The Mansfield Crisis was a 1956 event in Mansfield, Texas, United States. It was part of the broader civil rights movement and especially the effort to desegregate schools in the Dallas-Fort Worth metroplex.
After the Supreme Court unanimously ruled in Brown v. Board of Education that segregation in public schools was unconstitutional, some black residents in Mansfield petitioned the school board to integrate the system. After the board denied repeated requests—both for desegregation and for improvement to the black school facility—three black students represented by L. Clifford Davis sued the board in the Northern District of Texas. The eventual judgement in Jackson v. Rawdon held that the board was "forever restrained from refusing admission to [...] any of the plaintiffs shown to be qualified in all respects for admission."
Despite the ruling, the white community in Mansfield responded with severe opposition to integration. Some anonymously burned crosses in the black neighborhood and separately hung black effigies in prominent areas of town. A large mob of dozens of white residents gathered on August 30, August 31, and September 4—the only days when black students would be able to register—blocking the doors and expressing their race-based opposition to desegregation. The demonstrations repeatedly featured violence or threats of violence. Due to the threats of violence and lack of government support, the black students did not attend Mansfield High School.
Texas Governor Allan Shivers supported the local officials in their aims to prevent desegregation. Shivers also worked with White Citizens' Councils throughout Texas to continue to support segregation in schools and develop an argument against federal government authority based in interposition. President Dwight Eisenhower expressed sympathy for the cause but declined to intervene to enforce the court order.
Mansfield High School remained segregated until the Voting Rights Act of 1965 threatened its federal funding. A year after the Mansfield Crisis, a similar conflict between a state and a federal court order mandating desegregation resulted in the Little Rock Nine being allowed to attend the predominantly white high school with protection by the National Guard.
Background
Throughout the early twentieth century, schools in the American South were often segregated by race under the legal doctrine of "separate, but equal." This system led to impoverished black schools, which received a much smaller share of public funds and led to severely worse educational outcomes for black students. Texas's educational system also discriminated against Tejanos, who were often also subject to segregated schools until Hernandez v. Texas (1954). Due to the exclusion in education and in many other areas of civic life, many towns featured distinct enclaves where black or Tejano people would create their own informal residential districts.
Mansfield originally developed during the lead-up to the Civil War based around a gristmill, which would provide essential food supplies to the Confederate cause during the war. As the town developed, black residents—often descendants of slaves or sharecroppers—were sequestered to their own neighborhood to the west of Main Street, which functioned as a color line. White Mansfield residents would only employ black people as domestics or in manual laborer, leading some to operate their own businesses or seek opportunity in the growing Dallas-Fort Worth metroplex. The discrimination and access to urban economic opportunity led some black residents to agitate about the status quo. A chapter of the NAACP opened in Mansfield in 1950 and was supported by most black Mansfield residents.
The black school, Mansfield Colored School (MCS), was made up of two poorly built schoolhouses, which lacked electricity, running water, and plumbing. The school only had funds to employ one teacher, who taught all students up to eighth grade. Black students who wanted to attend high school would commute via Trailways bus to Fort Worth to attend one of the two black-only high schools in the multi-county area. The Mansfield Colored School was organized by the local board of education with specific "subtrustees"—often prominent black citizens—to make requests for funds to the board, many of which were denied. In 1953, the white-led Mansfield Independent School District (MISD) opened a separate 17-room elementary school which had 12 teachers and joined the existing Mansfield High School.
In 1954, the Supreme Court ruled in Brown v. Board of Education that segregated schools were unconstitutional. The following year, the court confirmed their decision in Brown II, ruling that schools should desegregate "with all deliberate speed." The University of Texas's law school was ordered in Sweatt v. Painter (1950) that it could not route black applicants to a segregated graduate school, leading many Texan colleges and universities to partially desegregate.
Early efforts to desegregate On August 17, 1954, after the Brown ruling, T.M. Moody and other black subtrustees formally requested at a school board meeting that the MISD integrate immediately. The board rejected the request. Like many black Mansfield residents, Moody had joined the NAACP and, by 1955, served as the president of the Mansfield branch. Throughout 1954 and early 1955, the subtrustees repeatedly petitioned the board for the legally mandated integration of the schools. They also requested for improvements to MCS and for public busing to the high schools in Fort Worth. The board continued to deny the requests.
Moody and other black Mansfield resident participated in broader NAACP conferences, seeking advice on their work from the NAACP's regional specialist Ulysses Simpson Tate, Thurgood Marshall, and others. When they expressed interest in suing the school board, Tate supplied L. Clifford Davis as the main civil rights lawyer in the region. With Davis, the subtrustees continued to unsuccessfully petition for improvements to MCS—including for smaller improvements, like a flagpole and a fence that would cordon the school off from a busy nearby street—and tried to work with individual board members on their agenda. In the wake of Brown II, Davis described the petitioners' changing philosophy:At first we were trying to get these small things. And then, when we could not get those things, [we decided] if we're going to have to fight, we're going to just fight the whole battle.In August 1955, Davis met with the school superintendent and formally tried to enroll Floyd Moody, Charles Moody, and Nathaniel Jackson at Mansfield High School that fall. The three students lived in Mansfield and had attended MCS, but were commuting to Fort Worth to attend I.M. Terrell High School. The superintendent denied the request, saying that the board had not yet decided in favor of desegregation. The school board further discussed segregation at the following meeting, but made no move to accept the enrollment of Jackson and the Moodys. They requested assistance from Tate and Marshall of the NAACP for legal support in a lawsuit against the school district.
Jackson v. Rawdon lawsuit L. Clifford Davis filed a class action lawsuit on behalf of Floyd Moody, Charles Moody, and Nathaniel Jackson in federal court on October 7, 1955. The MISD, the superintendent, and members of the school board were named as defendants, with Joseph Estes the presiding judge. Davis and the plaintiffs sought participation from other black students who commuted to Fort Worth for high school, but parents feared that it would lead to reprisals from the white community.
Davis argued for the plaintiffs that the rulings in Brown and Brown II (and McKinney v. Blankenship (1955) before the Texas Supreme Court) were definitive, making the exclusion of the black students illegal. Tiny Gooch argued for the defense that public opinion was too set against desegregation and that they would need time for white residents to support the move. Estes found in favor of the MISD. He accepted their argument that desegregation wasn't practicable and also felt that the plaintiffs had not constructed a class because most of the applicable black students had declined to participate. Davis, as well as Tate and Marshall of the NAACP, had expected the loss and primarily fashioned their argument for the appeals process.
On June 28, 1956, Joseph Chappell Hutcheson of the U.S. Fifth Circuit Court of Appeals reversed Estes's judgement. He concluded that while the implementation could proceed in one of multiple ways, the school had to offer a reasonable timeline for desegregation. The case was remanded to Estes to provide further instructions to the parties on August 17. On August 25, Estes decreed that the plaintiffs and all other members of their school-year had the right to attend Mansfield High School and that the defendants were "forever restrained from refusing admission to [...] any of the plaintiffs shown to be qualified in all respects for admission."
After the judgement from the Fifth Circuit, Gooch filed a petition for a stay of proceedings in late August. Supreme Court Justice Hugo Black denied the stay request on September 4. The school board's legal team appealed the case to the Supreme Court on September 25, arguing that the court did not properly consider the local dynamics. On December 3, the full court declined the writ of certiorari.
Reactions to lawsuit The white community in Mansfield reacted negatively to news of the lawsuit. Many argued that school desegregation was a plot led by outsiders attempting to carry out a communist agenda. At a public meeting a week after the suit was first filed, some white residents formed a Mansfield chapter of the White Citizen's Council (WCC) to fight desegregation. The group unanimously voted to support the MISD and affirm segregation in their community, with one organizer saying that they would use "grits, guts, and gunpowder" to achieve that goal. All of the school board members on the ballot in April 1956 won re-election, with O.C. Rawdon—named in the case's common shorthand, Jackson v. Rawdon—earning the most votes of any candidate.
In the summer of 1956, Texas—led by Governor Allan Shivers and supported by branches of the WCC—held a statewide referendum that proposed to exempt pupils of integrated schools from compulsory attendance rules, harden state laws against interracial marriage, and implement interposition to help nullify perceived federal interference. Mansfield voters approved the referendum on all three points, with the first question decided by an 85 percent margin. The Fort Worth Star-Telegram ran a series on integration in Mansfield that summer, which reflected hardening views against the court-ordered desegregation.
The black community faced retaliation from the white community. After the appeals process found in favor of integration, Floyd Moody's father J.E. was evicted from his property for his involvement. The MISD also separately cancelled a standing agreement T.M. Moody had to use the well water on the MCS property. In Mansfield's black neighborhood, burning crosses were used to intimate residents on August 22 and 23. Though it's unknown who exactly burned the crosses, historian Robyn Duff Ladino wrote that it was unlikely that it was organized by the Ku Klux Klan or other formal organization. An armed group of black community members protected T.M. Moody after the police declined to, fearing that he would be assassinated. At a meeting of black parents, they initially decided that all but one of the 12 students then commuting to Fort Worth would attempt to enroll at Mansfield High School.
Rejection of court order