Taylor V. Board Of Education Between 1954 And 1954

Between the years 1954 and 1968, an extremely influential era occurred, known as the
African American Civil Rights Movement. During this time, African Americans fought for the equal rights and freedoms they deserved. The widely recognized, Brown v. Board of Education case, which transpired in Topeka, Kansas in 1954, addressed the segregation issues between whites and African Americans in public schools. Similarly, the New Rochelle Board of Education was challenged with a court-ordered case involving the desegregation of the Lincoln
School in 1962. The case, Taylor v. Board of Education of City School District of City of New Rochelle, evolved when eleven children sued the district for gerrymandering the elementary schools. When the plaintiff’s

(page 7) Families were infuriated with this de-facto all-black school, and took initiative by bringing it to court in the well-known case titled, Taylor v. Board of Education of City School District of City of New Rochelle. They accurately claimed that students who attended the Lincoln School got a poorer education than in other schools because they were not in a proper learning environment. For example, students that attended Lincoln performed the lowest in vocabulary and comprehension in both fifth and sixth grade. In addition, kindergarten students at Lincoln scored lowest on the reading readiness test, with a mean grade of about one third of the highest scoring school. (page 9 & 10) Families were appalled that they were denied the opportunity to transfer their children to a different elementary school in the district, even with the clear statistics that they were not getting the same quality of education as other students were receiving. Fortunately, the final court decision read that the school

(page 30) Numerous changes to the community followed in result of the Taylor v. Board of Education of City School District of City of New Rochelle case. Specifically, on April 19th, 1962, three members of the Board of Education in New Rochelle resigned from their positions soon after the conclusion of the case. Their reasoning for doing so was because they quarrelled on various racial disputes and issues with their fellow members on the panel. (page 33) Additionally, and most obviously, the Lincoln School was closed indefinitely and destroyed on June 30th, 1963. (page 34) Furthermore, the court non-racially assigned students from the Lincoln School to transfer into other elementary schools within the City School District. This helped integrate the students part of a once isolated community, to the city that it has grown into today, one of the most diverse places in Westchester. The lawsuit created loads of controversy locally, and across the nation, alerting citizens about what needs to be done to give African Americans the equal rights that they deserve. About half a century later, the City of New Rochelle has switched from its segregated