ABSTRACT
This chapter examines the complex events that lead to the sweeping changes in the city's school system and shows how potential community conflicts were overcome through a process of conciliation and open communication. On September 3, 1976, the Dayton, Ohio, public schools were peacefully desegregated. Under a federal court order, some twenty thousand black and white children were transported to schools across the city without incident. In July 1968, an outspoken champion of desegregation was named superintendent of schools by the board's liberal majority. With Dr. Glatt at the time of his assassination was Tommie Jones, a woman well known in Dayton school circles as a teacher and outspoken champion of human rights and desegregation. In school desegregation cases, frequently, but not always, Community Relations Service (CRS) intervention occurs at court invitation or direction. The CRS in the person of Jones also played a key, if less visible, role on behalf of the federal court.
