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Up and until the 1950s, Edgemont, almost entirely white and very affluent, had been sending its high schoolers to the wealthy Bronxville and Scarsdale High Schools. Hartsdale, the unincorporated community just north of Edgemont (indicated by district #7 in the image to the right), equally as white but slightly less affluent, had been sending its students to the nearby White Plains High School, where black students from Fairview (indicated as district #8 on the map to the right) were a small minority. When Greenburgh's population exploded 60% in coming into the 1950s, Scarsdale and Bronxville announced they would not extend their contracts allowing students from Edgemont to attend their schools due to the unmanagable overflow of new students.
1955: EDGEMONT HIGH SCHOOL OPENS
The highly affluent, nearly exclusively white Edgemont quickly built its own high school in 1955.
(Image courtesy of Hudson River Valley Heritage Historical Newspapers, Scarsdale Inquirer, Feb. 17 1956)
(Image courtesy of Proquest Historical Newspapers, The New York Times Apr. 15, 1966)
In 1954, the Supreme Court issued its landmark decision in Brown v. Board of Education, ruling that racial segregation in public schools was unconstitutional. At the time, both unincorporated communities of Hartsdale and Fairview were still in need of a high school, and White Plains was to stop taking students from unincorporated Greenburgh by 1950s' end. In a follow-up decision the following year, the Court ordered schools to desegregate "with all deliberate speed," and progressive New York State commissioner of education James E. Allen had endeavored on his "master plan" to consolidate schools together for greater diversity. He therefore proposed a merger between Hartsdale #7 (less than 1% Black) and Greenburgh #8 (which included Fairview), 36% Black. In an explosion of disapproval, Hartsdale school board members organized to fight the merger--a fight that would last years to come--before, losing to the state, "Hartsdale was the sole Greenburgh district unable to avoid the master plan." -Dan Weinfeld, Manor Woods Blog
(Image courtesy of Proquest Historical Newspapers, The New York Times Apr. 15, 1966)
In the meantime, Hartsdale students continued to be sent to nearby high schools such as Ardsley, despite these high schools' persistent objection and resistance. Race undoubtedly played a massive part in Hartsdale's resistance to the merger, though Hartsdale's residents argued simply that "sure, we've got to merge, but why merge with a district that's inferior?" The same article referred to the ongoing debate as the "colored situation."
1967: AN ATTEMPT TO INTEGRATE
In 1967, Greenburgh school district #8 endeavored to speed up integration efforts by introducing the Princeton Plan. The purpose of the plan was to send students to elementary schools correlating to their grade, not geographical area (something that led to the whiter, wealthier areas having better funded schools that the more diverse, lower-income areas). K-1 would go to Lee F. Jackson, 2-3 to Highview, and 4-6 to Richard J. Bailey. (Images courtesy of Greenburgh Public Library, Equality Through Integration: a report on Greenburgh School District No. 8).
In the summer of 1967, Dr. James E. Allen ordered an integration referendum in Hartsdale to vote on the merger. Hartsdale residents refused to participate, obtaining an injunction from Justice Pennock in Albany. It was appealed, and the justice department ruled that "the injunction was automatically stayed," essentially putting a pause on the injunction. Hartsdale advocated merging with the whiter districts of Edgemont and Ardsley, "an action that they said they neither wanted nor needed" ("Hartsdale Rejects a School Merger; Integration an Issue"). It was now up to the state to decide the merger's fate.
Hartsdale ended up losing the battle in its resistance to the Greenburgh #8 merger. In 1968, the Amsterdam News, a Black-run newspaper, published "Black-White Students Fight at Woodlands Hi," showing the extreme racism white students directed towards blacks: "N***** Go Home," "N****** Go Back South," and phone calls home asking for parents to come pick them up.
(Images courtesy of Proquest Historical Newspapers, New York Amsterdam News, Mar. 30 1968)
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