Newsday

I'm Tom Grimes, the Executive Producer of KER's Newsday. KER's Day is a daily news analysis program which is proven to be one of the most successful locally produced programs on any of the 208 public broadcasting system stations. We go to great links to bring together local, state and national news authorities and experts in many fields to bring in-depth discussion of issues and information not available elsewhere in the broadcast medium. Just let me briefly show you a few examples of the different types of subject matter. We've covered this here.

Then we'll show you in its entirety what we feel is one of the most successful programs we produced in 1979. January 3rd was the week the House Assassinations Committee issued its startling findings that Lee Harvey Oswald had not acted alone in gunning down the present of the United States. Newsday featured an in-depth interview with Lewis Stokes, Chairman of the House Assassinations Committee, live from Washington via satellite. The Warren Commission included that he was a loner. We know in fact, from our investigation that Lee Harvey Oswald was not a loner. We also talked with a man who coordinated the FBI's original investigation of the assassination Robert Gimberling. The possibility of conspiracy might have been, could have been, isn't it possible. I've read books for 15 years inferring that there was a conspiracy yet.

I still have not seen any concrete, hard evidence that would substantiate it. On August 28, 1979, we went to the Fort Worth Office of Congressman and House Majority Leader Jim Wright. Congressman Wright had some scathing criticism for the press, and he showed a remarkably conservative side for a congressman who was recently rated as one of the most liberal members of the Texas delegation. I'm afraid it has reached the point where so many in the movement of the press feel that they aren't doing their job unless they find some evil to expose. And maybe there isn't any evil there. I have the feeling that they've carried this adversary relationship a bit too far and that they think the only good news is bad news and the only thing worth reporting is either something stupid or something venal that some elected official has performed.

After Dallas and Fort Worth had spent hundreds of millions of dollars building the world's largest airport, the FW International. A small commuter airline decided it wanted to start flying from Dallas' close-in airport love field. Well, that raised all sorts of havoc from City Hall of the U.S. Congress. On September 10th at the height of the controversy, we were able to engineer a remarkable discussion of the issues both here in Dallas and in Washington. We brought in the chairman of the Civil Aeronautics Board, Marvin Cohen, the chairman of the commuter airline, Herb Keller, and the regional director of the FAA, Henry Newman, all live in Washington. Back here in Dallas, we had the mayor, Robert Folsom. In September of last year, an issue that came out on our program for the first time was the profound rift among members of the Dallas School Board. The Dallas School System has and still is embroiled in one of the worst financial scandals in its history.

The board had been divided over who was at fault in the scandal and how it was being handled. All this had simmered under the surface until school board member Jerry Bartos appeared on the news day to bring it out in the open. The board member expressed to me today that particular individual thought that maybe the board needed a good psychiatrist or psychologist, and that is not a bad assessment because, as I said, I've served on many boards with divergent views and been able to have great disagreement and come out with a position and join arms and go forward. This is a we're dealing in personal and emotional reactions. Dallas is a business city and business issues are among the most poorly covered by both the print and broadcast media. We pride ourselves in doing the best business reporting in Dallas and doing that reporting in layman's terms. On November 9th, we dissected a speech by Paul Volker, Chairman of the Federal Reserve

Board. We used three respected economists, the Chairman of the School of Business at Southern Methodist University, Dean Coleman, the President and Chief Executive Officer of the LTV Corporation, Ray Hay, and Jim Bird, the Chief Economist of First International Bank Shares, Business Analyst, David Johnson, moderated the discussion. Now, correct me if I'm wrong, the way I translate that into English for me is, I'm sorry real estate, it's going to be real tough, you're just going to have to slide along with it. Isn't it that kind of real estate inflation that can really bring our area to its knees? What is big business about this? When William McJessney Martin was the head of the Federal Reserve Bank, he said that the Federal Reserve's job is to take the punch bowl away as soon as the party gets going good. And that really spells out for me what the Federal Reserve's responsibilities have been. Perhaps the real strength of our program is our flexible format, our ability to spend

a solid half hour explaining and discussing a single important issue. One of the best examples of this type of program was our coverage of the presentation of Dallas' desegregation case before the United States Supreme Court on October 29th of last year. Much of our program originated live from Washington. The following is the program in its entirety. The Dallas School System took its 24-year-old desegregation case to the U.S. Supreme Court today and just a moment we'll tell you what happened. Good evening from Washington, D.C. I'm Tom Grimes.

After 24 years and at least 17 appeals, the Dallas School District finally reached the Supreme Court. It happened when last August the school board voted to appeal a decision by the Fifth Circuit Court that ordered the district to desegregate its 28-all black schools or give justification for them. Rather than head back to district court, a majority of the school board decided to appeal and so the board found itself at the steps of the Supreme Court at one o'clock, the time the court scheduled the hearing. Only one board member did not attend. Jerry Bartos said the trip to Washington was a waste of taxpayer money and he said it was up to the lawyers, not school board members, to persuade the justices hearing the case. At least one of the justices didn't attend today's hearing. They're good marshal disqualifying himself on the basis that he was one of the attorneys for the NAACP, one of the parties which participated in today's hearing. With more on the history behind this 24-year-old battle, we go to Suzanne Weber in Dallas, Suzanne.

The fight for adequate desegregation in Dallas schools has been raging off and on for nearly a quarter of a century. Today the highest court in the land heard testimony regarding the suit as the long journey towards court-ordered equal educational opportunities for black, brown, and white children draws to a close. The first formal step down that road was taken back in 1955 when the NAACP filed suit seeking integration in Dallas classrooms, after a lengthy court battle, desegregation began in 1961 on a grade-by-grade basis. On September 6th of that year, 18 black first graders walked into classrooms in what had previously been all white schools and the first hurdle was behind us. However, minority groups in Dallas weren't entirely satisfied with the steps taken during the decade of the 60s. On October 7th, 1970, Dallas legal services representing 21 black and Mexican-American plaintiffs asked U.S. District Judge William Taylor to develop a comprehensive desegregation plan.

First however, the plaintiffs had to prove discrimination still existed in Dallas classrooms. On July 14th, 1971, Judge Taylor was satisfied. The plaintiffs had proven their case, and he refused a school district request for dismissal of the proceedings. The next day, Judge Taylor ordered the Dallas district to revise its plan. On August 2nd, 1971, Taylor handed down a plan calling for both the busing of Dallas school children and integration through the use of television. Less than a month later, the appeals court stopped the proposal to spend $10 million on television facilities, but allowed the busing order to go into effect while further appeals were pending. Then in the summer of 1975, the Fifth Circuit Court of Appeals finally decided the 1971 plan was in its words, constitutionally inadequate. The plan was thrown out, and Judge Taylor had to begin the process all over again.

Nearly a year passed before Judge Taylor ordered the adoption of a plan proposed by the Dallas Alliance. The highlight of that plan called for busing forth through eighth graders, and establishing the controversial magnet schools, a new element designed to produce voluntary desegregation. August 23rd, 1976, was a landmark date in the history of the Dallas school district. Seventeen thousand dollar school children were bused that opening day. The implementation of the busing order went so smoothly, the Dallas program is still cited as a model for cities around the nation. Nevertheless the following spring, the NAACP intervened again. This time appealing the Alliance plan because it allowed $26,000 students to remain segregated in all black schools. Also the appeals court refused to halt implementation of the program on April 21st, 1978.

The case was remanded to Judge Taylor, who was ordered to come up with a new student assignment plan, and to provide justification for any remaining one-race schools within the Dallas school system. Throughout the ordeal the Dallas school district fought the proceedings in court until there was only one court left to turn to the United States Supreme Court. On February 20th, 1979, a high court agreed to hear the Dallas desegregation case. Written arguments were submitted last May, and today, October 29th, 1979, the Supreme Court listened to oral arguments in that suit. Thank you Suzanne, before looking at the issues in this case, there were two Supreme Court decisions that were handed down last summer that were a background to today's hearing. They involved desegregation cases in Dayton and Columbus, Ohio.

In those cases, the court ordered massive busing to desegregate those school systems. Earlier today, we asked an attorney for the plaintiffs at Cloudman why those two cases were so important in understanding the Dallas desegregation case. The issues presented by those cases and those in this case are so similar that I believe the decision will very much track that in Dayton and Columbus. If you recall, Justice Berger even suggested they might remain the matter immediately because of their decisions in those cases, and that's obviously because they were so similar. Well, Mr. Cloudman and other observers believe that a big reason the Supreme Court decided to hear the Dallas case was so that the same decision that applied to the Dayton and Columbus cases could be applied to a southern school district like Dallas where segregation was a state law until 1955. There were six participants in today's hearing and we'll look at the arguments of four of them. First, the DISD's case. In 1976, when Federal District Judge William Taylor issued his latest order, he allowed something called the East Oakliff Sub-District to be formed.

The East Oakliff contains 28 all black schools with a student body of 26,000 children. When the Fifth Circuit issued its order to the DISD last year to integrate East Oakliff, that's when the board decided to appeal. The school board appealed because it knew that the only way to integrate East Oakliff was through massive busing. Here are a sample of quotes from the DISD's attorney Warren Whittomis. He argued his case before the court. A national educational crisis exists in large urban school systems because some federal courts refuse to admit that court rulings must be interpreted in light of the urban condition as it exists in these school systems. And then Mr. Whittomis said, quote, unless Judge Taylor's realistic approach to such a school system is affirmed by this court, segregation litigation will go on and on over the years and will end only when such school systems become virtually all black or virtually all black

in Mexican-American. And finally, Mr. Whittomis argued that the dual system of education for blacks and whites is no more, only its trace must now be removed from the system. Next came the plaintiffs who filed the current suit in 1970. Their arguments, presented by Attorney Ed Cloudman, were one that no reason was ever given by Judge Taylor's court for eliminating grades K-3 and all of Dallas' high schools from a desegregation plan. Then Mr. Cloudman hit Easto Cliff by saying that it was totally unjustified that no good reason was ever given for its creation, especially when busing as a tool for desegregation exists. And finally, Mr. Cloudman argued that the DISD is it now exists is a dual school system. There are also interveners in today's hearing that is people who believe they have a legal stake in anything the Supreme Court hands down.

The so-called North Dallas interveners argued one that busing isn't the only way to desegregate a school system, but in their second point, they argued that the Supreme Court, in prior cases, has asked school districts to eliminate one race school. So quote, you might as well ask those school districts to nail current jelly to the wall. And finally, the North Dallas interveners stated that Dallas was a model community in the way in which it went about designing the present integration system. And finally, the so-called East Dallas interveners argued that East Dallas has naturally integrated neighborhoods and that massive busing would only cause white flight. So those are the major points brought out by each of the parties, the DISD, the North Dallas interveners, and the East Dallas interveners all see busing as a way of guaranteeing that white flight will continue. And the plaintiffs see the desegregation current desegregation plan as a way of maintaining a dual school system.

Here to discuss the issues in this case are the president of the Dallas Board of Education Brad Lapsley, the associate superintendent of the East Oakland Sub-District, Yvonne Yule, and school board member Robert Madrono. Mr. Madrono, let me go to you first and ask you, you did not support the district's decision to appeal this case to the U.S. Supreme Court. Why did you not? The reason I opposed it was because it would leave room for the other various plans that were introduced. There was a plan submitted by the school board and other numerous plans submitted. There was plans submitted by other organizations which we had an option. So we did not close the doors as far as appealing. Okay, but what was it about this particular system that the DISD is now under that you considered unacceptable and would not ratify? Not every effort being made to desegregate various segments of the community.

That is my main problem. Do you think that the East Oakland Sub-District is one of the worst offenses to that in your opinion? My opinion, yes. If you're going to leave a segment of the community without the experience of integrated in education and definitely you're denying a class of individuals or raise the opportunity for an educated opportunity. Mr. Lapsley, the DISD's position to reaffirm its position is that yes, we have one race schools, but in order to integrate those schools would mean a massive exodus from the school system of middle class people, whites and blacks. Is that not correct? Yes. That the rationale behind what you probably, the largest reason that we have behind it, yeah. Attorneys for the plaintiffs say that your argument is just fine until you realize that three out of five black students in the DISD go to school and all black schools.

The evidence is so massive that there appears to be a dual school system that you really cannot rationally explain your way out of it. What has been the district's traditional approach to that rationale? Well, I think the approach that we are talking about right now is the fact that although there are one race schools and well admit it, we feel that that is the best in the long run for the city of Dallas. And Mr. Madrano himself voted for this plan back on April 7, 1976, together with five other board members that this would be an acceptable plan. The three board members at that time who did not that voted against it are no longer on the board. So we realize that although there are problems with one race schools, we feel that this is the best plan that we could come up with under the circumstances that we're forced to face. And when the light of decreasing Anglo and Roman in the district, we are in effect, we will be in effect resegregating the schools again if something is not done in this direction.

I believe Suzanne has a question. Suzanne? Yes, Mr. Lapsley. What realistic alternatives are there to the East Oak Cliff sub-district and also could you tell us what hard evidence you have that makes the school board believe white flight would be the inevitable result of pushing more busing on this area? Suzanne, as you know have compromised, we have made on the other hand, even though we have an all back district or all one race school district, we have pumped extra money and extra programs and extra teachers and things into that district in an effort to counterbalance the whatever negative effects there would be in that neighborhood. As far as proof of the other, I think you just have to look at cities like Atlanta and others across the country that have historically gone that direction over the past few years.

Could I ask you one more thing, what proportion of the aid and special teachers that you're talking about have gone to the East Oak Cliff sub-district is compared to other districts in the DISD? I'm sorry, I can't answer that accurately. Yvonne could probably add something to that point, but it's been several million dollars over the past three years and I'm not sure exactly what proportion that would be. Mr. Madrano, what of Mr. Lapsley's statement that you did in fact ratify the current plan in 76? What has happened then, what has happened now that changed your mind? Once for all the stability as far as the anticipation of additional wide flight for the first time this year, it has stabilized now, is that attributed to the current desegregation plan? I'm contented that the middle lower to socio-economic Anglo community has the one that

has to maintain in the integrated position. Why did you change your mind about the worthiness of this plan? As Mr. Lapsley pointed out, you voted for it in 76, then you voted not to appeal the fifth circuit ruling which says that the plan you ratified is inadequate. Once again, I want to point out the reason I voted for the plan was for the right to appeal if the plaintiffs or the NAACP appealed, that that point, the Dallas University District would then appeal. Oh, I see. So you did it as you made it, made a procedural move is what you're saying. Exactly. What of Mr. Lapsley's contention that, you know, when you do eliminate every or almost every one race school in a city like Dallas, where there appears to be a great deal of white flight, that you run the real risk of making the school district a one race district

again, all black or all Mexican-American, that you defeat in the ultimate, the ends to which you were trying to accomplish? I don't even foresee that in Dallas coming about, I think if you're going to attract industry and business and looking for that educational setting in that given community, I think they will look at the education experience as being offered by that community, and if that community wishes to establish its industry and say the cleanest or urban or that's where those children will continue to be attracted to those public schools, I think we're at a stable point now. As you will, your commitment to civil rights and the eloquence with which you assert that commitment is fairly well known in the city. However, you're governing a portion of the school district as an associate superintendent. That's considered by the NAACP for one as a racist enclave. How do you handle an accusation like that?

Well, in the first place, it cannot be a racist enclave, because racism is designed to speak to who is in power, and the governance of East Oak Cliff is still essentially a predominantly white board, so that's a misnomer of the issue around what racism means. As it relates to my role in East Oak Cliff and to civil rights, I think that we have to look at 25 years of resistance as it relates to desegregation. It is clear now that issues related to race run deep in the American psyche. I would also say that the primary reason for schools is to educate young people, and if we look another quarter century at desegregation, rather than the primary issue of education, and I don't know what that says for firstly, black America is not what it says for this country in general, and so for that reason, I'm very, very comfortable in trying to make up for many, many deficits in education that black people have experienced over the last several centuries.

Go ahead, Suzanne. As you all, I wanted to ask you, we were talking about the racist feelings that run deep in the American psyche, race-related feelings, and our primary purpose here being education. How severely do you think the education of children in the East Oak Cliff sub-district would be if they were all taken out of that district and bust all over the city? What kind of repercussions would you foresee? I think that there would be an increase in the exodus of middle class, people in particular in middle class whites, but I think my primary concern would be that I don't have any evidence from what has happened over the United States, that that would be in a substantive increase in the educational achievement of black students, and indeed there may be a decrease as if we look at the data from across the country. Mr. Madrana, where do you get your evidence that white flight has leveled off and that were we to engage in massive bussing, is the court dictated in the Columbus and Dayton cases, were we to engage in that kind of bussing we wouldn't see massive white

flight? It depends on, you know, if we come up with a new desegregation plan, incorporated new pairing and clustering, there's still alternatives there that there's room that you could attract programs maybe in different sections of the community where you would prevent this flight. Let me ask you a question that was really intriguing to me today, as I listened to Bryce Cunningham, the attorney for the NACP, argue before the eight justices. I believe in response to a question by Justice Potter Stewart. No it was Justice Byron White, that's who it was, he said, would you advocate massive bussing if that massive bussing turned out to make the district completely all black? And he said, yes, I would advocate it because that is a remedy for trying to segregate a desegregate a segregated school system.

Do you see bussing as Mr. Cunningham sees it, it is a tool and by golly it ought to be used despite what consequences have been projected by some authorities to take place at bussing occurs? I'd like to follow that by what Chief Justice Berger followed that question. That question that also was asked, Bryce, that if that's the prerogative of that Anglo community, if it chose to send him into an integrated setting, if that's what is required to receive an integrated education, that that's the prerogative of the Anglo community to do that, if it required all schools to be integrated or in a desegregation plan it would reveal this, then Mr. Cunningham said that that was the remedy. Tom, could I say, I think the two things that we need to point out, first of all under Yvonne's leadership over there and he's still clear, the students over there have made exceptionally good record of achievement in the last three years and I think that flies in the face

of any educational loss that they might face by being where they are under the conditions they're under. They have done exceptionally well, far better than the other, a lot of the other students in the rest of the, rest of Dallas. So if you run a busing program to the point that some people are interested in today, you utterly destroy any bilingual program because you're busing folks that are Mexican-American to other areas which destroy as the opportunity for that specialized training that we find is so necessary to teach them English and I think that's one thing we must really keep in mind. Another issue, Tom, is that it seems that issues surrounding desegregation and therefore transportation have created so much unrest in the country that we are at the point of perhaps disestablishing the total school system. If we look at Californian, some of the places where tuition tax credit are coming on for perhaps a vote of the city, therefore to my mind, in the first place, we're not achieving

desegregation as it is and then because of our long look at that issue alone, we are failed to look at education and so we've got a massive underclass under-educated and this order is the first order in the Dallas Independent School District that has addressed an interesting phenomenon of education and not the other issues that have to do with busing and pairing and magnet schools. The consensus seems to be is I talk to the different attorneys and even some of your fellow board members and I don't mean Mr. Madrano, that given what the justices said today, the kind of questions they asked and the kind of records that they have on desegregation, that they will probably not grant your petition, they will probably throw this back into the district court say in essence you've got too many one-ray schools, now you at the district court level do something about it. Do you, Mr. Lapsley, agree, do you think that the chances of them saying that are very

high? Well, I don't know, it's very difficult to determine what they're going to say and what they're going to judge just on the basis of their questions and so forth, that they otherwise they would have told us already and we already know. I think there's a massive material they're going to be looking at and evaluating, I think the achievement records of the district, the community reaction and the support is going to enter into it. I think there are going to be a bunch of factors that will enter into this and whether, I think, I think I'm very positive, I think we're going to win. Suzanne? Yes, Mr. Lapsley, I understand the magnet schools have not been very successful in terms of its goals of voluntary desegregation. Any talk of taking the money put into the special schools, the magnet schools and putting it elsewhere? No Suzanne, those magnet schools may not be the perfect tool for desegregation but they have certainly been a great asset to Dallas, from an educational standpoint, I think they have served very, very well and I think we're going to continue on with them and creasing

if we can. Tom, for the record, be sure you note that there are 33 one-way schools outside East Coast Cliff that are predominantly black, that are black and that the issue is much more much broader than that. Well, the question, it wasn't decided today by the court, it's really not known when the court's going to make the decision, maybe January, maybe next spring, so we will have to wait for the final order. After all that was said and done today, we wondered how the man who originally filed the suit nine years ago also felt about what happened. We asked Eddie Mitchell, Tazby, that question. Well, I'm saying that please, the high court was willing to hear us and let us have our say, yet a little bit disappointed, it takes so long for his case have been in court like about 10 years and of course, I am a bit awestowness about it and when we're talking about integrating and we're not so much talking about just let warm bodies come in set with

other warm bodies, but we are trying to get people's come to know each other, work together with one another and I'd like to round it here just a little bit. I kind of look at the white art anglo as we want to use the word as the Jew and the blacks and other minorities as the Palestinians and I hope say when the historian are reviewing, I used to say 500,000 years now, it won't be parallel with the Jews and the Palestinians that we read about today over in the east and we'll have to start with our school children but we want to not because we have no other choice and you can't wait till they get grown but if you could start with the very first elementary child, first graders, lie in,

we might get this integration to work. Just in terms of the presentations made before the court, were you positively impressed, negatively impressed, what were your feelings about it? Well, I felt quite positive about it, but it's a good thing that we were able to have I would say, have a hug before this high court and therefore I felt very good about it. Boy that was something that I'd never been in a Supreme Court chamber and never been to a hearing and it was really impressive, no matter what the outcome was, sure was. Five years from now we'll look back at all. You've been. Thank you very much for joining us, we'll see you tomorrow night at 7 o'clock, good evening. .