Mansfield (Texas) School Desegregation Incident (1955-1965)

February 20, 2013 
/ Contributed By: Gayle W. Hanson

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Black students arriving at Mansfield High School

Courtesy Fort Worth Star-Telegram

The desegregation of public schools in Mansfield, Texas was one of the most contentious in the state and eventually garnered national attention as the evolving civil rights struggles moved to the forefront of the country’s conscience.  In Mansfield, African Americans campaigning for civil rights in general and school integration waged a ten-year campaign to gain equal access to public schools in that community.

In 1955, the Mansfield Independent School District (ISD), which numbered fewer than 700 white students and 60 Black students, segregated its African American students into a four-room elementary school in the city.  High school students were required to ride a bus into nearby Fort Worth and then walk twenty blocks to the all-Black I.M. Terrell High School.

As a result of the 1954 U.S. Supreme Court ruling in Brown v. Board of Education, the Mansfield School District was ordered to desegregate by recently appointed U.S. District Judge for Northern Texas, Joe Ewing Estes on August 15.  The judge responded to a lawsuit filed by the  Mansfield National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP) on behalf of three Black high school students (T.M. Moody, John F. Lawson, and Mark Moody), insisting that they should attend the high school in their community. The Mansfield NAACP hired Fort Worth attorney L. Clifford Davis to represent their interest to the school board.

With Judge Estes’s ruling, the Mansfield School District became the first Texas school district ordered to desegregate following the 1954 Brown ruling.  The school board approved a measure to allow the Mansfield High School to desegregate but Mayor William Arnold “Bud” Halbert and Police Chief C.G. Harwell vowed that they would not comply with the Board’s decision.

Encouraged by their defiance, on August 30 and 31, 1956, a mob of nearly 400 whites surrounded Mansfield High School to prevent the enrollment of three African American students.  Angry white residents hanged the three black students in effigy and reporters and observers from outside Mansfield were attacked.  At one point the county sheriff, Harlan Wright, who attempted to confront the mob, was threatened.  Downtown stores closed as a show of support and vigilantes met all cars entering town, barring integration sympathizers.

Texas Governor R. Allan Shivers, who opposed the Brown decision, called out the Texas Rangers at Mansfield to prevent any Black students from entering the public school.  Shivers ignored the federal court order for integration by authorizing Mansfield ISD to send its Black students to Fort Worth, Texas.

The Mansfield incident was the nation’s first example of a failure to enforce a federal court order for the desegregation of a public school.  The Mansfield School Incident encouraged later violent confrontations in Little Rock, Arkansas in 1957 and at the University of Mississippi in 1962.  More immediately it was the principle factor in the passage of the 1957 segregation laws by the Texas state legislature which delayed integration for several years.  In 1965, faced with loss of federal funds, the Mansfield school district finally desegregated, its decade-long defiance of a federal school integration order was one of the longest in the nation during that period.

 

About the Author

Author Profile

Gayle W. Hanson is a historian, genealogist, lecturer and researcher for Texas Historical and Ancestry Researchers (THR) in Arlington, Texas. The purpose is to encourage, educate, and promote the study, writing, and publishing of Texas, African, Hispanic and Native American history, as well as the development of teaching aids and educational programs for researchers, schools, and the general public.

Ms. Hanson has research experience in public and university libraries, archives, state and local repositories, and special collections. Her area of expertise is historical research (Slavery to World War II) and family history. Ms. Hanson is presently working on several historical projects: the WPA Federal Writers Project Ex-Slave Narratives of Tarrant County, the Early Negro Schools of Tarrant County and the Jeanes Supervisors of Texas.

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CITE THIS ENTRY IN APA FORMAT:

Hanson, G. (2013, February 20). Mansfield (Texas) School Desegregation Incident (1955-1965). BlackPast.org. https://www.blackpast.org/african-american-history/mansfield-texas-school-desegregation-incident-1955-1965/

Source of the Author's Information:

Texas Observer, September 5, 1956 and June 9, 1978; Robyn Duff Ladino,
Desegregating Texas Schools: Eisenhower, Shivers, and the Crisis at
Mansfield High
(Austin: University of Texas Press, 1996); Anna Victoria
Wilson and William Edwin Segall, Oh, Do I Remember!: Experiences of
Teachers During the Desegregation of Austin’s Schools 1964-1971
(State
University of New York Press, July 2001); George N. Green, The
Establishment in Texas Politics
(Westport, Connecticut: Greenwood Press,
1979); Mansfield Historical Society,  102 North Main Street  Mansfield,
TX 76063; 4B — Wednesday, February 24, 2010, mansfieldnewmirror.com;
http://media.star-telegram.com/smedia/2010/03/04/08/Page4BXB0040224xxxM1152M0_1_.CMYK.Mans.source.prod_affiliate.58.pdf;

http://www.tshaonline.org/handbook/online/articles/MM/jcm2.html

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