L.A. Schools Integration

I am the lawyer who tried the Los Angeles city schools integration case (Crawford vs. Board of Education) on behalf of the minority pupils before Judge Alfred Gitelson.

I read with interest your article “Integration Fight--No Victor Seen” (Part I, April 6). I think an evaluation of what happened in the fight to integrate the schools of the Los Angeles Unified School District required inclusion of at least two facts.

First, the trial judge found, at the close of a lengthy trial, that the school district and school officials had segregated the schools of Los Angeles not only de facto but de jure . Judge Gitelson made specific findings to this effect, e.g., that the district segregated minority pupils by, among other things, deliberately drawing boundary lines, constructing new schools, establishing attendance areas, promulgating transfer policies, etc., in a deliberate and intentional effort to further intensify racial segregation in our schools. The California Supreme Court affirmed that finding.

Second, efforts to integrate or at least desegregate our schools failed, in no small measure, because public officials did not support the effort. In fact, they denounced the Gitelson decision and did everything possible to stir up public anger. Members of the school district, former Mayor Sam Yorty, and Gov. Ronald Reagan were among the public officials who were most loud in their condemnation.

The public, misled by officials over a period of 18 years, has been deluded into believing that the Crawford decision pertained exclusively to so-called “segregation . . . caused by changing neighborhood growth patterns,” as your reporter, Carol McGraw, put it. In fact, the trial court found, and the highest court of our state confirmed, that school authorities had deliberately and intentionally followed practices and policies that intensified and deepened segregation in our schools. Los Angeles will have to live with the shame of that decision.

The history of school integration since 1952 shows that efforts to successfully and peacefully integrate or desegregate schools in various communities across the country fail unless such efforts have the full-hearted support of school authorities and other public officials. Needless to say that support was lacking in Los Angeles. This is one of the lessons to be drawn from the history of the Crawford case.

BAYARD BERMAN

Los Angeles