Leveling Lincoln

- [Announcer] This program is made possible in part by.

(calm music) (film projector clicking) - We operate under the neighborhood school principle in New Rochelle.

Our school composition in each case reflects the makeup of the neighborhood.

- And white children living right across the street from the Lincoln School were going to schools in other parts of New Rochelle.

- [Commenter] This was a tremendous blow to this community, a community that had prided itself on being tolerant.

Activists of the day, Ossie Davis, and Ruby Dee, and Whitney Young all had come here, and then the families at Lincoln School sue the Board of Education over segregation.

- Naturally, it starts with your education.

There's no getting around that.

You're not getting, you know, what the rich are getting, whites are getting, people of privilege are getting.

Yes, you're gonna suffer.

- The North, I think you've had de facto segregation, which in some areas, is bad or even more extreme than in the South.

- I don't feel that this hit the North, except that it exploded.

It was always there.

(compelling music) (children calling at play) - [Arden] As a teacher, I have always been fascinated by the Ruby Bridges story.

Ruby walked into the William Frantz School in New Orleans, Louisiana on November 14th, 1960, with federal marshals around her and protestors across the street.

She was tiny, she was six.

(compelling music) Famous New Rochelle resident, Norman Rockwell, painted Ruby Bridges.

We were taught about that in elementary school, and the story stayed with me all of my life.

We were not taught that in 1960, two months before Ruby's famous walk, Leslie Taylor, Rosalyn Williams, and a group of African American children walked with their parents into my school, Roosevelt School, in New Rochelle, New York, and were turned away.

They were sent back to the segregated Lincoln School downtown.

By the time I was enrolled in 1964, my elementary school was integrated, had always been diverse, I thought.

I was not aware that that integration was achieved through protests, boycotts, arrests, and a court case.

It was not until my mother opened up a file of photos from my childhood Girl Scout Troop, did the story begin to unfold.

School integration in New Rochelle was orchestrated into being by determined moms and dads with a brilliant lawyer from the NAACP.

I was just a half Irish Catholic, half Episcopalian kid, white.

My childhood friends were mostly not what I was.

I was unaware why.

- This empty lot is all that's left of the great New Rochelle School fight that began four years ago.

The Lincoln Elementary School that used to stand right here has been leveled now, its foundation plowed under so that grass can grow.

(birds chirping) - I was just excited about being a mother, just couldn't wait till the first PTA meeting so I could go to her kindergarten, but while she was at Lincoln School, to me, I was just being a mother, an average mother sending her to school.

I was very excited when she was going to Lincoln School, and then when, I think the first thing I heard was that Roosevelt had books, and my daughter who was in first grade, she didn't have books.

- The Lincoln School had a reputation of being a bad school.

It was decrepit, it was falling apart, and everybody knew that.

- We just knew that Lincoln School was suffering because we were all Black.

It was an all Black school by that time, because by the time I graduated from Lincoln School, it was all Black.

- It had been built in 1898.

This was now 1950s.

- So there was somebody driving a book mobile around to different schools, which was a library, and the students could walk out of Ward School or any of the schools, and could borrow books from this library on wheels, basically.

This particular parent knew that, what the different students in the different schools were reading, so he was very aware of the fact that his children were not reading the same books as they were reading in other parts of the district, and he became one of the movers and shakers.

- There's a meeting about shutting down Lincoln School, and I said, "I wanna go see, 'cause it involves Valerie."

And I went that first night, and it was held at Lincoln School in the auditorium.

I went initially, just to try to find out, I guess, to get a footing to find out what was really going on.

Some of us were unruly that night, because we were angry, and we were afraid, and you know, there were all kinds of, there's a fear there, because here's something new.

- My mother was on the opposing side.

She felt that the reason why it was de facto segregation is because that we were redlined.

So we couldn't get into the schools up there, because it was neighborhood schools, and we weren't allowed to buy property up there, so that was her.

She says, you know, I remember her being very vocal about the fact that we need to change the housing in New Rochelle, and not the schools.

- Originally, the Lincoln Avenue Corridor was a very diverse community with Italian, Irish, and Black families living side by side.

After the war, they built these housing projects, so soldiers coming home from the war, this was an economical way for them to house their families with the knowledge that at some point, they were gonna save enough money to buy a house.

Many of the white people, the white families were able to do just that, but because of discrimination, the Black families became trapped in these housing developments.

Some of them moved out, but not the kind of turnover that was expected, and it was basically due to, you know, Black people couldn't get loans from banks.

The neighborhoods were redlined.

- [Commenter] Most of the Jewish people lived in the north end.

Most of the Italian people lived on the west side of town.

The central part of the city was heavily African American.

The south end was a combination of everything.

- I had a neighbor on another block who was sure that the whole neighborhood would turn Black if one Black family moved in, and she was already looking in Connecticut for a new house.

- Some realtors discovered they could make a lot of money buying and selling houses if they got a hold of a house in a white neighborhood and sold to a Black family, and then they would tell all the other people in the area, "Oh, the Blacks are moving in, you gotta sell your house or else it won't be worth anything, and you can make a lot of money."

You know, all of a sudden you would turn over a whole block, you know, 3%, 5%, whatever your commission was.

It was great for the realtors, but it was very socially destructive, because it exploited ignorance.

- When Negroes started moving into the Lincoln community in numbers, the board started extending the lines outward and transferring the white children out of the Lincoln School to other schools in New Rochelle.

The situation reached a point where Negro children from blocks away, three or four blocks away, were coming to the Lincoln School, and white children living right across the street from the Lincoln School were going to schools in other parts of New Rochelle.

The services at the school deteriorated, and the children were housed in an increasingly dilapidated building.

- Around Lincoln School, there were scaffolds, and people are saying, "Well, you know, every time the season changes, the bricks, they moved."

You know, so you are concerned now about those bricks falling on your children.

- It was almost time for me to go to school, but a brick had fell on a child and hit a child.

- I don't remember the brick falling on a child per se, but I do remember the scaffolding and the bricks being loose.

- And my father said, "That's it.

You will not be going to that school.

You'll be going to some other school," and then that's when the fight began.

(school bell ringing) - [Rudy] You might say that we did what we did because of segregation, but it isn't really the segregation that bothers me so much as the way they treat the kids who are segregated.

- [Marjorie] If you wanna know how it looks to me, those teachers over at Lincoln figured, this is just a bunch of poor colored kids who are never going to amount to anything anyway, so we might as well just keep them happy.

That way you can be sure they will never amount to anything.

- The PTA, they were against it.

They did not want this to happen, keep the school, and today I can say they were right, but at that time, I saw those scaffolds, and "What, my child can't get a book?"

And all this anger is coming out there, and everyone else is having books.

And we just kept meeting and yelling at each other, and for some reason, I gravitated towards Hallie's group.

- The achievement test issued by the board, the statistics showed that the Negro children were not achieving up to their capacity, and were indeed performing below the norm.

This is what caused us to have such grave concern about the education of our children.

- We know what the statistics were, and we know what the grade averages were, so they had to take action.

- And we forthwith decided to keep them out of the Lincoln School to force the board to offer some better education for the children.

- Now, I'm quite sure my mom was outspoken.

I'm quite sure Ms. Taylor was vocal as well too, and Ms. Williams and Ms. Murphy in their own way.

These were vocal women.

These were not women who would just sit down and not express how they were feeling, and not express their position on things.

All four of the families, you know, were all vocal.

- We grew up on, yeah, you gotta get it.

You have to get it.

Regardless of what goes down, who says what, you have to get your education.

- I wanted the school to be shut.

I wanted them to shut it down.

It was just the idea that you had something our children do not, and we're not gonna be our parents.

That was another thing.

We didn't want 'em beat up, we wanted to fight.

- My sixth grade graduation couldn't be in Lincoln School because the top floor wasn't secure.

There was a new school proposal on the planning board, but at the same time, if they built that new school, made it state of the art at that time, and bring other programs into this school that people would want their kids to come to that wasn't in any other school, that was her stance on keeping Lincoln School where it was.

- They had a vote to rebuild the school, and if you look at the overall vote of the community, the community voted to rebuild the school.

And yet if you look at the polling within Lincoln, they are the only district to not vote in favor of building a new school for their own children.

That's the beginning of showing that these are families who are saying no, that Brown versus Board of Education was a change in this country, that the only way to guarantee that my child is getting an equal education is to make sure that they are sitting next to white children, and that they can attend any school that any other student can attend.

- We worked with this one Black lawyer, and we weren't getting anywhere, and I don't know who brought Zuber, who brought him in.

- So all of a sudden, he had this notoriety from the Harlem Nine case, and he started becoming well known.

Who was this young, brash attorney?

I think Amsterdam News calls him the young, brash attorney, Paul Zuber.

You know, he gladly took the case.

I think my father's viewpoint on the world, he used to always say, "The difference between the North and the South is in the South, the bigots wear white sheets.

In the north, they wear Brooks Brothers suits and ties."

And he honestly believed that it was much more insidious in the North than it was the South, because in the North, they did it, he called it Madison Avenue suave.

- [Reporter] Mr. Rukeyser, why is the Lincoln School so predominantly Negro, over 90%?

- Well, as you probably know, we operate under the neighborhood school principal in New Rochelle.

Our school composition in each case reflects the makeup of the neighborhood.

The Lincoln neighborhood is predominantly Negro, partly because of the Hartley low income houses, which are occupied largely by Negroes, but we have concentrations in other schools too.

For example, in the Columbus School, they are predominantly Italians.

In the north end, the school population is predominantly of a single religious faith.

- You know, they kind of figured a way, "Well, no, we're not racist.

It's a neighborhood school.

You know, it's a neighborhood school, don't worry about it."

In his mind, it was like, that was no different than in the South when they said, "It's a way of life, segregation's okay."

Well, no it wasn't, because neither one was backed by law, in his opinion, and in his opinion, the way that these school district lines were drawn, they were drawn with malicious intent.

- They will complain when it's coming too close to their own backyard.

These same liberals will send $25 to desegregate in Albany, Georgia, but they will turn their back and call names if we're trying to desegregate and bring equality next door to them.

- People today have a lot of difficulty trying to win de facto segregation cases, to win gerrymandering cases.

Those things are hard to prove, and you have to remember that while they are doing this, they are sacrificing.

They're sacrificing their just kind of normal lives, right?

They're trying to get their kids into schools that are much further away from where they currently are.

They're gonna upend their kids.

Their kids have friends, and we don't think of those small little stories, but those things matter to a family.

- So he had two sides to it.

He had the court side to it, and he also had the publicity side to it, which he knew was necessary in order to move the case forward.

So part of the sit-ins were all designed to generate that press.

So you know, they went to the Ward School first, because that was a big, beautiful kind of school, and tried to have the mothers register their kids in the sit-in there.

- Naturally, you go there, you wanna make sure you're clean and you're nice, and the white folks, you're thinking they're gonna be looking at you, so make sure you don't have any spots, and all the stuff I remember thinking.

And I'm very excited about going there, and it was the group, you know?

There's a energy there that's, you know, it's just hard to describe.

And when we went up there, you know, I felt good.

I felt proud, and we're talking, everybody's excited.

- My mom, she used to sew, so she made our twin dresses, my sister and I's twin dresses, and we had little white socks, and we had new shoes, and we got our hair done.

We was like, so happy to go because we was like, so cute.

- And for me, I'm like, "Oh wow, look at all these white people.

Now what are we going to do?"

- That's my father, and this is my mom.

She was teaching us at the table, and this was our cat, Putie.

(chuckles) This is the room where they had all the meetings at.

All the parents would come in and discuss what they was gonna do, and Mr. Zuber would come in, and they would have spaghetti.

- So he went to a series of schools, he'd appear with the students and their parents, and they would be turned away.

(compelling music) One of the last occasions was, I believe, at Ward school, where when they were turned away, they brought folding chairs with them, and they sat down.

In the South, this was the time of the student sit-in movement, and so they borrowed from the students who were sitting down in lunch counters, and they sat down outside of the school where they were refused enrollment.

- Yes, they pulled us all outta school, and we all had to stay home.

So they was telling them to send us to school, and they were saying no.

So with that, they said, "Well, you're going to jail."

And my parents was like, "Okay."

- They really had an organized way, and had people who really helped out with the tutoring, the lunches at Ms. White's house.

- What I remember the most is I attended Mayflower School, which is about a two block walk away from our home.

And I remember the children from Lincoln School, there were maybe, I don't know how many, eight or 10 of them.

- She had a nice house, and my sisters, my brothers went there.

Leslie was up there, the Taylors was up there.

Margie and their families, they was there as well, so you know, the tutoring wasn't bad at all, and what I liked about it the best is that we got a chance to go outside for recess.

- They would be there from maybe half past eight in the morning until three in the afternoon, and they would be studying in the dining room table with my mother, with their various books, and she'd be getting up their reading scores.

- He particularly had them go to the Roosevelt School.

Dr. Mason would have to deny them entrance.

She had no other choice, she couldn't say yes.

- And I don't know whether it was 'cause Mrs. Ms. Mason was the principal there, and we were angry with her.

Some of us felt, I'm not speaking for all the mothers, I'm just speaking for the small group that I hung with for the most part, we felt she was Black, and she should be doing something to help us.

I don't recall hearing anything from her in our community at the time.

It was almost like she was betraying us, I think, to some degree, you know, that she wouldn't help us the way we wanted her, you know, to speak out and say something, and you know, about the books and what was going on at Lincoln School, 'cause when her first job was Lincoln School here.

When she came here to teach, it was at Lincoln School, and you know, now that I'm older, and you know, I can understand why, you know, because the woman's gotta work.

- My parents were both very involved.

They were on the side, they had moved to New Rochelle specifically for the Roosevelt School, and for their kids to be able to walk to school, ride bicycles to school, come home for lunch, walk back to school, all in a period of an hour.

There was a spoken fear that the move to bus the children from Lincoln to the north end was really a first shot from the Board of Education forcing busing throughout the city.

The Jewish community of the north end of New Rochelle was heavily involved in the civil rights movement, and there were battles that are, you know, verbal battles that erupted between neighbors.

"How can you be against this, you know, and call yourself, you know, a Jew, and be against these children being bused into a better school?"

- We zeroed in on that school, have to be honest with you, it was because it was white.

We knew the rich white youngsters were going there.

And as I said, we were Black young mothers, not sophisticated enough to understand the politics.

- "New York Times" picked up on it.

It started generating more and more news, and more and more notoriety.

- It was only after a series of these public events that he filed the suit against the school district.

- I liked Paul Zuber very much.

He organized us, and he wanted to know what we wanted, and what we were saying, and examine that, and see what he could do with it.

And then he decided, "Go to court.

We go to court."

- So he always looked at it as, "I'm not coming into this courtroom as some poor Black lawyer with some poor Black parents and poor Black children.

I'm coming in this courtroom as an American, and these parents are coming into the courtroom as Americans, and we have a constitutional right to education."

The best part about being in court was you get to speak, then opposing counsel gets to speak.

You're not speaking over each other, and there's a judge, and that judge has more power than pretty much anybody else in the country, so if you can convince that judge on a rule of law, which he has to rule based on the rule of law, then that judge can simply, with a stroke of a pen in a decision, change the fabric of a community.

- [Commenter] The school district going into Judge Kaufman's courtroom was supremely confident that they were going to win.

- The first time we went to court, I went twice to court, the first time, and the judge's name was Kaufman.

- I just remember going up the stairs, it's the famous, you know, courthouse, to the courtroom.

I just remember these paneled walls.

Everyone was seated, but what impressed me the most was that huge building.

I mean, I felt like an ant.

- It was big.

It was just a big, gigantic room with all these people in there, and we saw the judge, but we didn't speak, we didn't have to speak.

I think only Mr. Zuber spoke.

- They called him a Sherman tank who will just barrel through anything, and go where no other person is willing to go, and he would've one of those legal folders that they'd get from Woolworth, and that's all he would bring into court.

And then you would have these big high powered lawyers would come in with all these, you know, briefcases and legal books.

You know, he was an incredibly bright man.

I think that made the courtroom a very easy place for him.

My mom would say at night he would just sit there and he'd have these maps, maps of the school districts open, and he would just stare at them for hours, and then eventually, he would look and he would go, "I got it.

I figured out how they did it."

- Bertha White was part of this citizen's committee for Lincoln School, and she was a social worker by training, and she was very much concerned with both the education and the social welfare of all of the people in the community, but especially the children.

- From what I heard, what my mom and her committee did was to go to the Lincoln neighborhood in the afternoons as the children were returning from school, and they would go door to door asking, "What school do your children attend?"

Paul Zuber called my mom to be a witness for the plaintiffs.

She read from those notes that she had compiled 10 years before the case.

17 May Street, four children, Negro, Lincoln School, 18 May Street, one child, white, Washington school, it was evidence that the board had operated in a discriminatory fashion towards the African-American students at Lincoln School, and was a critical part of the evidence the judge used in his ruling.

- [Judge Kaufman] The Neighborhood School Policy is certainly not sacrosanct.

It is valid only insofar as it is operated within the confines established by the Constitution.

It cannot be used as an instrument to confine Negroes within an area artificially delineated in the first instance by official acts.

If it is so used, the Constitution has been violated, and the courts must intervene.

For 11 years, the Board has discussed the problem, but in 11 years, it has taken no action whatsoever to alter the racial imbalance in the Lincoln School.

It has met the problem with mere words, barren of meaning, for they were never followed by deeds.

(compelling music) - We were able to nail down the fact that the Board of Education and previous boards had intentionally moved district lines to keep the Negro population or the majority of it within the Lincoln School, that when there were pockets of white students when the lines were moved, these white students were permitted to transfer out, whereas the Negro students were able to, had to stay in.

And from this, the court said that the children were getting an inferior education, and their rights under the 14th Amendment had been denied by the acts of the Board.

(upbeat music) - We actually got the news, you know, that the judge agreed with us, and that the school would have to open up, but then the Board of Education fought that, and it went to Supreme Court.

- [Reporter] Mr. Rukeyser and most of his board fought hard in court, lost to Paul Zuber, appealed, delayed, lost, and finally resigned.

- All of a sudden, Dad wins this case in New Rochelle, and it becomes the basis for every other case in the North, but it's also very difficult for the kids.

And I know it was a difficult transition when they had to go from being in a segregated school to an integrated school, and coming in there with a chip on their shoulder, and kids looking at 'em differently.

(compelling music) - The Lincoln School District remains the same, almost solid Negro.

The boundaries of the district are the same as they were before the Lincoln School was torn down, but now these same children go to other elementary schools in New Rochelle.

The instrument of integration here is the prosaic school bus.

In many another city in the North, it is the vehicle, the whites here will take their children to some distant school to be with Negroes the parents don't much want their children with in the first place.

- I went to Ward, and you went to- - And I went to Barnard School.

We went to two different schools.

- [Interviewer] Do you know why they would've done that?

- No, I don't.

- [Michelle] I remember my mother trying to explain to us what was going on, and why it was going on.

- It was a culture shock in the beginning because, you know, I really didn't wanna leave, and I couldn't understand at that time why I had to.

- [Michelle] I felt very scared going into Roosevelt School.

The news was out there.

It was like everything we did, there was somebody taking pictures.

There was a reporter here, a reporter there, you know, which made it, for me, scarier.

I didn't wanna go, but you know, again, we had no choice.

I was really scared going into a school for the first time.

- Initially, I remember getting off the bus, and children staring.

For a while, it made you feel like you had two heads, you know?

- Parents were not happy with us going there.

That's what I remember.

You know, you could tell parents that were in front of the building, they wasn't happy.

- I was concerned at first because I realized that they had an inferior education in that area, from what I heard from other people, so that I felt that the level of education at Roosevelt would go down, but ultimately, it didn't, because they're compensated for many things, and they gave students who needed extra help, extra help.

- Up at the north end, there were a lot of richer kids, and much more white.

When they went to Mayflower or to Webster, there was a more diverse group, so they were happier there, and it was closer to where they lived, but when they went up to Ward or to Roosevelt, they really were isolated.

- I'm not so sure that I was aware of the case, what was going on, but I became aware when they said that they were busing us to Ward School.

That was traumatic for myself and my peers.

- I was in first grade at Ward, and they said that I couldn't read, and I didn't know math.

She didn't really even bother to teach me, and she used to put me in the back of the class all the time, like I was bad, and I was like, a real shy child, so I would either cry, or just sit there, and she would never call on me.

She would never ask me questions.

She told the kids not to play with me.

They talked to Mr. Zuber about it, and they must have went back to the school and said, "No, she's not gonna sit in the back of the class.

You know, she's gonna sit wherever she wants to sit, but she's not gonna sit in the back," but that teacher, she was really like, "Okay," but as soon as the parents or whatever would leave, she said, "Get to the back of the class."

- And as children, you do not have the wherewithal, 'cause you have limited experience of how to deal with hatred, you don't, of how to deal with hostility, of how to deal with, I say, depraved indifference.

- We had no Black adult to look out for our interest, to protect us, to nurture us.

We had no Black adult.

So I remember there was a gentleman named George Junior.

He was only in the sixth grade, but he was like, I was in the fourth, so he was like a father to us, and he just looked out for us, he protected us.

They were not very sympathetic to us or empathetic.

Many of my peers were put into a class, a special class, where they just watched cartoons all day.

When they got to junior high school, they were missing the basics, the foundations, the fundamentals, and you know, you're concerned with your image then, so before the teacher could ask you to read the next paragraph, you would act out.

And you know, it wasn't that they were unintelligent, they just lacked the fundamentals.

- I never considered myself poor, and people would say, "Oh, you're poor."

I'd say, "Oh, no I'm not," because all my needs were taken care of.

I never knew I was poor until I went to school with white folks.

(upbeat music) I remember being outside at lunchtime, didn't know I was being set up until later, until they started asking me questions.

I'm sitting with my classmates, 'cause they were not my friends, they were my classmates, and I remember them talking about where they go to buy their clothes.

So the question came around to me, "Well, Valerie, where do you buy your clothes?

Where does your mother buy your clothes?"

- Bon Matela, I had a charge account at Bon Matela, and she says, "Mommy, I told 'em where you brought my dresses from," I said, "Good, don't worry about it."

I felt happy for my child, 'cause that meant she wasn't going through what I went through, and that's why I did that.

- Your mother shops there for you?

Yes, and I didn't think anything of it.

- My daughter was called a tiny militant.

That's how angry she became.

- So it became a thing of a fight of, on a daily basis, of proving that I'm a human being and I have worth, and I was constantly having to prove either my intellect, or my own humanity, and that gets to a point, it's called death by a thousand cuts.

That begins to embitter you.

- Said our prayers at night, and my mother would sit and talk to us, and explain to us that we're doing a good thing, and if we don't feel like it's helping us now, later on in life, it will help us, but you know, as a child you don't understand that.

- We adapt pretty quickly.

I made friends, and then I loved my teacher, Mr. Polachetti.

I adored him.

He told me, one day I was sitting in the back, and he made me sit in the front.

He says, "Pernetta," he says, "if you stop sucking your fingers from Monday to Friday, I will take you across the street," and at that time it was parlor, Betty Allen's, "and I will buy you a ice cream soda," and boy, why did he tell me that?

It was such a treat, and I tried so hard.

- [Denise] I think had we stayed at Lincoln, see, it all depends on the teacher, okay?

And it all depends on as far as the teacher teaching you, or just passing you out work to do.

Whereas you go up here to the white school, you got more tests to take, you got more homework.

- My mother, having been one of those parents who was against the busing, she came to an understanding that it really was about Lincoln School and the quality of education at Lincoln.

She saw those children coming into her class behind, and she spent a lot of time bringing those kids up to speed.

It changed her attitude.

I don't know that she ever stopped being a believer in the neighborhood school system, but it certainly changed her attitude as to why that happened at Roosevelt.

- I was invited to a birthday party, and my mother dressed me up, and she made me this pretty dress, and I put it on, and she curled my hair.

And I went to the birthday party, and the father said, he answered the door, and said, "Oh no, she can't come in here," and the little girl said, "But that's Roslyn, she's my best friend."

He said, "No, you can't be best friends with her.

You can't even play with her.

I don't even wanna see her," and the little girl was kicking and crying and screaming, and I was crying, and my mother was, my mother had to explain to us.

Excuse me, and that's where I felt very, that was the hardest, one of the hardest things in my life.

After a couple of months, the mother came to me and said, "Oh, you can come over and have lunch with my daughter, and we can have a play date, ask your mother," and so she invited me over, and we had a play date, and the mother gave her another birthday party.

It was just me and her at the birthday party.

We had such a good time.

- One of the reasons I think that people despise one another is because of ignorance.

But once you understand other people's culture, you grow, and you develop as a human being.

So I think that if they would've did it the opposite, to bus some of the Caucasians down to Lincoln School, I think it would've been a balance.

- [Michelle] My mother would've to take a cab, because she didn't have a vehicle at that time.

You're talking about taking a cab up there, you know, taking a cab back.

- I would offer rides to parents, and go to their buildings to pick them up.

There were times when I would go and something would come up and they couldn't go, but I would, you know, still make the trudge.

- And in other communities who are economically able to drive over the river and through the woods, they can walk right across the street.

- Somewhere between 50 and 60% of the Lincoln parents voted no on rebuilding their school, and slightly more than half asked to have their students transferred to another school.

And of course, in history, that minority, which is a pretty large minority, then disappears, because the school is closed, so their voice is gone.

The parents who would've been happy about their children getting a new school never got their new school for the neighborhood.

- The end of Lincoln School was a death knell for this community.

People are not vested in their community in the same way that they would've been if the school was here.

- Once it was forced, my sister was still in elementary school.

She's three years behind me, so they had the opportunity at that time to either choose a school to go to the open schools that were available, or to stay in Lincoln School until such time they had deemed that the school would have to be permanently closed, so my mother chose that my sister would stay in Lincoln School.

- Are you gonna send your children to the north end?

Are you gonna let your children be bused?

My family, they didn't want any parts of that, because they understood the necessity of having a community school.

Maybe about 15, 16 other families, we stayed.

- Mrs. Brennan was there, Ms. Elmore.

Everybody know Ms. Elmore, (chuckles) you probably heard the name before, she was, and she's still around.

She was marvelous.

We loved her, still love her.

- When the students were bused, they were just bused for the school day, then they came back and they played with us, you know what I mean?

And they told us about their experience of being bused.

- My class was the last graduating class, because the school was falling down, they claimed, but they had to blow it up.

They couldn't knock it down, so they had to blow it up.

We'd seen it come down.

It wasn't a good sight.

- The Lincoln School had become a hated symbol of segregated education to the Negro leadership of this community.

- [Reporter] And so you and the Board of Education decided simply to wipe it off the face of New Rochelle?

- That's correct.

- This whole process of getting rid of the Lincoln School and busing the students to the other schools around town must have cost New Rochelle a good deal of money, didn't it?

- Well, strangely enough, it saved us a good deal of money.

The operation of a Lincoln school had cost us an extra $100,000 a year.

Since the busing of the children is costing us only $7,000 a year, we're making a $93,000 profit.

♪ Patty cake, patty cake, baker's man ♪ ♪ Bake me a cake as fast as you can ♪ - [Arden] So when the school was torn from this thriving Black neighborhood, all the children were bused.

Now full integration is in place from kindergarten onward.

In 1964, my class began kindergarten.

- I was in daycare, nursery school while my sister was at Lincoln School, and then when it was time for me to go to kindergarten, my first school was Roosevelt.

- There was a bus that showed up.

Most of my friends and I all walked to school, but there was one random bus that showed up.

I had no clue that was the bus that came from the Lincoln District.

- I didn't know why, but I knew I couldn't go to school in my neighborhood.

That's all I knew.

I was one of those weird kids.

I loved school, I loved learning, so I was just on a bus going to school.

- School is partially integrated, and I think the partially is really important.

I mean, there were 20 people in a class, and we had like, one African American student in a class, maybe two.

- There was a social worker who was apparently assigned to work with the Black kids in school.

This was at Ward.

And so for first, second, and third grade when I was there, we would have these periods of time where, you know, all the Black kids would be in the auditorium, and you know, with this social worker, and we sang songs and we played games, but I guess it was, you know, a way to pave the way and make the integration experience easier for the Black kids, because, you know, we were, you know, I got on the bus, and you know, I was bused to Ward School.

- The access to a quality education that my mom and these families fought for, I was now living.

And so when I entered Stevenson School, I was in first grade, and the experience was fantastic.

The whole purpose and fight that the families, my mom, and the families went through was paying off.

You could see the fruit of it.

- I remembered clearly going to kindergarten the first day.

I was sitting right next to someone of a different race, of course, and I remember putting my hand next to hers, and I was like, "Wait a minute, what's going on?"

That was my first understanding that my skin looked different than someone else's, because I mean, my family, we all kind of look alike, you know?

And it didn't hit me, it didn't really make an impact to me until I went to school.

Then I kind of caught on, "Okay, there's people who kind of looked different."

I learned all of that in school, you know, understanding the differences for the very first time in hair texture, and skin color, and all that race has to offer.

- I understood that I was going to school with white kids, Black kids.

I knew that even with white kids that I had, that some were Jewish, some were Italian, some were Irish.

We had a handful, we had a couple of Asian students, so I was aware of differences.

- Dreidel, dreidel, dreidel, I made it out of clay, that song, my father told me the story that I came home singing that song, and you know, he kept saying, "What is a dreidel?"

And the more he was sort of puzzled and confused about what this song was about, the more I sang it, and then I started to cry and sing it, and by the time we were finished, I was just crying, and talking about how I wanted a dreidel, and I didn't understand why he didn't know what I was talking about.

And he told me the story that he took a day off from his job at Carver Federal Savings Bank, and went up to Barnard school to ask the teacher what a dreidel was, and he got me one.

♪ Happy birthday ♪ - Well, in those days, when there was a birthday party at home, you usually invited the whole class, girls and boys.

We just disregarded the fact that this one was Black and this one was white.

- In elementary school, one of my best friends was Sarita Ward, you know, and my house used to be like a little mini United Nations.

When you woke up, you never knew who was gonna be over there, sleepovers, whatever, it's all different, you know, all different nationalities.

- Maybe I did get a little extra special treatment because I was sickly, and I missed a lot of school.

- No, it's because you excelled, seriously.

I'm telling you this from a kid's point of view, and nobody was ever jealous of you or anything.

Everybody knew you- - Okay, wow, if you insist.

(both chuckling) - Everybody knew Adrienne was gonna succeed in life, even at that point.

- The entire experience at Trinity School, looking back, truly amazing adults, and we were left in their care for eight hours a day.

Those adults there, they looked after us.

They took care of us as if we were part of their home family, and we became that.

I mean, Ms. Theo, if I missed school, after school, she would bring the homework to my house.

I remember her sitting in the kitchen with my mom.

- There was a science teacher at Henry Barnard School.

- And I think he was pretty good at what he did in the classroom.

- He not only taught science for sixth grade, but he also ran the intermural.

- And you almost went to school just because you know that you had recreation afterwards.

- He was this white man in a suit and a tie who'd go out after class.

- Probably the most popular of any teacher in the building, and that was Mr. Parsons.

- He didn't care where you were from.

Whether you were Jewish, protestant, Black, Italian, he didn't care.

If you wanted to play sports, you got to play sports, and he ran the program where it didn't matter if you stunk.

(chuckles) - You talk about Barnard, you talk about Mr. Parsons.

- I admired him so much at the time, because at the time, I thought that being in the sciences was the greatest thing in the world.

- I remember being close to a Girl Scout leader by the name of Mrs. Lewis.

I think she liked me too.

I didn't experience anything other than just being a part of something.

- This troop was formed because the other troop filled, and my mom said that the couple of moms decided we're gonna scoop up everybody else, and they meant everybody else, and they scooped up the girls who took the bus.

And I love that you made an integrated paper doll set set for me.

- We met at Ms. Lewis's house and everybody joined us there.

And it wasn't like, "No, you can't come."

No, everybody just went.

- They couldn't catch their school bus, so they were, you know, from my house, we drove them home, and maybe Mrs. Pekiana did too.

- We would drop Diane off on Coligni.

- She was on Coligni.

- But I didn't know anything about Coligni, Lincoln Avenue, that whole side.

I wasn't allowed to go there.

- I just remember having a good time.

You know, it was a whole bunch of different kinds of girls.

- We did everything in this room.

We had meetings in this room, we did plays in this room.

Everything you did as a Girl Scout was in here.

- Oh, my goodness gracious.

(laughing) Oh, my.

I take so many things from the way people treated me when I was younger, and maybe it's not right to do, but I kind of hold everybody else to that same standard.

- I really can't pinpoint when I learned about Lincoln School.

They swept that under the rug, and they did us a great disservice for that, because this is something, this is a story of the triumph of the human spirit.

This is what makes America great is the fact that ordinary citizens can petition their government and affect real change.

- Well, I think that was a good decision, because I feel like had rebuilt a new school, I think it would've been more and more years of segregation.

- So to rebuild it would've been to rebuild segregation in a different manner.

- Our mother left us a hell of a legacy.

I think it's important for our kids to know where we really came from.

You know, Black people have been hidden so long with the good that they do in history, that their families may never find out something that one of their grandparents or great-grandparents did.

- She made a lot of sacrifices for me.

- Oh, I realize that.

- You do realize the sacrifice, but you never, I really don't think that you ever really saw how amazing you were, and what you made me live up to.

- My parents kind of stayed in jail a lot for New Rochelle.

I mean, it wasn't just here.

They fought for Macy's.

They fought a lot of other places too just for Blacks to get where they're at today, and that's what I tell my kids that it's so important that you do what you have to do.

- You know, right after the New Rochelle, his notoriety kept going up and up and up and up.

He actually ended up running for president.

He made the argument that, "Whatever delegates I get, I promise to give to one of the candidates if they promise to help the Black community throughout this country."

And from there, he went to Englewood, Chicago.

People like my father, people like Thurgood Marshall, those leaders, maybe they changed perceptions a little, right?

- [Reporter] Paul Zuber's rally drew 4,000 cheering Negroes into Englewood's Mackay Park.

(crowd chanting and clapping) - People say that I wheel and I deal, and I move in a high-handed fashion.

Let's face one thing, folks.

We're in the big leagues now.

Now, anybody who wants to play sandlot baseball, you take the token integration that goes with it.

You take the token freedom that goes with it.

I want it all, I want it now, not tomorrow or the day after tomorrow, and if it comes to that tomorrow, I'm gonna fight for it.

(crowd cheering) - [Protesters] How much longer will it take?

How much longer will it take?

How much longer will it take?

How much longer will it take?

How much longer will it take?

- [Protesters] Education is right, not just for the rich and white.

Education is right, not just for the rich and white.

Education is right, not just for the rich and white.

- And I think particularly in these times, that's why this is so important, and everything that's being told here is so important, because we can't forget.

- The Lincoln Elementary School that used to stand right here has been leveled now, its foundation plowed under so that grass can grow.

And the wounds inflicted by that segregation court case have healed over in the first school decision in the North.

♪ There is a time, there is a place ♪ ♪ There is an innocence and a grace ♪ - [Interviewer] We're walking through the space where the building was right now, yes?

- Yes, we're walking through the building.

♪ Our lives unfurl, you are not alone in this world ♪ - Race is something that we talk about more today than we did when I was a child, because we have to.

♪ We will walk you home ♪ ♪ With a love we've always known ♪ ♪ You are not alone ♪ ♪ Walk with me ♪ - [Dorothy] Naturally, it starts with your education.

There's no getting around that, and if your education is below par, or you're not getting, you know, what the rich getting, whites are getting, people of privilege are getting, yes, you're gonna suffer.

There's no getting around that.

But what gets me, it's so systemic.

It's in every part of the fabric of our lives.

- The conversation has come full circle.

We are not finished talking about race.

We won't be finished talking about race until we can talk about it with an educated mind, and an open heart, and a good quality of spirit.

♪ Walk with me ♪ ♪ You not alone ♪ - [Protesters] How much longer will it take?

How much longer will it take?

How much longer will it take?

How much longer will it take?

How much longer will it take?

How much longer will it take?

How much longer will it take?

(lively music) ♪ Oh, little playmate, come out and play with me ♪ ♪ And bring your dollies three, climb up my apple tree ♪ ♪ Slide down my rainbow into my cellar door ♪ ♪ And we'll be jolly friends forever more, more, more, more ♪