The Constitution in the Classroom: Student Protest and Legal Change

This paper analyzes the politics of racial reform in public schools in Benton Harbor, Michigan, between 1965 and 1970. The public schools became the locus of a vibrant movement of young African Americans and their parents who sought significant changes in the way the schools were run. At the same time, the rural, outlying areas around Benton Harbor were in the midst of a push from state and local officials to modernize and consolidate with Benton Harbor, and they eagerly joined the district in 1965.

My study argues that the schools were a central site of contestation over the future of Benton Harbor and that student voices powerfully shaped the contours of this debate. Black and white parents and students, teachers, administrators, and local industries all made bids for the future of Benton Harbor. In response to unrest in the schools, white parents in outlying districts quickly reversed their decision to join the Benton Harbor School District and sought transfers to nearby, predominantly white rural districts. Others disputed this negative image of the city. The Whirlpool Corporation, headquartered nearby, initiated a public relations campaign against representations of Benton Harbor as an “inner city” by those who hoped to transfer their children out of the school district.

The struggle over Benton Harbor’s schools demonstrates the ways in which children and teenagers could wield significant influence over school policy—especially in an era when youth demonstrations in cities and on college campuses were common. At the same time, using schools as a lens to study civil rights reforms reveals the particular ways that political protests by minors were entangled with discussions of safety. Even as children and teenagers articulated their own substantive visions of racial reform, others countered with arguments for the vulnerable status of minors and the need to protect them.