Hobson v. Hansen, 269 F. Supp. 401 (D.D.C. 1967), was a federal court case filed by civil rights activist Julius W. Hobson against Superintendent Carl F. Hansen and the District of Columbia's Board of Education on the charge that the current educational system deprived Black people and the poor of their right to equal educational opportunities relative to their white and affluent counterparts, on account of race and socioeconomic status. Having established de jure segregation unconstitutional in Bolling v. Sharpe (1954), the federal court addressed questions of de facto segregation in D.C. schools, seen in the trends that survived legal desegregation, in Hobson v. Hansen. Judge J. Skelly Wright's decision, in favor of the plaintiffs, sought to remedy the re-segregation or de facto segregation enforced by the educational policies, including tracking and optional-transfer zones, adopted by the Board of Education in an attempt to accommodate the consequences of the shift to integrated schools in the aftermath of Bolling, and within the wider context of emerging racially and socioeconomically rigid residential patterns.
It was the first federal court case to rule against discriminatory use of standardized tests in the context of educational tracking.
Historical Context The post-World War II era experienced a surge in white migration to the suburbs, "as city dwellers lured by the prospect of spacious new homes and easy financing left urban areas nationwide."Chris Myers Asch and G. Derek Musgrove, "Chapter 10 "How Long? How Long?": Grassroots Activism and Mounting Frustration in a Black-Majority City, 1956-1968," in Chocolate City: Race and Democracy in the Nation's Capital (Chapel Hill: North Carolina University Press, forthcoming). The growth of the suburbs brought about the movement of employers, as well as the federal government, which began to "decentralize its operations by moving agencies to the suburbs." The civil rights advances of the late 1940s and early 1950s – including the Supreme Court's rulings in Hurd v. Hodge (1948) and Bolling v. Sharpe (1954) calling for desegregation in housing and education, respectively – catalyzed the flight to the suburbs. With blacks now having legal access to white neighborhoods, whites fled racially changing neighborhoods for fear of "declining real estate values, deteriorating schools, and a loss of status – having black neighbors, they felt, inherently made a neighborhood less desirable." White fears were further exacerbated as "schools that had been majority white soon became more than 80% black." Therefore, the decade between 1950 and 1960 witnessed a massive white migration to the suburbs; white population in the city declined from 65% to 45% as the population of blacks rose from 35% to 54%.U.S. Bureau of Census, "Historical Census Statistics on Population Totals By Race, 1790 to 1990, and By Hispanic Origin, 1970 to 1990, For The United States, Regions, Divisions, and States," Table 9, District of Columbia – Race and Hispanic Origin for Selected Large Cities and Other Places: Earliest Census to 1990. In the 1960s, the former continued to drop as the latter rose. White flight made the preservation of integrated neighborhoods increasingly difficult; residential segregation grew more pronounced. Not only were Washington's white families fewer in number, they were also "heavily concentrated in one area of the city, the area west of Rock Creek Park… east of the park is very heavily Negro."Hobson v. Hansen, 269 F. Supp. 401 (D.D.C. 1967). This was reflected to a great degree in the racial composition of schools – ten years after the Bolling decision, "126 of the 185 public elementary schools in the District were 90-100 percent black, while thirteen elementary schools were 90-100 percent white."Donald L. Horowitz, The Courts and Social Policy (Washington, D.C.:Brookings Institution, 1977), 108. The legal end to de jure segregation was not sufficient to alter or counter the fact of racial segregation.
Background Julius Hobson 1965 was a volatile time in the District; African Americans were seeking betterment for their race as they were simultaneously facing pushback. Education stood as a symbol of advancement for many and Julius W. Hobson firmly agreed, having grown up in a home where "education was prized." Hobson's anger toward the public school system sprang much earlier when he was taking his son to kindergarten and had to drive "past white Woodridge Elementary down the street in order to attend overcrowded black Slowe Elementary a mile away." From this moment forward, he sought justice for his family and black families alike, beginning his attack against the school system in the District.
In a 1965 article pre-dating the lawsuit, Hobson was quoted saying, "I am against the track system and the whole concept of testing," and thus he launched his campaign against these ideals.George Lardner Jr., "Hobson, Hansen Share Inflexibility On Growing School Problems," The Washington Post and Times-Herald, November 15, 1965 Hobson began his attacks with non-violent protests. According to the article, he wanted to boycott the school and to have the superintendent removed from his position. He joined every pro-black group accessible to him, including the Parent Teacher Association, the Federation of Civic Associations, and the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP). His work with these organizations drew national attention, resulting in his being hired to the Congress of Racial Equality (CORE), "a pacifist organization dedicated to using nonviolent direct action to challenge racial inequality," founded in 1942. The civil rights movement in the District during this time was a two-fold operation. African Americans were feeling a burgeoning unrest as they fought for their rights peacefully, while whites were reacting angrily with violence. Efforts such as "pickets, negotiations, and boycotts to pressure businesses to hire black employees at all job levels," by individuals like Hobson, prompted angry backlash from the white community. Alongside Sterling Tucker, Hobson worked through CORE, creating a "merit hiring" program for African Americans. Most of his efforts in these years represented nonviolent projects to secure better jobs, housing, and education for African Americans. In 1964 Hobson was cast out of CORE and his approach became more radical, culminating in his lawsuit against the school system.
Case Background The Supreme Court in Bolling v. Sharpe (1954), a companion case to Brown v. Board of Education (1954), "held that the District of Columbia's racially segregated public school system violated the due process clause of the Fifth Amendment."Emanuel Hurwitz, "Hobson v. Hansen Summary," in Criticism, Conflict, and Change: Readings in American Education (New York: Dodd, Mead & Co., 1970). The same year, the District's school officials adopted a neighborhood school policy "under which students were assigned to schools near their homes.""Hobson v. Hansen: Judicial Supervision of the Color-Blind School Board," Harvard Law Review 81 (1968): 1514, accessed January 23, 2016, doi:10.2307/1339305. With the court's decision in effect, "73% of the schools were – in varying degree – racially mixed," by September 1955. Educational integration meant that the achievement scores of black students were reported on a citywide basis in a manner uncharacteristic of the preceding system. In the aftermath of integration, Dr. Hansen, then Assistant Superintendent of senior high schools, began to receive "reports of very serious retardation in achievement in the basic skills [of black students]." The previously reigning "separate but equal" education system produced these consequences, only revealing themselves in the efforts to counter institutionalized educational segregation.
In an effort to "treat the causalities of de jure segregation," the Board of Education adopted optional-transfer zones and a track system. While the former gave residents "the option of transferring from nearby schools that were overcrowded and predominantly Negro to more distant schools that were integrated or predominantly white," the latter placed students at the elementary and secondary levels "in tracks or curriculum levels according to the school's assessment of each student's ability to learn."Beatrice A. Moulton, "Hobson v. Hansen: The De Facto Limits on Judicial Power," Stanford Law Review 20 (1968): 1252, accessed January 23, 2016, doi:10.2307/1227499 Dr. Hansen presented the track theory in his book Four Track Curriculum for Today's High Schools. He identified the two basic objectives underlying the system as "(1) The realization of the doctrine of equality of education and (2) The attainment of quality education." The system categorized students according to their abilities into several tracks in elementary and junior high schools: Honors (intellectually gifted), General (average and above-average), and Basic or Special Academic, with the addition of the Regular Track in senior high schools to accommodate the needs of above-average students – placement in either basic or general track in senior high school deprived students of the opportunity to take college preparatory classes. While the track system was flexible and accommodated cross-tracking in theory, its application was met with charges of discrimination against blacks and the poor.
Filing the Case Having learned that his daughter Jean, a middle school student at the time, had been placed in the basic track, Julius Hobson filed a class action suit against Superintendent Carl Hansen in the U.S. District Court of the District of Columbia, heard by Judge J. Skelly Wright. (Wright, a circuit judge, was sitting by designation.) He claimed that the school system, "more than a decade after desegregation… was discriminating against black students by channeling them into lower rungs of rigid academic tracks that received inadequate resources and discouraged achievement."Cynthia Gorney, "Julius Hobson Sr. Dies," The Washington Post, March 24, 1977. Therefore, the question at hand was "whether the defendants, the Superintendent of Schools and the members of the Board of Education, in the operation of the public school system here, unconstitutionally deprive the District's Negro and poor public school children of their right to equal educational opportunity with the District's white and more affluent public school children." Hobson was represented by William Kunstler and future corporation counsel of the District of Columbia Herbert O. Reid, Sr.
Arguments