The Example of Mount Vernon

ONLY 25 minutes away from Manhattan lies Mount Vernon, N.Y., a highly segregated suburb of 80,000 people, divided starkly into black and white worlds by an east-west railroad track. It could well be the kind of community that Senator Ribicoff had in mind when he complained of racial hypocrisy in the North.

Blacks have been steadily moving into Mount Vernon since the end of World War II. They formed 11% of the population in 1950 and now account for 35%. Since the city has only one high school, it is integrated. But the white community has persistently and bitterly opposed integration of its eleven elementary schools. School-board candidates routinely campaign on the pitch "Preserve Your Neighborhood Schools," which black critics understandably interpret as "Keep Your Schools White."

Responding to pleas from blacks, the then New York Commissioner of Education James E. Allen (now U.S. Commissioner of Education) in 1965 ordered Mount Vernon's school board to submit an integration plan. The board turned to a freedom-of-choice scheme under which all pupils would be free to attend any school in the city. It is a device the

South once fought but is now urging the courts to accept, since it leads to little integration. It worked that way in Mount Vernon, where some blacks chose to attend white schools--but not a single white student volunteered to change schools. "No white mother or father is going to let his child be picked up and driven across town," contends Mount Vernon State Assemblyman George Van Cott.

Allen in 1968 ordered Mount Vernon to initiate a compulsory busing plan that would require transporting 3,000 students. The board balked, and an appellate judge overruled Allen's order. Yet Mount Vernon occupies only 4 1/2 sq. mi. and seems ideal for busing; rides would be short, and the cost not unmanageable. It was Assemblyman Van Cott who was a leader last year when the New York legislature enacted a law that bans compulsory busing to achieve a racial balance. Its passage seems to rule out any such transporting of Mount Vernon students. Nevertheless, whites are continuing to leave the community. "There is no outward racism here," says one of the town's defenders. "Our whites and blacks get along well, except when whites feel that their jobs and homes are threatened."

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