Frequently cited sources have been identified by the following abbreviations:

DC Democrat and Chronicle (Rochester, NY)

LOC Library of Congress (Washington, DC)

NYSA New York State Archives (Albany, NY)

PW Phillis Wheatley Public Library Oral History Collection (Rochester, NY), available at http://www.rochestervoices.org/collections/african-american-oral-histories/

RBSCP Department of Rare Books, Special Collections and Preservation, University of Rochester

RMSC Rochester Museum and Science Center

RPL Rochester Public Library

T-U Times-Union (Rochester, NY)

Preface

1. James Baldwin, “Notes of a Native Son,” in Baldwin: Collected Essays, ed. Toni Morrison (New York: Library of America, [1964] 1998), 713.

Introduction

1. DC, “RCSD Will Consider Renaming,” May 14, 2018; author interview with Djinga St. Louis, Aug. 17, 2018.

2. DC, “$1.2M Effort Collapses [. . .],” Oct. 28, 2018.

3. DC, “City Opens 5 New Schools,” Sept. 2, 1968; “Douglass Prepares to Close,” May 8, 2007; “Troubled RCSD Program [. . .],” Sept. 22, 2017.

4. North Star, “Editorial Correspondence,” April 7, 1848.

5. North Star, “Proscription and Oppression towards Colored Children in Rochester,” Nov. 2, 1849; “Zion Church School,” Nov. 9, 1849.

6. North Star, “Colored Schools,” Aug. 17, 1849.

7. People ex rel. King v. Gallagher 93 NY 438, 458–66 (1883).

8. People ex rel. King v. Gallagher, 462.

9. North Star, “Proposition,” Aug. 10, 1849; DC, “Franklin Rowdies [. . .],” Oct. 2, 1968; untitled FIGHT press release, March 19, 1969, box 4B, Franklin Florence Papers, RBSCP. The study on school violence, known as the Meagher report, is available in box X0301, Rochester Municipal Archives, Rochester, NY.

10. T-U, “School 30 Parents to Fight [. . .],” Nov. 22, 1963; author’s notes, Spencerport Board of Education meeting, Dec. 9, 2014.

11. DC, “City Students Drive Revenue for Suburban Schools,” June 20, 2019; New York State Temporary Commission on the Condition of the Colored Urban Population, Second Report (Albany, NY, February 1939), 114–15.

12. New York Times, “It Was Never about Busing,” July 12, 2019.

13. Anti-Masonic Enquirer, “New York Legislature,” Jan. 31, 1832; T-U, “Inner-City Parents Say ‘No’ to School Plan,” Feb. 4, 1971.

14. DC, “The Long Way Home,” Feb. 25, 1995; “Mayor’s Grandfather McClary Dies,” Jan. 3, 2014; author interview with Lovely Warren, Oct. 21, 2019.

15. Author interview with Lovely Warren, Oct. 21, 2019; DC, “Education Remains Key Issue in Battle,” Sept. 7, 2017.

16. Author interview with Lovely Warren, Oct. 21, 2019.

17. Author interview with Lovely Warren, Oct. 21, 2019.

18. Derrick Bell, Silent Covenants: Brown v. Board of Ed. and the Unfulfilled Hopes for Racial Reform (New York: Oxford University Press, 2004), 113, 136.

19. Bell, Silent Covenants, 21–27.

20. Bell, Silent Covenants, 24–25.

21. “Brief of 553 Social Scientists as Amici Curiae in Support of Respondents,” submitted in Parents Involved in Community Schools v. Seattle School District No. 1, 551 US 701 (2007).

22. sean f. reardon et al., “Is Separate Still Unequal? New Evidence on School Segregation and Racial Academic Achievement Gaps,” working paper no. 19-06 (Stanford, CA: Stanford University Center for Education Policy Analysis, 2019).

23. Rucker Johnson, Children of the Dream: Why School Integration Works, with Alexander Nazaryan (New York: Basic Books, 2019), 56–65.

24. Johnson, Children of the Dream, 59; Gary Orfield, John Kucsera, and Genevieve Siegel-Hawley, “E Pluribus . . . Separation: Deepening Double Segregation for More Students” (Los Angeles: Civil Rights Project/Proyecto Derechos Civiles, September 2012); Amy Stuart Wells and Robert L. Crain, “Perpetuation Theory and the Long-Term Effects of School Desegregation,” Review of Educational Research 64, no. 4 (Winter 1994): 531–55; Robert D. Putnam, Our Kids: The American Dream in Crisis (New York: Simon and Schuster, 2015), 207–16.

25. Author interview with Frank Ciaccia, June 28, 2018.

26. Rochester City School District, “An Interim Report on a Fifteen Point Plan to Reduce Racial Isolation and Provide Quality Integrated Education” (June 21, 1968), held at Local History and Genealogy Division, RPL; Hearings before the Select Committee on Equal Educational Opportunity of the United States Senate (Washington, DC, Oct. 7, 1971), 9039.

27. Author interview with Lovely Warren, Oct. 21, 2019; author interview with James Beard, May 31, 2019; T-U, “KKK Tactics Dangerous,” June 24, 1971; Alberta Cason press statement, Feb. 10, 1969, folder 4B:14, Franklin Florence Papers, RBSCP.

28. DC, “Transfer Response Swamps Schools,” Dec. 20, 1963.

29. Democrat and Chronicle /Rochester Area Community Foundation/Siena College Research Institute poll, Dec. 18, 2018, to Jan. 2, 2019. Seven hundred respondents, margin of error +/– 4.8 percent, available at https://www.documentcloud.org/documents/20986622-rochester-siena-poll-monroe-1218-crosstabs. The Urban-Suburban question is from the 2015 version of the same poll (823 respondents, margin of error +/– 3.4 percent). DC, “New Siena Poll Results [. . .],” March 31, 2019.

30. Jim Antonevich, “Great Schools for All Parent Survey Summary Report,” (Rochester, NY: Metrix Matrix, 2016), http://gs4a.org/wp-content/uploads/2016/05/GS4A-Summary-Survey-2016-FINAL-B.pdf; DC, “Parents Say They Like Magnet Schools,” May 27, 2016.

31. Gary Orfield and Danielle Jarvie, “Black Segregation Matters: School Resegregation and Black Educational Opportunity” (Los Angeles: Civil Rights Project/Proyecto Derechos Civiles, December 2020).

32. Dan W. Dodson, “Educational Challenges Relating to Desegregation,” Central School Boards Committee for Educational Research, 1965, folder 4:28, James E. Allen Personal Papers 1950–71, New York State Library Manuscripts and Special Collections, Albany, NY.

33. New York Times, “Daniel B. Dodson, 72, Retired Professor, Dies,” Aug. 19, 1995; Mt. 5:41 (King James Version); Dodson, “Educational Challenges Relating to Desegregation.”

34. Dodson, “Educational Challenges Relating to Desegregation.”

1. The African School

1. Rochester city directory, 1841, RPL; Blake McKelvey, “The Physical Growth of Rochester,” Rochester History 13, no. 4 (October 1951); Daily Democrat, “Board of Education,” Aug. 11, 1849.

2. Daily Democrat, “At the Meeting of the Inhabitants [. . .],” Feb. 20, 1841.

3. Walter Henry Green, History, Reminiscences, Anecdotes and Legends of Great Sodus Bay, Sodus Point, Sloop Landing, Sodus Village, Pultneyville, Maxwell and the Environing Regions (Sodus, NY: Henderson-Mosher, 1947), 66–71; Blake McKelvey, “Lights and Shadows in Local Negro History,” Rochester History 21, no. 3 (October 1959); DC, “Important Lessons to Learn,” July 19, 2020.

4. Austin Steward, Twenty-Two Years a Slave and Forty Years a Freeman (Syracuse, NY: Syracuse University Press, 2002), 44.

5. Edgar J. McManus, A History of Negro Slavery in New York (Syracuse, NY: Syracuse University Press, 1966) 177.

6. Steward, Twenty-Two Years, 54–64.

7. McKelvey, “Lights and Shadows” 3–5; Thomas James, “The Wonderful Eventful Life of Rev. Thomas James, by Himself,” Rochester History 37, no. 4 (1975), 5.

8. Austin Reed, The Life and the Adventures of a Haunted Convict, ed. Caleb Smith (New York: Modern Library, 2017), 5.

9. Telegraph, Aug. 17, 1819, cited in Blake McKelvey, Rochester: The Water-Power City, 1812–1854 (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1945), 100; Edward R. Foreman, “Rochester: Its Name and Its Founder,” in Centennial History of Rochester, New York, vol. 1, ed. Edward R. Foreman (Rochester, NY: Rochester Historical Society, 1931), 262; Howard Cross, “Creating a City: The History of Rochester from 1824 to 1834” (master’s thesis, University of Rochester, 1836), 98, folder 1:2, Whitney Rogers Cross Papers, RBSCP; Rochester city directory, 1834, RPL.

10. Cross, “Creating a City,” 9, 323; McKelvey, Water-Power City, 100.

11. Whitney R. Cross, The Burned-Over District: The Social and Intellectual History of Enthusiastic Religion in Western New York, 1800–1850 (Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, 1950), 55.

12. Robert S. Fletcher, A History of Oberlin College, from Its Foundation through the Civil War, vol. 1 (Oberlin, Ohio: Oberlin College, 1943), 18–25; Charles G. Finney, Memoirs (New York: A. S. Barnes), 290–91; Milton Sernett, North Star Country: Upstate New York and the Crusade for African American Freedom (Syracuse, NY: Syracuse University Press, 2002), 23. See also Cross, The Burned-Over District, 211–37.

13. Lawrence Cremin, American Education: The National Experience, 1783–1876 (New York: Harper Torchbooks, 1988), 165.

14. Carleton Mabee, Black Education in New York: From Colonial to Modern Times (Syracuse, NY: Syracuse University Press, 1979), 36; Steward, Twenty-Two Years, 76; Henry O’Reilly, Settlement in the West: Sketches of Rochester; with Incidental Notices of Western New-York (Rochester, NY: William Alling, 1838), 293.

15. Cremin, American Education, 137–38.

16. Harlan Hoyt Horner, ed., Education in New York State, 1754–1954 (Albany: New York State Education Department, 1954); S. A. Ellis, “A Brief History of the Public Schools of the City of Rochester,” Publications of the Rochester Historical Society 1 (1892), 71; Blake McKelvey, “Rochester’s Public Schools: A Testing Ground for Community Policies,” Rochester History 31, no. 2 (April 1969); Henry C. Maine, ed., Rochester in History with Portraits and Our Part in the World War (Rochester, NY: Wegman-Walsh, 1922).

17. Leon Litwack, North of Slavery: The Negro in the Free States, 1790–1860 (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1961), 126; Herbert Aptheker, A Documentary History of the Negro People in the United States: From Colonial Times through the Civil War, (New York: Citadel, 1973), 398–402.

18. Steward, Twenty-Two Years, 158.

19. Daily Advertiser, “Board of Education,” March 27, 1850.

20. Daily Advertiser, March 27, 1850; Anti-Masonic Enquirer, “New York Legislature,” Jan. 31, 1832.

21. Rights of Man, “The Following Is an Abstract [. . .],” April 26, 1834. Rochester city directory, 1834, RPL; O’Reilly, Settlement in the West, 291.

22. Mabee, Black Education, 70.

23. Arthur O. White, “The Black Movement against Jim Crow Education in Buffalo, New York, 1800–1900,” Phylon 30, no. 4 (1969), 376.

24. Daily Advertiser, March 27, 1850; John N. Thompson, “History of the Sabbath Schools of Rochester,” Genesee Country Scrapbook 6 (1955): 14.

25. Daily Advertiser, “Report on Condition of African School,” Feb. 28, 1833.

26. Rights of Man, “The Following Is an Abstract [. . .],” April 26, 1834.

27. Steward, Twenty-Two Years, 147.

28. Rights of Man, “The Following Is an Abstract [. . .],” April 26, 1834; Musette Castle, “A Survey of the History of African Americans in Rochester, New York, 1800–1860,” Afro-Americans in New York Life and History 13 (July 1989), 7–32.

29. Daily Democrat, Aug. 11, 1849.

30. Daily Democrat, Feb. 20, 1841.

31. Daily Advertiser, “City Council,” July 2, 1841; “Board of Education,” July 12, 1841.

32. Rochester city directory, 1844, RPL.

33. Daily Advertiser, March 27, 1850; Daily Advertiser, “Board of Education,” April 9, 1846; Judith Polgar Ruchkin, “The Abolition of Colored Schools in Rochester, New York, 1832–1856,” New York History 51, no. 4 (July 1970), 377–93.

34. Daily Advertiser, “Board of Education,” Sept. 1, 1847; Daily Democrat, “Colored School Exposition,” April 23, 1849; Rochester city directory, 1849, RPL.

35. Daily Democrat, “Address of the Colored People,” March 30, 1846.

36. US Bureau of Education, “Special Report of the Commissioner of Education on the Condition and Improvement of Public Schools in the District of Columbia” (Washington, DC: US Bureau of Education, 1871), 207.

37. Frederick Douglass to Amy Post Oct. 28, 1847, Isaac and Amy Post Papers, RBSCP cited in Victoria Schmitt, “Rochester’s Frederick Douglass,” Rochester History 67, no. 3 (Summer 2005), 16.

38. Frederick Douglass, Narrative of the Life of Frederick Douglass, 1845, The Frederick Douglass Papers, series 2, vol. 1, eds. John W. Blassingame and John McKivigan IV (New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 1999), 31–32.

39. Carter G. Woodson, The Education of the Negro Prior to 1861 (New York: G. P. Putnam’s Sons, 1915), 320; Cremin, American Education, 138.

40. William F. Peck, Semi-Centennial History of the City of Rochester (Syracuse, NY: D. Mason, 1884), 307; Blake McKelvey, “Private Educational Enterprise since the Mid-Century,” Rochester Historical Society Publication Fund Series 17 (1939), 155; Schmitt, “Rochester’s Frederick Douglass” 25; Leigh Fought, Women in the World of Frederick Douglass (New York: Oxford University Press, 2017), 157.

41. The entire below account comes from a lengthy open letter Douglass published in the North Star, “H.G. Warner, Esq. [. . .],” Sept. 22, 1848.

42. There is no record that Warner ever responded in writing, including in his papers stored at the University of Rochester. Douglass pressed his point several weeks later in the North Star: “Mr. Warner edits a paper in this city, and we naturally supposed that he would vindicate his conduct in the matter referred to in his paper. In this, however, we have been thus far mistaken; either from feelings of shame, or a conviction that his conduct admits of no defense, he has thus far remained silent.” North Star, “H.G. Warner Esq. [. . .],” Oct. 20, 1848.

43. Schmitt, “Rochester’s Frederick Douglass,” 21; Rosetta Douglass Sprague, “Anna Murray-Douglass—My Mother As I Recall Her,” Journal of Negro History 8, no. 1 (January 1923), 97; Frederick Douglass, Life and Times of Frederick Douglass, 1881, The Frederick Douglass Papers, series 2, vol. 1, eds. John W. Blassingame and John McKivigan IV (New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 1999).

44. Douglass, Life and Times, 210; Fought, Women in the World of Frederick Douglass, 156–58.

45. Frederick Douglass Jr., “Frederick Douglass Jr. in Brief from 1842–1890,” in If I Survive: Frederick Douglass and Family in the Walter O. Evans Collection, eds. Celeste-Marie Bernier and Andrews Taylor (Edinburgh, UK: Edinburgh University Press, 2018), 633; DC, “To Rest in Rochester,” Feb. 22, 1895.

46. References to the Douglass children’s public education are scattered but mostly consistent. See Charles Remond Douglass, “Some Incidents of the Home Life of Frederick Douglass,” in Bernier and Taylor, If I Survive, 671; Douglass Jr., “Frederick Douglass Jr. in Brief from 1842–1890,” in Bernier and Taylor, If I Survive, 633; John W. Thompson, An Authentic History of the Douglass Monument (Rochester, NY: Rochester Herald Press, 1903), 157; James M. Gregory, Frederick Douglass, the Orator (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, 2001 [1893]), 199–206; DC, “About Frederick Douglass,” Oct. 8, 1922.

47. DC, Feb. 22, 1895; Sprague, “Anna Murray-Douglass,” 98; Douglass Jr., “Frederick Douglass Jr. in Brief, from 1842–1890,” in Bernier and Taylor, If I Survive, 633; Thompson, An Authentic History, 157.

48. Douglass, “Some Incidents,” in Bernier and Taylor, If I Survive, 671.

49. McKelvey, Water-Power City, 285–86.

50. North Star, “Education Among the Colored People,” Oct. 26, 1849.

51. Daily Democrat, Aug. 11, 1849.

52. North Star, “Colored Schools,” Aug. 17, 1849.

53. North Star, “Proposition,” Aug. 10, 1849; Daily Democrat, “Colored Schools Meeting,” Dec. 24, 1849.

54. North Star, “Proscription and Oppression [. . .],” Nov. 2, 1849; “Zion Church School,” Nov. 9, 1849.

55. North Star, Nov. 9, 1849; “Meeting Against Colored Schools,” Dec. 21, 1849; Daily Democrat, “Colored School Meeting,” Dec. 14, 1849.

56. North Star, Nov. 2, 1849; Dec. 21, 1849; Daily Advertiser, March 27, 1850; Ninth Annual Report of the Superintendent of Public Schools of the City of Rochester (Rochester, NY: A. Strong, 1852), 20–21.

57. Daily Union, “The Colored People and the Board of Education,” Aug. 31, 1854.

58. Daily Union, “Board of Education,” Aug. 23, 1854; Ruchkin, “The Abolition of Colored Schools”; Twelfth Annual Report of the Superintendent of Public Schools of the City of Rochester, Presented March 26, 1855 (Rochester, NY: Lee, Mann, 1855), 20–21.

59. Lucy N. Colman, Reminiscences (Buffalo, NY: H. L. Green, 1891), 16.

60. Thirteenth Annual Report of the Superintendent of Public Schools, Rochester, Presented March 24, 1856 (Rochester, NY: Daily Advertiser Press, 1856), 17.

61. Daily Democrat, “Board of Education,” July 11, 1856.

62. White, “Black Movement”; Mabee, Black Education, 198–203; People ex rel. King v. Gallagher 93 NY 438 (1883); People ex rel. Cisco v. School Board of the Borough of Queens 161 NY 598 (1900); Paynter v. New York 98 NY 2d 644 (2002), Smith dissent.

63. Colman, Reminiscences, iii.

64. North Star, Aug. 17, 1849.

2. Nowhere Else to Go

1. Interview with Jesse [sic] James, Sept. 21, 1979, PW.

2. Interview with Jesse [sic] James, Sept. 21, 1979; DC, “‘Instigator’ Looks Back,” Aug. 2, 1987; “Clubs ‘Anchor’ Blacks,” April 7, 1991.

3. Blake McKelvey, “Lights and Shadows in Local Negro History,” Rochester History 21, no. 3 (October 1959).

4. New National Era, “Letter from the Editor,” June 13, 1872.

5. Isabel Harmon, untitled and undated document, Big Springs Historical Society, Caledonia, NY. In addition to its archives, Big Springs has an excellent permanent exhibit on the community’s Black history. See also DC, “In Quiet Belcoda [. . .],” April 18, 1948; “Good Pay, Good Land,” July 22, 1979; Caledonia Advertiser, “A Bit of Harmon History,” Jan. 25, 1962.

6. Benjamin Frank Harmon to Corina Brown Harmon, July 21, 1871, Big Springs Historical Society, Caledonia, NY; DC, “Colored Folks Went Home,” Dec. 19, 1904; “Colored Men Make Good Farm Hands,” Feb. 13, 1907; July 22, 1979; “The Road to Rochester,” Feb. 22, 1981.

7. Interview with Evelyn Brandon, March 28, 1980, PW.

8. Blake McKelvey, “Rochester’s Ethnic Transformations,” Rochester History 25, no. 3 (July 1963), 5–24.

9. Interview with Evelyn Brandon, March 28, 1980.

10. R. Nathaniel Dett to Juanita Jackson, Aug. 26, 1936, folder I:G135, NAACP Papers, LOC; Voice, “Rochester as I See It,” October 1934; Eunice Grier and George Grier, Negroes in Five New York Cities: A Study of Problems, Achievements and Trends (New York State Commission against Discrimination, Division of Research, Aug. 1958), 58.

11. New York State Temporary Commission on the Condition of the Colored Urban Population, Second Report (Albany, NY, February 1939), 41. See also reports of two Rochester visits, in 1926 and 1931, by National Urban League Director of Industrial Relations T. Arnold Hill, folder I:D35, National Urban League Papers, LOC.

12. Elizabeth Brayer, George Eastman: A Biography (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1995), 278.

13. Sally Parker, Tearing Down Fences: The Life of Alice Holloway Young (Rochester, NY: self-published, 2020), 23; Laura Warren Hill, Strike the Hammer: The Black Freedom Struggle in Rochester, New York, 1940–1970 (Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, 2021), 107; Brayer, George Eastman, 475; Marion Gleason, “The George Eastman I Knew,” University of Rochester Library Bulletin 26, no. 3 (Spring 1971); DC, “Twenty-Nine Years of Service,” March 14, 1940; “Solomon Young Recalls Posh Days,” Feb. 3, 1964.

14. Franklin Bock to American Civil Liberties Union, June 12, 1924, folder I:C281, NAACP Papers, LOC.

15. Irving Gray to NAACP, Aug. 31, 1924, and Walter White to Van Levy, Oct. 8, 1924, both in folder I:C281, NAACP Papers, LOC.

16. Franklin Bock to Walter White, Aug. 27, 1924, Sept. 8, 1924, folder I:C281, NAACP Papers, LOC.

17. James Rose, Charles Lunsford, and Van Levy to James Weldon Johnson, May 13, 1927; James Rose to Walter White, Sept. 21, 1930; George Burks to Walter White, Oct. 22, 1929; George Eastman to Walter White, Nov. 5, 1929; all in folder I:G135, NAACP Papers, LOC.

18. William Warfield, My Life and My Music (Champaign, IL: Sagamore, 1991), 51.

19. New York State Temporary Commission on the Condition of the Colored Urban Population, Second Report, 114; Ingrid Overacker, The African American Church Community in Rochester, New York, 1900–1940 (Rochester: University of Rochester Press, 1998), 117; DC, “Group Fights Hospital Pact,” Dec. 11, 1937; “Doctors Nip Move [. . .],” Dec. 22, 1937; “Fight Fails at Hospital Plan Parley,” Dec. 23, 1937.

20. New York State Temporary Commission on the Condition of the Colored Urban Population, Second Report, 114–15; Mrs. George Hoyt Whipple, “‘Key’ to the Eastman Scrapbook,” University of Rochester Library Bulletin 21, no. 1 (Fall 1965).

21. DC, “UR Commended [. . .],” May 7, 1943; “NAACP at UR Blasts [. . .],” Aug. 13, 1958; Interview with James Christian, April 23, 1980, PW; Michael Klein to Herbert Wright, Sept. 24, 1958, folder III:E12, NAACP Papers, LOC.

22. T-U, “From Sanford, Fla. [. . .],” March 10, 1969, part of a four-part series on the Great Migration in Rochester. See also Dwayne E. Walls, The Chickenbone Special (New York: Harcourt Brace Janovich, 1971), 167; Eugene Barrington, “New Beginnings: The Story of Five Black Entrepreneurs Who Migrated from Sanford, Florida, to Rochester, New York” (PhD diss., Syracuse University, 1976); Victoria Schmitt, “Goin’ North,” Rochester History 54, no. 1 (1992).

23. Dorothy Nelkin, On the Season: Aspects of the Migrant Labor System (Ithaca, NY: New York State School of Industrial and Labor Relations, Cornell University, 1970), 11.

24. William H. Metzler, Migratory Farm Workers in the Atlantic Coast Stream: A Study in the Belle Glade Area of Florida, Circular 966 (Washington, DC: US Department of Agriculture, 1955), 3–7

25. Author interview with Walter Cooper, June 28, 2018.

26. DC, Dec. 19, 1904; undated clipping from Rochester Post Express, ca. 1918–19, in Charles W. Frazier, ed., The Old Ship of Zion: Its History and Its People (Rochester, NY: self-published, 1995), 219.

27. Stephen W. Jacobs, Wayne County: The Aesthetic Heritage of a Rural Area (Lyons, NY: Wayne County Historical Society, 1979) 31, 92–94; Genesee/Finger Lakes Regional Planning Board, “Agricultural Land Resources—Regional Survey, Report 14” (December 1972), 83, 94.

28. DC, “Sodus Famed as Fruit Country,” Aug. 27, 1944.

29. DC, “154 Jamaicans Arrive [. . .],” June 21, 1944.

30. “Alex Brown,” in Migrant Farmworkers of Wayne County, New York: A Collection of Oral Histories from the Back Roads, ed. Joyce Woelfe Lehmann (Lyons, NY: Wayne County Historical Society, 1990), 58–59.

31. Dale Wright, They Harvest Despair: The Migrant Farm Worker (Boston: Beacon, 1965), 147.

32. Wright, They Harvest Despair, 110–11.

33. Genesee/Finger Lakes Regional Planning Board, Migrant–A Human Perspective (1972), 65; DC, “Labor Camps in State Jam Workers into Filthy, Unsanitary Firetraps,” Sept. 24, 1944.

34. Jeffry Hoffman and Richard Seltzer, “Migrant Farm Labor in Upstate New York,” Columbia Journal of Law and Social Problems 4, no. 1 (1968), 30–31.

35. “Ruby McCants Ford,” in Lehmann, Migrant Farmworkers of Wayne County, New York, 27.

36. Howard W. Coles, “Nomads from the South,” unpublished manuscript, ca. 1941, 3, oversized folder 1:1, Howard W. Coles Collection, RMSC.

37. Coles, “Nomads from the South,” 2–5; T-U, “‘Imported’ Negroes Stage Revolt [. . .],” Aug. 21, 1941.

38. Genesee/Finger Lakes Regional Planning Board, Migrant, 21.

39. Robert Coles, Uprooted Children: The Early Life of Migrant Farm Workers (Pittsburgh, PA: University of Pittsburgh Press, 1970), 37–38.

40. William H. Friedland and Dorothy Nelkin, Migrant: Agricultural Workers in America’s Northeast (New York: Holt, Rinehart and Winston, 1971), 248.

41. Coles, Uprooted Children, 130.

42. DC, “Ill-Fed Children of Migrant Camps Helped by Too-Few Day Nurseries,” Sept. 27, 1944; Hoffman and Seltzer, “Migrant Farm Labor in Upstate New York,” 43.

43. Hoffman and Seltzer, “Migrant Farm Labor in Upstate New York,” 40.

44. “Ivory Simmons,” in Lehmann, Migrant Farmworkers of Wayne County, New York, 78.

45. Coles, Uprooted Children, 76.

46. DC, “Farm Labor Camps ‘Deplorable,’” Sept. 9, 1967; “Ivory Simmons,” in Lehmann, Migrant Farmworkers of Wayne County, New York, 81. The Democrat and Chronicle ran a four-part series beginning Sept. 24, 1944, and another beginning Aug. 22, 1965. The Frederick Douglass Voice had a compelling account on Nov. 3, 1972.

47. Barrington, “New Beginnings,” 54.

48. Grier and Grier, Negroes in Five New York Cities, 28.

49. Undated clipping from Rochester Post Express, ca. 1918–19.

50. Laura Root, “An Analysis of Social Distance between the Two Negro Communities of Rochester, New York” (master’s thesis, University of Rochester, 1951), 18, 64, held at RBSCP.

51. Root, “Analysis of Social Distance,” 61, 79–80.

52. Root, “Analysis of Social Distance,” 78.

53. Interview with Bobby Johnson, April 2, 1980, PW.

54. Robert C. Weaver, The Negro Ghetto (New York: Harcourt, Brace, 1948), 28–29.

55. Grier and Grier, Negroes in Five New York Cities, 22.

56. Douglas S. Massey and Nancy A. Denton, American Apartheid: Segregation and the Making of the Underclass (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1993), 17–19.

57. Howard Coles, “Brief History of Frederick Douglass Voice ” and “Biographical Sketch, Howard Wilson Coles,” both in folder 6:4, Howard W. Coles Collection, RMSC; author interview with Joan Coles Howard, Aug. 7, 2018.

58. Howard Coles, “Preliminary Background Material on Status of Negroes in Rochester,” Howard W. Coles Collection, RMSC; “A Real Property Inventory of Rochester, New York” (Rochester, NY: Rochester Bureau of Municipal Research, 1940), held at Local History and Genealogy Division, RPL.

59. Coles, “Preliminary Background Material.”

60. Marvin Slotoroff, “Report of Survey of 28 Negro Families Living in Predominantly White Neighborhoods in Rochester, New York (May–June, 1960),” folder 18:4, Walter Cooper Papers, RBSCP; interview notes, folder 19:5, Walter Cooper Papers, RBSCP; see also Robert H. Rhodes, “House-Hunting in Rochester: A Case History,” 1962, folder 18:4, Walter Cooper Papers, RBSCP.

61. Weaver, The Negro Ghetto, 217.

62. Howard Coles to F. Dow Hamblin, February 3, 1960, folder 1:28, Howard W. Coles Collection, RMSC.

63. Richard Rothstein, The Color of Law (New York: Liveright, 2017), 63–75; Federal Housing Administration, Underwriting Manual (Washington, DC: US Government Printing Office, 1939), sections 978–80.

64. Federal Housing Administration, Underwriting Manual (Washington, DC: US Government Printing Office, 1938), section 951.

65. “Mapping Inequality” project, University of Richmond, https://dsl.richmond.edu/panorama/redlining; DC, “Maps from 1930s Show Discrimination,” Oct. 24, 2016; “Closed Doors,” Feb. 9, 2020.

66. DC, “Racial Bans Pervaded in Monroe,” Aug. 9, 2020; City Roots Land Trust and the Yale Environmental Law Clinic, “Confronting Racial Covenants: How They Segregated Monroe County and What to Do about Them” (2020); James A. Kushner, Apartheid in America: An Historical and Legal Analysis of Contemporary Racial Segregation in the United States (Arlington, VA: Carrollton, 1980), 19–20. The 1948 Supreme Court case was Shelley v. Kraemer, 334 US 1 (1948).

67. T-U, “Housing Bias Hits Hard [. . .],” June 8, 1960; Quintin Primo, The Making of a Black Bishop (Wilmington, DE: Cedar Tree, 1998), 70; Conor Dwyer Reynolds, “The Motives for Exclusionary Zoning” (working paper, Yale University, 2019), https://ssrn.com/abstract=3449772, 57–93.

68. Warren Hill, Strike the Hammer, 17; Norma Wagner to Marvin Rich, April 24, 1962; Ralph W. Barber, “The Effects of Open Enrollment on Anti-Negro and Anti-White Prejudices among Junior High School Students in Rochester, New York” (EdD diss., University of Rochester, 1968), 33.

69. Author interview with Nellie King, June 19, 2018; DC, “Action Vowed on Blockbusting,” May 23, 1969.

70. Voice, “Negro Family Housing Survey Reveals Startling Facts,” March 14–28, 1938; Anna Louise Staub and Vicki Schmitt, “Building an Urban Faith Community: Centennial History of St. Augustine Church, Part Two,” Rochester History 60, no. 3 (Summer 1998), 7.

71. Interview with Evelyn Brandon, March 28, 1980.

72. Author interview with Alice Young, June 27, 2018.

73. DC, “Police Probe Cross Burning, KKK Cross,” June 2, 1980; “White Supremacy Has a History in Rochester,” Aug. 18, 2017; author interview with Jasper Huffman, Aug. 4, 2018.

74. Author interview with Walter Cooper, June 28, 2018; DC, “Educator, Chemist, Community Leader [. . .],” Feb. 11, 1986. See also Slotoroff, “Report of Survey of 28 Negro Families.”

75. Urban League of Rochester, “Research Report No. 1, Covering Operations from September 1967 to September 1968,” folder 20:16, Howard W. Coles Collection, RMSC.

76. DC, “Baden-Ormond Area Project Dedicated,” June 15, 1951; “Hanover Homes Magic Shown at Open House,” Dec. 27, 1952.

77. “FIGHT in the Seventies,” undated ca. 1971, Howard W. Coles Collection, RMSC; DC, “Hanover Houses Must Go,” Nov. 13, 1974; “Hanover Houses a Dumping Ground,” Feb. 17, 1976.

78. Author interview with Luis Burgos, Sept. 27, 2018.

79. Author interview with Velverly Caldwell, Oct. 3, 2018; author interview with Luis Burgos, Sept. 27, 2018.

80. Interview with Clarence T. Ingram, May 22, 1980, PW.

81. Herman Goldberg et al., “Racial Imbalance in the Rochester Public Schools: Report to the Commissioner of Education,” (Rochester, NY, Sept. 1, 1963), held at Local History and Genealogy Division, RPL.

3. Willing Combatants

1. Author interview with Nellie King, June 19, 2018.

2. DC, “Portable Classrooms Depreciate Property,” Dec. 8, 1964; “Crowd of 200 Protests Use of Police Dogs,” Aug. 20, 1961; author interview with Nellie King, June 19, 2018.

3. New York State Temporary Commission on the Condition of the Colored Urban Population, Second Report (Albany, NY, February 1939),106; DC, “No. 3 School One of City’s Oldest,” Sept. 16, 1928 (the series ran from Sept. 9, 1928, to Nov. 17, 1929, with one school featured each week).

4. William Warfield, My Life and My Music (Champaign, IL: Sagamore, 1991) 22, 47.

5. Ingrid Overacker, The African American Church Community in Rochester, New York, 1900–1940 (Rochester: University of Rochester Press, 1998), 117.

6. DC, “A Family History of Pride, Deeds,” Feb. 5, 1989.

7. New York State Temporary Commission on the Condition of the Colored Urban Population, Second Report, 106.

8. Union and Advertiser, “Small Sensation,” April 8, 1895.

9. DC, “It Seems Conclusive,” April 9, 1895.

10. DC, “Children in Church,” June 14, 1897; “Board of Education,” July 3, 1889; “Zion A.M.E. Church,” June 30, 1890; “Booker Washington’s Stenographer,” June 8, 1902; “Cupid Records His Victories,” June 30, 1904; “Will Decorate Monument,” Aug. 22, 1911; Pittsburgh Courier, “Granddaughter of Frederick Douglass Dies in Missouri,” Nov. 6, 1943.

11. Crisis, Sept. 1918, 241; West High School yearbook January 1916, Monroe County Library System, Rochester, New York, http://www.libraryweb.org/~digitized/yearbooks/West/1916_Jan.pdf.

12. Weekly News (Rochester, NY) 4, no. 42 (June 27, 1924), folder I:G135, NAACP Papers, LOC; DC, “Pioneers in Education,” Feb. 28, 1994; “Rochester Schools Pioneer Dies at 104,” Jan. 5, 2016; Rochester city directory, 1927, RPL; Adolph Dupree, “Rochester Roots/Routes Part II,” about . . . time, Aug. 1984. Dupree is the only source to identify Sprague and Van Buren as pioneers but errs in dating their tenures.

13. New York State Temporary Commission on the Condition of the Colored Urban Population, Second Report, 109.

14. DC, “Orphans’ Home at Lake Causes Disquietude,” Sept. 20, 1916; “Small Farm as Site for Dorsey Home Assured,” July 31, 1918; “Can Care for 35 Boys and Girls at Dorsey Home,” Oct. 24, 1919; “Mrs. Dorsey, Orphans Home Founder, Dies,” June 5, 1932.

15. DC “To Open New School for Negro Children,” April 14, 1922; “‘Mother’ Dorsey Called to More Important Work,” July 14, 1922; “Only Two Principals in 52 Years’ History of 24 School,” Feb. 10, 1929; “Close Home Founded by Mrs. Dorsey,” March 9, 1928; Dupree, “Rochester Roots/Routes.”

16. DC, “Manitou Beach Kingdom of Joy for Whole Day,” July 28, 1921.

17. “To the Members of the Dorsey Home for Dependent Colored Children,” March 19, 1928, Jean Vance Clarke Papers, Local History and Genealogy Division, RPL; DC, June 5, 1932.

18. DC, “Remember Sambo and Tigers? [. . .],” Oct. 12, 1951.

19. DC, “NAACP Praises Ban on ‘Little Black Sambo,’” Dec. 4, 1951, “That Decision on ‘Sambo’—Contrasting Comments,” Dec. 9, 1951, “Thinks We’re Imbeciles,” Dec. 18, 1951, “Scores Intolerance,” Dec. 22, 1951.

20. Patricia Sullivan, Lift Every Voice: The NAACP and the Making of the Civil Rights Movement (New York: New Press, 2009), 267–74.

21. Roy Wilkins, “The Negro Wants Full Equality” (1944), in Rayford W. Logan, ed., What the Negro Wants (Notre Dame, IN: University of Notre Dame Press, 2001), 115.

22. Mary McLeod Bethune, “Certain Unalienable Rights” (1944), in Logan, What the Negro Wants, 250.

23. John Hope Franklin and Alfred A. Moss, Jr., From Slavery to Freedom: A History of African Americans, seventh ed. (New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 1994), 465–66.

24. Davison M. Douglas, Jim Crow Moves North: The Battle over Northern School Segregation, 1865–1954 (New York: Cambridge University Press, 2005), 225–26.

25. Richard Kluger, Simple Justice: The History of Brown v. Board of Education and Black America’s Struggle for Equality (New York: Vintage, 2004), 134.

26. Ann Pointer quoted in William H. Chafe, Raymond Gavins, and Robert Korstad, eds., Remembering Jim Crow: African Americans Tell about Life in the Segregated South (New York: New Press, 2001), 155.

27. Plessy v. Ferguson, 163 US 537 (1896), 13.

28. Kluger, Simple Justice, 122.

29. Gunnar Myrdal, An American Dilemma, vol. 1: The Negro Problem and Modern Democracy (New Brunswick, NJ: Transaction, 1996), lxix, 519.

30. Kluger, Simple Justice, 260.

31. Sweatt v. Painter, 339 US 629 (1950); McLaurin v. Oklahoma Board of Regents 339 US 637 (1950).

32. Kluger, Simple Justice, 290.

33. James T. Patterson, Brown v. Board of Education : A Civil Rights Milestone and Its Troubled Legacy (New York: Oxford University Press, 2001), 25–30.

34. Ronald H. Bayor, Race and the Shaping of Twentieth-Century Atlanta (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 2000), 119; Kluger, Simple Justice, 413.

35. Kluger, Simple Justice, 321; Brown v. Board of Education of Topeka, 347 US 483 (1954), 15.

36. Brown v. Board of Education of Topeka, 349 US 294 (1955).

37. T-U, “May 17 is a New Emancipation Day,” May 18, 1954.

38. DC, “Dr. Anthony Jordan,” Dec. 20, 1971.

39. Author interview with Anne Micheaux Akwari, March 7, 2019.

40. Eunice Grier and George Grier, Negroes in Five New York Cities: A Study of Problems, Achievements and Trends (New York: New York State Commission against Discrimination, 1958), 83–87.

41. Author interview with Walter Cooper, June 28, 2018.

42. Grier and Grier, Negroes in Five New York Cities, 31–32.

43. Interview with Frank McElrath, March 10, 1980, PW.

44. DC, Sept. 16, 1928; “9 City Schools More than 31 P.C. Negro,” July 31, 1962; Rochester City School District, “Annual Statistical Report, 1965–66” (Rochester, NY, 1966).

45. DC, “New School May Not Help Overcrowding,” Oct. 23, 1959; North Star, “Zion Church School,” Nov. 9, 1849.

46. DC, “Negro Leaders Charge Bias [. . .],” July 8, 1960; Walter Cooper, “Presented Before the Board of Education by the Municipal Affairs Committee—July 7,” folder 3A:5, Walter Cooper Papers, RBSCP.

47. DC, “City Ponders Upping Mobile Schools’ Use,” Jan. 6, 1960; July 8, 1960; “Shortened Classes Dropped [. . .],” July 16, 1960; “Official Proceedings [. . .],” Aug. 3, 1960.

48. “Regents Statement on Intercultural Relations in Education,” January 28, 1960, box 4, James E. Allen Personal Papers, NYSA; Southern School News, “Eight Districts Outside South Plan Voluntary Desegregation,” September 1962, 18.

49. Taylor v. Board of Education of City School District, 191 F. Supp. 181 (SDNY 1961), 30.

50. Advocator 3, no. 3 (April–May 1961), folder 4:14, Walter Cooper Papers, RBSCP.

51. T-U, “NAACP Switches its Attack to the North,” May 31, 1962; DC, “N.Y. Policy Cited in School Suit,” June 22, 1962; Southern School News, “13 Northern and Western School Districts Extend Desegregation,” November 1962, 14; June Shagaloff, “A Review of Public School Desegregation in the North and West,” Journal of Educational Sociology 36, no. 6 (Feb. 1963), 292–96.

52. Author interview with Walter Cooper, June 28, 2018.

53. Author interview with Walter Cooper, June 28, 2018. Cooper’s papers do not contain the study to which he referred, done by UR student Jonathan Steepee. According to Cooper’s 1961 annual report on the local NAACP’s education committee, he completed “a comprehensive study” of de facto school segregation in Rochester and presented it to the main body on Oct. 20. But, he wrote to Jawn Sandifer, it was subsequently withdrawn “due to suspicion of collusion between some executive board members and ‘downtown’ politicians.” Walter Cooper to Jawn Sandifer, March 22, 1962, folder 19:6, Walter Cooper Papers, RBSCP. A partial version of the Steepee study exists in the NAACP Papers at the Library of Congress and will be discussed later.

54. Author interview with Walter Cooper, Aug. 21, 2018.

55. Laura Warren Hill, Strike the Hammer: The Black Freedom Struggle in Rochester, New York, 1940–1970 (Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, 2021), 25–28.

56. DC, “NAACP to Study Schools,” March 31, 1962; “Court Action Expected on Segregation,” May 5, 1962; T-U, “De Facto School Segregation Debated at Board Meeting,” April 13, 1962.

57. The full list of child plaintiffs: Allen, Denise, and James Aikens; Charles Banks; David, Joseph, and Kathe Balter; Donna and Patricia Carroll; Arthur Crutch-field; Jan and Ross Dubin; Beth, Mark, and Susan Faegre; Ann and Lydia Micheaux; Michael Truitt; Deborah, Jeremy, and Miriam Tuttle; and Nellie Whitaker (King). The defendants were Superintendent Robert Springer, the school board, and its five members individually.

58. Aikens v. Board of Education (WDNY 9736), 6

59. DC, “Bi-Racial Suit Filed,” May 29, 1962.

60. Author interview with David Balter, April 27, 2019; author interview with Ruth Balter, April 19, 2019.

61. Author interview with Susan (Faegre) deFay, May 16, 2019; author interview with Mark Faegre, May 21, 2019.

62. Author interview with Mark Allan Davis, Feb. 26, 2019; DC, “NAACP Names Acting President,” Feb. 2, 1962; “Davis Sworn as Judge,” March 12, 1967; “Supreme Court Losing Highly Praised Justice,” Dec. 9, 1996; “Court System Pioneer Davis Dies,” March 13, 2010.

63. T-U, “Segregation Suit Timing Surprises Supt. Springer,” May 29, 1962.

64. DC, “Schools Lawsuit is a Slap,” May 30, 1962.

65. T-U, April 13, 1962; “2 Deny Conflict of Interest,” June 1, 1962; DC, “Cerulli Unanimously Elected . . .,” May 9, 1962.

66. DC, “Schools to Ask Study of Segregation Issue,” June 5, 1962; “City Denies Responsibility for School Segregation,” June 19, 1962; Aikens v. Board of Education response (June 18, 1962), 4.

67. DC, “Negro Named School Head,” May 29, 1962; author interview with Alice Young, June 27, 2018.

68. DC, May 29, 1962; author interview with Alice Young, June 27, 2018.

69. Author interview with Walter Cooper, June 28, 2018; DC, “Principal Named to Direct Aid to Deprived Children,” Sept. 3, 1965.

70. DC, “Dr. Springer: ‘Quality of Education Equal in All Schools,’” March 9, 1963; “A Catalyst for Desegregation,” Nov. 7, 1969.

71. DC, May 29, 1962.

72. Gary Orfield, Must We Bus? Segregated Schools and National Policy (Washington, DC: Brookings Institution, 1978), 15–24; Matthew Delmont, Why Busing Failed: Race, Media, and the National Resistance to School Desegregation (Oakland: University of California Press, 2016), 123.

73. DC, “Overcrowded School 4 May Let Pupils Transfer,” Dec. 19, 1962; March 9, 1963.

74. Form letter from Citizens’ Committee on School Integration, Nov. 28, 1962, folder 3A:10, Walter Cooper Papers, RBSCP; T-U, “School Integration Needs Discussed,” Feb. 13, 1963; DC, “Group Protests ‘Segregation’ at School 44,” Dec. 17, 1962; US Commission on Civil Rights, Hearing Before the United States Commission on Civil Rights: Hearing Held in Rochester, New York, Sept. 16–17, 1966, held at Rush Rhees Library, University of Rochester.

75. Rochester Board of Education minutes May 21, 1953; June 18, 1953; April 21, 1955; Oct. 2, 1958; April 30, 1959; Aug. 4, 1960; Herman Goldberg et al., “Racial Imbalance in the Rochester Public Schools: Report to the Commissioner of Education,” (Rochester, NY, Sept. 1, 1963), held at Local History and Genealogy Division, RPL.

76. US Commission on Civil Rights, “Staff Report on Issues Related to Racial Imbalances in the Public Schools of Rochester and Syracuse, New York,” held at Rush Rhees Library, University of Rochester, 8–9; DC, “New School 2 to be Racially Balanced,” Feb. 22, 1961; “District Change Keeps Imbalance,” Dec. 5, 1963.

77. Cooper’s correspondence with Steepee is in folder 3A:7, Walter Cooper Papers, RBSCP; see also Jonathan Steepee, “Racial Discrimination in the Rochester, N.Y. School District,” folder V:1377–78, NAACP Papers, LOC.

78. Steepee, “Racial Discrimination.”

79. Goldberg et al., “Racial Imbalance in the Rochester Public Schools”; Delmont, Why Busing Failed, 128; author interview with Walter Cooper, Aug. 21, 2018.

80. Rochester Post Express, undated ca. 1918–19, in Charles W. Frazier, ed., The Old Ship of Zion: Its History and Its People (Rochester: self-published, 1995), 219.

81. T-U, April 13, 1962; DC, May 30, 1962.

4. Six Rugged Years, All Uphill

1. DC, “Dr. Springer Has Heart Attack,” June 1, 1963; “Goldberg Named to Fill In For Springer,” June 5, 1963; “Last Rite Tomorrow for Dr. Springer,” June 20, 1963.

2. DC, June 20, 1963.

3. Randy Goldman interview with Herman Goldberg, May 15, 1996, oral history collection, United States Holocaust Memorial Museum, https://collections.ushmm.org/search/catalog/irn504462.

4. T-U, “What Allen Ruling Means to Rochester,” June 18, 1963; US Commission on Civil Rights, Hearing Before the United States Commission on Civil Rights: Hearing Held in Rochester, New York, Sept. 16–17, 1966, held at Rush Rhees Library, University of Rochester, 289.

5. Herman Goldberg et al., “Racial Imbalance in the Rochester Public Schools: Report to the Commissioner of Education” (Rochester, NY, Sept. 1, 1963), Herman Goldberg, “Grade Reorganization and Desegregation of the Rochester Public Schools: A Report to the Board of Education” (December 1969), both held at Local History and Genealogy Division, RPL.

6. DC, “City Schools ‘Better Integrated,’” Jan. 6, 1970; National Observer, “Doubts Grow About School Integration,” Jan. 26, 1970.

7. DC, Jan. 6, 1970.

8. T-U, June 18, 1963; DC, “City Schools to End Racial Imbalance,” June 19, 1963.

9. T-U, “Here Are Proposals [. . .],” Aug. 27, 1963; “Rochester: Return of Junior Highs,” Aug. 31, 1971; DC, June 19, 1963; “Integration OK With Board [. . .],” Aug. 28, 1963; Goldberg et al., “Racial Imbalance in the Rochester Public Schools.” For more on junior high schools, see Nellie M. Love, “An Analysis of the Junior High School Movement in the City of Rochester, New York,” (EdD diss., University of Rochester, 1968).

10. DC, Aug. 28, 1963; “School Racial Quota Plan [. . .],” Sept. 7, 1963; “NAACP Generally Favors [. . .],” Sept. 27, 1963; Goldberg et al., “Racial Imbalance in the Rochester Public Schools”; William C. Rock, “Summary of Reactions to ‘ Cliffs to Climb,’” (Rochester City School District, July 15, 1963), folder 3A:13, Walter Cooper Papers, RBSCP.

11. DC, “Board’s Imbalance Plan Aired,” Oct. 9, 1963; “Parents Have Mingled Feelings [. . .],” Oct. 20, 1963; “Students Are Confident of Racial Solutions,” Dec. 1, 1963; T-U, “Vote to Be Asked [. . .],” Dec. 6, 1963.

12. DC, “Integration OK With Kids,” Nov. 22, 1963, “Transfer Response Swamps Schools,” Dec. 20, 1963; T-U, “School 30 Parents to Fight [. . .],” Nov. 22, 1963; Herman Goldberg and H. Hunter Fraser to district parents, Dec. 2, 1963, folder 3A:9, Walter Cooper Papers, RBSCP.

13. DC, Nov. 22, 1963; “Pupil Transfer Completed,” Jan. 14, 1964; Margaret M. Brazwell, “‘No One Ever Asked Us:’ Counterstories of the Rochester, NY Open Enrollment Process” (EdD diss., 2010, University of Rochester), 75, 89.

14. US Commission on Civil Rights, Hearing Before the United States Commission on Civil Rights, 98, 112, 177.

15. Strippoli v. Bickal 42 Misc. 2d 475 (N.Y. Misc. 1964); DC, “Work Repeated, Pupils Tell Court,” Jan. 16, 1964; “Parents Group Will Oppose [. . .],” Feb. 5, 1964; “School Shift Foes Organize,” Feb. 6, 1964.

16. Strippoli v. Bickal; Di Sano v. Storandt, 22 A.D.2d 6 (1964); DC, “City to Appeal Ban [. . .],” June 16, 1964.

17. T-U, “Group Will Combat School Segregation,” April 9, 1964; DC, Nov. 22, 1963; “Princeton Plan Foes Unite,” Dec. 6, 1963; Citizens’ Committee on School Integration to Lloyd Storandt, March 1964, folder 3A:6, Walter Cooper Papers, RBSCP.

18. Jewish Ledger, “Door Opened—Not Heart,” Feb. 7, 1964, reprinted in T-U, Feb. 20, 1964.

19. DC, “Crowd of 200 Protests [. . .],” Aug. 20, 1961; Carvin Eison, dir., July ’64 (Rochester, NY: ImageWordSound, 2006) 54 min.; Laura Warren Hill, Strike the Hammer: The Black Freedom Struggle in Rochester, New York, 1940–1970 (Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, 2021), 53–54.

20. Simulmatics Corp., “Unrest in Rochester: A Research Report” (unpublished report, Aug. 1, 1967), folder I:156, Daniel Patrick Moynihan Papers, LOC; Nydia Padilla, “Puerto Rican Contributions to the Greater Rochester Area” (MEd thesis, State University of New York College at Brockport, 1985), 70, box 1, Nydia Padilla-Rodriguez Papers, RMSC.

21. Porter Homer, “Riots of July, 1964,” (City of Rochester, Aug. 27, 1965); State Commission against Discrimination, “Greater Rochester Takes a Look,” (undated pamphlet ca. 1957), Howard W. Coles Collection, RMSC; Walter Cooper, “Reflections on the Rochester Riots in Rochester, N.Y.,” undated, folder 4:18, Walter Cooper Papers, RBSCP; Eison, July ’64.

22. Homer, “Riots of July, 1964”; Thomas H. Allen, “Report on the Rochester, N.Y. Incident” (NAACP, July 1964), folder III:C106, NAACP Papers, LOC.

23. Peniel E. Joseph, Waiting ’til the Midnight Hour: A Narrative History of Black Power in America (New York: Henry Holt, 2006), 5–6, 111.

24. Lou Buttino and Mark Hare, The Remaking of a City: Rochester, New York, 1964–1984 (Dubuque, IA: Kendall Hunt, 1984), 16; DC, “Still Fighting the Good Fight,” July 21, 1985; “FIGHT Aims to Organize [. . .],” June 12, 1965.

25. S. Prakash Sethi, Business Corporations and the Black Man: An Analysis of Social Conflict; The Kodak-FIGHT Controversy (Scranton, PA: Chandler, 1970), 23, 51; Eison, July ’64.

26. Sol Chaneles, “Unrest in Rochester,” undated (ca. August 1967); folder I:156, Daniel Patrick Moynihan Papers, LOC; Simulmatics Corp., “Unrest in Rochester.”

27. Buttino and Hare, Remaking of a City, 19; US Commission on Civil Rights, Hearing Before the United States Commission on Civil Rights; Bernard Gifford (FIGHT education committee chairman), “Policy Statement Concerning Rochester and Area Schools,” Oct. 15, 1967, folder 5:15, Walter Cooper Papers, RBSCP.

28. Jim McCain to Jimmie McDonald, July 31, 1964, folder III:C106, NAACP Papers; author interview with Walter Cooper, Aug. 21, 2018; untitled cartoon, folder 5:2, Walter Cooper Papers, RBSCP; T-U, May 14, 1975; author interview with Gloria Winston Al-Sarag, Sept. 20, 2018; Hill, Strike the Hammer, 71–73.

29. Reuben Davis letter to Jawn Sandifer, May 17, 1962; minutes, Rochester NAACP Executive Committee, November 1962, both in folders III:C105–6, NAACP Papers, LOC.

30. Jerome Balter to June Shagaloff, May 8, 1964, folder V2828:5, NAACP Papers, LOC; untitled open letter, Citizens’ Committee on School Integration, November 1962, folder titled “Citizens’ Committee on School Integration, 1962–66,” Jerome Balter and Ruth Balter Papers, 1959–1974, Swarthmore College Peace Collection, Swarthmore, PA.

31. DC, “NAACP Shifts Strategy on School Balance,” May 7, 1965; T-U, “NAACP May Drop Law Suit on Schools,” April 30, 1965; minutes, Coordinating Council, March 22, 1966, folder titled “Citizens’ Committee on School Integration, 1962–66,” Jerome Balter and Ruth Balter Papers, 1959–1974, Swarthmore College Peace Collection, Swarthmore, PA; Gertrude Gorman to Gloster Current, March 18, 1966, folder IV:C59, NAACP Papers, LOC.

32. Theron Johnson, “Report of Special Study of Elementary School Pupils,” undated (ca. October 1963), folder 2:2, New York State Education Department Bureau of School District Organization Subject and Administrative Files, New York State Library Manuscripts and Special Collections, Albany, NY.

33. T-U, “Drive For Balance,” Aug. 26, 1963; Rochester City School District, Cliffs to Climb, June 20, 1963; DC, “Black Teachers’ ‘First Day’ Shocking,” April 13, 1970; “The Lucky Teachers Got Jobs,” Sept. 17, 1972; author interview with Nydia Padilla-Rodriguez, March 5, 2021. There is no single source for historical statistics on teacher diversity; the numbers presented here are gathered from scattered press reports and other sources.

34. Author interview with Lillie (Young) Winston, Sept. 28, 2018.

35. Author interview with Lillie (Young) Winston, Sept. 28, 2018; author interview with Andrew Ray, Feb. 4, 2019.

36. Author interview with Andrew Ray, Feb. 4, 2019.

37. Bettina L. Love, We Want to Do More Than Survive: Abolitionist Teaching and the Pursuit of Educational Freedom (Boston: Beacon, 2019), 47–48.

38. Love, We Want to Do More Than Survive, 48; author interview with Musette Castle, June 21, 2018.

39. Rochester City School District, The Negro in American Life: Teacher’s Guide (1964); T-U, “Someone for The Kids [. . .],” Oct. 25, 1972; US Commission on Civil Rights, Hearing Before the United States Commission on Civil Rights, 42; Gifford, “Policy Statement Concerning Rochester and Area Schools”; DC, “A Proud Heritage,” March 4, 1963.

40. Author interview with Idonia Owens, Jan. 18, 2019.

41. Author interview with Jonathan Perkins, June 3, 2019.

42. Author interview with Nellie King, June 19, 2018; author interview with James Beard, May 31, 2019.

43. DC, “Schools Face Cut [. . .],” June 8, 1966; “More Negroes Will Be Bused,” Oct. 21, 1966; T-U, “How City Fights [. . .],” June 21, 1966.

44. US Commission on Civil Rights, Staff Report on Issues Related to Racial Imbalances in the Public Schools of Rochester and Syracuse, New York, (1966), held at Rush Rhees Library, University of Rochester, 8–9.

45. Ralph W. Barber, “The Effects of Open Enrollment on Anti-Negro and Anti-White Prejudices among Junior High School Students in Rochester, New York” (EdD diss., University of Rochester, 1968), 104–8.

46. George J. Rentsch, “Open Enrollment: An Appraisal” (EdD diss., University of Rochester, 1966), 238–41; “Testimony by Minister Franklyn [sic] Florence, President of FIGHT, Sept. 16, 1966, before the U.S. Civil Rights Commission,” box 4B, Franklin Florence Papers, RBSCP; US Commission on Civil Rights, Hearing Before the United States Commission on Civil Rights, 169–70.

47. Citizens’ Committee for School Integration, “Ability Index Otis, Grade 5 School Mean, Rochester, N.Y. School Districts” (unpublished report), folder 3A:6, Walter Cooper Papers, RBSCP; US Commission on Civil Rights, Staff Report, 14–17; DC, “Better Schools Urged [. . .],” July 17, 1966; “Allen Urged to Speed [. . .],” Aug. 5, 1966; T-U, “Plea Made on School Imbalance,” Sept. 8, 1966.

48. DC, “Goldberg Ordered to Plan [. . .],” May 20, 1966; “Metro School Districts Urged [. . .],” May 20, 1966; T-U, “State Readying School Plan,” June 17, 1966.

49. Rochester City School District, “Desegregation of the Elementary Schools: Special Report to the Board of Education” (Feb. 1, 1967); DC, “School Board Studies Plans by Goldberg,” Feb. 2, 1967.

50. Jerome Balter, “Statement to the Rochester Board of Education,” Feb. 16, 1967, folder titled “Schools, 1967–69,” Jerome Balter and Ruth Balter Papers, 1959–1974, Swarthmore College Peace Collection, Swarthmore, PA; Rozetta McDowell to Herman Goldberg, Feb. 27, 1967, folder V:1377, NAACP Papers, LOC; DC, “Bickal Blasted for Criticism [. . .],” March 3, 1967; “Classroom Teachers Back Rochester Plan,” March 10, 1967; untitled press statement, Feb. 21, 1967; box 4B, Franklin Florence Papers, RBSCP.

51. DC, “Busing Plan Opposed,” Jan. 24, 1967; March 3, 1967; “Tax Unit Attacks Busing,” March 14, 1967.

52. DC, “Politicos, Parents Rap School Integration,” Jan. 6, 1964.

53. US Commission on Civil Rights, Hearing Before the United States Commission on Civil Rights, 186; T-U, “The Issue of Race in Schools,” July 22, 1966.

54. Transcript of Louis Cerulli comments at public hearing, Feb. 14, 1967, folder titled “Schools 1967–69,” Jerome Balter and Ruth Balter Papers, 1959–1974, Swarthmore College Peace Collection, Swarthmore, PA; DC, “Cerulli Meets with Parents [. . .],” Feb. 15, 1967.

55. DC, “School Push Set by Negro Leaders,” March 18, 1967; Benjamin H. Richardson, “City School Reorganization: Antecedents, Forces, and Consequences” (EdD diss., University of Rochester, 1973), 85–86.

56. Rochester Board of Education, untitled document announcing 15-Point Plan, March 16, 1967, folder 3A:9, Walter Cooper Papers, RBSCP.

57. DC, March 18, 1967; “Negro Groups Fight Board’s School Plan,” March 29, 1967; “Parents Hit Pupil Imbalance Program,” July 24, 1967; Jerome Balter, “Statement to the Rochester Board of Education.”

58. T-U, “School Desegregation Decision Due Tonight,” March 17, 1967; “Roche Has Eyes on Political Future,” Nov. 9, 1967; author interview with Faust Rossi, May 17, 2019.

59. DC, “Schools to Pay Workers [. . .],” June 30, 1967; “Inner City Assails Bus Plan,” July 21, 1967; “Busing Too Successful,” Sept. 22, 1967; Parents Association of Clara Barton No. 2 School to Herman Goldberg et al., July 14, 1967, folder 3A:9, Walter Cooper Papers, RBSCP.

60. Rochester City School District, “An Interim Report on a Fifteen Point Plan to Reduce Racial Isolation and Provide Quality Integrated Education,” (June 21, 1968), held at Local History and Genealogy Division, RPL; DC, Sept. 22, 1967; T-U, “Parents and Principal Praise School 2 Plan,” March 26, 1968; “100 White Pupils are Lined Up [. . .],” June 17, 1968; “Our Children Say” (collection of statements from children at School 2 in the 1968–69 and 1969–70 school years), folder 5:4, Harry Gove Papers, RBSCP.

61. Author interview with Dana Miller, Sept. 19, 2019.

62. Author interview with Dana Miller, Sept. 19, 2019; T-U, “White Response to School 2 [. . .],” Aug. 21, 1968.

63. DC, “Principals Urge Full Integration,” March 26, 1969; “Integrationists Urge Boycott,” Aug. 19, 1969; “Principals Take to Streets,” Aug. 28, 1969; Franklin Florence to John Mitchell, Aug. 15, 1969, folder 4B:13, Franklin Florence Papers, RBSCP.

64. DC, “Desegregation Plans Demanded [. . .],” Aug. 22, 1969; “School Boycott Called Off,” Sept. 6, 1969; T-U, “Double Targets Reflected [. . .],” Sept. 6, 1969.

65. DC, “Cerulli Quits City School Board,” Dec. 25, 1969; “Ashford Accepts Chicago Post,” Jan. 17, 1970.

66. T-U, “Roche Ponders Busing [. . .],” Oct. 3, 1969; DC, “Board Outlaws Non-Voluntary School Busing,” Dec. 19, 1969; “Suit Looms on School Integration,” Dec. 20, 1969; “Goldberg ‘Should Have Quit Work,’” Dec. 23, 1969.

67. DC, Dec. 19, 1968; Dec. 20, 1969; T-U, “Integration Plans Shaped Despite Vote,” Dec. 19, 1969; Urban League of Rochester, “Position Statement on Reorganization of Rochester Public Schools,” January 1970, folder 8:5, Walter Cooper Papers, RBSCP.

68. Goldberg, “Grade Reorganization.”

69. Goldberg, “Grade Reorganization”; T-U, “Integration Plan Would Reorganize [. . .],” Dec. 30, 1969; DC, “Balance Plan for Schools,” Dec. 30, 1969.

70. T-U, “Junior Highs Finding Favor [. . .],” Jan. 6, 1970; Aug. 31, 1971; DC, “Verdict Toughened on Schools’ Violence,” March 24, 1969; “Report Urges Board Action [. . .],” June 14, 1969; “Schools: All Plans Up in Air,” Dec. 31, 1969; Goldberg, “Grade Reorganization.”

71. DC, Dec. 31, 1969; “School Board Chair Filled,” Jan. 1, 1970; “Branch to Head City School Board,” Dec. 29, 1970. At the time, the mayor was responsible for appointing replacement school board members. Cerulli officially resigned on December 28, allowing outgoing Democratic mayor Frank Lamb to choose Branch as his successor, whereas Roche waited until the last moment to resign, letting incoming Republican mayor Stephen May choose Serrano to replace him.

72. T-U, “700 Jam Parents’ Meeting,” Feb. 4, 1970.

73. George J. Rentsch, “Community Meetings and Conflict Management,” Integrated Education: Minority Children in Schools 11, nos. 4–5 (1973), 48–52; see also DC, “New School Program Draws Shouts [. . .],” Feb. 3, 1970; and Richardson, “City School Reorganization,” 136.

74. Herman Goldberg and Phale D. Hale, “An Experiment in Community Schools: Controversy and Development” (Rochester, NY: Community School Council, 1970), held at Local History and Genealogy Division, RPL; Richardson, “City School Reorganization,” 154–60; Joseph Wilson, “Statement by Joseph C. Wilson Regarding the Plan for Reorganizing and Desegregating the Rochester Public Schools,” Feb. 4, 1970, folder 140:01, Joseph C. Wilson Papers, RBSCP; DC, “Teen-agers League Urges Integration,” Jan. 18, 1970.

75. T-U, “Legislator Opposes Plan,” Feb. 5, 1970; DC, “Teachers Give Sims ‘No’ Nod,” Feb. 16, 1970.

76. T-U, “81 Spoke While the Board Listened,” Feb. 6, 1970; “Four Days of Decision,” Feb. 26, 1970; DC, “School Vote Stuns [. . .],” Feb. 26, 1970; Richardson, “City School Reorganization,” 151–53; newsletter, Citizens for Quality Integrated Education, March 1971, folder 5:4, Harry Gove Papers, RBSCP.

77. T-U, Feb. 26, 1970; DC, “37 Teachers Call In Sick,” Feb. 27, 1970; “Close ‘Inquiry’ for Two Days,” Feb. 28, 1970; “School Boycott Called Off [. . .],” March 4, 1970. The absent teachers later were found to have instituted an illegal strike and were docked two days’ pay.

78. Ewald Nyquist to Herman Goldberg, March 2, 1970, folder 20:6, Ewald B. Nyquist Subject Files, NYSA; DC, “Board’s Solution Pleases Nobody,” March 6, 1970.

79. DC, “City Schools Reorganized,” March 6, 1970; “Schools Face Boycott Today,” March 9, 1970; “Schools Back to ‘Normal,’” March 11, 1970; “Board Holds Up Leaves, Tenure,” April 3, 1970.

80. DC, “147,000 in School Today,” Sept. 9, 1970; “Schools’ First Day: All’s Well,” Sept. 10, 1970.

81. DC, “RNSAC Loses Officers,” Sept. 15, 1970; T-U, “‘Splinter’ Group Picks Cerulli,” Oct. 17, 1970.

82. DC, “School Board,” Oct. 31, 1970; “Democrats Win School Board [. . .],” Nov. 4, 1970.

83. DC, “No Politics in Schools? [. . .],” Aug. 31, 1969; “School Vote Breeds Political In-Fights,” March 8, 1970; “Laverne Balks [. . .],” March 21, 1971; “Non-Party Vote to Elect Board,” April 23, 1971. Partisan school board elections were reinstated in 1981.

84. DC, “West, Madison Shifts Planned,” Jan. 6, 1971; “School Plan: 2nd Time’s a Charm,” Jan. 31, 1971; “Crowd Delays School Vote,” Feb. 5, 1971.

85. Herman Goldberg speech, Dec. 15, 1970, box X0428, Rochester Municipal Archives, Rochester, NY; DC, “Goldberg Quits School Job,” Nov. 19, 1970; “Franco First in Line [. . .],” June 5, 1971.

86. DC, “Schools Support Dropped,” Feb. 4, 1971; “City Schools Reorganized,” March 6, 1971; T-U, “Inner-City Parents Say ‘No’ [. . .],” Feb. 4, 1971; “Petition Appeals to Wyoma Best,” March 4, 1971; “Mrs. Best Defends School Reorganizing,” April 19, 1971; Richardson, “City School Reorganization,” 305.

87. T-U, “Protest Reorganization of City High Schools,” Feb. 13, 1971; DC, “Call in Class: Boycott,” Feb. 7, 1971; “2 Suspended as Pupil Boycott [. . .],” Feb 9, 1971; “School Shift Foes March,” Feb. 14, 1971; March 6, 1971.

88. George Richardson to John Pellegrino, “Incident at Charlotte High School,” (police report), April 20, 1971, box X0429, Rochester Municipal Archives, Rochester, NY.

89. Richardson, “City School Reorganization,” 176–81; T-U, “Three on Board Defy Council [. . .],” April 12, 1971; “School Plan Foes Protest [. . .],” June 11, 1971; DC, “GOP Councilmen Reject Loan Request [. . .],” April 24, 1971; “Wood Wields Extraordinary Power [. . .],” June 13, 1971; Hearings Before the Select Committee on Equal Educational Opportunity of the United States Senate (Washington, Oct. 7, 1971), 9036.

90. US Dept. of Health, Education and Welfare Office of Education, Planning Educational Change vol. 4: How Five School Systems Desegregated (Washington, DC: US Government Printing Office, 1969); DC, “Schools Make U.S. Booklet,” Aug. 26, 1969.

91. New York State Education Department, “Racial and Social Class Isolation in the Schools: A Report to the Board of Regents of the University of the State of New York” (Albany, NY, December 1969); Greece Post, “Humbly, Humanly, Commissioner Talks on Education,” May 14, 1970.

92. DC, “School Busing on Defense [. . .],” July 27, 1969.

5. From Charlotte to Milliken

1. Benjamin H. Richardson, “City School Reorganization: Antecedents, Forces, and Consequences” (EdD diss., University of Rochester, 1973), 218–19.

2. Herman Goldberg, “New Partnerships in Education: A Truth-in-Packaging School System,” annual message to staff, Sept. 23, 1970, folder 140:1, Joseph C. Wilson Papers, RBSCP.

3. Author interview with Bob Sagan, Sept. 27, 2019.

4. Richardson, “City School Reorganization,” 194–96; Rochester City School District, “Policy Statement on School Disruptions,” Nov. 28, 1970; Rip Off (publication of Concerned Youth Community), Jan. 20, 1971, folder 5:7, Harry Gove Papers, RBSCP; DC, “Most High Schools Closed After Strife,” June 18, 1971.

5. DC, “Everyone Getting School Blame,” July 23, 1972; author interview with James Beard, May 31, 2019; author interview with Marlene Caroselli, Oct. 1, 2019.

6. Richardson, “City School Reorganization,” 302–6; author interview with James Beard, May 31, 2019; T-U, “KKK Tactics Dangerous,” June 24, 1971.

7. T-U, “School Plan Foes Protest [. . .],” June 11, 1971.

8. T-U, “Protesters in Sheets [. . .],” July 15, 1971; June 24, 1971; DC, July 16, 1971; Richardson, “City School Reorganization,” 307.

9. T-U, “Adults Teach Children a Bad Lesson,” June 28, 1971.

10. DC, “90 P.C. of Students Report,” Sept. 10, 1971; “Few Complaints on School Shifts,” Sept. 26, 1971; T-U, “Smooth Start [. . .],” Oct. 1, 1971.

11. DC, “Whites Form Group,” Oct. 6, 1971; “Report Cards ‘Hooky Game’ Pawns,” Dec. 11, 1971; T-U, “Smooth Start [. . .],” Oct. 1, 1971.

12. Richardson, “City School Reorganization,” 261.

13. Author interview with Ed Cavalier, Oct. 2, 2019.

14. DC, “School Decision Reserved,” Feb. 29, 1972; Ralph W. Barber, “The Effects of Open Enrollment on Anti-Negro and Anti-White Prejudices among Junior High School Students in Rochester, New York” (EdD diss., University of Rochester, 1968), 31, 39; author interview with Bob Sagan, Sept. 29, 2019.

15. T-U, Oct. 1, 1971; DC, “Students List Demands,” Oct. 5, 1971; “Blacks Urge Boycott [. . .],” Oct. 6, 1971; “Parents Decry ‘Runaround,’” Oct. 8, 1971; “Parents Ask Dean’s Ouster,” Oct. 19, 1971; author interview with Roy Lane, June 27, 2019; Richardson, “City School Reorganization,” 192; Robert Byrnes to Rochester Police Commissioner John Mastrella, Nov. 10, 1971, folder 20:6, Ewald Nyquist Subject Files, NYSA.

16. Author interview with Bob Sagan, Sept. 29, 2019; author interview with Bob Stevenson, Oct. 1, 2019.

17. Irving Levine, “Proposal for a National Consultation on Ethnic America,” in American Jewish Committee Institute of Human Relations, The Reacting Americans: An Interim Look at the White Ethnic Lower Middle Class, 1969, folder 20:16, Howard W. Coles Collection, RMSC; Boris Mikoji, “Race, Nationality and Politics in an Urban Community” (PhD diss., Case Western Reserve University, 1970); Simulmatics Corp., “Unrest in Rochester: A Research Report” (unpublished report, Aug. 1, 1967), folder I:156, Daniel Patrick Moynihan Papers, LOC.

18. Author interview with Bob Stevenson, Oct. 1, 2019; Richardson, “City School Reorganization,” 293.

19. Jerre Mangione, Mount Allegro (New York: Hill and Wang, 1963), 164–65.

20. Author interview with Jasper Huffman Aug. 4, 2018.

21. Author interview with Dana Miller, Sept. 19, 2019.

22. Author interview with Nydia Padilla-Rodriguez, Aug. 22, 2019.

23. T-U, “Some City Parents [. . .],” Sept. 28, 1971; “How They’re Teaching [. . .],” Sept. 30, 1971; DC, “ ‘Block’ Schools Probed,” Sept. 29, 1971; “Block Schools Get Free Books,” Oct. 18, 1971; “Block Schools Facing Review Monday,” Dec. 18, 1971; Richardson, “City School Reorganization,” 198–201. The five block schools were: East-side Tutoring Service, 145 Parsells Avenue; the Old Schoolhouse, 492 Lyell Avenue (apparently relocated from the Italian-American Sport Club shortly after opening); Northwest Liberty School, 1322 Dewey Avenue; Lighthouse Tutoring Service, 4409 Lake Avenue; and the Open School, 266 Lyell Avenue.

24. T-U, Sept. 30, 1971; “Parents Create Tension in Schools,” Nov. 1, 1971; “Block Schools Probed,” Jan. 7, 1972.

25. DC, “Block Schools Pledge Fight,” Dec. 3, 1971; “Move on Block Schools,” March 8, 1972; “Block Schools Are Defended,” May 6, 1972; T-U, “40 Parents Freed in School Case,” May 16, 1972.

26. Author interview with Frank Ciaccia, June 29, 2018.

27. Author interview with Frank Ciaccia, June 29, 2018; DC, “New School Plan [. . .],” Jan. 28, 1970.

28. Author interview with Frank Ciaccia, June 29, 2018; DC, “Board Outlaws Non-Voluntary School Busing,” Dec. 19, 1969.

29. Jerome Zukosky, “Giving Up on Integration,” Time, Oct. 14, 1972; T-U, “Cerulli Hits Bus Plan,” Feb. 4, 1970; Richardson, “City School Reorganization,” 242–44.

30. T-U, “The Voters Wanted a Change,” Nov. 3, 1971.

31. T-U, Nov. 3, 1971; DC, “Democrats Win School Board,” Nov. 4, 1970.

32. Author interview with Ed Cavalier, Oct. 2, 2019; T-U, Nov. 3, 1971.

33. Ewald Nyquist to Sally Miles, Nov. 15, 1971, folder 20:6, Ewald Nyquist Subject Files, NYSA.

34. Author interview with Sereena (Brown) Martin, Dec. 27, 2019; DC, “Desegregation Suit Filed. . .,” March 4, 1970.

35. DC, March 4, 1970; “Segregation Suit Charges Board,” April 9, 1970; T-U, “A Judge on the Spot,” March 15, 1972. Besides Lillian Colquhoun and her daughter, Sereena Brown, the other plaintiffs were Elizabeth Jones, her daughter Gail Jones, and her grandsons Steven and Michael Jones; and Louise Duncan and her children Edward, Kenneth, Francenia, Jeffery, and Robert Duncan. The lawsuit, Colquhoun v. Board of Education, CIV-1970–97 (WDNY), was converted to a class-action in April 1970.

36. Keyes v. School District No. 1, Denver, 413 US 189 (1973); DC, “Busing Shift Could Speed Integration,” Nov. 8, 1971; “Board Struggles with School Plan,” Jan. 18, 1972; “Alter School-Shift Plan [. . .],” Jan. 25, 1972.

37. DC, “Board to Drop School Reshuffle,” Feb. 1, 1972; “School Shift Tab [. . .],” March 7, 1972.

38. DC, Feb. 1, 1972; “City School Changes OK’d,” Feb. 4, 1972; “School Board’s Plans Criticized,” Feb. 16, 1972; T-U, “Farbo Rebuked on Bid to Close School 14,” Feb. 8, 1972; “Parents Oppose Minority Busing,” Feb. 16, 1972.

39. DC, “School 14: Races Mix . . . and Learn,” Dec. 5, 1971; “No School Decision Now,” March 15, 1972.

40. DC, “Block Schools Defy Franco,” Jan. 11, 1972; “Busing: It’s a Year of Decision,” March 19, 1972; New York Times, “Opposition at a Fever Pitch,” Nov. 14, 1971.

41. Gary Orfield, “Congress, the President and Anti-Busing Legislation, 1966–1974,” in School Busing: Constitutional and Political Developments, vol. 2: The Public Debate over Busing and Attempts to Restrict Its Use, ed. Douglas Davison (New York: Garland, 1994), 5–7, 21–25, 55; Richard M. Nixon, “Message of the President of the United States Relative to Busing and Equality of Educational Opportunity,” March 20, 1972, in Davison, School Busing, 155.

42. DC, “Foes Ask Voice [. . .],” March 19, 1972; “Whites Get School Choices,” March 24, 1972; Morton J. Sobel to Ewald Nyquist, May 18, 1972, folder 20:6, in Ewald Nyquist Subject Files, NYSA.

43. T-U, “Injunction Denied on City’s Schools,” June 14, 1972.

44. DC, “Parents Endorse Separate Schools,” May 17, 1972; “School Plan Satisfy All?” May 18, 1972.

45. DC, “Adversaries of Busing [. . .],” March 12, 1972; “Six Parents Battled Board,” April 13, 1972; “DeHond Crushes Zone A,” May 5, 1972; “DeHond Wins Senate Bid,” Nov. 8, 1972; T-U, “Zone A Parents Urged [. . .],” May 18, 1972.

46. DC, “Incidents Mar End of Study,” June 17, 1972; “Violence Shutters Schools,” June 20, 1972; “9 Pupils Named in Disorder,” June 21, 1972; “Community Bias [. . .],” July 20, 1972; “School Hearings Make a House Call,” July 21, 1972; author interview with Ed Cavalier, Oct. 2, 2019. Much of the detail regarding the incidents on June 16 and 19 comes from a series of hearings that the school board held over the summer.

47. DC, June 20, 1972; June 21, 1972; author interview with Dorothy Pecoraro, Oct. 23, 2019.

48. Author interview with Marlene Caroselli, Oct. 1, 2019; author interview with Idonia Owens, Jan. 18, 2019; DC, July 21, 1972.

49. DC, “Police Role at School Criticized,” July 19, 1972; author interview with James Beard, May 31, 2019.

50. DC, July 19, 1972; “A Trick Absolves Policeman,” Aug. 19, 1972.

51. DC, “Dr. Cerulli Dies at 61,” March 14, 1972; “Dr. Cerulli Courageous,” April 6, 1972; “It’s Dr. Louis Cerulli School,” Dec. 20, 1974; author interview with Ed Cavalier, Oct. 2, 2019.

52. DC, “School Changes Bringing Gripes,” July 26, 1972; “City’s Students [. . .],” Aug. 29, 1972; Richardson, “City School Reorganization,” 223–24, 228.

53. Richardson, “City School Reorganization,” 228, 239; Jerome Balter, “Statement to the Rochester Board of Education,” Feb. 16, 1967, folder titled “Schools 1967–69,” Jerome Balter and Ruth Balter Papers, 1959–1974, Swarthmore College Peace Collection, Swarthmore, PA; Matthew F. Delmont, Why Busing Failed: Race, Media, and the National Resistance to School Desegregation (Oakland: University of California Press, 2016), 3, 174.

54. DC, “Parents: Drop School Action,” Aug. 17, 1972; “Integration Bid Future Unclear,” May 6, 1976; newsletter, Citizens for Quality Integrated Education, June 1970, folder 5:3, Harry Gove Papers, RBSCP; J. Harold Flannery to Norman Chachkin and Nathaniel Jones, June 29, 1972, folder V:1498, NAACP Papers, LOC.

55. Conrad Istock to Ewald Nyquist, Sept. 25, 1972, folder 41:17, Ewald Nyquist Subject Files, NYSA.

56. Zukosky, “Giving Up on Integration.”

57. Author interview with Marlene Caroselli, Oct. 1, 2019; Richardson, “City School Reorganization,” 238.

58. DC, “Students Promise Unity,” Sept. 30, 1972.

59. Author interview with James Beard, May 31, 2019.

60. Keyes v. School District No. 1; Gary Orfield, Gary Orfield, Must We Bus? Segregated Schools and National Policy (Washington, DC: Brookings Institution, 1978), 15–19.

61. Herman Goldberg et al., “Racial Imbalance in the Rochester Public Schools: Report to the Commissioner of Education” (Rochester, NY, Sept. 1, 1963), held at Local History and Genealogy Division, RPL; Richardson, “City School Reorganization,” 223–24; US Census data, 1950–70.

62. US Census data; Jeffrey Mirel, The Rise and Fall of an Urban School System, 1907–81 (Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press, 1993), 333.

63. Green v. County School Board, 391 US 430 (1968); Eleanor P. Wolf, Trial and Error: The Detroit School Segregation Case (Detroit: Wayne State University Press, 1981), 220–38.

64. Joyce A. Baugh, The Detroit School Busing Case: Milliken v. Bradley and the Controversy over Desegregation (Lawrence: University Press of Kansas, 2011), 145; Robert Bork and J. Stanley Pottinger, “Memorandum for the United States as Amicus Curiae,” Milliken v. Bradley, in Douglas, ed., School Busing: Constitutional and Political Developments, Vol 1, 392–418.

65. Gerald Grant, Hope and Despair in the American City: Why There Are No Bad Schools in Raleigh (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 2009), 150–52; Milliken v. Bradley (418 US 717.

66. Milliken v. Bradley.

67. “Milliken v. Bradley in Historical Perspective: The Supreme Court Comes Full Circle,” Northwestern University Law Review 69 (1975), 799–801; Terrance L. Green and Mark A. Gooden, “The Shaping of Policy: Exploring the Context, Contradictions, and Contours of Privilege in Milliken v. Bradley, over 40 Years Later,” Teachers College Record (March 2016), 2; San Antonio Independent School District v. Rodriguez, 411 US 1 (1973); Milliken v. Bradley.

68. DC, “Court’s Detroit Ruling Blow to Desegregation,” July 26, 1974.

69. George J. Rentsch, “Community Meetings and Conflict Management,” Integrated Education: Minority Children in Schools 11, no. 4–5 (1973): 48–52.

6. Considering the Metropolis

1. Wilho Salminen to Greece Board of Education, June 22, 1966, provided to author by John Woods.

2. James Wilmot to Joseph Wilson, April 29, 1966, folder 139:7, Joseph C. Wilson Papers, RBSCP; DC, “Protest Planned at School Meet,” April 15, 1965.

3. DC, “A Metropolitan School District,” May 23, 1941.

4. DC, “Competent, Constructive,” May 18, 1945; “Metropolitan District Urged [. . .],” June 3, 1947.

5. DC, “School Board Member for Metropolitan Plan,” June 3, 1947.

6. Blake McKelvey, “Rochester’s Metropolitan Prospects in Historical Perspective,” Rochester History 19, no. 3 (July 1957): 28; Andrew J. Coulson, School District Consolidation, Size and Spending: An Evaluation (Mackinac Center for Public Policy, 2007). School districts in the South were more often formed in accordance with county boundaries, in part because the county was historically a more salient political unit in the South compared to the North and in part because operating parallel education systems for Black and white students across wide rural expanses was a costly endeavor and required greater geographical scale. This distinction, initially based in white supremacy in the South, ultimately made desegregation a less complex affair there compared to in the North, where politically independent districts proliferate within single metropolitan areas. For more background on the factors behind the shape of school districts across the United States, see William A. Fischel, Making the Grade: The Economic Evolution of American School Districts (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2009).

7. Joseph Barnes, “Rochester’s Era of Annexations, 1901–1926” (PhD diss., State University of New York at Buffalo, 1974); DC, “Repeal of Charter Section Suggested [. . .],” Jan. 10, 1931.

8. DC, “Ask Smith to Back [. . .],” April 8, 1924; “Urges Study of Tax Phases,” Jan. 8, 1925; “City Should Keep Its First Bargain [. . .],” Feb. 19, 1929; Jan. 10, 1931; May 23, 1941; May 18, 1945; “Dewey Signs Bill Giving Autonomy to School Boards, April 20, 1950; “Aex Recommends Fiscal Freedom [. . .],” Sept. 14, 1955; “School Fiscal Freedom Called Step Forward,” Oct. 6, 1955; “City Puts Pressure on Free Districts,” Feb. 22, 1964; “Assembly OKs Bill to Abolish Free Schools,” May 1, 1975. See also A. Vincent Buzard, “Brief in Opposition to the Continuation of Free School Districts Around the City of Rochester,” Feb. 26, 1972, box X0429, Rochester Municipal Archives, Rochester, NY.

9. McKelvey, “Rochester’s Metropolitan Prospects,” 28; DC, “Edison Tech Courses Advocated for Girls,” Oct. 17, 1958; “Law Stymies County Control of Edison High,” Feb. 10, 1960; Jonathan Steepee, “Racial Discrimination in the Rochester, N.Y. School District,” folder V:1377, NAACP Papers, LOC

10. T-U, “Time Short for Joint School Program,” Dec. 17, 1952; DC, “Deadline Stands, Education Board Tells Irondequoit,” May 28, 1954.

11. DC, “The ‘Why’ of Waiting [. . .],” May 30, 1954; “School Bids Short of Estimates,” June 10, 1964.

12. DC, “City is Growing!” July 9, 1940; “Metropolitan School District Needed,” May 30, 1947; “City Taxpayers Built Them Up,” May 31, 1947.

13. Rochester City School District, Desegregation of the Elementary Schools (February 1967); DC, “Metro School District Urged,” Feb. 8, 1967; “Why Goldberg Didn’t Offer Metro School Plan,” Feb. 16, 1967.

14. DC, “Suburbs Bar Merged Schools,” Dec. 13, 1966; “Long Look at Schools Pledged,” Feb. 3, 1967; “Metro School Plan Essential—Allen,” Jan. 18, 1967.

15. DC, “Call for Calmness,” Feb. 9, 1967.

16. DC, Feb. 3, 1967; “Don’t Force Busing,” Feb. 25, 1971; Jerome Balter, “Statement to the Rochester Board of Education,” Feb. 16, 1967, folder titled “Schools, 1967–69,” Jerome Balter and Ruth Balter Papers, 1959–1974, Swarthmore College Peace Collection, Swarthmore, PA.

17. Untitled document (announcing 15-Point Plan), Rochester Board of Education, March 16, 1967.

18. Stephen H. Greenspan and Friedrich J. Grasberger, Target: The Three E’s; a Study of the Organizational and Financial Structure of Public Education in Monroe County (Rochester, NY: Rochester Bureau of Municipal Research, February 1969).

19. The 1971 report also echoed some points that a state joint legislative committee had made in late 1968. Monroe County Educational Planning Committee, A Proposed Model for a County Federation of School Districts (August 1971); DC, “School Federation Urged,” Sept. 29, 1971; Greenspan and Grasberger, Target; DC, “Merger Eyed on Special Education,” Dec. 31, 1968.

20. Monroe County Educational Planning Committee, A Proposed Model; Nancy Orr, A Financial Plan in Support of the Federated Intermediate Educational District (Rochester, NY: Rochester Center for Governmental and Community Research, October 1971).

21. Author interview with Don Pryor, April 9, 2020; Monroe County Educational Planning Committee, A Proposed Model.

22. Author interview with Don Pryor, April 9, 2020.

23. DC, “City Schools Would Blend into Suburbs,” May 8, 1983; “Wilson Plan Being Taken Seriously,” May 9, 1983; “City Schools’ Distress Signal Is Real,” May 10, 1983; “Council Adopts ‘Balanced’ Budget,” June 30, 1983; “City Fiscal Problems,” Dec. 25, 1983.

24. The founding of Project UNIQUE is discussed briefly in: Rochester City School District, World of Inquiry School (1976), https://files.eric.ed.gov/fulltext/ED132231.pdf; DC, “UR Professor Liaison Aide [. . .],” Nov. 20, 1964; “Storefront School Planned,” Jan. 13, 1967; “Superclasses Will Open in School 58,” June 16, 1967; “Peek-a-Boo School at Sibley’s,” Feb. 28, 1968. See also William Young, Project UNIQUE (Rochester, NY: Rochester House of Printing, 1969), folder 137:9, Joseph C. Wilson Papers, RBSCP.

25. Project UNIQUE, newsletter, January 1968, Nazareth College Archives, Pittsford, NY.

26. DC, Jan. 13, 1967; June 16, 1967; Feb. 28, 1968; “New Tasks for Satellite School,” Nov. 13, 1971; Rochester City School District, World of Inquiry School; Dean Corrigan, “Reflections on the Creation of the World of Inquiry School,” report attached to Nov. 13, 2009, letter to Jean-Claude Brizard, provided to author by Tate DeCaro.

27. T-U, “West Irondequoit Schools to Take [. . .],” April 13, 1965; DC, “Protest Planned at School Meet,” April 15, 1965; Robert Spillane to Gordon Ambach, July 12, 1979, folder 10:3, Gordon M. Ambach Subject Files, NYSA.

28. T-U, Old and New Merge [. . .],” Nov. 28, 1967; DC, “Model School to Open [. . .],” Sept. 4, 1967; Nov. 13, 1971.

29. Project UNIQUE, newsletter, January 1968; T-U, “More Applicants Than Capacity [. . .],” May 24, 1967; Nov. 28, 1967.

30. DC, “Teachers Object to Inquiry Plans,” Feb. 27, 1969; “Faculty, Parents Reply to Critic,” March 1, 1969.

31. T-U, “Panel Urges Relocation [. . .],” Feb. 2, 1977.

32. Author interview with Thomas Warfield, Sept. 17, 2019.

33. Author interview with Tate and Patricia DeCaro, Aug. 26, 2019.

34. Rochester City School District, World of Inquiry School; DC, “Removing City Limits,” Feb. 8, 1995; “City Studies All-Boys School,” Sept. 11, 2008; graduation rate data available from New York State Education Department, at http://data.nysed.gov; placement data obtained by author from Rochester City School District via Freedom of Information Act request, July 10, 2017.

35. Steven L. Bennett, “Our Incredible Experimental School” Campus School Documents 3, 2011, SUNY Brockport College Archives (online), https://digitalcommons.brockport.edu/campus_docs/3; Brockport State Teachers College, “Campus School Parent Handbook,” Campus School Documents 1, 1964, SUNY Brockport College Archives (online), https://digitalcommons.brockport.edu/campus_docs/1.

36. Bruce Leslie interview with Andrew Virgilio, Aug. 31, 1999, SUNY Brock-port, Rose Archives ; DC, “City to Bus Inner City Pupils [. . .],” Aug. 19, 1966; “Children Learning to Work and Play [. . .],” April 7, 1981; “220 Students Must Find New Schools,” Aug. 29, 1981.

37. Bennett, “Our Incredible Experimental School”; DC, April 7, 1981.

38. DC, “Some Help for New Teachers,” July 7, 1966; Rochester City School District, World of Inquiry School; author interview with Jeannette Banker, Jan. 23, 2019.

39. Author interview with Terry Carbone, Feb. 28, 2019.

40. DC, “Federal Funding May Save Campus School,” Feb. 28, 1976; Aug. 29, 1981; author interview with Terry Carbone, Feb. 28, 2019.

41. DC, “New School of Inquiry Planned,” June 15, 1973; T-U, “Inquiry School Sept. 10,” Aug. 24, 1973; “Inquiry School Enrollment Up [. . .],” Aug. 31, 1973; “Inquiry School,” Sept. 4, 1973.

42. T-U, “Inquiry School Hailed,” Feb. 21, 1974; “Inquiry School Threatened,” May 28, 1974; DC, “School Integrated—By Choice,” Sept. 22, 1975.

43. DC, “Don’t Drop School Integration Priority,” Aug. 4, 1975; “Brockport School May Be Saved,” Feb. 28, 1976; “Students Sought for Integrated School,” Aug. 23, 1977; T-U, Feb. 21, 1974.

44. Author interview with Terry Carbone, Feb. 28, 2019.

45. Author interview with Thomas Warfield, Sept. 17, 2019; author interview with Terry Carbone, Feb. 28, 2019; author interview with Jeannette Banker, Jan. 23, 2019.

46. John Woods, “Suburban-Industrial-City Cooperative Educational Plan for Disadvantaged Children for the City of Rochester,” undated ca. July 1967, folder 3A:9, Walter Cooper Papers, RBSCP; DC, “School Park Proposal Gets Good Reception,” July 11, 1967.

47. Author interview with John Woods, Jan. 14, 2019; DC, July 11, 1967; “Interest Grows [. . .],” July 26, 1967; “Greece Votes Aid to City Schools,” Aug. 10, 1967.

48. DC, “Greece Voters Turn Down Busing,” Feb. 27, 1967; “Greece Rejects Busing from City,” June 6, 1968; “World Shown What Racism is About,” March 4, 1969.

49. DC, “City Board Skeptical About Park School Plan,” July 12, 1967; Aug. 10, 1967; T-U, “Rochester Rapped on Segregation,” April 11, 1968.

50. Herman Goldberg to Ewald Nyquist, Feb. 3, 1970; and Nyquist to Goldberg, Feb. 24, 1970, both in folder 20:6, Ewald Nyquist Subject Files, NYSA.

51. John Bennion, “Report on the Activities of the Task Force on Reducing Racial Isolation in Monroe County during the 1970–71 School Year,” May 3, 1971, attached to Craig Smith letter to Kermit Hill, Oct. 5, 1971, folder titled “Board of Education General 1971,” box X0429, Rochester Municipal Archives, Rochester, NY; Brighton-Pittsford Post, “BCS Teachers Speak on Integration Issue,” April 9, 1970.

52. Herman Goldberg to Ewald Nyquist, Feb. 3, 1970, folder 20:6, Ewald Nyquist Subject Files, NYSA; Brighton-Pittsford Post, “BHS Students Back Integration,” April 2, 1970.

53. Author interview with William Cala, Oct. 10, 2019; Rochester City Newspaper, “Regional Schools,” May 21, 2014; DC, “Cala Seeks a Metro School,” Sept. 21, 2008; “The Regional Academy: History,” undated document, provided to author by William Cala; “The Regional Academy Act of Two Thousand Ten,” draft enabling legislation, provided to author by William Cala.

54. Author interview with Bryan Hetherington, Dec. 19, 2019; author interview with William Cala, Oct. 10, 2019.

55. Rochester City Newspaper, May 21, 2014; “The Regional Academy Act of Two Thousand Ten”; author interview with Bryan Hetherington, Dec. 19, 2019.

56. Author interview with William Cala, Oct. 10, 2019; author interview with Joseph Morelle, Feb. 19, 2020; author interview with Bryan Hetherington, Dec. 19, 2019; William Cala, “Why Mayoral Control Is Wrong and Doesn’t Work,” undated essay ca. 2010, provided to author by William Cala; Rochester City Newspaper, May 21, 2014.

57. Author interview with Bryan Hetherington, Dec. 19, 2019; author interview with Malik Evans, Jan. 30, 2020.

58. Author interview with Lynette Sparks and Don Pryor, Jan. 8, 2020; Rochester City Newspaper, “Lessons for Rochester from Raleigh,” July 23, 2014.

59. Author interview with Lynette Sparks and Don Pryor, Jan. 8, 2020; “GS4A: Great Schools for All,” undated brochure, provided to author by Great Schools for All.

60. Jim Antonevich, “Great Schools for All Parent Survey Summary Report” (Rochester, NY: Metrix Matrix, May 2016), http://gs4a.org/wp-content/uploads/2016/05/GS4A-Summary-Survey-2016-FINAL-B.pdf; DC, “Magnet Schools Supported,” June 10, 2016; author interview with Lynette Sparks and Don Pryor, Jan. 8, 2020.

61. Author interview with Lynette Sparks and Don Pryor, Jan. 8, 2020.

62. Author interview with William Cala, Oct. 10, 2019; DC, “RCSD announces its ‘Path Forward,’” Jan. 26, 2018; Rochester Board of Education, Resolution 2016–17:899, June 27, 2017.

63. DC, “Hannah-Jones Asks [. . .],” Oct. 28, 2017; author interview with Lynette Sparks and Don Pryor, Jan. 8, 2020.

64. DC, “Mayor Calls for Consolidations,” March 5, 2002.

65. DC, “Merge School Districts?” Sept. 25, 1996; “Mayor Criticizes Consolidation Letter,” April 19, 2002; “Reactions Split at Metro Forum,” April 26, 2002; author interview with Bill Johnson, Dec. 27, 2019.

66. DC, “GOP hits Johnson [. . .],” July 24, 2003; “Johnson Outspends Brooks,” Oct. 28, 2003; author interview with Bill Johnson, Dec. 27, 2019.

67. DC, “Flap over Race Roils Monroe Campaign,” Oct. 3, 2003; “Johnson Stresses Experience and Vision,” Oct. 19, 2003.

68. DC, “Brooks Soars,” Nov. 5, 2003; Rochester City Newspaper, “Lessons from the Johnson Loss,” Nov. 12, 2003; “2004 ‘Pollie’ Award Winners” (McClean, VA: American Association of Political Consultants, 2004), https://theaapc.org/wp-content/uploads/2015/10/2004_Winners.pdf.

7. The Urban-Suburban Program

1. DC, “Indicted City Aides [. . .],” Aug. 3, 1962; “Jazz,” May 29, 1977; “Pythodd Club, a Jiggling Jazz Mecca,” June 21, 2015; author interview with Kirk Holmes, July 22, 2018.

2. Norman Gross, “Minority Group Isolation in Schools (Part II),” about . . . time, Aug. 1979, 2–3; DC, “W. Irondequoit Pupil Shift [. . .],” Sept. 4, 1965; “Retiring Director Fighting to Save [. . .],” May 23, 1982; Lawrence W. Heinrich, “A Descriptive Study of a Cooperative Urban-Suburban Pupil Transfer Program” (EdD diss., University of Rochester, 1969), 72.

3. DC, “Irondequoit to Get City 1st Graders,” April 14, 1965; T-U, “W. Irondequoit Schools to Take [. . .],” April 13, 1965; Heinrich, “Descriptive Study,” 72–77.

4. Author interview with Kirk Holmes, July 22, 2018.

5. DC, “Students Are Confident [. . .],” Dec. 1, 1963; “Madison’s Answer to Image [. . .],” March 18, 1964; “High School Pupils Examine Prejudice,” Oct. 30, 1964; US Commission on Civil Rights, Hearing Before the United States Commission on Civil Rights: Hearing Held in Rochester, New York, Sept. 16–17, 1966, held at Rush Rhees Library, University of Rochester, 62–65.

6. DC, “Teacher Salaries Proposal [. . .],” March 8, 1956; “Storandt Sees Gross [. . .],” Aug. 23, 1962; T-U, “Negro History Courses Pushed,” July 18, 1968.

7. Author interviews with Deborah Gitomer, Oct. 17, 2018, Dec. 19, 2018.

8. DC, “Gross Fire Returned at Session,” Oct. 17, 1968.

9. DC, “Narrowing the Distance,” Oct. 8, 2014.

10. Etter v. Littwitz, 47 Misc. 2d 473, 262 NYS 2d 924 (1965); DC, Sept. 4, 1965; “Irondequoit Board Upheld on Accepting Negroes,” Feb. 25, 1966; “Irondequoit Ponders Pursuing Busing Fight,” Sept. 22, 1967; Heinrich, “Descriptive Study,” 140.

11. DC, “West Irondequoit Elects Board ‘Secrecy’ Foe,” June 17, 1965; DC, “School Budget Rejected in W. Irondequoit,” May 4, 1967; Gross, “Minority Group Isolation in Schools (Part II),” 30.

12. Heinrich, “Descriptive Study,” 145, 152, 162; author interview with Mary Halpin, Oct. 2, 2018.

13. Author interview with Kirk Holmes, July 22, 2018; author interview with Yvette Singletary, July 31, 2018.

14. Clement Finch Hapeman, “Teacher and Administrator Evaluations of the West Irondequoit Intercultural Enrichment Program,” Spring 1967, folder 1:16, Urban-Suburban Summer School Program, Brighton, NY, Papers, RBSCP.

15. DC, “Concern of Few Stirs [. . .],” Aug. 17, 1966; “The History of Project U-S: 50th Anniversary Edition” (November 2015), https://www.monroe.edu/cms/lib/NY02216770/Centricity/Domain/121/US_History_50thAnnivEdition_rev4_21_16.pdf; Project UNIQUE, newsletter, January 1968, folder 2/1/16.1, Nazareth College Archives, Pittsford, NY.

16. Brighton-Pittsford Post, “Brighton Group to Fight ‘Busing,’” Nov. 10, 1966; Brighton-Pittsford Post, “Busing Poll,” undated clipping ca. December 1966, folder 1:12, Urban-Suburban Summer School Program, Brighton, NY, Papers, RBSCP

17. T-U, “Parents More Receptive to Integration,” Sept. 26, 1972.

18. “A Special Report to the Board of Education of Hilton Central School on Poverty and Integration,” April 25, 1967, folder 3B:12, Walter Cooper Papers, RBSCP.

19. DC, Oct. 17, 1968; “Sick, Says Gross of Suburban Whites,” Jan. 31, 1969; “Board Rejects School Integration Plan,” March 13, 1979; “Webster Poll Opposes Pupil Transfer,” Feb. 22, 1979.

20. Gross, “Minority Group Isolation in Schools (Part II).”

21. DC, “6 take on U.S. [. . .],” May 9, 1974; “Project US,” undated booklet ca. 1980, Local History and Genealogy Division, RPL; T-U, “The Annual Urban-Suburban Crisis,” May 16, 1975; “Worry Expressed about Future of School Desegregation Program,” Nov. 14, 1984; “The History of Project U-S.”

22. Kara S. Finnigan and Tricia J. Stewart, “Interdistrict Choice as a Policy Solution: Examining Rochester’s Urban-Suburban Interdistrict Transfer Program” (presentation at “School Choice and School Improvement: Research in State, District and Community Contexts,” Vanderbilt University, October 25–27, 2009), 13–14, 26; DC, “Transfer Program Could Be in Danger,” Sept. 3, 1980; “Urban-Suburban Program Stresses Diversity,” Jan. 9, 1991; “Fairport Targets Diversity,” Nov. 17, 2003.

23. Author interview with William Cala, Nov. 13, 2018.

24. Author interview with William Cala, Nov. 13, 2018; DC, “Fairport Mulls Pupil Transfer Plan,” Feb. 26, 2003; Nov. 17, 2003.

25. “The History of Project U-S”; DC, “District Won’t Enter Orogram,” Feb. 2, 2011.

26. Author interview with William Cala, Nov. 13, 2018.

27. Spencerport Board of Education, minutes, Oct. 28, 2014; Dec. 9, 2014; Feb. 2, 2015; Feb. 24, 2015.

28. Author’s notes, Spencerport Board of Education meeting, Dec. 9, 2014.

29. DC, “School Choice Debate Divisive,” Dec. 10, 2014.

30. DC, “Step Up, Spencerport,” Feb. 3, 2015; “District Joins Despite Rancor,” Feb. 25, 2015.

31. DC, “Only 25 Places for 60 Kids,” July 16, 1965; “W. Irondequoit Schools Take [. . .],” Sept. 8, 1965; “Learning Better When We’re Together,” Nov. 27, 1998.

32. DC, “School Turns White Girl Down,” Sept. 11, 1998.

33. DC, “Transfer Plan at a Crossroads,” Jan. 27, 1999; “Integration Program to Reopen,” June 22, 2000.

34. Hopwood v. Texas, 78 F.3d 932 (5th Cir. 1996). The Circuit Court decision was abrogated by the US Supreme Court in 2003 in Grutter v. Bollinger, 539 US 306 (2003).

35. Parent Ass’n of Andrew Jackson High Sch. v. Ambach, 598 F.2d 705 (2d Cir.1979); Brewer v. West Irondequoit Central School Dist., 32 F. Supp. 2d 619 (WDNY 1999). See also Parent Ass’n of Andrew Jackson High Sch. v. Ambach, 738 F.2d 574 (2d Cir.1984).

36. DC, “Ruling Adds to Race Debate,” May 13, 2000, June 22, 2000; “Early Success in Spencerport,” Dec. 30, 2016.

37. Parents Involved in Community Schools v. Seattle School District No. 1, 551 US 701 (2007); author interview with William Cala, Nov. 13, 2018.

38. Rush-Henrietta Board of Education, “Board of Education Position Summary: Urban-Suburban Inter-District Transfer Program” (May 25, 2016).

39. DC, “Program May Admit Whites,” March 20, 2015; Dec. 30, 2016; “The History of Project U-S”; Author interview with Jeff Crane, Oct. 22, 2018.

40. DC, “Diversity of Students Sought,” May 23, 2015; “Webster Schools to Take City Kids,” Nov. 25, 2015; “Long Bus Ride Forces Kendall from Urban-Suburban Plan,” Sept. 7, 2016; “Honeoye Falls-Lima to Offer [. . .],” Dec. 22, 2017.

41. Rochester City School District, “Urban Suburban Program,” internal memo, Feb. 12, 2018; 2017–18 district data from New York State Education Department General Formula Aid Output Report database, available at stateaid.nysed.gov.

42. Author interview with Richard Stutzman, Jan. 21, 2015.

43. Honeoye Falls-Lima Urban-Suburban Committee, “Report to the HFL Board of Education” (October 24, 2017).

44. Rochester City School District operating budget, 2014–15; RCSD, “Urban Suburban Program”; DC, “City Students Drive Revenue for Suburban Schools,” June 20, 2019; author interview with Jeff Crane, Oct. 22, 2018.

45. Brewer v. West Irondequoit Central School Dist.

46. William C. Young et al., Project UNIQUE (Rochester, NY: self-published, 1969), 50, folder 137:9, Joseph C. Wilson Papers, RBSCP.

47. Hapeman, “Teacher and Administrator Evaluations.”

48. Center for Governmental Research, Race and Education in Rochester: Successes, Problems and Opportunities (Rochester, NY, June 1979), 120–21; DC, “Schools Can Improve Racial Balance: Study,” Aug. 17, 1979.

49. Finnigan and Stewart, “Interdistrict Choice.” See also Jennifer Jellison Holme and Kara S. Finnigan, Striving in Common: A Regional Equity Framework for Urban Schools (Cambridge, MA: Harvard Education Press, 2018); Kara S. Finnigan et al., “Regional Educational Policy Analysis: Rochester, Omaha, and Minneapolis’ Inter-District Arrangements,” Educational Policy 29, no. 5 (2015), 780–814.

50. West Irondequoit newsletter no. 37 (April 1965), cited in Finnigan and Stewart, “Interdistrict Choice,” 24.

51. Heinrich, “Descriptive Study,” 192.

52. Holme and Finnigan, Striving in Common, 60–63; Finnigan et al., “Regional Educational Policy Analysis”; Kara S. Finnigan and Jennifer Jellison Holme, “Learning from Inter-District School Transfer Programs,” Poverty & Race 24, no. 4 (July/August 2015), 12.

53. Finnigan and Stewart, “Interdistrict Choice.”

54. Rush-Henrietta Central School District, “Responses to Most Frequent Community Questions about the Urban-Suburban Program” (October 2016); Finnigan and Stewart, “Interdistrict Choice”; Honeoye Falls-Lima Urban-Suburban Committee, “Report.”

55. Finnigan and Stewart, “Interdistrict Choice,” 22.

56. Finnigan and Stewart, “Interdistrict Choice.”

57. Dennis et al. v. Board of Education of the Pittsford Central School District, WL 696398 (WDNY 2005).

58. DC, “Penfield Puts New Limits on Transfers,” March 24, 1994.

59. Author interview with Jessica Lewis, Sept. 27, 2018; author interview with Wayne Johnson, Aug. 4, 2018.

60. DC, “Removing City Limits,” Feb. 8, 1995; author interview with Jessica Lewis, Sept. 27, 2018; author interview with Kennedy Jackson, Dec. 20, 2018.

61. Finnigan and Stewart, “Interdistrict Choice,” 36.

62. Author interview with Jeff Crane, Oct. 22, 2018; DC, “Urban-Suburban’s Reach at 50,” Jan. 18, 2015.

63. Author interview with Jeff Crane, Oct. 22, 2018.

64. DC, May 23, 1982.

65. Author interview with Jeff Crane, Oct. 22, 2018.

66. US Department of Health, Education, and Welfare, Office of Education, Planning Educational Change, vol. 4: How Five School Systems Desegregated (Washington, DC: US Department of Health, Education, and Welfare, 1969); DC, Aug. 17, 1966.

67. Author interview with Walter Cooper, Aug. 21, 2018.

8. The Age of Accountability

1. DC, “Legal Opinion Stops Busing Resolution,” Oct. 3, 1969.

2. DC, “Warren Calls on Community [. . .],” March 5, 2019; “Is This Off the Table?” March 7, 2019.

3. T-U, “City School Rolls Decline [. . .],” Dec. 29, 1970; US Census data, 1970 and 2010; student enrollment data from New York State Education Department, available at data.nysed.gov.

4. DC, “Puerto Ricans Quite Crowded Island for City [. . .],” Jan. 12, 1955; Karen McCally, “Building the Barrio: A Story of Rochester’s Puerto Rican Pioneers,” Vocero Hispano, April 1957, folder 1:31, Nydia Padilla-Rodriguez Papers, RMSC; Nydia Padilla, “Puerto Rican Contributions to the Greater Rochester Area” (MEd thesis, State University of New York College at Brockport, 1985), 12–15, box 1, Nydia Padilla-Rodriguez Papers, RMSC; Nydia Padilla-Rodriguez interview with Ramon Padilla, Nov. 23, 1985, folder 1:19, Nydia Padilla-Rodriguez Papers, RMSC.

5. McCally, “Building the Barrio”; DC, “Adelante Begins; Bilingual Studies,” Aug. 19, 1969; “Rochester’s Spanish Community,” June 18, 1972; Manuel Rivera, “Bilingual Education in Rochester: A Report,” draft copy, Rochester City School District Department of Bilingual Education, June 1982, folder 140:14, Sue Costa Papers, RMSC; George Rentsch, “The Puerto Rican in the Rochester Public Schools,” Rochester City School District, Nov. 3, 1966, folder 15:202, Sue Costa Papers, RMSC.

6. DC, “Vietnamese Still Dream about Going Home,” Aug. 27, 1978; “Scars Linger,” Aug. 8, 1981; “For Refugees, a Long Road to Prosperity,” Sept. 25, 1988; enrollment data from New York State Education Department, available at data.nysed.gov.

7. Author interview with Nydia Padilla-Rodriguez, Aug. 22, 2019.

8. McCally, “Building the Barrio”; DC, “Asian Influx,” Nov. 11, 2014.

9. Enrollment data from New York State Education Department, available at data.nysed.gov; US Census data, 1970 and 2000; author interview with Musette Castle, June 21, 2018; author interview with Gloria Winston Al-Sarag, Sept. 20, 2018; see also Gary Orfield and Susan Eaton, Dismantling Desegregation: The Quiet Reversal of Brown v. Board of Education (New York: New Press, 1996), 84–85.

10. Urban League of Rochester, “Monroe County Housing Audits, May 1974—December 1975,” July 1976, folders 12:27–29, Sue Costa Papers, RMSC.

11. DC, “A Warning to City Schools on Integration,” May 1, 1975; T-U, “Urban League Proposes Steps [. . .],” May 20, 1977; David J. Wirschem, Racial Isolation in the Rochester Public Schools: The Problem and What To Do about It (Urban League of Rochester, April 1977), folder III:347, National Urban League Papers, LOC.

12. DC, “Group’s Name Inflammatory?” June 1, 1977; “School District Integration Study [. . .],” Jan. 7, 1979; “City Schools’ Integration is Criticized,” Jan. 30, 1979; “Report: Students Should Be Allowed to Choose School,” Oct. 16, 1979.

13. DC, “County, City School Integration Examined,” July 1, 1979. The documents are also not contained in the papers of Patricia Harris, then the Health, Education and Welfare secretary, at the Library of Congress.

14. DC, “Frusci: Kids Fail Because They Don’t Try,” July 12, 1978; July 1, 1979.

15. Lou Buttino and Mark Hare, The Remaking of a City: Rochester, New York 1964–1984 (Dubuque, IA: Kendall Hunt, 1984), 234–35; Joel S. Berke, Margaret E. Goertz, and Richard J. Coley, Politicians, Judges, and City Schools: Reforming School Finance in New York (New York: Russell Sage Foundation, 1984), 163–65; Kermit Hill to John Franco, Dec. 28, 1972, box X0429, Rochester Municipal Archives, Rochester, NY.

16. Board of Education, Levittown Union Free School District et al. v. Ewald B. Nyquist, 57 NY2d 27, 439 NE2d 359, 453 NYS2d 643 (1982); DC, “School Financing: Tough Knot to Unravel,” June 25, 1978; “Unequal Spending for Schools Legal,” June 24, 1982; Brian J. Nickerson and Gerard M. Deenihan, “From Equity to Adequacy: The Legal Battle for Increased State Funding of Poor School Districts in New York,” Fordham Urban Law Review 30, no. 4 (May 2003), 1361–64. The relevant section of the New York State Constitution (article 11, section 1) reads: “The legislature shall provide for the maintenance and support of a system of free common schools, wherein all the children of this state may be educated.”

17. DC, “Franco, Board in Awkward Positions,” March 2, 1980; “Franco to L.I. [. . .],” April 22, 1980; “Teachers Ratify the Pact,” Sept. 12, 1980; “Teachers Union called Cohesive,” May 6, 1981; Buttino and Hare, Remaking of a City, 236–41.

18. T-U, “The Change Agent,” July 4, 1981; author interview with Archie Curry, March 2, 2020; Ralph Edwards and Charles V. Willie, Black Power/White Power in Public Education (Westport, CT: Praeger, 1998), 33.

19. “A Nation at Risk: The Imperative for Educational Reform” (Washington, DC: US Commission on Excellence in Education, 1983).

20. Denise Gelberg, The “Business” of Reforming American Schools (Albany: State University of New York Press, 1997), 126–27.

21. Education Week, Nov. 14, 1990; David Kearns and Denis Doyle, Winning the Brain Race: A Bold Plan to Make Our Schools Competitive (San Francisco: Institute for Contemporary Studies, 1988), 3.

22. Gerald Grant and Christine Murray, Teaching in America: The Slow Revolution (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1999), 142; DC, “Assignment: Change,” Jan. 17, 1988; “Education Must Change, and Business Can Help,” Sept. 25, 1988.

23. DC, “School Program Lacking Support,” Feb. 26, 1973; “Magnet OK Looks ‘Certain,’” June 9, 1973; “Voluntary Integration Plan Okayed,” Nov. 16, 1973; “Schools Plan Arts Program as Attraction,” Aug. 7, 1976; T-U, “Magnet School Shift Planned [. . .],” June 22, 1977; Buttino and Hare, Remaking of a City, 233–34.

24. DC, “Magnet Schools: City’s Main Hope for Integration,” Dec. 3, 1979; “City School Board Votes 5–1 [. . .],” Dec. 7, 1979; “Big Change Proposed for Schools,” Dec. 19, 1980; “School Restructuring Ok’d,” May 1, 1981; T-U, “1 of 4 Attends ‘Away’ School,” Dec. 19, 1979; Rochester City Newspaper, “Have We Found a Racial Magnet?,” Sept. 6, 1979; author interview with Peter McWalters, March 9, 2020; Buttino and Hare, Remaking of a City, 233–34.

25. Author interview with Suzanne Johnston, Oct. 11, 2019; T-U, “From Tough School to Tough Standards,” Jan. 24, 1984.

26. DC, “Parents Pleased with Magnet School,” Jan. 21, 1984; “Wilson Magnet High School Proves Itself,” Jan. 27, 1985; “Taste of Adventure in Learning-Trip to Bahamas,” March 5, 1986; “I Won’t Forget This Visit,” May 19, 1989; “Federal Grant Will Aid City’s Top Students,” Sept. 19, 1998; author interview with Malik Evans, Jan. 30, 2020.

27. Author interview with Lovely Warren, Oct. 21, 2019.

28. DC, “Magnet Schools’ Enrollment Down,” Jan. 25, 1984; “Education Officials Praise Program [. . .],” June 21, 1988; T-U, “City Magnet Schools Get Their Report Card,” May 8, 1984; “New Magnet Schools’ Methods [. . .],” Sept. 16, 1986.

29. T-U, May 8, 1984; DC, “School Tour Finds Quick Benefactor,” Feb. 21, 1983.

30. Orfield and Eaton, Dismantling Desegregation, 16–19; T-U, “Tolerating Segregation,” Feb. 6, 1984; “New Definition Helps Schools’ Racial Balance,” June 5, 1984; “White Students Score Higher than Minorities,” June 20, 1989; DC, “City Schools Show Racial Imbalance,” Oct. 31, 1989.

31. T-U, “Magnets’ Costs Soar,” June 25, 1980; “Recruiting Drive Planned for City Magnet Schools,” Dec. 20, 1983; “A Shaky Refuge from the Raw World,” June 24, 1992; DC, “Assessing the Future of City’s Magnet Schools,” June 7, 1982; author interview with Peter McWalters, March 9, 2020; author interview with Suzanne Johnston, Oct. 11, 2019.

32. Author interview with Lovely Warren, Oct. 21, 2019; DC, “Urbanski Leads Teachers Union in Blast [. . .],” June 7, 1989; “Franklin High Added to Bad-School List,” July 13, 1991; “Franklin High Principal Asks [. . .],” Aug. 6, 1991; “Rivera Says He Won’t Forsake Franklin High,” Oct. 29, 1991.

33. DC, “City Schools: The War against Attrition,” Aug. 28, 1988; “District Endorses Choice,” Aug. 9, 1993; Rochester School Board, “Parent Preference/Managed Choice Policy #5153,” adopted Oct. 17, 2002; Rochester City School District budgets, 1993–94 and 2007–08.

34. DC, “Wilson High to Restore IB Classes for All,” Oct. 2, 2014; “Panel Looks at School Choice,” Jan. 28, 2017.

35. Author interview with Archie Curry, March 2, 2020.

36. Mary Anna Towler, the founder of Rochester City Newspaper and a veteran of the fight for school desegregation, summarized these efforts nicely in “The More Things Change: 48 Years with the RCSD,” a Sept. 3, 2019, column in City.

37. Rump Group, “A Community at Risk: Why the Failure of Rochester City Schools Is Everybody’s Business” (2003).

38. New York Times, “Big Raises Agreed on for Rochester Teachers,” May 16, 1986; Julia Koppich, “The Rocky Road to Reform in Rochester” (paper presented at the annual meeting of the American Educational Research Association, April 1992), available at https://files.eric.ed.gov/fulltext/ED346557.pdf, 10, 13; Gelberg, The “Business” of Reforming American Schools, 175–77.

39. DC, “School-Based Planning Takes Root in Rochester,” Aug. 29, 1988; “Did City Schools Get What They Paid For?” May 7, 1995; Washington Monthly, “Reform School Confidential,” October 1992; Koppich, “Rocky Road to Reform,” 20–28; author interview with Adam Urbanski, March 3, 2020.

40. DC, “City Zapped,” Sept. 8, 1987; author interview with Adam Urbanski, March 3, 2020; Washington Monthly, October 1992.

41. DC, “Teachers Contract Approved,” Sept. 4, 1987; Koppich, “Rocky Road to Reform,” 34–46; author interview with Adam Urbanski, March 3, 2020.

42. DC, May 7, 1995; author interview with Adam Urbanski, March 3, 2020.

43. DC, “McWalters Chosen,” May 28, 1986; author interview with Archie Curry, March 2, 2020; author interview with Peter McWalters, March 9, 2020.

44. Art Aspengren et al., “For All Our Children . . . No More Excuses! A Framework for Transforming Rochester’s Public Education System,” (Dec. 5, 1994), also known as “The King/Johnson Report”; DC, “Accountability is Key,” Oct. 14, 2012; “New Charter Schools Lead District Exodus,” Feb. 18, 2014; “Enrollment at Charter Schools Still Booming,” Nov. 21, 2017; Rochester City School District, “Budget and District Profile, 2020–21,” May 7, 2020.

45. DC, “Charter School Leader Fired [. . .],” May 6, 2015; “Public Funding, Little Oversight,” Jan. 24, 2016; “Charter School Criticized for Finances,” May 26, 2017; “Public Helps Bolster Developer’s Profit,” Dec. 10, 2017.

46. DC, “Unwanted?” Nov. 10, 2019.

47. DC, “Regents Approve Charter School [. . .],” July 14, 2000; “To Succeed, Keep Middle-Class Students [. . .],” March 28, 2015; “Regents Make Moves against Charter Schools,” May 21, 2020; Koppich, “Rocky Road to Reform,” 26–27.

48. Author interview with Shannon Hillman, May 13, 2020.

49. DC, “RCSD Board Approves Closings [. . .],” Feb. 29, 2020; author interview with Ed Cavalier, Oct. 2, 2019.

50. Author interview with Amber Paynter, Sept. 23, 2020.

51. The full list of child plaintiffs: Amber Paynter, Desirae Morris, Yancey and Yalawn Christian, Shanika Graham, Alicia Feliciano, Taiwan and Ashley Jackson, Ryan Addamson, Nicholas Williams, Jerome Blocker, Winnie Alfred, Ashley Smith, Joshua Graham, and Eli Presha. All were school-age Black children living in the city of Rochester.

52. DC, “Local Lawsuit Takes Schools to Task,” Aug. 27, 1998; “Helping to Even Up City and Suburban Success Rates,” Sept. 30, 1998; “Suit Links Poor Grades to Poverty,” Nov. 13, 2002; author interview with Bryan Hetherington and Jonathan Feldman, Dec. 19, 2019.

53. Paynter v. State of New York, 187 Misc. 2d 227, 720 N.Y.S.2d 712 (2000).

54. Paynter v. New York; author interview with Bryan Hetherington and Jonathan Feldman, Dec. 19, 2019.

55. Author interview with Yalawn Christian, Sept. 23, 2020.

56. Sheff v. O’Neill, 238 Conn. 1, 3 (1996).

57. Campaign for Fiscal Equity Inc. v. State, 86 N.Y.2d 306 (1995).

58. Author interview with Jonathan Feldman and Bryan Hetherington, Dec. 19, 2019.

59. Jane F. Morse, A Level Playing Field: School Finance in the Northeast (Albany: State University of New York Press, 2007), 59; author interview with Jonathan Feldman and Bryan Hetherington, Dec. 19, 2019.

60. Paynter v. New York; DC, “City Hall Says It’s Backing GRACE lawsuit,” March 7, 2003.

61. Paynter v. New York; DC, “Ruling Deals Mortal Blow to GRACE Suit,” June 27, 2003.

62. DC, “School Aid Formula Gets an ‘F,’” June 27, 2003; “Why NY’s School-Aid Formula is Flunking,” Aug. 28, 2016.

63. New York Times, “Judge George Bundy Smith, 80, Dies [. . .],” Aug. 10, 2017; Sandra Jefferson Grannum, Erika J. Duthiers, and Janet A. Gordon, “George Bundy Smith” (White Plains: Historical Society of the New York Courts, 2007), https://history.nycourts.gov/biography/george-bundy-smith/.

64. Paynter v. New York.

65. DC, June 27, 2003; author interview with Amber Paynter, Sept. 23, 2020.

66. Author interview with Jonathan Feldman and Bryan Hetherington, Dec. 19, 2019.

67. The cases are Oklahoma City v. Dowell, 111 US 630 (1991); Freeman v. Pitts, 503 US 467 (1992); and Missouri v. Jenkins, 515 US 70 (1995). See Raymond Wolters, Race and Education, 1954–2007 (Columbia: University of Missouri Press, 2008), 265–67.

68. Arthur v. Nyquist 415 F. Supp. 904 (WDNY 1976); Jenna Tomasello, “Buffalo History and the Roots of School Segregation: The Rise of Buffalo’s Two-Tiered School System,” in Discrimination in Elite Public Schools: Investigating Buffalo, ed. Gary Orfield and Jennifer B. Ayscue (New York: Teachers College Press, 2018), 47–50; John Kucsera and Gary Orfield, “New York State’s Extreme School Segregation: Inequality, Inaction and a Damaged Future” (Civil Rights Project/Proyecto Derechos Civiles, March 2014); New York Times, “School Integration in Buffalo is Hailed . . .,” May 13, 1985; Buffalo News, “For Vocational High Schools [. . .],” June 8, 1997.

69. Buffalo News, “Magnets: Losing Their Attraction [. . .],” June 8, 1997; New York Times, May 13, 1985; Tomasello, “Buffalo History,” 50.

70. J. John Harris et al., “The Curious Case of Missouri v. Jenkins: The End of the Road for Court-Ordered Desegregation?” Journal of Negro Education 66, no. 1 (Winter 1997), 50; Parents Involved in Community Schools v. Seattle School District No. 1, 551 US 701 (2007), including “Brief of 553 Social Scientists as Amici Curiae in Support of Respondents.”

71. Parents Involved v. Seattle.

72. The answer key: No Child Left Behind; Race to the Top; Every Student Succeeds Act; Adequate Yearly Progress; Diagnostic Tool for School and District Effectiveness; Student Learning Outcomes; Annual Professional Performance Review; Comprehensive Support and Improvement; Targeted Support and Improvement; School Comprehensive Education Plan; School Improvement Grant; District Comprehensive Improvement Plan.

73. DC, “Straight Talk on City Schools,” Aug. 16, 2016.

74. Author interview with Peter McWalters, March 9, 2020.

Conclusion

1. Author interview with Melanie Funchess, April 8, 2020; DC, “City Probably Will Close More Schools,” April 9, 2020.

2. Terry Dade to Rochester City School District Students, Families and Staff, April 23, 2020, available at https://www.documentcloud.org/documents/20986264-dade-resignation-letter; Times Herald-Record (Middletown, NY), “Cornwall Names New School Superintendent,” May 5, 2020.

3. Jennifer Jellison Holme and Kara S. Finnigan, Striving in Common: A Regional Equity Framework for Urban Schools (Cambridge, MA: Harvard Education Press, 2018), 128.

4. Holme and Finnigan, Striving in Common, 96–114.

5. Derrick Bell, Silent Covenants: Brown v. Board of Ed. and the Unfulfilled Hopes for Racial Reform (New York: Oxford University Press, 2004), 166.

6. James Baldwin, No Name in the Street, in Baldwin: Collected Essays, ed. Toni Morrison (New York: Library of America, [1972] 1998), 431–32.

7. “Stand Against Racism,” Monroe County Council of School Superintendents, June 9, 2020, available at https://fairport.org/2020/06/a-message-from-monroe-county-superintendents-stand-against-racism/; DC, “Suburban Struggle,” Dec. 16, 2018.

8. Herman Goldberg and H. Hunter Fraser to RCSD parents, Dec. 2, 1963, folder 3A:9, Walter Cooper Papers, RBSCP.

9. Rochester City Newspaper, “Education . . . Means Emancipation”, Feb. 13, 2019; author interview with Malik Evans, Jan. 30, 2020.

10. DC, “Students Confront Racial Issues,” Jan. 9, 2016; Dec. 16, 2018; “Student Activists Step Up [. . .],” Oct. 16, 2020; Rochester Business Journal, “Local Students Leading Discussion [. . .],” July 10, 2020.

11. DC, “Students Fight for School Integration,” Feb. 24, 1968; “MCC Students to Take Up [. . .],”April 6, 1968.

12. DC, Feb. 24, 1968.