Stell v. Savannah-Chatham County Board of Education

The Issues

This is a class action in the right of the minor Negro plaintiffs as students in public schools of Savannah-Chatham County to enjoin defendant Board of Education from operating a bi-racial school system. Alternately plaintiffs pray a mandatory injunction to compel defendants to submit a plan for the admission of Negro applicants to the white schools now maintained in Savannah-Chatham County.

It was alleged in the complaint that admission to the various public schools of Savannah-Chatham County is determined solely upon the basis of race and color and that plaintiffs are irreparably injured thereby.

The defendants formally denied these allegations but conceded the existence of a dual school system for white and Negro students in the City and County. De *668 fendants further pleaded certain administrative difficulties which would ensue if the relief demanded in the complaint were to be granted.

A motion to intervene on behalf of themselves and their class was made by minor white school children alleging that the separation of Negro and white children in the public schools was not determined solely by race or color but rather upon racial traits of educational significance as to which racial identity was only a convenient index.

Among these significant factors for consideration in devising a rational program best suited to the peculiar educational needs of Negro and white school children in separate schools were:

(a) differences in specific capabilities, learning progress rates, mental maturity, and capacity for education in general;

(b) differences in physical, psychical and behavioral traits.

The differences were alleged to be of such magnitude as to make it impossible for Negro and white children of the same chronological age to be effectively educated in the same classrooms.

It was alleged that to congregate children of such diverse traits in schools in the proportion and under the conditions existing in Savannah would seriously impair the educational opportunities of both white and Negro and cause them grave psychological harm.

Plaintiffs objected to the motion for intervention, stating that the decision of the Supreme Court in Brown v. Board of Education of Topeka, 347 U.S. 483, 74 S.Ct. 686, 98 L.Ed. 873, created a conclusive presumption of injury to Negro students by reason of segregation such as to withdraw from white children or school authorities any right to show either an absence of injury from segregation in the area concerned or that compulsory integration of Negro and white school children rather than segregation wouid cause great and irreparable injury to both.

Sitting without a jury, the court allowed the intervention and proceeded to trial, reserving any ruling on plaintiffs’ objection until the conclusion of the evidence.

The Trial

At the opening of the trial plaintiffs showed the maintenance of separate white and Negro primary and secondary schools by the defendants and a corresponding assignment of teachers and staff. Plaintiffs offered no evidence in support of their allegation of injury to themselves from the maintenance of the dual school system. When plaintiffs rested, defendants came forward to show that reasonable inquiry was being made and hearings were being held by defendant Board on petitions for integration when the complaint herein was filed. Defendants further proved that no Negro plaintiff or other student had, prior to this action or since, applied for a transfer to any white school. Defendants then rested.

Intervenors first called Dr. R. T. Osborne, Professor of Psychology and Director of the Student Guidance Center at the University of Georgia, conceded by plaintiffs to be an authority in the field of educational psychology. Dr. Osborne stated that, on an annual basis since 1954, the County and City had, under a testing program devised by him, administered the California Achievement Battery and the California Mental Maturity Test to all students in the sixth, eighth, tenth and twelfth grades. The Battery was described as a set of nationally accepted standard achievement tests in reading comprehension and vocabulary, mathematical reasoning and fundamentals and the application of mathematical concepts. The Mental Maturity Test was described as being a nationally accepted standard indicator of the ratio between mental and chronological age, sometimes referred to as intelligence quotient or I.Q.

Dr. Osborne assisted in training the teachers to administer these tests on a uniform basis. He stated the tests were intended to evaluate achievement levels and provide specific information to coun-sellors, teachers and school administrators in the City and County school system. Superintendent of Schools McCor-mac had theretofore testified that this test program had been initiated by the City and County to adapt or accommodate *669 the instructional program to the educational needs and abilities of individuals and student groups and to aid in counseling.

Course selection was effected by the designation of different elective subjects to be made available in each of the schools, based on student request and in consultation with school counsellors and teachers.

For test evaluation, Dr. Osborne made a comparative study of the training and experience of the teachers in the white and Negro schools which showed Negro teachers with more collegiate and graduate training and teaching experience, higher pay and closer supervision in their schools. The Court notes that plaintiffs have at no time made any suggestion that the schools attended by Negroes in Savannah-Chatham County are inadequate or that any differences in achievement resulted from a deprivation of educational opportunity.

The test results were analyzed by Dr. Osborne’s staff at the University of Georgia and summarized in a 1962 monograph published by him. 1 These results show that major differences exist in the learning ability patterns of white and Negro pupils. In reading, Negro students are two school years behind the white children at the sixth grade level. This increases to a reading difference between the two of more than three school years in the twelfth grade.

*670 The test results on arithmetic show a comparable difference in the sixth grade but show an even greater variation than in reading at the twelfth grade level. The average Negro pupil in the twelfth grade of the Savannah-Chatham County schools is below the eighth grade national arithmetic norm. White children who have been given the same courses tested above the eleventh grade national norm.