Schools’ desegregation impacted judge’s family
Shirley Duncan always knew she wanted to be a teacher.
She loved children and secured a job as a kindergarten teacher in the 1970s at Gables Elementary School, a predominantly white school at the time on the Northwest Side.
In those days, students went to their neighborhood schools, which were predominately white or Black depending on where they lived.
“Everyone knew what was going on,” said the now-89-year-old Berwick resident, who is white.
“The Columbus City School Board of Education found a way to segregate the schools, so the white children would go here and the Black children would go there.”
Her late husband, Robert Duncan, a U.S. District judge, found that unconstitutional. He was the first Black judge to be appointed to a federal bench in Ohio.
In 1977, Duncan ruled in Penick v. Columbus Board of Education that school officials were intentionally using school boundary methods to keep Black and white students away from each other. (The class-action case originally was brought in 1973 by Columbus school students.)
Duncan determined that it was a clear violation of the famous 1954 U.S. Supreme Court decision in Brown v. Board of Education, which ruled that racial segregation in public schools is unconstitutional.
The Columbus school board challenged Duncan’s ruling and took it all the way to the U.S. Supreme Court, losing in 1979. As a result, Columbus was among the first cities in the nation to use busing routes to desegregate schools in September of that year.
And the Duncan family found itself at the center of the desegregation of Columbus schools.
Cities like Boston had been ravaged by violence and protests when busing started in 1974. Buses transporting Black children were hit with eggs, bricks and bottles.
In Columbus, a handful of anti-busing pickets showed up at some schools, but they dispersed when asked on the first day of school. Columbus police had 50 officers on standby and about 4,000 volunteers on hand in schools to help students on Sept. 6, 1979.
People in Columbus were divided on the issue of desegregation in the 1970s. Many Columbus families moved out of the city so their children wouldn’t have to go to an integrated school.
“It did affect me, but I never let it bother me,” said Shirley Duncan.
Robert and Shirley – who married in 1955 – had three children: Robert Vincent Duncan, whom they called “Vincent”; Linn Ann Duncan; and Harriett Theresa Duncan Turner, whom they called “Tracey.”
In 1979, Vincent Duncan was a senior at Eastmoor Academy, which was known as Eastmoor High School at the time.
“I basically just went to school every day, and I didn’t really allow it to really have an impact on me,” said the now-58-year-old Berwick resident. “For my father, it put a lot of stress on him.”
People made threats against Duncan, so two U.S. marshals stayed with his family around the clock for a week.
“That certainly was different,” his son said. “It makes you think of some cop show … where someone is staying at your house and they are staking the place out and making sure no one is going to do anything bad.”
In October 1979, brothers John W. Gerhardt II and Edward Gerhardt, leaders of the American White Nationalist Party, allegedly planned to bomb Olde Orchard Elementary on the Far East Side – attended by Duncan’s then-11year-old daughter Tracey – over the
judge’s desegregation order.
Their plans were thwarted by the FBI, and the brothers were arrested.
“I was feeling very afraid at that time,” Shirley Duncan said. “I just knew that I had to protect her.”
The Duncans pulled their sixth grader daughter out of Olde Orchard and moved her to Gables Elementary, where her mother taught.
Gables, which had students being bused in from the East Side, didn’t receive any threats, Shirley Duncan said.
“They didn’t bother me at all,” she said.
Not letting politics get in the way
Mae Welch, 76, of New Albany was a math and science teacher at Champion Middle School during the desegregation. Champion was a Black school before the desegregation ruling.
“When the (white) kids came in, we made them feel at ease,” said Welch, who is Black. “We had to make them feel at ease, and we also had to make sure the Black kids that we already had also felt at ease with them.”
She said she didn’t let the political division surrounding desegregation get in the way of her doing the job she felt called to do, which was to give everyone a good and equal education.
“We’re not going to skip a beat,” she said. “Our thing is to get you educated.”
She recalled the students were nervous when desegregation started, but said it didn’t take long for the students to adjust.
She remembered how at first the white parents were reluctant to come down to Champion but said they quickly became more comfortable.
“We were not going to stop our method of teaching because all kids need to learn pretty much the same thing,” Welsh said. “We just kept on doing what we were doing.”
Busing for school integration
Scott Reeves was one of about 35,000 students in Columbus schools who were transported to a different school.
He lived on the East Side and was bused to Olde Orchard on the Far East Side for fifth grade.
“It carved up the district and sent people completely out of their neighborhoods, completely to different parts of the city,” said Reeves, who is Black. “I think it disconnected neighborhoods from their school.”
The now-52-year-old Gahanna resident was at Olde Orchard in 1979 when the Gerhardt brothers made their bomb threat. He didn’t personally know Tracey but remembered police going through the school classroom by classroom to make sure it was safe as the students and teachers waited outside on
the playground.
“Rumors spread but we were kids on a playground, jovial,” he said. “I imagine that the adults were pretty anxious about the situation.”
The end of desegregation
Duncan released Columbus schools from his order in 1985, six years after the start of desegregation, with a warning not to repeat past mistakes. Busing returned to neighborhood schools in 1996.
“There were some people from both communities, white and Black, that didn’t want desegregation,” Duncan’s son Vincent said. “They simply wanted their children to go to the neighborhood schools. They didn’t want them to be bused across town to go to different schools.”
Enrollment at Columbus Schools dropped significantly during this time as families moved to the suburbs. The district went from 95,000 students in 1977 to 67,00 in 1985.
“I think the only (district) that was really hurt in the long term was Columbus City Schools,” Reeves said.
Despite all the challenges his family faced during the desegregation, Vincent Duncan said he was proud of his dad. Duncan died Nov. 2, 2012, at the age 85.
“I think it took a whole lot of bravery, a whole of guts for him to make that decision even in the face of opposition from both sides,” he said. “He felt it was something that had to be done to give every student an equal chance.” mhenry@dispatch.com @megankhenry