Mansfield school desegregation incident

The Mansfield school desegregation incident is a 1956 event in the Civil Rights Movement in Mansfield, Texas, a suburb of the Dallas–Fort Worth metroplex.

Throughout the early twentieth century, schools in the American South were often segregated by race under the legal doctrine of "separate, but equal." This system led to impoverished black schools, which received a much smaller share of public funds and led to severely worse educational outcomes for black students.^[1] Texas's educational system also discriminated against Tejanos, who were often also subject to segregated schools.^[1] Due to the exclusion in education and in many other areas of civic life, many towns featured distinct enclaves where black or Tejano people would create their own "quarter."^[1]

Mansfield originally developed during the lead-up to the Civil War based around a gristmill, which would provide essential food supplies to the Confederate cause during the war.^[2] As the town developed, black residents—often descendants of slaves or sharecroppers—were sequestered to their own neighborhood to the west of Main Street, which functioned as a color line.^[3] White Mansfield residents would only employ black people as domestics or in manual laborer, leading some to operate their own businesses or seek opportunity in the growing Dallas-Fort Worth metroplex.^[4] The discrimination and access to urban economic opportunity led some black residents to agitate about the status quo.^[5] A chapter of the NAACP opened in Mansfield in 1950 and was supported by most black Mansfield residents.^[6]

The black school, Mansfield Colored School, was made up of two poorly built schoolhouses, which lacked electricity, running water, and plumbing.^[6] The school only had funds to employ one teacher, who taught all students up to eighth grade.^[6] Black students who wanted to attend high school would commute via Trailways bus to Fort Worth to attend one of the two high schools in the multi-county area.^[7] The Mansfield Colored School was organized by the local board of education with specific "subtrustees"—often prominent black citizens—to make requests for funds to the board, many of which were denied.^[8] In 1953, the white-led Mansfield Independent School District (MISD) opened a separate 17-room elementary school which had 12 teachers and joined the existing Mansfield High School.^[9]

In 1954, the Supreme Court ruled in Brown v. Board of Education, that segregated schools were unconstitutional.^[10] The following year, the court confirmed their decision in Brown II, ruling that schools should desegregate "with all deliberate speed."^[10] The University of Texas's law school was ordered in Sweatt v. Painter (1950) that it could not route black applicants to a segregated graduate school, leading many Texan colleges and universities to partially desegregate.^[1]

In Jackson v. Rawdon, the U.S. Fifth Circuit Court of Appeals ruled in favor of the students. In 1956, Mansfield ISD became the first school district in the state ordered by a federal court to desegregate. The school board approved the measure and allowed Mansfield High School to desegregate. Although other districts in Texas desegregated quietly that fall, the mayor and police chief of Mansfield did not approve of this measure. When school started on August 30, 1956, they joined over 300 whites in front of Mansfield High School. Their goal was to prevent the enrollment of the three Black students. The town turned into complete turmoil as three Black effigies were hanged as part of the demonstration.^[11]

Texas Governor Allan Shivers was a noted segregationist and used the power of his office to resist implementation of Brown v. Board of Education. Shivers dispatched Texas Rangers to prevent integration, led by Captain Jay Banks, who, in addition to threatening to arrest Black students, refused to take down an effigy of a Black man hanging by a noose at the entrance of Mansfield High School.^[12] Shivers then authorized the Mansfield Independent School District to send its Black students to Fort Worth, Texas. By doing this the school district had effectively ignored a federal court order for integration.^[11]

After the transfer of the Black students to Fort Worth, the demonstrations soon ended. This led to Arkansas Governor Orval Faubus to attempt a similar ordeal in Little Rock, Arkansas in 1957. Later that year, Texas passed more segregation laws that delayed integration even further.

Facing the lack of federal funds, the Mansfield Independent School District quietly desegregated in 1965.^[11] The decade long defiance of a federal school integration order was one of the longest in the nation during that period.^[13]

In June 2020, a statue modeled after Texas Ranger Captain Jay Banks, called One Riot, One Ranger, was removed from Dallas Love Field.^[14] It was first dedicated in 1961, 5 years after the Mansfield School Desegregation Incident.^[14]

• Ladino, Robyn Duff (1996). Desegregating Texas Schools: Eisenhower, Shivers, and the Crisis at Mansfield High. Austin, Texas: University of Texas Press. ISBN 9780292746923.
• McArthur, Judith N.; Smith, Harold L. (2010). Texas Through Women's Eyes: The Twentieth-Century Experience. Austin, Texas: University of Texas Press. ISBN 9780292778351.

• Mansfield School Desegregation Incident at the Handbook of Texas Online
• The Crisis at Mansfield, online museum, University of North Texas