Student Rezoning Case Goes to Trial Today
Eleven years after winning release from desegregation decrees, Nashville's school officials are being dragged back into federal court beginning today to face accusations they're discriminating against black children. The issue is whether race was a consideration in the student assignment plan that went into effect this school year, and much of the city's white officialdom is on trial.
Did school board chairman David Fox openly advocate segregation in community meetings? Did he say, as the plaintiffs' attorneys allege, that we should "put African American students back in north Nashville where they live?"
Did state Rep. Mike Turner use racial terms to urge support for the rezoning plan in a closed-door meeting with Chamber of Commerce and NAACP officials? Did he say, as has been alleged, that "this rezoning plan will put the whites in their neighborhood schools and the blacks in their neighborhood schools, and everybody will be better off?"
Was ousted school superintendent Pedro Garcia telling the truth in explosive memorandums made public last year in which he chronicled a secret white conspiracy involving the chamber and various board members to resegregate schools?
At last report, Garcia still was waffling about testifying, but the plaintiffs plan to present witnesses to tell the court what he told them about all this at the time. There also are witnesses who will claim they heard Fox's and Turner's remarks, which both men deny making.
The trial could last two weeks. The NAACP wants Judge John Nixon to toss out the rezoning plan and order the school system to come up with a new one acceptable to both sides by next summer. Whatever the outcome, the trial will open wounds, with the city torn in two along racial lines over schools once again.
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