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This picture depicts 12 African-American students in front of a bus in 1968. The bus reads, “Suburbia.” The children are from the Hartford area but are being bussed to suburbs to attend other schools. This photo shows attempts at school integration despite residential segregation. Because where you live determines where you go to school, bussing is necessary to get minority students who don’t have access to housing in better neighborhoods to higher quality schools. In the following video, Susan Hansen is enlightened of this housing segregation that existed in her neighborhood in the 1940s.

Source: Hansen, Susan. Oral history interview on West Hartford, CT and restrictive covenants (with video), by Candace Simpson for the Cities, Suburbs, and Schools Project, July 22, 2011.Available from theTrinity College Digital Repository, Hartford Connecticut (http://digitalrepository.trincoll.edu/cssp/).

The interviewer, Candace Simpson, reads Susan Hansen a racially restrictive property deed from West Hartford in the 1940s. The property deed explicitly said that “no persons of any race, except the white race, shall use or occupy any building on any lot.” Susan, extremely surprised and confused, says, “I’m shocked… I can’t even comprehend it…. its not something I would have expected in Connecticut at all” (3:50 – 4:05). This interview shows how many people were unaware that such blatant racism existed in housing. These discriminatory actions not only affected the housing market for minorities but also school choice. That is why the picture of bussing in the 1960s is so significant.

Leo and Karen Harrington were two of the plaintiffs involved in the Sheff v. O’Neill lawsuit during the 1990s. Recounting their experience with the case, the Harringtons discuss how many of their friends and neighbors in West Hartford did not have a very good understanding about what the lawsuit was about or what it would mean for Connecticut. Most people were generally uninterested because the case dealt with inadequate schooling, which was “Hartford’s problem.”

However, the Harringtons are proof that the concerns raised by the plaintiffs in Sheff v. O’Neill did not just affect poor and minority residents of Hartford. The Harringtons are a white, middle class family that lived with their two sons in the West End of Hartford. They loved the neighborhood and the local Noah Webster elementary school, but once their sons reached middle school age they realized that the city’s public education system had severe problems. Because the law required their sons to attend a district school, the only way for them to get access to a better education was to move. Although the schools in their new West Hartford neighborhood were dramatically better, the Harringtons still miss life in their West End home.

Harrington, Leo and Karen. Oral history interview on Sheff v. O’Neill (with video) by Anique Thompson for the Cities, Suburbs, and Schools Project, June 27, 2011. Available from the Trinity College Digital Repository, Hartford Connecticut (http://digitalrepository.trincoll.edu/cssp/).

Connecticut had made some attempts to integrate its schools, such as with Project Concern that bused Hartford students into suburban school districts. However, as can be seen in the image below, this program was small and affected very few of Hartford’s 20,000+ students. At the time of the Sheff hearing, only around 500 students were enrolled in Project Concern, despite the fact that there was a very long waiting list. For families who wanted to live somewhere more diverse than the suburbs but still send their children to a quality school, the options were very limited.

As the Harringtons explain, living in a diverse neighborhood offers many benefits to everyone involved. Integration would make schooling better for the wealthy white suburban students just as it would for poor minority children living in Hartford. But when a person’s decision of where to live also determines their decision of what school their children will attend, sacrifices often have to be made. The law requiring students to attend a district school was at the heart of the Sheff v. O’Neill lawsuit, and the Harrington’s involvement in that case demonstrates that segregated schools were reducing the opportunity for all of Connecticut’s students and were restricting all families’ right to pick a neighborhood based on characteristics beyond school quality.

Here’s a different video

Elizabeth Horton Sheff, July 28, 2011 from Trinity College on Vimeo.

The interview of Elizabeth Sheff address some of the key historical turning points prior to her own case about school segregation. At 12 minutes and 55 seconds into the interview Ms. Sheff is shown a picture of Ms. Russell Rue picketing “de facto” segregation at Noah Webster School in 1965. This picture of civil rights protestors appropriately gives  evidence to the civil rights movement in CT during the 1960s.  Ms. Sheff, prompted by the photo goes on to explain her own feelings about the term “de facto” in an articulate way that resonates with the sentiments expressed in the term “de jure” or “of law”, not of fact.

Elizabeth Sheff explains how the district lines of towns that keep races separate also kept the schools segregated. Sheff explains that the district lines were done intentionally and as a result could not cause “de facto” segregation if the district lines were drawn intentionally. In Susan Eaton’s book The Children of Room E4 it is explained that “De jure, “of law, ” refers to racial separation enforced by laws or statues” (77). What is so interesting to me about this interview is that Sheff was aware of the reality with out the legal terms to express this reality, it makes the sentiment more true. She could not hide within fancy vernacular, but simply told it how she saw it. Raw, and candid. In her own words she is “very articulate”.

In this image, a young Puerto Rican student works on her assignment in a Hartford classroom in 1957.  Seen behind her are other students of various different ethnicities working on the same work.

The video within this comment follows the history of two young women who were involved as Plaintiffs in the historic Sheff vs. O’Neill lawsuit of 1989.  The two women, Wildaliz and Eva Bermudez, were supported by their entire family in 1989 when they were only five or so years old.  In the oral interview the women discuss their earliest memories of being involved in the case, being involved in outdoor picnics trying to raise awareness for the cause.  They also discuss how the case has followed them throughout their lives into college.  One woman shared how she was in a class at the University of Hartford and her professor said they would be discussing the Sheff vs O’Neill case.  She had to raise her hand and make sure he knew that she had first-hand experience.

Source: Bermudez, Wildaliz and Eva. Oral history interview on Sheff v. O’Neill school desegregation by Anique Thompson for the Cities, Suburbs, and Schools Project, June 30, 2011. Available from the Trinity College Digital Repository, Hartford Connecticut (http://digitalrepository.trincoll.edu/cssp/).

Both the oral interview and the photo are connected because they are focused on Puerto Rican students in Hartford.  All students, as a US right, have the access to a free public education, and the Sheff vs. O’Neill case brought that idea into focus.  This photo also revisits this fundamental right because it shows a young Puerto Rican girl being involved in a classroom with other students of other ethnicities and backgrounds.  The dates are very far apart, which is an interesting point seeing as the Sheff vs. O’Neill case wasn’t brought into court until 1989, and this photo was taken in 1957 in Hartford.

Susan Hansen, July 22, 2011 from Trinity College on Vimeo.

Hansen, Susan. Oral history interview on West Hartford, CT and restrictive covenants (with video), by Candace Simpson for the Cities, Suburbs, and Schools Project, July 22, 2011.Available from the Trinity College Digital Repository, Hartford Connecticut (http://digitalrepository.trincoll.edu/cssp/).

The picture above from the Hartford History Center displays students from the city of Hartford being bused in to a school in Suffield, approximately 30 minutes outside the urban center. This photo is somewhat surprising due to the fact that it is from 1968, because it displays racial segregation in the educational system slowly advancing towards integration. It indicates that the children bused in from Hartford were of African American descent and the teacher greeting the students is Caucasian therefore integrating mixed races under one building.
In the video below, Susan Hansen responds to the map portraying the race restrictive covenants in her suburban dwelling that were permissible in the 1940’s stating that, “[It was] before my time so I don’t really give it much thought. But no, I never heard of this. I never this happening anywhere, really, in Connecticut or this part of the country. Like I said, grow up in New York and when you heard about problems, it was “Well, that’s the South. You know, they still have this horrible segregation, but we don’t have it in New York.” At least superficially we didn’t have it in New York, but certainly when I was a kid, you noticed” [00:05:43]. Race restrictive covenants go hand in hand with the educational system that was enforced in the same time period. Just like any discriminatory or communal policy implemented, the internal institutions such as schools were affected along with the community members, students, in the same society. The shock that Hansen evokes provides the evidence that the notion of racial segregation has certainly diminished if not completely eliminated in the modern world, giving the photo above credit for the production of integrated schooling.