Research Proposal - "More Mouth Than Anyone Else”: The Consolidated Parent Group and the Desegregation of D.C. Public Schools

“More Mouth Than Anyone Else”: The Consolidated Parent Group and the Desegregation of D.C. Public Schools

Statement of Problem & Research Question
On May 17, 1954, the Supreme Court of the United States handed down one of its most famous decisions, Brown v. Board of Education, and jumpstarted the process of desegregating U.S. public schools. The case from Kansas has become one of national importance and the subject of a quite substantial body of written works by both historians and legal scholars.

However, historians frequently overlook Bolling v. Sharpe, Washington, DC’s companion case to Brown that was decided on the same day as the landmark civil rights case. Unlike plaintiffs in the other Brown rulings, African-American residents of the District of Columbia were not explicitly entitled to equal protection under the law (granted by the Fourteenth Amendment) because the District was not a state. Because they were entitled to the liberty promised all citizens by the due process clause of the Fifth Amendment, the Court decided that segregation of District public school was unconstitutional because it deprived the city’s African-American residents of their liberty to attend the school of their choice. Less than four months after the decision, the District’s dual school system was merged into one, and most schools in the city were at least nominally integrated.

Despite the success of Bolling, little attention has been paid to the history of the case and its plaintiffs. Bolling v. Sharpe was brought to court by a small group of District residents called the Consolidated Parent Group, Inc (CPG). Originally a junior high school Parent-Teacher Association, the CPG broke ties with its school in 1948 to advocate for improved conditions in all of the city’s African-American schools. Unlike the other Brown plaintiffs, the CPG refused to seek or accept legal or financial aid from the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP). It was this feisty local group, with the help of Howard University law professors, who filed the suit that became Bolling v. Sharpe, yet little is known about them. Filling in this gap in knowledge will help to answer larger questions about the nature of activism in Washington, DC, and the relationship between the city’s federal administrators and its African-American residents.

From 1948 to 1954, the Consolidated Parent Group actively fought to desegregate public schools and recreational facilities in the District of Columbia. How did the CPG represent itself to different interest groups - members, prospective members, potential allies, opponents, and the general public - and what rhetoric informed the group’s actions? What does this tell us about the nature of civil rights protest in the District of Columbia?

Relevant Scholarship
Because of its focus on Washington, DC from 1948 to 1954, this paper will place itself in the middle of a historiographical debate about the “long civil rights movement.” “The civil rights movement” is a term that has generally described the social reform work led by black and white Southern activists to improve the lives and standing of African-Americans, employing techniques of nonviolent resistance between the years of 1954 and 1968. These years mark the time period between the Brown ruling, long considered to be the beginning of the civil rights movement, and the 1968 assassination of Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. Yet in the last two decades, scholars of the civil rights movement have begun to challenge the traditional geographical, temporal and ideological strictures of this definition to include early 20th century battles for increased African-American rights, movements centered in the U.S. North, Midwest and West, and activists who eschewed nonviolent tactics and integrationist goals. Championed by Jacqueline Dowd Hall, this historiographical trend toward expanding the scope and meaning of the black freedom struggle is referred to as “the long civil rights movement.”

Long civil rights scholars generally argue that the civil rights movements of the North and South were distinct. Northern civil rights activists began their work earlier than their southern counterparts, and often combined their local grassroots efforts with those of radicals and labor interests. This activism often found success in the North, where de facto segregation remained the norm despite legal blows to de jure segregation. These earlier experiences employing techniques that Southern activists would make famous - sit-ins, boycotts, and court cases - forced northern activists to radicalize earlier.

Long civil rights historians also focus on the connection between the United States’ Cold War abroad and its struggle to ensure civil rights at home. While anti-communism squelched many voices of dissent at home, the spotlight shined on the U.S. by enemies abroad offered an international stage for the demands of African-American civil rights activists. Discrimination against African-Americans undermined the United States’ assertions of democracy abroad, and forced U.S. officials to pay grudging attention to civil rights causes. As a result, civil rights activists often couched their pleas for justice in the language of anti-communism and anti-fascism, pushing local and federal leaders to grant them real democratic freedoms.

In some ways, this paper falls within the confines of the traditional civil rights movement: Bolling was a companion case to Brown, the traditional starting point of the movement; Washington, DC, was a geographically Southern city; and the CPG used nonviolent methods to advance its goal of school integration. Yet at the same time, the CPG refused the support of traditional civil rights organizations like the NAACP, and insisted on keeping their fight a local one. They boycotted the city’s public schools as early as 1948 to protest unequal conditions for black students - not segregation itself - well before the tactic was widely used in the South. One of the northernmost cities in the South, the District’s schools were segregated by custom, not by law. And as the nation’s capital, Washington, DC, was distinct from other Southern cities because it could not make its own laws, as it was federally administered by Congress.


Primary Sources/Methods
Howard University holds the papers of the Consolidated Parents Group, Inc. in its Moorland-Spingarn Research Center. The collection includes the group’s meeting minutes, annual reports, flyers, public statements, newsletters, personal and organizational correspondence and newspaper clippings. The CPG communicated with its members through funding and membership drives, form letters, and newsletters. These documents show that in its internal communications, the CPG focused almost entirely on children, even making its slogan “Give the child a fair chance.” This laser-like focus on improving public education for children manifests itself in calls for donations, invitations to attend bake sales and social events, and reminders to attend meetings.

On the other hand, the group’s public speeches and press releases are full of statistics and legal rhetoric. Although the group’s lawyers eventually chose to fight segregation instead of school inequality, CPG speeches and releases are full of data showing incongruencies between the facility conditions, student-teacher ratios, student populations and staff sizes of black and white schools. Speeches are also full of references to democracy, and directly connect the integration of public schools at home to the defeat of fascism and communism abroad. Letters written to the school board and Department of Justice ask procedural and legal questions: why was segregation being enforced in District schools when it was not congressionally mandated? Why were African-American representatives of the CPG banned from speaking at recreation board meetings? Why did the school superintendent refuse to publicly acknowledge inequalities between black and white schools when a report he commissioned showed exactly that? Annual reports intended for circulation among CPG leadership outline specific actions taken and monies raised by the group, offering suggestions for how to increase both.

The most tantalizing documents in the collection are personal and organizational correspondence with other local leaders, which offer glimpses into the personalities and strategies of CPG members. After receiving a letter from the president of the District’s all-white Federation of Citizens Associations insisting upon the necessity of social segregation from criminal, venereal disease-ridden blacks, CPG president Gardner L. Bishop penned a blistering response on the group’s letterhead: “If you have any fears about our wishing to associate with people like you, please disabuse yourself. ...The reasons for this reply is in hopes that some semblance of intelligence may penetrate the false shell of egotistical greatness you have so foolishly wrapped around yourselves.” While the CPG’s initial attempt to ally with the Federation of Citizens Associations clearly failed, other letters more successfully show CPG attempts to build coalitions with veterans and home rule groups. These attempts at forging alliances offer evidence of members’ other political attitudes and relationships, and again demonstrate CPG rhetoric linking integration and democracy.

The rich and varied documents in the Consolidated Parent Group, Inc. papers will answer questions about the character of CPG activism in their successful fight to desegregate District public schools. By analyzing these documents, hopefully more can be known about the nature of African-American activism in Washington, DC, and about alliances between the city’s civil rights and home rule groups. While the scope of this paper is admittedly small, it will eventually become part of my dissertation, which explores the intersection of the District’s civil rights-black power and home rule movements.

Bibliography
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Crooms, Lisa A. “Race, Education and the District of Columbia: The Meaning and Legacy of Bolling v. Sharpe.” Washington History 16 (Fall/Winter, 2004/2005), 14-22.
Dudziak, Mary L. Cold War Civil Rights: Race and the Image of American Democracy. Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2000.
Hall, Jacqueline Dowd. “The Long Civil Rights Movement and the Political Uses of the Past.” Journal of American History 91 (March, 2005): 1233-1263.
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GOOD LUCK DEB!!!!!!!!

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