White flight left empty schools while black students were crowded into half-day sessions

Evidence

For their part, school officials appreciated the impact residential changes had on the city’s school system. “It is very evident that many white residents are moving to the suburbs,” Superintendent John Letson announced in 1960, “and many white areas in the city are becoming Negro residential communities.” As a result, he noted, the ratio of black students to white was rapidly expanding. During the 1959–60 academic year, for instance, the school system lost 1,627 white students and gained 2,668 black students. The next year, Atlanta’s public schools lost another 1,072 white students and gained 3,064 more blacks. Instead of realloting resources to address the expanding black student body, officials tried to make do with already overtaxed and overcrowded facilities. As white classrooms remained half-filled or stood empty, black students were forced into cramped classes and taught in half-day “double sessions.” As the situation approached a crisis state, school officials reluctantly reached the obvious conclusion. “At some point,” Letson announced in July 1961, “we must convert a white school to a Negro school.” — Kevin M. Kruse, White Flight, 377

Categorization

• XREF: The double-session overcrowding amid empty white schools recurs as a resource-inequality pattern in many resegregated districts today. — connects to: School token integration recreated segregation inside schools — Kevin M. Kruse, White Flight: Atlanta and the Making of…, 366; Small residential minority increases greatly amplify into public school resegregation — Kevin M. Kruse, White Flight: Atlanta and the Making of…, 588; Suburban school district fragmentation structurally enabled white flight from desegregation. — G. Alan Tarr, Judicial Process and Judicial…, 3026 (+2 more)