3

FALL FROM GRACE

The Transformation of an Urban School System

Speaking to some 340 new teachers at the start of the school year in 1962, Kansas City, Missouri, school superintendent James Hazlett urged them not to believe reports that local suburban schools were better than his district’s. The city schools had long been considered the best in the region, especially the system’s crown jewel, Southwest High. Noting a “trend towards the suburbs,” Hazlett acknowledged that outlying schools were beginning to get more attention, drawing families out of the city with the promise of superior education. In particular, he complained that real estate agents “sometimes say that schools are better in Johnson County.”1 In the past, Kansas City school leaders compared their institutions to those in Omaha, Des Moines, and St. Louis, systems they believed to be peers. The upstart suburban districts, on the other hand, hardly seemed worthy of consideration. But a new day was dawning.2

Hazlett objected strongly to the idea of suburban superiority and even arranged a meeting with real estate agents to set the record straight. Observing that people often moved “for status and prestige,” he declared that “you can’t necessarily apply the word ‘better’” to suburban schools.3 Unfortunately, it was not clear that everyone agreed, as the district was already losing white students. In the years to come, competition from suburban districts would become a major problem for Kansas City, as larger numbers of families left the central city in search of newer, reputedly better, and predominantly white schools. Although Hazlett was loath to admit it, in the early 1960s, questions of race and poverty loomed large in the district’s future. Before long they would dictate a dramatic reversal of fortune for a school system that only recently had started to hit its stride.

The “crisis” of big-city school systems became a familiar trope in American education during the postwar era.4 A similar process of change occurred in metropolitan Kansas City, at least in the eyes of many observers. In particular, the Kansas City, Missouri, Public Schools (KCMPS) underwent a transformation of sorts during the 1960s and ’70s. While it was widely considered a venerable school district during the immediate postwar years, by 1980 the reputation of KCMPS had declined precipitously. Like urban educational institutions elsewhere, the public schools of Kansas City suffered a dramatic fall in public perceptions of their quality.

Race and poverty, of course, became major components of these changes. Kansas City’s African Americans nearly doubled their share of the city’s population between 1950 and 1970, from around 11 percent to 22 percent. As blacks moved southward into areas and schools long occupied by working-class whites, most prior residents departed for suburban districts, especially those located within the city’s borders.5 A growing number of KCMPS institutions became predominantly or wholly African American in composition. By 1970 a slight majority of the system’s students were black, and ten years later the number of white students had declined precipitously.

Predominantly African American institutions in Kansas City reported lower graduation rates and test scores than other schools, as they did elsewhere in the country. As district leaders argued at the time, this was largely attributable to the extreme, concentrated deprivation typically found in black neighborhoods, along with historically low adult education levels. At the same time, city school budgets declined as a result of drops in property tax income and state aid. Much of this was linked to plummeting house values, businesses departing the city, and the ill repair of rental properties in slum neighborhoods. If the city schools were in “crisis,” it was largely due to the changing circumstances of their settings, partly a consequence of policy choices abetting the flight of human and material resources from the urban core.6

For many black students, on the other hand, educational opportunities offered by KCMPS were considerably better than previous generations of their families had experienced, especially those arriving from the South. African American graduation rates improved steadily overall, as they did across the country. Indeed, as noted earlier, black attainment levels were better than those of whites when factors such as poverty and family structure were statistically controlled.7 But public opinion nevertheless held that the city schools had declined significantly in effectiveness and safety.

Despite their willingness to allow busing to relieve overcrowding, the predominantly white and conservative school board in Kansas City consistently refused to embrace racial integration as a district goal. Their steadfast resistance to black community demands for system-wide desegregation only fueled more such concerns. White flight eventually proved endemic once KCMPS was required to begin desegregating throughout the district. This set the stage for the historic Jenkins v. Missouri desegregation case, which prescribed a remedy that did little to alter levels of racial segregation in the schools or popular perceptions of them.8

This chapter examines changes in the KCMPS schools in greater detail. It addresses questions about the effects of board opposition to the very idea of desegregation, and popular reactions to attendant patterns of change in the district. What were key moments in its transition from a system serving a racially diverse population to one with a predominantly African American student body? What was the role of the district’s leaders in these events, and what could they have done to alter the course of change? How did the process of white flight unfold, and what sorts of conflict did it represent? What were responses of African Americans to changes in the schools? And how did the city’s institutions ultimately compare to emerging suburban school systems? The following account of the district’s changing fortunes addresses these and other matters, along with their social and political consequences.

A Moment of Prominence

The decade of the 1950s can be considered among the best of times for urban schools in the United States. With the return of veterans following the war, the economy boomed and so did the birthrate. Education systems everywhere expanded, and big-city schools, which historically had greater resources and higher-achieving students than other institutions, benefited. In particular, urban high schools were widely judged to be superior, both with respect to academic offerings and extracurricular activities. They were larger than typical rural or suburban institutions, at least early in the decade, and there were more of them in major urban centers. Outlying communities may have had reputedly good schools, but as a rule their counterparts in the cities were widely regarded as the best.9

Much of this was due to the scale of enrollment differences between districts. In 1951 KCMPS enrolled 51,910 students, from a school-age population numbering over 86,000. The next largest district in Jackson County was Independence, at 6,341, and of the eleven remaining only Raytown had more than two thousand. In Clay County, north of the river, the North Kansas City district enrolled 4,714 students, and Liberty and Excelsior Springs a little over a thousand each. High schools in most suburban districts were tiny, with only Independence and Raytown enrolling more than 250 students in Jackson County, and the latter counted fewer than 600. In Clay County only North Kansas City had more than 300 secondary students.10 Generally speaking, smaller schools offered few electives or opportunities for more advanced instruction. This meant that they typically provided fewer resources to help students excel academically, including specialized clubs and scholastic competitions. Moreover, many ambitious teachers aspired to work in the big city, where they typically could teach more advanced courses, work with better facilities, and make more money.11

In many respects, senior high schools were the crown jewels of educational systems, flagship institutions from which only about half of American youth graduated at midcentury. Bigger was widely considered better, because larger schools offered greater curricular variety and more clubs, teams, and other activities. With nearly twelve thousand students enrolled, Kansas City’s senior high schools averaged about fifteen hundred students each, although there was some variation in size. They differed in reputation as well, which tended to reflect neighborhood characteristics and clientele. Near the city’s geographic midpoint, Central High was its oldest public secondary institution and enjoyed a venerable academic tradition. Southwest High, located adjacent to the affluent J. C. Nichols development of Sunset Hills, was the most scholastically renowned.12 It typically registered the most National Merit Scholarship winners each year. Paseo Academy, just to the south of Central, was also celebrated for strong academic programs and an architecturally impressive building. Other schools, such as East, Northeast, Southeast, and Westport, served particular neighborhoods. Lincoln was the city’s African American high school and had achieved distinction in science education. Separate technical schools, R. T. Coles and Manual High, also existed for black and white students respectively.13 Altogether, KCMPS provided students with many options when it came to completing their education, especially for whites.

This is not to say that the system did not have problems, with racially segregated and inequitable schooling perhaps the most obvious. African Americans had long suffered unequal resources in their institutions, and black parents sued the district in 1952 to end overcrowding in segregated elementary schools.14 When James Hazlett became superintendent in 1955, he confronted these and manifold other difficulties that faced many city districts at the time. Because of the postwar baby boom and in-migration, overall enrollment expanded by about a thousand students annually, adding the equivalent a new school each year. But most new students to the district were black, as white enrollment leveled off in the later 1950s. Overcrowding was a national problem, but in Kansas City it mainly affected African Americans, as whites began to leave the city schools for the suburbs.15

At the same time, there was a growing teacher shortage, and the district struggled to recruit and retain educators. In 1956 it dropped the age limit for new teachers, encouraging married women to apply for the first time and urging retirees to return.16 But competition for teachers increased, and as many as two-thirds of those who were offered positions with KCMPS took jobs elsewhere. The Kansas City Star lamented the comparatively low salaries offered by city schools and advocated making teacher compensation equivalent to that in Omaha, Des Moines, and other big cities. The problem was temporarily resolved when a $27 million ($235 million in 2015 dollars) bond issue was approved by voters in 1956, providing funds for new buildings and budget relief to raise teacher salaries.17 Record budgets were registered in subsequent years, permitting the district to lower class sizes and recruit new staff members. The overcrowding crisis was temporarily averted.

Hazlett also faced issues particular to Kansas City and other districts with a legacy of racial segregation. When he assumed office, KCMPS had just begun the process of dismantling a dual education system that had existed for many decades. By all accounts the process went fairly smoothly and helped resolve overcrowding issues in black institutions. But most previously white schools that gained black students registered relatively small numbers of them. As a result, little meaningful integration was actually accomplished. While there were complaints about black teachers losing jobs as enrollments shifted, most were eventually rehired. By and large, long-standing residential segregation dictated enrollment patterns, since KCMPS remained committed to the concept of neighborhood schools. The fact that the shift to a system that did not explicitly dictate placement by race was accomplished without major discord, however, was taken as a hopeful sign for the future.18

As the successful bond levy and growing budgets suggested, along with apparently widespread support for ending de jure segregation, public satisfaction with KCMPS was quite high during the latter part of the 1950s. The district was overseen by a six-member “silk stocking” board, usually elected unopposed and mainly composed of wealthy, civic-minded individuals, so there was little controversy in governance.19 Despite problems endemic to most public schools at the time, its administrators were widely viewed as competent and forward looking. “Because of Hazlett and board policies of recent years,” the Star declared in 1959, “the Kansas City Schools operate from a position of strength.”20

The system’s positive reputation had been affirmed four years earlier, when residents of the tiny elementary district of Sugar Creek voted overwhelmingly to be annexed by KCMPS, rejecting entreaties from neighboring Independence. Sugar Creek was the site of a large industrial complex near the Missouri River, and thus offered considerable tax enhancements to its suitors. Its constituents were clearly impressed by KCMPS plans to build Van Horn High School nearby, but they also noted the district’s generally good reputation. Within a few years two additional small elementary districts approved annexation by KCMPS in the same area, but that development marked an end to the district’s physical expansion for quite some time.21 The public view of KCMPS would begin to change markedly in the decade ahead.

Race, Poverty, and Education: The Beginnings

Like public education systems across Missouri, KCMPS had long maintained racially segregated schools, but it moved quickly to desegregate following the Brown decision in 1954. The board eliminated the dual system by establishing new school boundaries, although the reassignment of students irrespective of race did not occur until 1955, starting in the fall. When the new school year began, forty-three of the district’s ninety-two schools had both black and white students, although the numbers of either group that was in the minority were small in most cases. Still, the Kansas City Call observed that “the school board has done well as far as the integration of students is concerned.” The mixing of black and white teachers was another matter and would take some time.22

While the integration of high schools in other cities sometimes led to conflict between students, the process apparently went relatively smoothly in Kansas City.23 The R. T. Coles vocational programs were shifted to Manual High, which almost immediately became a predominantly black institution. Located near the city’s growing black community, Central High also received more than a hundred African American students. As the principal noted after a year, somewhat prematurely, “Those of us who have been privileged to live it have known the determination of students and faculty that the integration program should succeed. . . . Never once did the leaders of our student body fail to stand fast in their determination that it would succeed.”24 Within a few years, however, integration had turned tenuous, as Central became a predominantly black institution. Still, the initial stage of desegregation was widely considered a momentous step, especially for the schools most immediately affected.

Integration appeared sustainable for a time at some schools, but it was relatively short-lived in most. Most of Central’s black students came from impoverished neighborhoods near the city’s center, and at the start of the desegregation policy they represented about 10 percent of the city’s population. That changed dramatically thereafter, and within four years the school was overcrowded and 70 percent black. Students were given the option of attending Northeast or Van Horn as Central’s numbers mounted.25 Apparently whites many did choose those options, as Central soon became nearly wholly African American, surpassing Lincoln in the number of black students it served.

These changes reflected the movement of African American families southward as their community expanded, but it also meant that whites were moving out of the area. Racial segregation proceeded rapidly as a consequence. Desegregation certainly represented greater opportunities for students in the city’s historically black schools, many of which had become extremely overcrowded.26 But the movement of these students into historically white schools typically resulted in a process of racial transition that unfolded quickly. This experience was akin to that of many urban schools nationally, as they shifted from white to predominantly black in fairly short order.27

The process of racial change in Kansas City can be seen in maps 3.1 through 3.3, which illustrate the geographic expansion of African American settlement in relation to KCMPS’s principal secondary institutions. By 1960 predominantly African American neighborhoods with high levels of poverty surrounded Central High but had not yet reached Paseo or schools to the south of it. Ten years later they extended south of Paseo but not yet as far as Southeast High, which was beginning to undergo racial change. By 1980 black settlement had expanded all the way to Raytown and started to move into the Center and Hickman Mills school districts. By that time the city’s major public high schools east of Troost and south of downtown had become nearly all black, and KCMPS’s student population was about two-thirds African American. Kansas City’s black community had expanded its geographic footprint significantly but still remained largely confined to highly segregated neighborhoods and institutions.28 Concentrated poverty existed in pockets throughout much of the area.

Much of this process of change reflected the unwillingness of whites to attend schools with majority black student bodies. In the fall of 1955 the district expected more than 900 white students to attend such schools, but fewer than 120 showed up.29 By 1960 most black secondary students still attended Lincoln, Manual, or Central, schools located in the city center, while only about 10 percent of new students entering East High were African American, and a slightly higher proportion at West.30 Institutions serving racially stable neighborhoods occupied by relatively affluent whites remained seemingly immune from integration until the 1970s.31 This included Southwest High (located far from any black neighborhoods), Northeast, and newly opened Van Horn on the largely white and blue-collar East Side.32

MAPS 3.1–3.3 Kansas City public high schools and expansion of African American settlement, 1960, 1970, and 1980

As the number of black students grew in the central and southeast parts of the district, whites left the system. This is evident in table 3.1, which provides KCMPS student population figures and the proportion African American in five-year intervals. Several patterns are evident. After climbing in the 1950s, the number of white students leveled off at a little more than fifty-two thousand in 1958 and declined thereafter. African Americans represented the major source of enrollment growth in the years to follow.

White departures were fairly gradual through the mid-1960s, at about a thousand per year, but then accelerated markedly. The reduction in enrollment occurred in the face of historically high fertility rates associated with the postwar baby boom, so the actual numbers leaving likely were somewhat higher. Total district enrollment plateaued in 1965, reaching a peak of nearly seventy-five thousand three years later. Black numbers began to decline in the early 1970s, owing both to declining birthrates and out-migration. With both black and white enrollments falling significantly in the later 1970s, the district stood at about half its postwar peak at the end of the decade, with a clear African American majority.33

TABLE 3.1 KCMPS enrollment by race, 1955–1980

*Students from other minority groups were counted as white prior to the mid-1970s.

Sources: KCMPS, Department of Accountability and Research, Twenty-Second Annual Report of the Progress of Desegregation in the Kansas City Public Schools, 1976. Joshua Dunn, Complex Justice, 63.

These system-wide changes accompanied a widening process of transition in many of the district’s schools. Central and Paseo, located near the city center, experienced rapid integration.34 As indicated in table 3.2, Paseo High became predominantly African American in 1965. Fueled by migration from the South and high fertility rates, the city’s African American population expanded from 55,682 to 83,130 during the fifties, predominantly in central-city areas increasingly perceived as black neighborhoods. Many of these migrants were very poor, arriving from destitute conditions in the South-Central states, and with little formal education or apposite experience in contemporary urban settings.35 This movement continued into the next decade as the black population increased to more than 110,000, pushing southward along the infamous metaphorical wall at Troost Avenue.

The dynamics of racial change in schools located in these neighborhoods is clearly evident in table 3.2, which reveals transitions in the student bodies of three secondary institutions. They included Southeast High, just a few miles south of Paseo. By 1969, it too had become predominantly black, and its academic reputation began to change as well. As these figures suggest, along with those for Paseo and Southwest Junior High, inducing white flight from KCMPS schools did not require large numbers of African American students. Departures jumped in the two senior highs when the number of blacks reached a tenth or so. The peak of out-migration, however, appears to have occurred when the number of black students approached a third. This was a widely acknowledge “tipping point” in studies of desegregation and neighborhood change, including research on KCMPS, and district leaders were well aware of it.36

TABLE 3.2 Transfers from select KCMPS schools, 1962–1973

Source: Arthur Benson Papers, SHSMO Research Center–Kansas City, UMKC Archives, box 320, file I.R.2. Data from Central High School was also collected. Its student population was more than 97 percent African American by 1961 and registered just 500 transfers in the next twelve years, 63 percent to schools outside the metro area and 20 percent to other KCMPS schools.

Much of this movement, of course, was likely motivated by changes in these students’ neighborhoods as much as the schools. But there can be little doubt that the majority of transfers were requested by white students. A study of Paseo students showed that large numbers of whites transferred to Westport or Southwest High Schools, even though district officials did not approve in principle.37 It also was quite clear that many others were leaving the district altogether.

The only secondary schools that could maintain a relatively stable level of integration for much of this period were Westport, East, and West, institutions located in predominantly white neighborhoods that eventually included black residents in their catchment areas. Although their numbers are not included in table 3.2, Westport and East served a student body that was about 20 to 30 percent African American in 1969 (West opened a little later). The numbers of black students thus did not reach levels that threatened white majorities in these schools, and the direction of black settlement was south rather than west or east.38 Consequently, white flight was less evident in these cases, as the ratio of racial groups remained more or less constant. It proved very difficult to maintain such a balance elsewhere, however, especially in light of the KCMPS school board’s dogged resistance to system-wide desegregation.

By 1970 the KCMPS population was majority African American by a slight margin, but most black students in the system attended schools in neighborhoods east of Troost Avenue where they lived. The result was a highly segregated school district that clearly reflected the racially divided residential geography of the city. Despite a study of the system conducted by urban education expert Robert Havighurst, and a desegregation proposal offered by Hazlett in 1968 to somewhat racially balance the schools, the KCMPS board steadfastly remained committed to neighborhood schools. Given the high degree of residential segregation, this meant that schools also would remain segregated, although the board did permit continued busing to relieve overcrowding in certain cases.

Perhaps reflecting a commitment to “defend” predominantly white institutions such as those feeding into Southwest and Van Horn, and fearful of white flight, KCMPS leaders expressed no interest in busing plans like those undertaken at the time in Charlotte, Denver, and other cities.39 This offered no encouragement to African American community members interested in sending their children to other schools in the system, and it also abetted opposition to desegregation among whites. There can be little doubt, moreover, that growing status anxieties motivated much of the latter sentiment, often reflecting racist presumptions about black families and their children. The result was a situation rife with growing tension and the potential for conflict, hardly a recipe for attracting new families to the district’s schools.40 Hazlett’s retirement in 1969 created a void in leadership that did not help matters. Following his departure after nearly fifteen years at the helm of the system, a “revolving door” of new superintendents attempted to manage the district’s mounting problems.41

Racial Boundaries and Institutional Change

As noted in chapter 2 , racial boundaries were clearly established in the minds of Kansas City residents in the postwar era, and they frequently impacted the lives of students. Susan Hilliard had been rounded up by police as a child, and continued to experience such mistreatment as a teenager. Among the first African Americans to attend East High, she recalled walking with her friends to school and “routinely” suffering harassment by the police when they reached predominantly white neighborhoods. Marvin Daniels remembered being threatened by white youth.42 Susan’s brother was a popular musician at East but was hassled by white students who resented the attention he received. He encountered different kinds of boundaries, those that governed the types of friendships that were acceptable, especially with young women.43

Like Susan, Stanley West also recalled boundaries that barred blacks from the west side of Troost and neighborhoods to the north. He started high school at Manual but transferred to East in the later 1950s and recalled belligerence from some of the white students there. It was intermittent, however, and “nothing that I didn’t really expect.” He was warned at the end of his sophomore year “not to come back” by a group of them, but ignored such threats and graduated two years later. He found teachers at East to be very supportive, and they helped him feel welcome and to succeed academically. It appears that the staff there worked diligently to accommodate the relatively small number of African Americans they served, and it paid benefits in student experiences.44

Marvin Daniels, on the other hand, had a different experience as one of the first African American students to attend Paseo High, where he encountered hostility and indifference from whites and struggled to find friends. His family had moved from rural Kansas, but that hardly made him feel welcome in Kansas City. After a couple of years, he transferred to predominantly black Manual High, the city’s public vocational school, where he felt more comfortable, before ultimately finishing at Central.45 Patrick Elard also struggled in KCMPS schools when his family arrived in the late 1940s. He was put back two grades because a meager education in Mississippi had left him barely able to read and write. He also recalled the clear boundaries that demarcated racially segregated neighborhoods and institutions at the time. Elard eventually dropped out of high school to join the military, but later graduated from college on the GI Bill and became a teacher.46 Like West, Daniels, and Hilliard, he managed to navigate the city’s segregated education system to a successful conclusion.

White decisions to leave changing neighborhoods reflected fear of falling property values and academically weakened schools, but outright racism too. Popular theories about innate racial differences in intelligence and morality, dating from the nineteenth century, continued to exert a telling influence, particularly for those with less education. The growing use of terms such as “culturally deprived” or “culturally disadvantaged” to describe poor children, typically by social scientists and public officials, was meant to sidestep the question of innate or genetic differences in achievement. But it did not appear to have changed public sentiments as a practical matter. By the mid-1960s these terms became firmly associated with black and brown children, especially in the big cities. As such, they often signaled new dimensions of supposed inferiority, registered in terms of culture and behavior.47 And they quickly found expression in Kansas City. As one white parent declared in response to the 1964 busing plan, “culturally, our children will not benefit from being reassigned.”48 Parent groups at predominantly white institutions were quick to express such sentiments whenever busing proposals seemed likely to affect their schools.

District officials did not always help matters. In 1963 representatives from KCMPS declared at a Jefferson City hearing that “some 31,000 culturally disadvantaged students” were served by city schools. Establishment of a “Division of Urban Education” to focus on the problem suggested that additional resources and remedial assistance were required for these students’ success. Statements such as these signaled that schools with significant numbers of such students could hardly be expected to attain high levels of academic excellence. Eventually programs were developed to assign struggling poor students to schools in “more advantaged neighborhoods.”49 This was intended to help children in such circumstances but reflected a logic that suggested predominantly poor and black schools were somehow naturally inferior.

Changes that occurred at venerable Central High School were symptomatic of a shift in perceived quality that eventually affected the system as a whole. The racial composition of the student body played a role in this, but so did the teaching staff. At the start of the decade only a dozen of Central’s seventy-nine teachers were African American, but by 1965 their numbers had increased to nearly half. This was due to increasing staff turnover, partly a result of district efforts to racially balance its teaching force, required by federal authorities and a goal of black community leaders.50 But it also reflected the priorities of many educators. Patrick Elard observed that more experienced white teachers left Central as it became a predominantly black institution serving many students from impoverished neighborhoods, and their replacements included some “who could not get jobs” otherwise and were “not very skilled” at handling children.51 Veteran teachers became tougher to recruit, as many avoided schools with “deprived” students, and others were attracted by higher pay in the suburbs. Those that did come often were younger, with less experience. As the student body shifted, consequently, so did the faculty, and this eventually occurred across the district.52 Whatever the cause, a more racially diverse and less veteran teaching staff contributed to perceptions of a decline in excellence, however unwarranted in many cases.

As the district moved teachers to address federal guidelines regarding faculty integration, parents and teachers sometimes protested.53 Concerned about the pace of change, district teachers invited the National Education Association to investigate the system. While the ensuing report did not suggest that problems had reached “crisis” proportions, it did note “serious deficiencies” in some schools, including the use of “obsolete and inadequate facilities” and “the increasing problem of attracting and holding qualified educators.”54

Students sometimes had similar concerns. In the mid-1960s Manny Stevens chose to attend Central rather than East High, where his siblings went, but later regretted the decision because of teacher turnover at the predominantly black school. His family had moved from Louisiana, where black schools had been significantly underfunded, but found educational experiences in Kansas City to be just as problematic. He encountered conflict in the white neighborhoods around East but felt that Central “didn’t hold a candle” to his sister’s and brother’s academic programs. Elard also remarked that the educational climate at Central declined significantly in the later 1960s.55 These observations were similar to other African American complaints about neglect at schools serving a predominantly black and poor clientele.56

Meanwhile, a number of other changes occurred. Participation in extracurricular activities at Central dropped substantially, a development also noted by Stevens and clearly evident in yearbooks from the era. This likely reflected the growing number of students from impoverished households, where such activities may have been less prioritized. The formal curriculum began to shift as well. In 1965 a new wing was added to the building for vocational training and to relieve overcrowding. In subsequent years practical nursing, electronics, and military science programs became more prominent, signaling a move toward job preparation options. This was consistent with national proposals for predominantly black secondary schools, to prepare students for skilled manual labor, but also contributed to the idea that African American students could not meet rigorous academic standards. Eventually Central would be identified as an academically underperforming school, one serving many students labeled “educationally disadvantaged.”57 By the end of the decade Paseo and Southeast would follow similar trajectories, even if they did not offer as many vocational options.

At the same time that questions of academic quality came into play, recurring reports of vandalism and school discipline problems gained public attention. In 1965 the Star reported that KCMPS was sixth in the nation on a per capita basis for destruction of school property, incurring nearly $80,000 (more than $600,000 in 2015 dollars) in damage during the previous year. The incidents went up thereafter, although predominantly white Southwest High reported the highest number, followed by Paseo.58 In 1968 the district established a special school for “students who are disciplinary problems,” to help “preserve order in the regular classroom.”59 An estimated $400,000 ($2.5 million in 2015 dollars) was spent on alarms, other security measures, and a special unit of guards trained by the police to address such problems, and eventually vandalism subsided. Although a district study found no statistical relationship to poverty or ethnicity in these incidents, it was not difficult for many observers to imagine that such patterns did indeed exist.60 In 1975, following yet another upsurge in damage, one Star commentary speculated that it was “one of many symptoms of a school district being deserted by upper middle class families.”61 Given the district’s history of racial tensions and the widespread poverty in neighborhoods it served, statements such as this clearly implied that white students were not the problem.

These developments were accompanied by growing fiscal challenges for KCMPS. Most of its budget came from property taxes, and much of the housing in the district had declined in relative value, partly because it was located in the oldest part of the city. A 1980 survey of residential property in the district reported that over half the homes had been built prior to 1940 and 70 percent before 1950.62 This, of course, made them less competitive with new developments in suburban districts. Values also declined in tandem with the growth of the dual housing market historically associated with the African American community.63 In particular, the number of residential properties assessed at less than $80,000 (in 2015 dollars) jumped significantly. In 1960 there were twenty-seven census tracts where at least 70 percent of residential properties fell into that category; ten years later the number of such tracts had increased to thirty-six, including the neighborhoods around Paseo and Southeastern High Schools. Combined with variable or declining state aid, partly a function of serving fewer students, and rapidly declining values in downtown commercial property due to competition from suburban malls, this created serious budget problems for the district.64

All this put the schools in a precarious position. As early as 1964 public perceptions of the system’s quality were beginning to slip, as a survey of local executives found its facilities “less than adequate.”65 Federal Title 1 funding subsequently helped but represented only about 10 percent of the budget, partly due to rising educational costs. A citywide sales tax increase of a half cent provided additional funds for a few years in the mid-1970s, but hardly enough to offset mounting losses from other sources.66 Following a successful tax levy vote in 1969, nearly two decades passed before another such increase in taxing authority succeeded in an election, largely owing to opposition among older whites in the district.67 The result was significant budget cuts, beginning as early as 1969, featuring the elimination of hundreds of staff positions, including teachers, and reductions to physical education, music instruction, libraries, and counseling offices.68 In the wake of these developments, the state downgraded the district’s financial rating in 1971 from AAA, the highest possible, to AA, the second highest. For the once-proud public schools of Kansas City, this was a considerable loss in standing, as it became the only district on the Missouri side of the metropolitan area with such a low assessment. As these issues played out in the press, public confidence in the system was shaken further.69

Altogether, it was a time of considerable uncertainty and turmoil for many students in Kansas City, black and white alike, as they negotiated a swiftly changing social and educational landscape. Some fared quite well, such as Marvin Daniels’s brothers who attended Westport High to the west of Troost Avenue, or Manny Stevens’s siblings at East. Others found a congenial environment at Central, Lincoln, or other schools near the city’s center. But there also was a great deal of movement.

As indicated earlier, KCMPS maintained a rather liberal school transfer policy during these years, a holdover from the overcrowded 1950s. The results are evident in table 3.2; students could request transfers to attend a different institution, and these were sought by growing numbers of whites as the population shifted. In 1971 a local task force concluded that “transfer policies have regularly permitted white parents to remove their children from schools in racially changing neighborhoods and place them in predominantly white schools.”70 Although district officials stipulated that such transfers were not to be utilized for “discriminatory” purposes, such requests were rarely questioned. A temporary ban on transfers at Paseo had little effect. KCMPS leaders feared that challenging them on a large scale could trigger a political backlash and the loss of even more whites to outlying districts, outcomes they clearly wanted to avoid.71 The result was sustained racial segregation and a continuing decline in the student population.

A District Divided

In August 1967 KCMPS superintendent James Hazlett greeted 377 new teachers to the district. This time he did not complain about comparisons with suburban schools, but rather suggested that working in city schools represented a special challenge. These teachers would be “on the frontline,” he declared, “in implementing the nation’s commitment to elevate disadvantaged and deprived persons.” Things had certainly changed in the five years since he had tried to persuade real estate agents of the district’s many assets. Now he was seeking foot soldiers ready to figuratively go into battle.72

In many respect, KCMPS had turned into something of a battlefield in the intervening years, with lines drawn largely in racial terms. A limited degree of integration had occurred under Hazlett’s leadership during the 1960s, but it proved difficult to sustain. He had succeeded in persuading board members to approve busing to relieve overcrowding in primarily black schools, at least temporarily, but their opposition to the idea of integration remained steadfast. In the meantime, elementary schools more proximate to black areas gained greater numbers, making overcrowding a perennial concern for black families.73 As the African American population grew, the institutions feeding Paseo and Southeast transitioned from white to black, presaging change in the high schools.74 In this fashion overall levels of segregation across the system remained relatively high.

Not all the district’s schools were affected by such challenges, however. Outside of KCMPS’s central sector, many were largely untouched by desegregation. Seemingly a world removed from Troost, Southwest High remained the city’s most prominent public secondary institution and among the last to be integrated. It continued to be among the nation’s top schools in National Merit finalists.75 A few African American students enrolled there through much of the 1960s, but there was little recognition of the broader issue of racial integration. For schools in this part of the city, along with those clustered with Van Horn and Northeast on the East Side, racial integration scarcely seemed a compelling question, and district leaders did little to change this. Yet just a few miles away, the city’s expanding African American neighborhoods were witnessing a steady exodus of whites from other institutions. Prior to the early 1970s just the central part of the district experienced these dramatic changes.

Despite accelerating out-migration, whites still remained the district’s largest group of voters, and many proved reluctant to support the schools financially as the African American population increased. Tellingly, in levy and bond elections, the strongest opposition often came from the predominantly white and working-class East Side of the city, while affluent whites in the southwest appeared more supportive.76 This was a pattern of resistance to school finance measures evident in cities elsewhere too. Kansas City’s experience demonstrated how racial integration in larger cities, particularly in the North, quickly encountered residential segregation, escalating numbers of poor students, white flight, and declining school revenues.77 It became a school system badly divided.

In 1965 the district enrolled more than eighteen thousand high school students, but African Americans were about 20 percent more likely to drop out than whites. As demonstrated in chapter 2 , this was largely due to the extreme poverty in segregated black neighborhoods.78 Responding to low test scores and graduation rates in predominantly black institutions, two years earlier KCMPS announced a “compensatory education” program focused on Lincoln High and its feeder elementary schools.79 This marked the start of a series of efforts to address educational problems of black students, each well intentioned but also contributing to the stigma attached to predominantly African American institutions. With the arrival of federal Title 1 funds after 1965, compensatory programs expanded to virtually all the district’s predominantly black schools. From the standpoint of students who benefited from these funds, these were important programs, and there was evidence that they helped. But test scores remained below national norms, and few middle-class families wanted their own children to attend schools with large numbers of students who were labeled culturally deprived or disadvantaged.80

There were other sources of concern that influenced white attitudes. Among the most significant was fear of violence and disorder. This came to the fore after a series of events in April 1968 following the assassination of Martin Luther King Jr. Kansas City did not experience civil unrest immediately following King’s death on April 4, as many other cities did, but five days later there was an outburst of violence that lasted for two days. It began with a student walkout and march from Central and Paseo High Schools to City Hall downtown, to protest the district’s decision not to cancel classes on the day of King’s funeral. When the more-or-less orderly procession arrived to meet with Mayor Ilus Davis, however, police fired tear gas at the crowd to disperse it. This attack angered members of the community, resulting in two nights of civil unrest that left several blocks of Prospect Avenue in ruins. Hundreds of fires were set, more than two thousand National Guardsmen and police were mobilized, many protesters were arrested, and seven were killed. It was the first incident of this type in the city’s history.81

The “Holy Week Riots” proved shocking to many area residents who believed that racial discord was not a major problem facing Kansas City. The level of violence on display, however, suggested otherwise and raised apprehensions about the possibility of further conflict. The city council passed an ordinance to desegregate housing sales and rentals, addressing a long-standing complaint of local civil rights groups. But other measures to resolve black concerns about public institutions were slow to materialize. At the same time, whites gained a new mindfulness of growing black militancy, especially among youth. For some this made the prospects of school integration even more difficult to abide.82

The school board was reorganized in 1970, with nine members elected from separate districts. This permitted greater diversity, including several black representatives, but it also contributed to greater turnover and factionalism. At the same time it made consensus on racial integration less likely. The new board avoided making system-wide desegregation plans until compelled to, under pressure from federal authorities.83 As noted in a 1971 report, “Plans that may have given encouragement to integration efforts have been consistently rejected.”84 This was frustrating to civil rights groups eager to see improvement in the schools, but it was hardly unusual for large urban school districts of the time. An influential US Civil Rights Commission report, Racial Isolation in the Schools, characterized this sort of response as typical. More often than not, the authors noted, school districts tended “to perpetuate, rather than reduce, separation in the schools.”85 Until the US Supreme Court decision in the Keyes case involving the Denver Public Schools in 1973, which held the district culpable for longstanding patterns of racial segregation, there was little guidance on the question from federal or state authorities. But even after Keyes, the KCMPS board continued to resist efforts to develop a comprehensive plan to integrate schools across the system.86

There were other issues regarding the schools, of course. Community groups also protested inadequate funding, demanded curricular changes, and deplored the loss of black educators’ jobs with layoffs. Segregation and overcrowding fueled perceptions that the quality of education offered in KCMPS’s white schools was better, especially in more affluent parts of the city.87 Overcrowding was an especially sensitive and long-standing issue for African Americans, and the district’s temporary classroom buildings were derisively labeled “Hazlett huts.” When complaints led to a 1967 investigation by the federal Department of Health, Education, and Welfare (HEW), however, it did not result in cited violations of the Civil Rights Act, and an investigation by the US Department of Justice a year later also ended inconclusively.88 The limited busing intended to relieve overcrowding often was uncoordinated and occasionally led to localized conflicts.89 In 1970, black students being bused to predominantly white Northeast High marched to the district office to protest violence from whites and lack of police protection.90 School leaders eventually resolved the grievances, but the incident was symptomatic of the district’s ungainly and piecemeal approach to problems associated with racial segregation.

Frustrated by lack of progress, the Southern Christian Leadership Conference (SCLC) launched a lawsuit in 1973 against KCMPS for maintaining an illegally segregated school system. The suit was eventually dropped because the local SCLC chapter lacked resources to sustain it, but it signaled the frustration felt by the city’s black community with lack of progress on the schools.91 About six months later, the district received notice from HEW that it was out of compliance with revised desegregation guidelines.92 As the Call noted that year, it was “not too late to build an integrated system,” while the district still had large numbers of white students. Describing the failure to adopt Hazlett’s plan five years earlier as “a major fumble,” the Call’s editors worried that KCMPS was “growing more and more segregated.”93 As in other big cities, federal authorities eventually forced the board’s hand, mandating a systemic desegregation plan four years later.94 In the meantime, the racial profile of the district’s schools had changed only incrementally.

Too Little, Too Late: Failed Desegregation

In 1970 the numbers of Kansas City white and black high school students were nearly even, but 85 percent of African Americans attended institutions that were 80 percent or more black. Only two of the city’s ten large senior high schools, East and Westport, had majority white student bodies and more than forty African Americans enrolled. Just eight elementary and junior high schools had greater than a 10 percent black population in a predominantly white building.95 Predominantly black schools enrolled large numbers of students from impoverished families, reflecting local conditions of concentrated disadvantage. This high degree of institutional segregation spurred growing complaints from the black community and federal investigations. Paralyzed by worries about angering whites, however, school board members and district administrators deflected or ignored demands for greater integration as a remedy to the educational problems faced by many African American youth. In particular, the board rejected a number of desegregation proposals following the 1973 HEW inquiry.96

Fear of antagonizing whites clearly was a major factor in the board’s stance, no doubt reflecting pressures that particular members felt from their constituencies. A 1974 report by the Midwest Research Institute found that “a state of caution that bordered on catatonic” existed among educators in the city because of conflict over school integration.97 A year later, HEW charged the district with maintaining an illegally segregated school system and ordered a cut to federal funds for its schools, demanding a desegregation plan for approval. After fighting the order in court, a decision the Call declared “a waste of taxpayers’ money,” KCMPS eventually launched a desegregation plan that called for every school in the system to enroll at least 30 percent minority students.98 Starting in 1977, the plan entailed busing nearly twenty thousand students, an expensive proposition for a district already under severe budgetary constraints.99 After years of resistance, this finally ushered desegregation to outlying schools that had long been sheltered from the very suggestion of racial integration. Unlike previous busing efforts to relieve overcrowding, it also called for white students to be sent to some of the district’s predominantly black institutions. This, of course, made it doubly controversial.

Many white patrons of the district were quick to protest, especially on the city’s East Side, which had seen relatively few black students in the past. In the Sugar Creek area, which had voted so enthusiastically to join KCMPS in 1955, anger was expressed “with shouts and the jabbing of fingers” as some two hundred parents met to condemn the plan.100 The Northeast Area Community Council, a major neighborhood organization, also voiced opposition to desegregation, and a new group called Concerned Citizens for Community Schools represented Van Horn High parents “who oppose any bussing of school children for desegregation.” Some leaders, such as local priest Richard Saale, urged openness to change, but failed to calm the animosity.101 At Thatcher Elementary School, the PTA president declared that “I’m not willing to make my children guinea pigs,” and other parents agreed, declaring a resolve to leave the district if necessary. Many other residents of the city’s East Side doubtless agreed.102

Other people felt angry but were resigned to following dictates of board policy while planning to move. The mayor of neighboring Independence appointed a task force to deal with “community tensions” due to desegregation in those parts of his city within KCMPS boundaries, which included Van Horn and its feeder schools.103 There seemed to be more support for the plan on the city’s southwest side, where parents discussed ways to ease the transition to new schools for their children. But some did note that, as one stated, “many of my children’s playmates have been put in private schools.”104 In the wake of growing unhappiness about required desegregation, families in areas previously unaffected by it were starting to leave the district in greater numbers.

KCMPS’s enrollment figures dropped steadily in the 1970s, as did the population of most school districts, largely owing to the end of the postwar baby boom. But the district was also losing students to other school systems, mostly in Missouri, especially those within the city’s municipal borders. Between 1970 and 1980 white students in the system declined by more than two-thirds, to about eleven thousand. African American students decreased as well, but only by about 20 percent, to nearly twenty-five thousand, mostly because of lower post-baby-boom fertility rates. Whites constituted only slightly more than a quarter of the district’s population at the end of the decade, making it difficult to achieve a meaningful level of integration in most schools. And their numbers continued to drop thereafter, much faster than declining birthrates.105

There can be little doubt that much of this was due to desegregation. A 1975 survey conducted by the Star found that the principal reason that families decided to leave the district was to experience “less racial integration,” followed by fewer discipline problems and “better instruction.”106 In the two years after the district’s desegregation plan was announced, nearly five thousand white students left the system, more than a quarter of their total enrollment. At the same time black enrollments declined by about fifteen hundred, or roughly 5 percent. By 1980 the district was fully two-thirds African American. Whites composed the remainder, along with other minority groups, principally Hispanics who had recently started arriving in greater numbers. Whether because of concerns about the quality of the schools or prejudicial responses to desegregation, in the eyes of many observers, KCMPS had ceased to offer an acceptable educational experience.107 Budget cuts left buildings in poor repair, and sometimes lawns went unmowed in summer. Given this situation, with whites fleeing and black community leaders complaining about declining standards, it was difficult to avoid the conclusion that most city schools were institutions of last resort, choices that families interested in superior public education would avoid if possible.108 Such was the stigma attached to public schools in many of the nation’s largest cities, and Kansas City was certainly not an exception.

There were yet other factors that contributed to declining enrollments during these years. A lengthy and bitter teacher strike occurred in 1974, and another three years later. Because of the district’s severe financial straits, most employees had worked without meaningful increases in pay for years, and KCMPS salaries lagged behind almost all local suburban districts.109 The schools were closed for six weeks in the first of these disruptive events, and seven in the second. Settlements were eventually reached in both instances, even though KCMPS could ill afford them, but when teachers returned, hundreds of students had left the district each time. The Star described parents looking into “district hopping” to find more stable school settings for their children, with Shawnee Mission reporting more than a thousand inquiries.110 More student departures followed, although it was not altogether clear whether it was the acrimony and disruption of labor conflict or the 1977 desegregation plan that led to the second exodus. Both probably were factors, but given the history of school integration prompting white flight in KCMPS, the threat of comprehensive desegregation unquestionably motivated this wave of departures as well.111 When the smoke metaphorically cleared in 1980, the district had been reduced to a shadow of its former identity. In less than twenty-five years it had gone from being the strongest public educational agency in the metropolitan region to arguably the weakest.

What did all this mean for Southwest High, the district’s best-known school and most academically distinguished? The number of African American students there began to climb after 1970, both as a result of transfers and limited busing, reaching more than a quarter by 1972. Students attempted to make the most of this, although a number of whites left for private schools or adjacent suburbs.112 In the next two years the proportion of African American students climbed to more than a third, and in the fall of 1977, under the district’s new desegregation plan, it jumped to nearly half. Three years later the number of black students had declined a bit (8 percent) but the white student population had fallen by more than half. In relatively short order, Southwest had become a predominantly black institution, although one with a sizable white minority. It also was considerably smaller than it had been during the heydays of the 1950s and ’60s, and no longer posted impressive numbers of National Merit finalists.113 Most of the highly proficient, affluent students who had registered such accomplishments had left. The only senior high schools with majority white student bodies were East and Van Horn, and both were almost half black.114 Desegregation had finally come to all parts of the district, but it arrived too late to represent a much improved educational experience for most KCMPS students.

Ultimately the district’s board tried to enjoin neighboring suburban school systems in a solution to long-standing problems of segregation, finding expression in the federal case Missouri v. Jenkins, one of the most ambitious, expensive, and contentious desegregation plans of the era.115 Metropolitan desegregation plans were widely discussed in the latter 1970s, and a bi-state committee on education, formed by members of the Kansas and Missouri advisory committees of the US Commission on Civil Rights, issued a proposal for combining some nineteen school districts in and around Kansas City. But few suburbanites were interested in such ideas.116 Jenkins ultimately would result in a massive effort to make KCMPS institutions more attractive to suburban district residents. But it did not reverse the fortunes of KCMPS, as affluent, more highly educated adults and their children generally chose to remain in suburban schools. That segment of the region’s population was one of the most vital resources that the district had lost in the years following 1950, and three decades later it was far too late to regain its former glory.117

A New Metropolitan Educational Order

If anyone had illusions about the relative standing of metro Kansas City school districts by the later 1970s, they were likely dispelled by the results of standardized tests that were then beginning to appear in the news. A budding accountability movement in education at the time placed greater emphasis on quantitatively comparable measures of student learning, seemingly objective portraits of school achievement.118 In 1978, the Star published the results of eighth-grade performance on a state-mandated test of basic academic skills. Even though it did not measure high levels of achievement, just comparing the percentages of students passing the test in each district revealed telling differences. As indicated in table 3.3, about a third of the eighth graders in Kansas City scored high enough to pass, but it was the only district to register less than a 50 percent success rate. Neighboring suburbs such as Raytown, Hickman Mills, and Center to the south, and North Kansas City, Liberty, and Independence to the north and east did considerably better, with nearly two-thirds or better passing.119 Kansas City high schools did a bit better on a statewide assessment also administered in 1978 but still scored well below suburban institutions.120 While tests such as these typically underestimated the academic skills of African American students, the district discrepancy in scores clearly reflected the large number of impoverished children served by KCMPS. Given these results, it was no longer possible to suggest that the city’s public school system was academically competitive with its suburban counterparts.

Test results such as these helped persuade many white families to leave the district, of course, but some black families as well. Stanley West left Kansas City for a home in Grandview in the early 1970s. His was not the first black family in their new community, but there were not many others at the time. The principal motivation was better schools, and his children eventually graduated from Grandview High. They lived there for more than two decades, with “really good neighbors.” West credited his experiences in an integrated high school, in college, and in the military with making the move to a “blue collar” suburb a comfortable experience. He recalled that friends in Kansas City told him “to stay here in the city,” but he felt angry about having “been denied access to these areas all my life, and I wanted to be there.” If the suburbs did indeed offer a better life, Stanley West did not want his family to be denied it.121

TABLE 3.3 Results of Missouri Basic Skills testing, 1978, in KCMPS and neighboring districts

Source: “Tests of Eighth Graders Shows Few Prepared,” Kansas City Star, September 15, 1978.

Not everyone could leave the area served by KCMPS, of course. For most families that remained, finding an appropriate school for their children became a more challenging task. A majority were African American, although significant numbers of whites continued to live in the district and sent their children to private schools. But growing numbers of blacks searched for alternatives to KCMPS as well. The result was a changing educational scene in Kansas City, one that evolved quickly in the face of shifting economic and demographic circumstances.

In the fall of 1982 Susan Hilliard’s daughter Maxine became a freshman at Southwest, as the family had moved into an “integrated” neighborhood near the district’s southern border. Susan recalled the school acquiring a reputation as a problem institution, but her daughter finished without difficulty in three and a half years. Maxine reportedly was a somewhat indifferent student and did not take the most demanding courses. Although she gave it little thought at the time, Susan believed that the curriculum was divided into tracks that ran largely along racial lines. On parents’ night, she remembered, “in some rooms there would be all black parents and other rooms there would be all white parents.” She also recalled that Maxine was in ROTC, which also was largely African American.122 Although schools such as Southwest were integrated for a spell, at least with respect to overall enrollment numbers, classrooms and hallways were often segregated. Integration at the building level in Kansas City public schools was rarely sustained long enough to address the difficult questions of tracking and curricular inequity along racial lines, which eventually became major issues in American education.123 Maxine Hilliard may have attended a desegregated school, but she did not necessarily have a racially integrated educational experience.

Marvin Daniels’s sons attended Central and Southeast in the 1980s, and he recalled that both enjoyed their high school experiences. Like their dad, they reportedly found success in predominantly African American institutions. Patrick Elard, on the other hand, was disappointed with the education his son had received at Central.124 Manny Stevens, also concerned about the quality of public schools, sent his daughter to school at nearby Catholic institutions. Although he did not state it explicitly, it is possible that his bitter memories of Central disposed him to favor alternatives to KCMPS.125 Even if the system served a largely poor African American population by the 1980s, Kansas City still offered its residents a variety of educational options. The general public perception of the district may have changed for the worse, but parents in search of viable school experiences for their children often could find workable solutions.

Patterns of Exit

Between the latter 1950s and 1980, KCMPS experienced a net loss of more than forty thousand white students. Despite James Hazlett’s worry about the schools of Johnson County, however, it appears that a small minority of those fleeing KCMPS were headed to Kansas. Attorneys in the Jenkins case collected data on student transfers from several KCMPS schools and where they were going, each year between 1958 and 1973. These institutions were Paseo and Southeast High, and Southeast Junior High, each of which transitioned from predominantly white to almost all African American during this time.126 As such, transfer patterns evident at these schools were revealing of just how white flight unfolded in Kansas City, at least prior to the mid-1970s.

Altogether, more than four thousand students transferred from these schools in this fifteen-year period. The largest numbers occurred during the years when each institution’s student body shifted from white to black, as district-level data suggested. Many transfers stayed within the KCMPS system, moving to another secondary school, or left the metropolitan area altogether, and little is known about where they went. About 32 percent transferred to suburban districts adjacent to KCMPS within Missouri, and only about 8 percent switched to schools in Kansas. Even if districts in Johnson County received most of these, it was a rather small share of the students leaving KCMPS. Of those staying on the Missouri side of the metro area, about three-quarters went to districts to the south of KCMPS, most within the municipal boundaries of Kansas City.

The districts that received the majority of such students were Hickman Mills, Raytown, Center, and Grandview. Each encompassed at least a part of municipal Kansas City, and all four were growing throughout most of the period in question. Like the neighborhoods that experienced white flight, these were largely blue-collar communities. They were still within easy driving distance of the city’s southeast side, where many of the parents likely worked, shopped, attended church, and maintained friendships. In short, propinquity and familiarity appear to have been important factors in deciding where to move, along with the good reputation of local schools.127 The fact that many could remain residents of Kansas City, with its lower municipal taxes and reliable services, may have been a factor as well. Altogether, for these families the districts just to the south of KCMPS appear to have been a very attractive option.

Of course, the data in table 3.2 end in 1973, before the most disruptive events of the decade. As many as eighteen thousand students left the district in subsequent years, and most were not from the neighborhoods proximate to Paseo or Southeast High Schools. Given the losses evident at Southwest, along with similar declines in white students at Westport in the same period, it is likely that propinquity and familiarity operated in these instances as well. Not surprisingly, significant numbers of Southwest students reportedly transferred to private schools in the area, particularly elite institutions such as Pembroke Academy, the Barstow School, or Rockhurst High, among others. The Star conducted a survey of more than two hundred families who left KCMPS schools in 1977, however, and found that most sent their children to suburban institutions on the Missouri side of the border. Once again, Raytown and Hickman Mills were among the leaders, along with Independence and North Kansas City. With desegregation slated to begin on the city’s East Side, it appears that families there had started to move as well. White flight, it turns out, was not limited to the city’s southernmost reaches by 1977.

The Star also found that nearly a third of its survey respondents sent their children to private schools, mainly Catholic institutions within the city. Many of these were African Americans in search of alternatives to KCMPS, and they helped keep local parish schools afloat. While metro-wide diocesan school enrollments declined after 1970, owing to out-migration and declining birthrates, within the city they remained generally stable. Many of the urban parish schools turned from all white to black, serving more children who were non-Catholics. This was a pattern seen in other cities as well, as the African American middle class actively sought better schools. Nearly half the transfers from KCMPS to suburban Hickman Mills were African American as well, as black families started to consider moving to the suburbs.128 Like Susan Hilliard and Manny Stevens, they too wanted to find the best schools available for their children. It would be a while, however, before their numbers would reach appreciable levels, which eventually would bring important change to these institutions too.

A Tale of Decline and Missed Opportunities

For students of American educational history, particularly postwar urban education and school desegregation, the story of KCMPS in this period is surely familiar. As suggested at the outset, it is strikingly similar to what happened in Detroit, Chicago, Milwaukee, St. Louis, and other districts in the Midwest that were confronted with questions of race and inequality, white flight, and the loss of perceived educational excellence.129 The arrival of impoverished African Americans in the 1950s and ’60s contributed to an exodus from the city’s public schools, mostly to suburban districts that enrolled very few black students. Other factors played major roles, especially new residential development, but bigoted responses to integrated schooling also were clearly important. This was evident in the transfer data reported in Table 3.2. As indicated in the subscript, very few—about one per year—of the five hundred students who left Central High after it became predominantly African American went to suburban districts in Missouri.130 This is an indication of the exclusion that such students faced in choosing where to attend schools. Given this, it is probably safe to say that one of the biggest attractions of suburban schools for many white families leaving KCMPS was the absence of African Americans.

Was KCMPS doomed to enrollment decline and the loss of resources with the arrival of poor African Americans in large numbers? Would white movement to the suburbs have occurred regardless of what district leaders did? The answer to both these questions may well be yes, but is also possible that the course of history might have been different. As Jennifer Hochschild noted during the 1980s, desegregation seemed to work best in school systems that embraced it positively, with leaders who tackled its problems directly and energetically, and more recent studies have suggested this as well.131 Had the KCMPS board followed James Hazlett’s lead in instituting a desegregation plan as early as 1968, while there was still a majority white student population in the schools, it might have been possible to achieve a more sustainable approach to school desegregation. The district may also have been able to better serve the growing numbers of poor students in its schools. This might have followed the model offered by Westport or West High Schools, where blacks represented less than a third of the student body for a number of years.

Of course, as more impoverished African American families arrived in the district, maintaining such a balance likely would have become difficult. But such a plan, in retrospect, would appear to have had much better chances of success than the course taken by the board, which was to resist all systematic attempts at desegregation until it was too late. As the Call observed in 1977, “The only thing the Kansas City district can say it has done over these 20 years since 1954 is to delay, delay and to do just enough—and no more—to keep federal funds flowing.”132 It was a pattern of behavior that signaled to whites that their preferences would be valued more than those of black families. Indeed, the very fact that the board unsuccessfully fought HEW orders in court likely suggested to many that desegregation was fundamentally a bad idea, and abetted the racist sentiments of its most diehard opponents. That proved to be leadership of the wrong kind.

James Hazlett’s decision to retire from his post as superintendent in 1969 was certainly a loss to the district and may have been influenced by the board’s refusal to follow his desegregation plan. His successors in the following decade, Andrew Adams, Robert Medcalf, and Robert Wheeler, lacked his depth of experience and inherited a very difficult situation, although Wheeler did manage to implement the 1977 desegregation plan. Few KCMPS superintendents since that time have remained in office more than a few years.133 This instability also contributed to the sharp decline in reputation that the district experienced.

For his part, Hazlett later expressed surprise at the course of events following his departure. In a deposition taken in the early 1980s for the Jenkins case, he testified that he fully expected enrollments to stabilize during the 1970s and that a successful desegregation plan would eventually materialize. He never expected KCMPS to be negatively compared to suburban districts, or to see outlying districts as competitors or adversaries.134 Despite his experience and knowledge, Hazlett clearly did not fully appreciate the magnitude of problems the district faced when he left office.

The last major actors in this drama operated largely offstage, hidden from view but exerting a powerful influence. They were the suburban districts, many of which were in fact located within the city limits. As Daniel Levine and Jeanie Keeny Meyer observed in 1977, “white flight” was “most likely to occur in city districts surrounded by largely white suburbs.”135 Kansas City certainly fit this description, and there can be little doubt about the role that many suburban districts played in this period. They were the chief beneficiaries of the crisis experienced by the KCMPS, which sent them thousands of students. It also reduced their chief historical competitor, the once mighty KCMPS, to the status of an educational pariah for much of the public, especially middle-class whites. For some of these districts, their response to this predicament was to erect walls to keep certain types of students out, while encouraging others to enter. In other words, they engaged in a particular form of opportunity hoarding, building their assets while minimizing the risk from dangers that KCMPS had come to represent. The next chapter explores these and other questions on the Missouri side of the metropolitan region.