Dallas Schools, Long Segregated, Charge Forward on Diversity
“Michael Hinojosa was about to enter the ninth grade in Dallas when a federal judge ordered the city’s public schools to integrate. It was 1971, and Mr. Hinojosa, the Mexican-American son of a preacher, was suddenly reassigned to a new school, whose football coach told him that it was too late to join the squad — its roster had been set months earlier. ‘I had a traumatic experience’ with desegregation, Mr. Hinojosa said. So, too, did Dallas. Like many cities, it replaced one form of segregation with another, as white and middle-class families moved to the suburbs or put their children in private schools.”