Desegregation at the elementary schools — the boycott, the settlement, the magnets

1945 – 1979

The concentration: Before 1945 the Fort Wayne school board had not operated racially separate schools — the Black population was small, and high school students attended the school of their choice. After the war the board's boundary-drawing changed that: by 1949, 75.5 percent of Black elementary pupils were concentrated in three schools, up from 53.4 percent twenty years earlier, and in 1951 the board refused to let two Black basketball players transfer from Central High School to North Side.

The boycott: In September 1969 Black parents boycotted the four central-city schools — Hanna, Harmar, McCulloch and Smart. More than 1,300 children stayed out and were taught instead in "Freedom Schools" held in six Black churches, led by the Rev. Jesse White of True Love Baptist Church and fifteen Black ministers. The boycott ran about nine to ten days and ended when the state superintendent of public instruction negotiated a settlement: the district agreed to adopt an integration policy, and to stop construction and modernization of central-city schools until an integration plan was in place.

The settlement's shape: At the high schools the board's answer was to close Central in 1971 (third rung). For the elementary and middle schools, the board reached an out-of-court settlement with Black parents in 1977 over the first-phase desegregation plan, and chose magnets over busing: the "Summit Program" placed special classes in inner-city schools to draw white families in, and early in 1979 the district appointed principals for its first two magnet schools — the kindergarten-through-fifth school at Young and the grades 6–8 school at Memorial Park. Fort Wayne's magnet system, Bunche and Towles among its descendants, descends from that settlement. No federal court ordered Fort Wayne's desegregation; the record shows a boycott, a state-brokered agreement, a board-closed high school and a negotiated magnet plan.

Sources:

1. Iwan W. Morgan, "Latecomers to the Industrial City: African Americans, Jobs, and Housing in Fort Wayne, Indiana, 1940–1960," Indiana Magazine of History (1999) — boundary concentration by 1949; the 1951 transfer refusal.
2. News-Sentinel, "1960–1969" and "1970–1979: Era of Crises" retrospectives — the September 1969 boycott and Freedom Schools; the 1977 settlement, Summit Program and 1979 magnet appointments.