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Chapter 6. The Trial of Judge Rubin, July, 1972, to December, 1972
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Chapter 6 The Trial of Judge Rubin, July, 1972, to December, 1972 The Michigan-Ohio Connection The NAACP local branches and general counsel Nate Jones had not limited their challenge to school segregation in Michigan to Benton Harbor, Pontiac, and Detroit. Cases also emerged in Kalamazoo, Grand Rapids, and Lansing. Except in the Grand Rapids case, the NAACP eventually prevailed in the lower courts in showing that the school segregation within these districts resulted from racial discrimination, not happenstance, choice, ethnicity, or economics. In time, these cases spurred HEW and the Department of Justice into action against the Flint and Ferndale school districts. Belatedly, the Michigan Department of Education also adopted guidelines for redressing "racial imbalance" within districts, and the Michigan Civil Rights Commission began compliance reviews of the nature and cause of school segregation within other districts in the state. Even so, all of these actions left hanging any further challenge to school district boundaries. Only the Benton Harbor case, as amended at mid-decade, seriously contemplated any challenge to metropolitan segregation. As the decade drew to a close the Detroit case was still mired in largely procedural wrangling over Detroit-only remedies and the conduct of the new trial judge, Robert Demascio, while the district court in Benton Harbor was just beginning to grapple with the difficult interdistrict violation and causation issues left open by the Supreme Court majority's opinion in the Detroit case. In addition, the appropriate legal standards for evaluating the unconstitutionality of segregation and propriety of desegregation even within a single district in northern cases remained unsettled in the lower courts and were subject to review by a Supreme Court that was growing increasingly sensitive to the antibusing furor. Of the second round of NAACP cases in Michigan, the most instructive involved Kalamazoo. In the spring of 1971, after three years of planning and community input, a closely divided Kalamazoo Board of Education adopted a plan to desegregate its public schools in the fall. Over the summer the balance of power shifted on the local board with the election of new board members who campaigned vigorously on a platform which promised the nullification of the integration plan. The new school board at its first meeting rescinded the plan, reinstated the segregated attendance zones, and provided for "voluntary open enrollment. " The local branch of the NAACP asked Nate Jones to assist 121 122 Beyond Busing in protecting its three-year community effort to end segregation from such frustration. On August 12 Jones filed a complaint on behalf of the black schoolchildren and the local branch in Kalamazoo. He requested a temporary order restraining the new board's rescission of the integration plan. District judge Noel P. Fox, an aging but still fiery liberal long committed to the American dreams of opportunity and equality, responded. He immediately issued an order forbidding the school board from resegregating the schools, pending a preliminary hearing. On August 24 and 25, Judge Fox received evidence on whether he should require fall 1971 implementation of the integration plan, pending a full hearing on the plaintiffs' claim of de jure segregation. In an opinion issued from the bench, Judge Fox noted that in the Kalamazoo school district, with a 17.6 percent black racial composition, the five predominantly black elementary schools contained 92.3 percent of all black pupils while the other twenty-four elementary schools served only 7.7 percent of the black pupils. Judge Fox also contrasted the careful consideration leading to adoption of the integration plan in the spring with the racial hostility of the June campaign and the new board's precipitous rescission of the desegregation plan. Relying on the Sixth Circuit's original opinion in the Detroit case holding the state's reversal of the Detroit board's minimal April 7 plan unconstitutional, Judge Fox ruled, "state action cannot be interposed to delay, obstruct, or nullify steps lawfully taken for the purpose of protecting rights guaranteed by the Fourteenth Amendment. " Fox held that the Kalamazoo board's original adoption of an integration plan constituted such constitutional steps and that the July rescission represented such unconstitutional nullification. He ordered the new board to implement the integration plan for the fall. Five days later the Sixth Circuit affirmed in a summary order. Following detailed discovery by all parties, Judge Fox began a trial on the issue of segregation in February, 1973, that lasted for six weeks. Once again, the peripatetic Lou Lucas was plaintiffs' chief trial counsel. On October...