Lesson in New Rochelle

By refusing to review a lower court decision, the U.S. Supreme Court last week upheld desegregation of a predominantly Negro school in the New York City suburb of New Rochelle--first Northern community found guilty of segregating Negroes by gerrymandering district lines.

New Rochelle had claimed that the Negro neighborhood around Lincoln School (94% Negro last year) "had, like Topsy, just grown that way, and appealed the decision on the ground that it seemed to make any "racially unbalanced" school illegal. Last week's Supreme Court action failed to clarify that issue. New Rochelle's angry school board is now considering free transfers for all children--in effect, the end of neighborhood schools. More to the legal point: Northern communities, for example, Chicago, where a similar suit is pending, may now find that they can no longer hide behind the neighborhood school idea if, in fact, they are manipulating it to create segregation.

This file is automatically generated by a robot program, so reader's discretion is required.