Low-Income Black Children in White Suburban Schools: A Study of School and Student Responses

Abstract

In 1976, as a result of the Gautreaux housing desegregation lawsuit, the Federal Government funded a program to assist low-income families in Chicago, Illinois, to move into private housing throughout the Chicago metropolitan area. The Federal Government made rent subsidies available for these families to make these moves. By late 1981, a year before the study reported here began, approximately 1,300 families had moved through this program, some to more than 50 primarily white suburbs and others to predominantly Black urban areas. When low-income Black families move into white middle-class suburbs, how do the Black children and the suburban schools respond to each other? How responsive were these suburban schools and teachers to the low-income Black students? How did the new students respond to their new schools? These are the questions to be addressed in this article.2 School desegregation has been studied extensively in recent