, 1969, in “Correspondence K–Z,” Missouri Department of State, Records Management and Archives Service, box 22070.

98. Clarence and Louise Swaidner, letter from Kansas City, MO 64129, to Mr. Spainhower, January 8, 1969, in “Correspondence K–Z,” Missouri Department of State, Records Management and Archives Service, box 22070.

99. Mrs. P. G. Moore, letter from Oak Grove, MO, to Representative James I. Spainhower, October 24, 1968, in “Correspondence K–Z,” Missouri Department of State, Records Management and Archives Service, box 22070.

100. Mrs. M. J. Aholt, letter from Raytown, MO, “To whom it may concern,” undated, in “Correspondence A–I,” Missouri Department of State, Records Management and Archives Service, box 22070.

101. Neighborhood Petition, of thirteen people living in the Center, Raytown, and Grandview school districts, 1969, in Petition file, Records Management and Archives Service, Department of Elementary and Secondary Education, Administrative Services, box 22070.

102. Petition from the Parents and Patrons of the Green Ridge R-8 School District, 1969. In “Correspondence A–I,” Missouri Department of State, Records Management and Archives Service, box 22070.

103. Daniel J. Perin, director of Youth Education for the Association of Unity Churches, Lee’s Summit, Missouri, to the Honorable James I. Spainhower, January 8, 1969, in “Correspondence K–Z,” Missouri Department of State, Records Management and Archives Service, box 22070. On comparison of opposition in Kansas City and St. Louis see Gardner and Rury, “Suburban Resistance to District Reorganization,” 140–45.

104. “Raytown Shows Suburbs’ Fears of School Redistricting,” 4B.

105. Jonathan Spears, interview by John Rury, March 8, 2012.

106. Deposition of James Spainhower, September 12, 1977, Arthur Benson Papers, Western Historical Manuscript Collection, University of Missouri at Kansas City, KC 250, box 354, 10.

107. Mrs. Margie McCoy to James Spainhower, March 3, 1969, Arthur Benson Papers, Western Historical Manuscript Collection, University of Missouri at Kansas City, KC 250, box 422.

108. “School Remap Weighed,” Kansas City Times, November 16, 1968, 4C.

109. On Hazlett’s response to the report see J. A. Hazlett deposition, Arthur Benson Papers, Western Historical Manuscript Collection, University of Missouri at Kansas City, KC 250, box 108, vol. 3, 361.

110. These reactions were consistent with an explanation offered by Peter Mieszkowski and Edwin S. Mills in “The Causes of Metropolitan Suburbanization,” Journal of Economic Perspectives 7, no. 8 (Summer 1993): 137, who suggested that such perceptions “lead affluent central city residents to migrate to the suburbs, which leads to a further deterioration of the quality of life . . . which induces further out-migration.” They also describe how this dynamic produced a certain type of suburban community: “Those who move to the suburbs often seek to form homogenous communities, for several reasons. There is the preference for residing among individuals of like income, education, race and ethnicity. By residing in income-stratified communities, the affluent avoid local redistributive taxes. . . . Homogenous groupings enhance the quality of education, as there is evidence that peer-group effects are important in the production of educational achievement” (137).

111. Mrs. Donald Hanes, [North] Kansas City, MO 64116, to the Honorable James Spainhower, February 5, 1969, in “Correspondence A–I,” Missouri Department of State, Records Management and Archives Service, box 22070.

112. As Sacks, Ranney, and Andrews observed about the formation of suburbs, “These new communities . . . almost universally . . . ‘felt’ the necessity to provide an educational system consistent with their high personal income and aspirations. . . . The new suburban systems were conceived to provide a level of excellence which had no previous counterpart in terms of number of children involved.” See S. Sacks, D. Ranney, and R. Andrews, City Schools / Suburban Schools: A History of Fiscal Conflict (Syracuse, NY: Syracuse University Press, 1972), 170.

113. Sacks, Ranney, and Andrews point out that “when suburban systems became sufficiently large, they competed . . . directly with large cities. [Eventually] suburban schools in general . . . emerged educationally equal to, or better than, their central city counterparts,” ibid., 171.

114. H. Williams, superintendent, Smithville R-II Public Schools, to Mr. James I. Spainhower, November 25, 1968, in “Correspondence K–Z,” Missouri Department of State, Records Management and Archives Service, box 22070.

115. Mrs. William Teal, Cass County, to Representative James Spainhower, January 9, 1969, in “Correspondence K–Z,” Missouri Department of State, Records Management and Archives Service, box 22070.

116. Bi-State Committee on Education of the Kansas and Missouri Advisory Committees to the US Commission on Civil Rights, “Crisis and Opportunity: Education in Greater Kansas City,” summary edition, 3.

117. Moran, Race, Law, 162–73.

118. “Area Districts Wary of School Merger,” Kansas City Times, January 26, 1977, 1B.

119. “North District: No Part in Desegregation,” Kansas City Times, February 9, 1977, 4A.

120. “Area Districts Wary of School Merger,” Kansas City Times, 1B.

121. Many southern urban districts were organized on a county basis, offering lessons on how suburbanites could respond to well-crafted and carefully presented desegregation plans. On these points see Ansley T. Erickson, “Fairness, Commitment, and Civic Capacity: The Varied Desegregation Trajectories of Metropolitan School Districts,” in The Shifting Landscape of the American School District: Race, Class, Geography, and the Perpetual Reform of Local Control, 1935–2015, ed. David Gamson and Emily Hodge (New York: Peter Lang, 2018), 107–226; Genevieve Siegel-Hawley and Stefani Thachik, “Crossing the Line? School District Responses to Demographic Change in the South,” also in Gamson and Hodge, Shifting Landscape, 79–106; and Genevieve Siegel-Hawley, When the Fences Come Down: Twenty-First-Century Lessons from Metropolitan School Desegregation (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 2016), pt. 2.

122. This point is acknowledged in Shortridge, Kansas City and How It Grew, 117. As suggested above, it eventually was less successful in Hickman Mills and Grandview.

123. For more on this see Rury and Rife, “Race, Schools and Opportunity Hoarding,” 101–7.

124. A similar scenario unfolded after KCMPS lost its state accreditation in 2012, when in 2014 parents attempted to enroll their children in neighboring districts under the provisions of a state law permitting them to do so. The suburban districts were not cooperative, however, demanding full-year tuition payments up front before admitting such transfers. See Joe Robertson, “Transfer Law Confusion Keeps KC Families on Hold as School Year Approaches,” Kansas City Star, August 5, 2014, http://www.kansascity.com/news/local/article1069939.html.

5. CONFLICT IN SUBURBIA

1. “Suburbia for Everyone?,” Album: Johnson County Museum 21, nos. 2 and 3 (Spring/Summer 2008): 1, 5.

2. Ibid.; “Overland-Lenexa Council Hears Integration Causes,” Kansas City Times, March 1, 1966, 32; “Donald Sewing: Housing Pioneer Improved KC Area,” Kansas City Star, September 29, 2007.

3. Robert O. Self, “Prelude to the Tax Revolt: The Politics of the ‘Tax Dollar’ in Post-war California,” in The New Suburban History, ed. Kevin M. Kruse and Thomas J. Sugrue (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 2006), 144–60; Lisa McGirr, Suburban Warriors: The Origins of the New American Right (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 2001), chap. 2.

4. Mindi C. Love, Johnson County, Kansas: A Pictorial History, 1825–200 5 (Shawnee, KS: Johnson County Museum, 2006), 162–64; “Shawnee Mission Schools Broke Much New Ground,” Johnson County Sun special issue, Bicentennial History of Johnson County, July 2, 1976, 58.

5. “Outgoing Superintendent Explains Opposition to One Big District,” Johnson County Sun, March 28, 1968 (Johnson County Library vertical file, “Shawnee Mission Schools, 1968”). Interestingly, there was no anticommunist rhetoric reported in connection with disputes in Shawnee Mission.

6. Robert Fishman, Bourgeois Utopias: The Rise and Fall of Suburbia (New York: Basic Books, 1989), chap. 5; on the role of Nichols as a suburban developer during this formative period see Kenneth Jackson, Crabgrass Frontier: The Suburbanization of the United States (New York: Oxford University Press, 1987), 177–78. Jackson described Nichols as “qualitatively the most successful American developer” of suburban communities (177).

7. For an overview of desegregation struggles in the region see Joshua Dunn, Complex Justice: The Case of Jenkins v. Missouri (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 2008), chap. 2. Major controversies over race and schooling occurred well after the events described in this chapter. Regarding the history of schooling for the local black community, which numbered around one thousand throughout the period, and the 1949 Kansas Supreme Court decision that ended segregated schooling there, see the Shawnee Sesquicentennial Committee, A Pictorial History of Shawnee: Celebrating Shawnee’s Sesquicentennial, 1856–2006 (Lawrence, KS: Sunflower, 2006), 37–38.

8. On the tendency of wealthy suburbanites to view local institutions in these terms, especially with respect to “hoarding of opportunity,” see Kruse and Sugrue, New Suburban History, introduction. Regarding larger patterns of urban and suburban educational development see John L. Rury and Argun Saatcioglu, “Suburban Advantage: Opportunity Hoarding and Secondary Attainment in the Postwar Metropolitan Northeast, 1940–1980,” American Journal of Education 118, no. 3 (May 2011): 307–42. The classic study of the development of urban school systems and the role of elite groups is David B. Tyack, The One Best System: A History of Urban Education in the United States (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1974), pt. 4, where he described the “interlocking directorate” of like-minded civic leaders who promoted organizational reform in the schools. On page 149 Tyack quotes David Hammack’s analysis of social groups supporting school centralization in New York, which identified “three over-lapping elites: aggressive modernizers from business and the professions, advocates of efficient, non-partisan municipal government, and moral reformers determined to uphold Protestant values in polyglot New York City.” These groups appealed to somewhat different constituencies but were united in support of bureaucratic reform. In short, centralization was supported by a coalition of affluent, well-educated, and elitist city residents determined to impose an ostensibly cosmopolitan vision on advocates of localism and the ward system.

9. Deanna Marquette, The Historical Development of Johnson County (Johnson County Center for Local History, Johnson County Community College, 1988), 12.

10. Love, Johnson County, Kansas, 96–97; “Taxes Turned Nichols toward Kansas Sites,” Johnson County Sun, July 2, 1976, 39 (this article featured a lengthy interview with Nichols’s son, Miller, about his father’s approach to suburban development).

11. William S. Worley, J. C. Nichols and the Shaping of Kansas City (Columbia: University of Missouri Press, 1990), chap. 4. See also James R. Shortridge, Cities on the Plains: The Evolution of Urban Kansas (Lawrence: University Press of Kansas, 2004), 301–2. On the influence of Nichols, the Country Club District, and the Plaza see also Martin Mayer, The Builders: Houses, People, Neighborhoods, Governments, Money (New York: W. W. Norton, 1978), 57–59; and Robert Pearson and Brad Pearson, The J. C. Nichols Chronicle: The Authorized Story of the Man, His Company, and His Legacy, 1880–1994 (Kansas City: Country Club Plaza, 1994), 91–106.

12. On the importance of exclusion see Jesse Clyde Nichols, “When You Buy a Home Site You Make an Investment: Try to Make It a Safe One,” Good Housekeeping, February 1923, 38–39, 172–76. See the discussion of this in Becky Nicolaides and Andrew Wiese, eds., The Suburb Reader (New York: Routledge, 2006), chap. 8, “The Tools of Exclusion.” On Nichols’s openness to Jewish buyers see Worley, J. C. Nichols and the Shaping of Kansas City, 151. On the importance of Nichols’s use of neighborhood associations see Richard Rothstein, The Color of Law: A Forgotten History of How Our Government Segregated America (New York: Liveright, 2017), 79. See also Pearson and Pearson, J. C. Nichols Chronicle, 57–63.

13. Shortridge, Cities on the Plains, 301–2; Love, Johnson County, Kansas, 115; Worley, J. C. Nichols and the Shaping of Kansas City, chaps. 7 and 8. Nichols’s work was recognized by the National Association of Home Builders: “Prairie Village District Is Awarded First Place,” Kansas City Realtor, February 9, 1950, 3.

14. Worley, J. C. Nichols and the Shaping of Kansas City, chap. 6.

15. Ibid., 83–84. Worley notes that in 1930 more than half the 1,325 individuals listed on the social register lived in Nichols settlements, and that by 1975 the proportion had increased to more than 80 percent of two thousand registrants, with a third living on the Kansas side of the border and 20 percent in Mission Hills alone. This was an unusually high concentration of wealth and social influence located at what would become the geographic heart of opposition to consolidation in SMSD.

16. James Shortridge, Kansas City and How It Grew, 1822–2011 (Lawrence: University Press of Kansas, 2012), 122–29 and 154–58; Elizabeth E. Barnes, Historic Johnson County: A Bird’s Eye View of the Development of the Area (Shawnee, KS: Neff, 1969), chaps. 6, 10, and 11; Love, Johnson County, Kansas, 125.

17. These factors were clearly correlated quite highly. In fact, all three are correlated at about .9, suggesting that they reflect underlying social status differences that clearly distinguished these settings. All these communities counted fewer than six thousand residents in 1960, with the exception of Prairie Village and newly established Overland Park, both with about twenty-five thousand. Some of the older Nichols communities, such as Westwood and Westwood Hills, were too small to be included in the published census tables.

18. Love, Johnson County, Kansas, 161; Worley, J. C. Nichols and the Shaping of Kansas City, 271–73; Franklin McFarland, interview with John Rury, April 2012.

19. Dave Farson, Better Than Necessary: A Celebrational History of Shawnee Mission North High School (Shawnee, KS: Shawnee Mission School District, 1981), 6. He reports the vote to establish the school at 1,027 to 952. Also see Love, Johnson County, Kansas, 161–62, and Barnes, Historic Johnson County, 28. Elizabeth Brooks, “Establishing the First Rural High School,” Johnson County Sun, March 20, 1992, 4E. The school’s establishment, of course, preceded development of most of the Nichols communities to the east and thus did not run afoul of localist sentiments that emerged later, during the postwar era.

20. “Dedicate Shawnee Unit,” Kansas City Times, October 12, 1937, 1; “An Architectural Drawing of the New Proposed Shawnee Mission High School Building,” Suburban News, May 2, 1941 (Johnson County Museum clippings file, “Schools”).

21. “Shawnee Mission Schools Broke Much New Ground,” 58; McFarland interview, April 2012.

22. Quoted in Love, Johnson County, Kansas, 163.

23. “Shawnee Mission Schools Broke Much New Ground,” 58.

24. “The School Debt on Increase in Northeast Johnson County,” Kansas City Star, January 3, 1954, 20E; Elizabeth E. Barnes, “Phenomenal School Growth,” Johnson County Herald, September 8, 1960 (Johnson County Museum clippings file, “Schools”); McFarland interview, April 2012.

25. Donna Davis, Jennifer Friend, and Loyce Carruthers, “The Fear of Color: Webb v. School District No. 90 in Johnson County, Kansas, 1949,” American Educational History Journal 37, no. 2 (2010): 331–45; and Rachel Devlin, A Girl Stands at the Door: The Generation of Young Women Who Desegregated America’s Schools (New York: Basic Books, 2018), chap. 4.

26. Myra F. Jenks and Irene B. French, Historic Merriam: The History of Merriam, Kansas (Lenexa, KS: Publishing Specialists, 2006), 123; Barbara Rein, “The Black Community of South Park–Merriam, Kansas, a Part of the Whole,” in Student Papers in Local History, Johnson County Center for Local History, Johnson County Community College, 1986, 145–55.

27. “Quiet Fund Drive Keeps an Area White,” Kansas City Star, July 24, 1964. In another incident, longtime KCK resident Charles Oliver reported that he and several other African Americans were invited to a home in Johnson County, presumably to discuss local civil rights issues. Upon arriving they were ushered onto a side lawn, so that the neighbors could see them. The owner confessed that the purpose was to motivate the neighborhood association to buy the home, which was up for sale. Apparently such purchases were not so unusual in that part of greater Kansas City; Charles Oliver, interview with John Rury, Kansas City, Kansas, March 15, 2012.

28. “Move to Suburbs Not Easy: Negroes Consider Children First,” Kansas City Star, March 6, 1968.

29. “Suburbia for Everyone?,” 1; Oliver interview; JOCO History, “Civil Rights Pioneering in Johnson County,” https://jocohistory.wordpress.com/2013/01/22/civil-rights-pioneering-in-johnson-county/.

30. Kansas City Star, May 4, 1958, 29B. A review of real estate advertisements published in Sunday editions of the Star, on the first two Sundays in May, was conducted for every year between 1948 and 1965. Shawnee Mission High School was mentioned in advertisements more than any other institution, typically four to six times each Sunday, although it should be noted that particular schools were named in a small proportion of hundreds of advertisements. Various SMSD elementary schools were regularly noted as well. City schools, particularly Southwest High, were mentioned also, although less frequently over time. For a similar analysis and discussion of suburban educational development see Jack Dougherty, “Shopping for Schools: How Public Education and Private Housing Shaped Suburban Connecticut,” Journal of Urban History 38, no. 2 (March 2012): 2.

31. “Flood of Housing Spurs a Johnson County School Push,” Kansas City Star, January 16, 1955 (Johnson County Public Library vertical file).

32. “Postwar Development in Johnson County, Kansas, Is Subject of Article in Nation’s Schools Magazine: Building Problems Curriculum and Establishment of Junior High System Are Discussed,” Kansas City Star, March 30, 1958 (Kansas City Public Library vertical file).

33. Ibid.; Love, Johnson County, Kansas, 149–51.

34. “Two Schools Here Win Praise for Excellence,” Kansas City Times, October 11, 1957, 1; “What Makes Them Good?,” Time, October 21, 1957, 54.

35. “Postwar Development in Johnson County, Kansas”; “Shawnee Mission Schools Broke Much New Ground,” 58; McFarland interview, April 2012.

36. “S-M District Grows to 120,000 since ’21,” Olathe News, May 5, 1961 (Johnson County Museum clippings file, “Schools”); Patricia Jansen Doyle, “Shawnee Mission Northwest’s New Passage to Learning,” Kansas City Star Magazine, April 18, 1971; Roy Inman, “A New Plot in the Environment Story,” Kansas City Star Magazine, May 30, 1971; Love, Johnson County, Kansas, 171–75. On the area’s black population and their access to education see Shawnee Sesquicentennial Committee, Pictorial History of Shawnee, 37–38.

37. “Will Johnny Learn a Lot Next Year with More Kids in His Class?,” Squire, February 5, 1970 (Johnson County Public Library vertical file), 10; Mayer, Builders, 59–60.

38. Kansas State Department of Education, “Unified School District Wealth, 1975–76,” Kansas State Department of Education, Topeka, 1976, np. The taxable income per pupil in the district was $14,972, compared to $8,324 for Olathe and approximately $9,000 for Kansas City, Kansas, $11,000 for Wichita, and $13,000 for Topeka. Kansas State Department of Education, “U.S.D. Report on Enrollments and General Fund per Pupil, 1974–5,” Topeka: Kansas State Department of Education, 1975, 18.

39. “School Staffs in Good Shape,” Kansas City Times, July 15, 1961, 1.

40. “Conservative Attitude Works as a Brake,” Kansas City Times, September 16, 1967, 2B. The series was written by the Star’s education writer, Patricia Jansen Doyle, who also wrote about other districts in the metropolitan area. She raised a number of questions about whether the district’s schools deserved their excellent reputation, noting that the district actually spent less per pupil than some other area school systems, and that some students complained that they had not been well prepared for college. Even if there was little question that Shawnee Mission was widely seen as the best district in the region, Doyle suggested that perhaps it was due to the high socioeconomic status of its clientele rather than the work of the schools. See “Both Facts, Fancy in Education Reputation,” Kansas City Star: This Week Magazine, September 10, 1967, 1A, 10A.

41. “Kansans Face Vast School Change,” Kansas City Star, May 25, 1964, 4.

42. Ghazal A. Husain, “Consolidation of School Districts in Kansas” (PhD diss., University of Kansas, 1966), 108; “School Consolidation History,” Memorandum from Lauren S. Douglas to Senator Chris Steineger, Kansas Legislative Research Department, Topeka, November 2, 2009, http://www.scribd.com/doc/26316131/Kansas-School-Consolidation-History. See also “Finance Plan Keyed to Unification,” Kansas City Star, May 28, 1964, 4; “Spur to Approval of a School Plan,” Kansas City Times, May 29, 1964, 3; “Pros and Cons of School Unification,” Kansas City Star, May 29, 1964, 4; “Hoping to End School ‘Maze,’” Kansas City Star, May 31, 1964, 22.

43. On this point see “Solving the Rural School Problem: New State Aid, Standards, and Supervision of Local Schools, 1900–1933,” History of Education Quarterly 48 (Spring 2008): 181–220, and David R. Reynolds, There Goes the Neighborhood: Rural School Consolidation at the Grass Roots in Early Twentieth Century Iowa (Iowa City: University of Iowa Press, 1999), chaps. 6 and 7. On early conditions in Kansas see E. T. Fairchild, Bulletin of Information regarding Consolidation of Rural Schools (Topeka, KS: State Print Office, 1908).

44. “A Study of the Public Schools of the Shawnee Mission District of Johnson County Kansas,” March 1962, Shawnee Mission, KS, 30.

45. “Complex Issues in Unification Vote,” Kansas City Star, May 27, 1964, 4A; “Push Approval of Unification,” Kansas City Star, June 1, 1964, 4; “Johnson County Delays the Inevitable,” Kansas City Star, August 19, 1964 (Johnson County Library clippings file).

46. “Another Blow to Unification,” Kansas City Times, May 28, 1964, 4A; “The Best School Plan for Johnson County,” Kansas City Star, June 1, 1964, 24; “Complex Issues in Unification Vote,” 4A.

47. “Reject a School Plan,” Kansas City Times, June 3, 1964, 4; “Complex Issues in Unification Vote,” 4A. One local history suggests that the residents of affluent Westwood were solidly opposed to the unification plan; see Gene Culbertson, The City of Westwood: Celebrating 50 Years of Progress, 1949–1999 (Shawnee, KS: Publishing Specialist), 25.

48. “Stride in School Vote,” Kansas City Star, June 3, 1964, 4A.

49. “Kill a Merger: Mission–Roeland Park Consolidation Plan Loses Overwhelmingly in Election,” Kansas City Star, September 27, 1953, 3A; “Vote on Merger Issue: Long and Sometimes Bitter Controversy over the Merger of Mission and Roeland Park,” Kansas City Star, September 25, 1953, 14.

50. “Against a Merger,” Kansas City Star, December 1, 1956 (Johnson County Public Library vertical file); “Plan Lengthy Bill Schedule: Move to Consolidate Johnson County Programs Will Await a Survey,” Kansas City Star, January 3, 1957, 15. Interestingly, the straw vote was positive in this case, although it did not result immediately in consolidation. See “A Johnson County Tangle,” Kansas City Star, September 13, 1958, 38. Mission Woods was (is) a very small Nichols development immediately to the north of Mission Hills, on the Missouri border.

51. See Tyack, One Best System, pt. 4.

52. These points are taken from Husain, “Consolidation of School Districts in Kansas,” summarized in chap. 5. A geographer, Husain conducted a statistical analysis of unification across all counties in the state, using multiple regression. Controlling for half a dozen other factors, including tax levels, farm products, and school costs, he found that the number of school districts was the strongest predictor of the rate of consolidation leading up to 1964 (p. 98). This logic did not appear to apply, of course, to Shawnee Mission in 1964, although Husain did not comment on it.

53. “Reject a School Plan,” 4A.

54. “Mixed Views on Unification,” Kansas City Times, December 4, 1968 (Johnson County Library vertical file). The quote about the danger in small boards is quite striking in light of Progressive Era measures backed by educated urban elites to drastically reduce membership on city school boards in the name of efficiency and nonpartisanship. On these points see Tyack, One Best System, pt. 4.

55. “School Plan Unit Studies Next Vote,” Kansas City Star, June 5, 1964, 4; “Expect a Modified Unification Plan,” Kansas City Times, June 5, 1964, 4.

56. “A School Unity Election Today,” Kansas City Times, September 8, 1964, 10; “Johnson County Delays the Inevitable.”

57. “Hails School Vote Results: Significant Step Seen Taken on Unification in Kansas,” Kansas City Star, June 3, 1964, 4A.

58. Husain, “Consolidation of School Districts in Kansas,” chap. 5, “Summary and Conclusions.”

59. In 1968 just twenty-nine districts in the state had yet to consolidate, and thirteen of them were within the Shawnee Mission High School District attendance area. See “Outgoing Superintendent Explains Opposition to One Big District.”

60. “Suggest Vote on Unification,” Kansas City Times, February 13, 1968, 5; “Question Amrein on Vote Proposal,” Kansas City Times, February 20, 1968, 4.

61. “Patrons Wary of Unity Plan,” Kansas City Star, November 19, 1968, 4; “Official for Voluntary School District Union,” Kansas City Times, February 3, 1968, 5A; “School Dispute Ends Smoothly,” Kansas City Times, February 19, 1969, 12B.

62. “Editorial: Adding More Emotionalism,” Johnson County Sun, January 8, 1969 (Johnson County Public Library vertical file, “Shawnee Mission Schools, 1969”); “For One School Unit,” Kansas City Star, February 7, 1968, 4A; “Hits Material on Unification,” Kansas City Times, February 16, 1968, 4A; “Bower Attacks Effort to Stop Shawnee Mission School Unity,” Kansas City Times, March 12, 1968, 5; “Would Delay Unity for a Year,” Kansas City Times, February 21, 1968, 4A.

63. Engelhardt, Engelhardt, and Leggett Inc., Unification (Johnson County, KS: Northeast Johnson County Public Schools, 1968); “Oppose Paying for Unification Study,” Kansas City Times, December 12, 1968, 5C.

64. “For Unified District,” Kansas City Times, January 21, 1969, 4; “School Unity Bill to Floor,” Kansas City Times, January 28, 1969, 4.

65. “School Bill Is Passed,” Kansas City Times, February 14, 1969, 4.

66. “Conservative Attitude Works as a Brake,” 2B.

67. “Century of History Surrounds Closing of Linwood School,” Kansas City Star, May 9, 1975 (Johnson County Public Library vertical file); “Closings Advised in Shawnee Mission,” Kansas City Times, November 11, 1975, 4A; “School Closings to Be Topic Tonight,” Johnson County Sun, November 19, 1975, 2A.

68. “Bill to Decentralize School District,” Kansas City Star, February 12, 1973, 4.

69. Love, Johnson County, Kansas, 184–85; Florent Wagner, “1960–1980: Incorporation and Organization,” in Historic Overland Park: An Illustrated History, ed. Norman Keech and Florent Wagner (San Antonio, TX: Historical Publishing Network, 2004), 72. On comparisons with Blue Valley and other districts see “State Competency Scores Improving but Not Great,” Johnson County Sun, August 11, 1982, 8A; Rachel Bolton, “The Testing of the Shawnee Mission District,” Squire, October 14, 1982 (Johnson County Library, Regional Reference vertical file, “Schools-Shawnee Mission, 1982”); “Some Teachers Find New Opportunities in District to South,” Kansas City Star, June 9, 1985, 19A. The district also began to experience labor troubles in the later 1970s, as teachers complained about working conditions and salary levels. See “Shawnee Mission Teachers Sue,” Kansas City Star, March 17, 1978, 4.

70. Under the terms of the state’s school consolidation legislation, only city districts had the power to close schools without a vote of affected patrons. Since Shawnee Mission was originally a rural high school district, it had to abide by rules governing districts serving rural areas. See “Ball for Court Action to Clarify School Issue,” Kansas City Star, March 5, 1976, 4.

71. “Impact of Keeping All Schools Open Studied,” Kansas City Star, February 17, 1976, 4; “School Board to Turn to Courts,” Kansas City Times, March 23, 1976, 4; “Parents Do Homework, Fight School Closings,” Kansas City Star, December 4, 1975, 2W; “Board Can’t Close Schools,” Kansas City Times, February 6, 1976 (Johnson County Public Library vertical file); “Board to Renew Drive for School Closing Law,” Kansas City Star, February 19, 1976, 4.

72. “Kansas House Defeats School Closing Plan,” Kansas City Star, March 2, 1976, 4; “Shawnee Mission Again Faces Threat from School Closing Bill,” Kansas City Times, January 26, 1978, 3B. For a legislative summary of the statute authorizing the district to close schools and the Kansas Supreme Court case upholding it see 1983 Cumulative Supplement to the Kansas Statutes Annotated, Volume 5A, Article 81: Unified School District Provisions of Limited Application, “72–8136a. U.S.D. 512 authorized to close school buildings; conditions” (Topeka: Kansas State Printing Office, 1983), 72–7601.

73. “Shawnee Mission Hopes Feuding Is Over,” Kansas City Star, November 11, 1987, 1; “The Education of Raj Chopra,” Kansas City Times, November 5, 1988, AM Profile. The 1987 vote in favor of an increased levy was just 58 percent, a margin of victory that would have been insufficient in Missouri, where a two-thirds majority was required for approval of such measures.

74. “Shawnee Mission Board Gets Honor,” Kansas City Star, October, 18, 1984, 5A; Shawnee Mission Schools, Just the Facts . . . about Schools (Fact Sheet distributed by the district in 1980).

75. Love, Johnson County, Kansas, 190.

76. On the propensity of earlier generations of civic leaders to promote bureaucratic, “nonpartisan” approaches to governance see Samuel P. Hays, “The Politics of Reform in Municipal Government in the Progressive Era,” Pacific Northwest Quarterly 55, no. 4 (October 1964): 157–69, and William J. Reese, “The Control of Urban School Boards during the Progressive Era: A Reconsideration,” Pacific Northwest Quarterly 68, no. 4 (October 1977): 164–74, in addition to Tyack, One Best System, pt. 4.

77. For a description of the study see Basil G. Zimmer and Amos H. Hawley, Metropolitan Area Schools: Resistance to District Reorganization (Beverly Hills, CA: Sage, 1968), chap. 1. Zimmer and Hawley found that college-educated, affluent suburbanites in larger metropolitan areas (Milwaukee and Buffalo in their study) expressed the greatest opposition to the idea of district reorganization or consolidation, favoring small, locally controlled and financed districts over other options (see chap. 7 for these points). On “localism” see Amos Hawley and Basil Zimmer, The Metropolitan Community: Its People and Government (Beverly Hills, CA: Sage, 1970), chap. 4, “The Localization of Daily Life.”

78. Matthew Lassiter, The Silent Majority: Suburban Politics in the Sunbelt South (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 2007), chap. 6; McGirr, Suburban Warriors, chap. 2; “Area Districts Wary of School Merger,” Kansas City Times, January 26, 1977, 1B. Reverend Maurice Culver, president of the SMSD Board of Education, dismissed the idea of consolidating districts across state lines as “next to impossible,” while the vice president of the Bonner Springs board declared that “nothing can be forced along this issue and make any real gains.”

EPILOGUE

1. Mará Rose Williams, “Kansas City Public Schools Hits the Full Accreditation Mark for the First Time in Decades,” Kansas City Star, November 7, 2016, http://www.kansascity.com/news/local/article113037663.html.

2. Joe Robertson, “As KC School District Ponders Big Moves, Southwest Students Are at the Forefront,” Kansas City Star, April 19, 2015, http://www.kansascity.com/news/local/article18948126.html. In 2008 KCMPS lost a significant portion of its population when Van Horn High School and its feeder institutions were “re-annexed” to the Independence School District, a change that required—and received—approval from voters in both districts. On this point see James R. Shortridge, Kansas City and How It Grew, 1822–2011 (Lawrence: University Press of Kansas, 2012), 181.

3. A listing of area districts and their size can be found at http://www.usa.com/kansas-city-mo-ks-area-school-district.htm. On perceptions of city schools, which may have improved a bit in recent years, see Joe Robertson, “KC Schools’ Fight to Win Over Urban Millennials Touches Questions of Equity, Race,” Kansas City Star, February 23, 2016, http://www.kansascity.com/news/local/article62077537.html.

4. A. G. Sulzberger, “Kansas City, Mo., School District Loses Its Accreditation,” New York Times, September 20, 2011, http://www.nytimes.com/2011/09/21/us/kansas-city-mo-school-district-loses-its-accreditation.html. On an earlier crisis see “Kansas City Schools Lose Accreditation,” Los Angeles Times, May 4, 2000, http://articles.latimes.com/2000/may/04/news/mn-26560.

5. Joe Robertson, “Lawsuit Likely If State Denies KC School District’s Bid for Accreditation,” Kansas City Star, October 20, 2013, http://www.kansascity.com/news/local/article329938/Lawsuit-likely-if-state-denies-KC-school-district%E2%80%99s-bid-for-accreditation.html. In 2013, Kansas City Star columnist Steve Rose wrote about a “private meeting” between area superintendents and Kansas City mayor Sly James, where it was reportedly proposed that KCMPS be divided up between the various “suburban” districts. Rose alleges that James opposed the idea, arguing that a “core district” was important to maintain. This, of course, was not accompanied by public statements from the participants, who did not have the power to make such decisions in any case. That sort of change would have required approval by school boards and voters in all the participating districts, a monumental undertaking, to say the least. Given the history of suburban animosity toward KCMPS, and the very public opposition of area school boards toward the transfer provision, the suggestion that this was a serious proposal strains credulity. See Steve Rose, “Rebirth of Van Horn High School Is a Sign of Hope,” Kansas City Star, August 17, 2013, http://www.kansascity.com/opinion/opn-columns-blogs/steve-rose/article325444/Rebirth-of-Van-Horn-High-School-is-a-sign-of-hope.html.

6. Joe Robertson and Jason Hancock, “Few Families File for Transfers Out of Kansas City School District,” Kansas City Star, March 29, 2014, http://www.kansascity.com/news/politics-government/article341791/Few-families-file-for-transfers-out-of-Kansas-City-school-district.html; Lee’s Summit R-7 School District, “Information about Kansas City Public Schools Loss of Accreditation and Its Impact on Lee’s Summit R-7 Schools,” January 28, 2014, https://lsr7.org/information-about-kansas-city-public-schools-loss-of-accreditation-and-its-impact-on-lees-summit-r-7-schools/.

7. National Public Radio, “562: The Problem We All Live With,” https://www.thisamericanlife.org/radio-archives/episode/562/transcript.

8. A classic case of this occurred in Shelby County, Tennessee, which includes the city of Memphis: Erica Frankenberg, Genevieve Siegel-Hawley, and Sarah Diem, “Segregation by District Boundary Line: The Fragmentation of Memphis Area Schools,” Educational Researcher 46, no. 8 (November 2017): 449–63. Also see Corey Mitchell, “Mostly White Alabama Town Can Split from Diverse District, Court Rules: Judge Says Move Is Racially Motivated,” Education Week, May 9, 2017, https://www.edweek.org/ew/articles/2017/05/10/mostly-white-alabama-town-can-split-from.html; T. Keung Hui and Doss Helms, “A Split for CMS? Lawmakers Want to Study How to Divide NC School Districts,” Charlotte Observer, April 12, 2017, http://www.charlotteobserver.com/news/local/education/article144231634.html; Gillian Edevane and Ian Cull, “Mt. Diablo Unified School District Split Doesn’t Enhance Segregation, according to Independent Review,” NBC Bay Area, August 11, 2017, https://www.nbcbayarea.com/news/local/Mt-Diablo-Unified-School-District-Split-Doesnt-Enhance-Segregation-According-to-Independent-Review-439920893.html. Also see Edward Buendia and Paul Humbert-Fisk, “Building Suburban Dreams: School District Secession and Mayoral Control in Suburban Utah,” Teachers College Record 117, no. 9 (2015): 1–52.

9. Peter Mieszkowski and Edwin S. Mills, “The Causes of Metropolitan Suburbanization,” Journal of Economic Perspectives 7, no. 8 (Summer 1993): 135; John Rennie Short, “Metropolitan USA: Evidence from the 2010 Census,” International Journal of Population Research 2012 (2012), Article ID 207532, 6 pages, http://dx.doi.org/10.1155/2012/207532; Jed Kolko, “2015 U.S. Population Winners: The Suburbs and the Sunbelt,” CityLab, March 24, 2016, https://www.citylab.com/equity/2016/03/2015-us-population-winners-the-suburbs-and-the-sunbelt/475251/.

10. Laura Lippman, Shelley Burns, and Edith McArthur, Urban Schools: The Challenge of Location and Poverty (Washington, DC: National Center for Educational Statistics, 1996), 4–11; quotes are from pages 5 and vi respectively.

11. On this point generally see John L. Rury and Jeffrey E. Mirel, “The Political Economy of Urban Education,” Review of Research in Education 22 (1997): 49–110.

12. Lippman, Burns, and McArthur, Urban Schools, pt. 2.

13. William Julius Wilson, The Truly Disadvantaged: The Inner City, the Underclass, and Public Policy (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1987), pt. 1; William Julius Wilson, When Work Disappears: The World of the New Urban Poor (New York: Vintage Books, 1996), pt. 1; Paul A. Jargowsky, Poverty and Place: Ghettos, Barrios, and the American City (New York: Russell Sage, 1997), chaps. 3–6; Craig Reinarman and Harry G. Levine, “Crack in Context: America’s Latest Demon Drug,” chap. 1 in Crack in America: Demon Drugs and Social Justice, ed. Craig Reinarman and Harry G. Levine (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1997).

14. William H. Frey, “Melting Pot Suburbs: A Census 2000 Study of Suburban Diversity” (Washington, DC: Brookings Institution Press, 2001), 3–12. Also see his book Diversity Explosion: How New Racial Demographics Are Remaking America (Washington, DC: Brookings Institution Press, 2015), chap. 8.

15. Frey, “Melting Pot Suburbs,” 4. A higher percentage of the Asian population moved to the suburbs, even if they numbered fewer than African Americans. Also see Richard Florida, The New Urban Crisis: How Our Cities Are Increasing Inequality (New York: Basic Books, 2017), chap. 8.

16. Mieszkowski and Mills, “Causes of Metropolitan Suburbanization,” 137.

17. On this point see Jack Dougherty, “Shopping for Schools: How Public Education and Private Housing Shaped Suburban Connecticut,” Journal of Urban History 38, no. 2 (March 2012): 205–24.

18. Andrew Wiese, Places of Their Own: African American Suburbanization in the Twentieth Century (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2004), chap. 9. See also Emily Strauss, Death of a Suburban Dream: Race and Schools in Compton, California (Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 2014), chaps. 4–6. Recently, the term “slumburb” has been applied to some of these communities, although it has been critiqued as well. See Kriston Capps, “Minorities and the ‘Slumburbs,’” CityLab, January 21, 2015, https://www.citylab.com/equity/2015/01/minorities-and-the-slumburbs/384680/.

19. Erica Frankenberg, “Understanding Suburban District Transformation: A Typology of Suburban Districts,” in The Resegregation of Suburban Schools: A Hidden Crisis in American Education, ed. Erica Frankenberg and Gary Orfield (Cambridge, MA: Harvard Education Press, 2012), 27–44. On the status of blacks leaving the cities see Deirdre Pfeiffer, “Racial Equity in the Post–Civil Rights Suburbs? Evidence from US Regions 2000–2012,” Urban Studies 53, no. 4 (2016): 799–817. On problems in suburban schools see Amanda Lewis and John Diamond, Despite the Best Intentions: How Racial Inequality Thrives in Good Schools (New York: Oxford University Press, 2015), chaps. 3–5; and Derrick Darby and John L. Rury, The Color of Mind: Why the Origins of the Achievement Gap Matter for Justice (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2018), chap. 7.

20. James E. Ryan, Five Miles Away, a World Apart: One City, Two Schools, and the Story of Educational Opportunity in Modern America (New York: Oxford University Press, 2011), chap. 8; Don Lee, “U.S. Population in Cities Growing Faster Than in Suburbs,” Los Angeles Times, June 28, 2012, http://articles.latimes.com/2012/jun/28/nation/la-na-census-cities-20120628; Eric Jaffe, “Why You Should Be Skeptical of Statistics on City vs. Suburban Population Growth,” CityLab, July 13, 2012, https://www.citylab.com/equity/2012/07/why-you-should-be-skeptical-latest-statistics-city-vs-suburban-population-growth/2571/; Joseph Berger, “Suburbs Try to Prevent an Exodus as Young Adults Move to Cities and Stay,” New York Times, April 16, 2014, https://www.nytimes.com/2014/04/17/nyregion/suburbs-try-to-hold-onto-young-adults-as-exodus-to-cities-appears-to-grow.html; Richard Florida, “The Urban Revival Is Over,” New York Times, September 1, 2017, https://www.nytimes.com/2017/09/01/opinion/cities-suburbs-housing-crime.html.

21. Ann Owens, “Inequality in Children’s Contexts: Income Segregation of Households with and without Children,” American Sociological Review 81, no. 3 (2016): 549–74.

22. Kris Hudson, “Generation Y Prefers Suburban Home over City Condo,” Wall Street Journal, January 21, 2015, https://www.wsj.com/articles/millennials-prefer-single-family-homes-in-the-suburbs-1421896797; David Z. Morris, “Why Millennials Are About to Leave Cities in Droves,” Fortune, March 28, 2016, http://fortune.com/2016/03/28/millennials-leaving-cities/; Haya El Nasser, “American Cities to Millennials: Don’t Leave,” USA Today, December 4, 2012, https://www.usatoday.com/story/news/nation/2012/12/03/american-cities-to-millennials-dont-leave-us/1744357/; Mike Lanza, “Suburb Hating Is Anti-Child,” NewGeography, September 6, 2013, http://www.newgeography.com/content/003916-suburb-hating-anti-child; Alison Bowen, “Relax. Take a Deep Breath. Moving to the Suburbs Is Going to Be OK,” Chicago Tribune, January 12, 2016, http://www.chicagotribune.com/classified/realestate/ct-mre-0117-relocate-suburbs-20160112-story.html. See also Alan M. Berger, “The Suburb of the Future, Almost Here: Millennials Want a Different Kind of Suburban Development That Is Smart, Efficient and Sustainable,” New York Times, September 15, 2017, https://www.nytimes.com/2017/09/15/sunday-review/future-suburb-millennials.html?_r=0.

23. On this problem see Michelle Alexander, The New Jim Crow: Mass Incarceration in the Age of Colorblindness (New York: New Press, 2012), chaps. 2–4; and Becky Pettit, Invisible Men: Mass Incarceration and the Myth of Black Progress (New York: Russell Sage, 2012), chaps. 5 and 6.

24. Florida, New Urban Crisis, chaps. 2–5.

25. Ibid., chap. 8; Rolf Pendall and Carl Hedman, “Worlds Apart: Inequality between America’s Most and Least Affluent Neighborhoods,” Urban Institute, 2015, https://www.urban.org/research/publication/worlds-apart-inequality-between-americas-most-and-least-affluent-neighborhoods; Joel Kotkin, “Geographies of Inequality,” Third Way, August 23, 2016, http://www.thirdway.org/report/geographies-of-inequality.

26. John R. Logan, Elisabeta Minca, and Sinem Adar, “The Geography of Inequality: Why Separate Means Unequal in American Public Schools,” Sociology of Education 85, no. 3 (2012): 287–301.

27. Robert Balfantz and Nettie Legters, Locating the Dropout Crisis: Which High Schools Produce the Nation’s Dropouts? Where Are They Located? Who Attends Them?, Center for Research on the Education of Students Placed at Risk, Johns Hopkins University, Report 70, 2004. More recently there has been a drop in the number of black and Hispanic students attending such institutions, although more than a million still attend them. See Chad Aldeman, “Great News: Fewer Students Attending Dropout Factories,” Education Next, July 6, 2015, http://educationnext.org/great-news-fewer-students-attending-high-school-dropout-factories/.

28. Aaron Tyler Rife, “Shifting Identities in South Kansas City: Hickman Mill’s Transformation from a Suburban to Urban School District” (PhD diss., University of Kansas, 2014), chaps. 4 and 5.

29. Eric Alder, Mará Rose Williams, and Savanna Smith, “KC Area Has Been One of the Most Racially Segregated in America. But Not Anymore,” Kansas City Star, January 6, 2019, https://www.kansascity.com/news/local/article223888475.html. The local segregation index dropped from 71 to 60 in this time span, and the region fell from being the eleventh most segregated metropolis of greater than a million residents to the twenty-seventh.

30. Shortridge, Kansas City and How It Grew, chap. 7. On recent tensions see Mará Rose Williams, “Lee’s Summit Schools Split over Training about Race,” Kansas City Star, September 28, 2018, 4A, and “Lee’s Summit School District Needs to Have a Tough Conversation about Race,” Kansas City Star, September 29, 2018, https://www.kansascity.com/opinion/editorials/article219217130.html. Also see Mará Rose Williams, “Embattled Lee’s Summit Superintendent Resigns,” Kansas City Star, July 24, 2019, 1a, 6a, and the editorial published the next day, “Lee’s Summit Students Are the Losers with Superintendent Dennis Carpenter Resignation,” Kansas City Star, July 25, 2019, https://www.kansascity.com/opinion/editorials/article233068307.html. It states that “Lee’s Summit, like much of the country, has a serious problem with race issues.”

31. Mid-America Regional Council, Fair Housing and Equity Assessment, March 2014, chap. 2, “Segregation.” On the continuing racialization of space in greater Kansas City see Kevin Fox Gotham, Race, Real Estate, and Uneven Development: The Kansas City Experience, 1900–2010, 2nd ed. (Albany: SUNY Press, 2014), conclusions. Also see Shortridge, Kansas City and How It Grew, chap. 7. The liberal views of residents in this area were discussed in oral history interviews: Franklin McFarland, interview with John Rury, April 2012, and David Cord, interview with John Rury, March 1, 2012.

32. Given the fact that white households were a minority in this part of the city, varying between 20 and 30 percent, it seems likely that many of them were also quite poor. Very few Hispanics lived in these census tracts. In largely black neighborhoods with lower levels of poverty, household incomes above $45,000 in 2010 dollars ranged between 30 and 45 percent of all families, suggesting a sizable black middle class. Data drawn from Social Explorer.

33. Shortridge, Kansas City and How It Grew, 182–84. On crime in the area see Robert A. Cronkleton and Ian Cummings, “Two Dead, 8 Injured Days after KC Police Pleaded for Help in Stopping Violence,” Kansas City Star, August 5, 2018, https://www.kansascity.com/news/local/crime/article216130815.html, and Kelsey Ryan and Ian Cummings, “Crime Statistics Reveal Kansas City’s Disturbing Homicide Trend,” Kansas City Star, July 2, 2017, https://www.kansascity.com/news/local/crime/article159204444.html. Poverty levels in particular census tracts were taken from Social Explorer.

34. On the Hispanic community in Kansas City, Kansas, see Shortridge, Kansas City and How It Grew, 146–47.

35. See, for instance, Linda M. Burton, Marybeth Mattingly, Juan Pedroza, and Whitney Welsh, “State of the Union, 2017: Poverty,” Stanford Center on Poverty and Inequality, https://inequality.stanford.edu/sites/default/files/Pathways_SOTU_2017_poverty.pdf.

36. The extent of single-parent households headed by women had increased, mainly in predominantly African American neighborhoods. In 2010, the American Community Survey showed some twenty census tracts in Kansas City, Missouri, where they numbered in excess of 30 percent of all households, and an equivalent number where they represented more than 20 percent. In tracts to the east of the historic ghetto area, their numbers were much lower. Data taken from Social Explorer.

37. For example see the editorial “Low Test Scores Show KC, Hickman Mills School Districts Falling Far Short of Goals,” Kansas City Star, October 6, 2016, 8A.

38. Mará Rose Williams, “Students’ ACT Scores in Missouri and Kansas Beat the National Average,” Kansas City Star, August 26, 2015, http://www.kansascity.com/news/article32441295.html.

39. Joe Robertson, “Scores on ACT Point to Many Disparities,” Kansas City Star, August 21, 2013, http://www.kansascity.com/news/local/article325697/Scores-on-ACT-point-to-many-disparities.html. Although veteran reporter Robertson was careful to discuss the various factors associated with variation in scores, especially the number of students taking the test, the list offered a ready means for ranking institutions across the region for anyone interested in doing so.

40. On local magnet schools see Andrew Vaupel, “These Are the Top High Schools in Missouri and Kansas,” Kansas City Business Journal, April 19, 2016, https://www.bizjournals.com/kansascity/news/2016/04/19/top-public-high-schools-in-missouri-and-kansas.html.

41. Mará Rose Williams, “A Year after Hitting Mark, KC Schools Again Miss Critical State Measure,” Kansas City Star, November 15, 2017, http://www.kansascity.com/news/local/article184867878.html. Although the district has improved its standing somewhat since then, it is unlikely to compete with high-performing suburban districts even if accreditation is eventually restored. See Steve Kraske, “Are KC Public Schools on the Verge of a Breakthrough? Full Accreditation within Reach,” Kansas City Star, November 25, 2018, https://www.kansascity.com/opinion/opn-columns-blogs/steve-kraske/article222039045.html.

42. Regarding the effects of high mobility and its relationship to student poverty see Russell W. Rumberger and Katherine A. Larson, “Student Mobility and the Increased Risk of High School Dropout,” American Journal of Education 107, no. 1 (November 1998): 1–35; Virginia L. Rhodes, “Kids on the Move: The Effects of Student Mobility on NCLB School Accountability Ratings,” Penn GSE Perspectives on Urban Education, 2017, http://www.urbanedjournal.org/archive/volume-3-issue-3-spring-2005/kids-move-effects-student-mobility-nclb-school-accountability-r; and Janet D. Dalton, “Mobility and Student Achievement in High Poverty Schools” (PhD diss., East Tennessee State University, 2013), Electronic Theses and Dissertations, Paper 1159, http://dc.etsu.edu/etd/1159.

43. For a clear summary of the racial dimensions of this see Thomas B. Edsall, “Integration vs. White Intransigence: Separate Has Never Been Equal,” New York Times, July 17, 2019, https://www.nytimes.com/2019/07/17/opinion/integration-politics.html.

44. “On a Metropolitan Solution,” James Hazlett deposition, March 9, 1983, 340–41, Arthur Benson Papers, box 108, Western Historical Collection, University of Missouri–Kansas City.

45. This process is summarized in Shortridge, Kansas City and How It Grew, chap. 7.

46. Basil Zimmer and Amos Hawley, Resistance to Reorganization of School Districts and Government in Metropolitan Areas (Thousand Oaks, CA: Sage, 1966), chaps. 1 and 2; Amos Hawley and Basil Zimmer, The Metropolitan Community: Its People and Government (Thousand Oaks, CA: Sage, 1970), chap. 1. Also see Stephen Macedo, Diversity and Distrust: Civic Education in a Multicultural Democracy (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 2000), pt. 1; and Roger B. Parks and Ronald J. Oakerson, “Regionalism, Localism, and Metropolitan Governance: Suggestions from the Research Program on Local Public Economies,” State and Local Government Review 32, no. 3 (Fall 2000): 169–79.

47. Campbell Scribner, The Fight for Local Control: Schools, Suburbs, and American Democracy (Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, 2016), chaps. 1–4.

48. Hazlett deposition, March 7, 1983, vol. 1, 40–41, Arthur Benson Papers, box 108, Western Historical Collection, University of Missouri–Kansas City.

49. Interestingly, KCMPS superintendent Hazlett used the word “localism” to characterize suburban opposition to interdistrict cooperation. “Argue School District Plan,” Kansas City Times, January 18, 1969.

50. For a discussion of these questions today see David D. Troutt, “Localism and Segregation,” Journal of Affordable Housing & Community Development Law 16, no. 4 (Summer 2007): 323–47; Erika K. Wilson, “The New School Segregation,” Cornell International Law Journal 49, no. 3 (2016): 139–210; and Richard C. Schragger, “The Limits of Localism,” Michigan Law Review 100, no. 2 (November 2001): 371–472. Regarding opportunity hoarding in this context see John L. Rury and Argun Saatcioglu, “Opportunity Hoarding,” in The Wiley Blackwell Encyclopedia of Race, Ethnicity, and Nationalism, ed. John Stone, Dennis M. Rutledge, Anthony D. Smith, Polly S. Rizova, and Xiaoshuo Hou (New York: Wiley Blackwell, 2015), 1–3, https://doi.org/10.1002/9781118663202.wberen435.

51. For elaboration of these comparisons see John L. Rury and Aaron Rife, “Race, Schools and Opportunity Hoarding: Evidence from a Post-war American Metropolis,” History of Education 47, no. 1 (January 2018): 87–107.

52. Ibid., 96–105.

53. Joe Feagin, Systemic Racism: A Theory of Oppression (New York: Routledge, 2006), chap. 1.

54. On local liberalism, KCMPS superintendent Hazlett referred to Johnson County “bleeding hearts” who offered gratuitous advice on racial questions to city school leaders. See James Hazlett deposition, March 9, 1983, vol. 3, 320, Arthur Benson Papers, box 108, Western Historical Collection, University of Missouri–Kansas City. Regarding the role of shared norms as a form of social capital see James S. Coleman, “Social Capital in the Creation of Human Capital,” American Journal of Sociology 94, Supplement: Organizations and Institutions: Sociological and Economic Approaches to the Analysis of Social Structure (1988): S104–5; on limitations to this conceptualization and a widely cited review of relevant literature see Alejandro Portes, “Social Capital: Its Origins and Applications in Modern Sociology,” Annual Review of Sociology 24 (1998): 18–21.

55. Clifford Hooker and Van D. Mueller, Equal Treatment to Equals: A New Structure for Public Schools in Kansas City and St. Louis Metropolitan Areas; A Report to the Missouri School District Reorganization Commission (Jefferson City, MO, 1969); Bi-State Committee on Education of the Kansas and Missouri Advisory Committees to the US Commission on Civil Rights, Crisis and Opportunity: Education in Greater Kansas City, summary edition, 1977; Joshua Dunn, Complex Justice: The Case of Missouri v. Jenkins (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 2008), chaps. 2 and 3.

56. Donna Gardner and John L. Rury, “Suburban Opposition to District Reorganization: The 1968 Spainhower Commission and Metropolitan Kansas City and St. Louis,” Urban Review 46, no. 1 (March 2014): 125–45. My thanks to Professor Gardner for her meticulous research on these questions.

57. “Area Districts Wary of School Merger,” Kansas City Times, January 26, 1977, 1B; “North District: No Part in Desegregation,” Kansas City Times, February 9, 1977, 4A.

58. Robertson, “Lawsuit Likely.”

59. Douglas S. Massey, Categorically Unequal: The American Stratification System (New York: Russell Sage Foundation, 2007), chaps. 3 and 4; Edsall, “Integration vs. White Intransigence.”

60. On its expression in this era see Eric Foner, The Story of American Freedom (New York: W. W. Norton, 1998), chaps. 11 and 12.

61. Linda Darling Hammond, “Race, Inequality and Educational Accountability: The Irony of No Child Left Behind,” Race, Ethnicity and Education 10, no. 3 (September 2007): 245–60. Also see Adam Gamoran, “Educational Inequality in the Wake of No Child Left Behind,” Spencer Foundation Award Lecture, Association for Public Policy and Management, November 7, 2013, http://www.appam.org/assets/1/7/Inequality_After_NCLB.pdf.

62. On inequality between districts see Ann Owens, “Income Segregation between Districts and Inequality in Students’ Achievement,” Sociology of Education 91, no. 1 (2018): 1–27. On the importance of extending choice to the suburbs see James E. Ryan, Five Miles Away, a World Apart: One City, Two Schools, and Educational Inequality in Modern America (New York: Oxford University Press, 2010), chap. 8.

63. On the impact of Milliken see Jennifer Jellison Holme, Kara S. Finnigan, and Sarah Diem, “Challenging Boundaries, Changing Fate? Metropolitan Inequality and the Legacy of Milliken,” Teachers College Record 118, no. 3 (2016): 1–40.

64. Genevieve Siegel-Hawley, When the Fences Come Down: Twenty-First-Century Lessons from Metropolitan School Desegregation (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 2016), pt. 2.

65. http://www.tcrecord.org/library, ID no. 18247. An overview of the eight best-known such plans can be found at http://school-diversity.org/pdf/ASW-interdistrict.pdf, compiled by Jennifer Jellison Holme and Amy Stuart Wells. On the status of school desegregation nationally see Sean F. Reardon and Ann Owens, “60 Years after Brown: Trends and Consequences of School Segregation,” Annual Review of Sociology 40 (2014): 199–218.

66. “Suburbs Reject Transfers,” Kansas City Times, June 5, 1986, 1A. This began as a lawsuit to establish such a program and involved eleven districts on the Missouri side of the border. Two districts, Independence and North Kansas City, expressed openness to the idea once the lawsuit was resolved; the others rejected the notion wholly or refused to comment on it.

67. On these programs and others see http://www.onenationindivisible.org/wp-content/uploads/2012/09/ONI_Interdistrict_Overview.PPT.pdf. Also see Kara S. Finnigan, Jennifer Jellison Holme, Myron Orfield, Tom Luce, Sarah Diem, Allison Mattheis, and Nadine D. Hylton, “Regional Educational Policy Analysis: Rochester, Omaha, and Minneapolis’ Inter-District Arrangements,” Education Policy 29, no. 5 (2015), at http://journals.sagepub.com/doi/abs/10.1177/0895904813518102.

68. On the history of the program in St. Louis, including suburban ambivalence about it, see Marquita L. Bowers-Brown, “The St. Louis Desegregation Transfer Program: Do African American Students Perform Better in an Integrated Suburban Setting?” (PhD diss., University of Missouri at St. Louis, 2015), chap. 3. Also see Elisa Crouch, “St. Louis Desegregation Program Headed for Phase Out,” St. Louis Post-Dispatch, June 10, 2016, http://www.stltoday.com/news/local/education/st-louis-desegregation-program-headed-for-phase-out/article_9dadfa4c-3d49-5b80-b6ec-2b1c03d2e5c7.html. On a smaller but similar program in Boston see Susan Eaton, The Other Boston Busing Story: What’s Won and Lost across the Boundary Line (New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 2001), chap. 7.

69. Reardon and Owens, “60 Years after Brown,” 207.

70. See, for example, Caitlin Howley and Kimberly Hambrick, “Interdistrict Cooperatives: They Improve Cost-Effectiveness and Make Common Cents,” District Administration, July 1, 2011, https://www.districtadministration.com/article/interdistrict-cooperatives.

71. Chastity Pratt Dawsey and Mike Wilkinson, “School Choice, Metro Detroit’s New White Flight,” Center for Michigan: Bridge Magazine, September 13, 2016, http://www.mlive.com/news/detroit/index.ssf/2016/09/school_choice_metro_detroits_n.html; Urban Institute Student Transportation Working Group, “Student Transportation and Educational Access: How Students Get to School in Denver, Detroit, New Orleans, New York City, and Washington, DC,” Urban Institute, February 2017, https://www.urban.org/sites/default/files/publication/88481/student_transportation_educational_access_0.pdf.

72. Raj Chetty, Nathaniel Hendren, and Lawrence F. Katz, “The Effects of Exposure to Better Neighborhoods on Children: New Evidence from the Moving to Opportunity Experiment,” American Economic Review 106, no. 4: 855–902, https://doi.org/10.1257/aer.20150572.

73. Mathew Desmond, Evicted: Poverty and Profit in the American City (New York: Crown, 2016), 308–12.

74. Siegel-Hawley, When the Fences Come Down, chap. 3.

75. On this point seen Derrick Darby and John L. Rury, The Color of Mind: Why the Origins of the Achievement Gap Matters for Justice (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2018), chap. 6.

76. Jennifer B. Ayscue and Gary Orfield, “School District Lines Stratify Educational Opportunity by Race and Poverty,” Race and Social Problems 7, no. 1 (March 2015): 5–20. On the problem of fragmented school districts in a metropolitan area with less community fragmentation see Shaina Cavazos, “Racial Bias and the Crumbling of a City,” Atlantic, August 17, 2016, https://www.theatlantic.com/education/archive/2016/08/indianapolis-school-districts/496145/.

77. For a recent review of themes in advancing equity in education see Erica Frankenberg, Lilliana M. Garces, and Megan Hopkins, “Which Way Forward? A Comprehensive Approach for Advancing Equity through Integration,” in School Integration Matters: Research-Based Strategies to Advance Equity, ed. Erica Frankenberg, Lilliana M. Garces, and Megan Hopkins (New York: Teachers College Press, 2016), 215–22, although reorganizing districts or moving students across district lines are not major points of emphasis.

78. David F. Labaree, “Public Goods, Private Goods: The American Struggle over Educational Goals,” American Educational Research Journal 34, no. 1 (January 1997): 39–81.

APPENDIX

1. John L. Rury, Argun Saatcioglu, and William P. Skorupski, “Expanding Secondary Attainment in the United States, 1940–80: A Fixed-Effects Panel Regression Model,” Historical Methods 43, no. 3 (July–September 2010): 151, fn 2.

2. See, for instance, American Psychological Association, Discussing Discrimination, at http://www.apa.org/helpcenter/keita-qa.aspx.