Taylor v. New Rochelle Board of Education

By Owen Benedict

Owen Benedict graduated from New Rochelle High School in June 2025 and is now attending college.

Education played and continues to play an incredibly important role in the fight for racial justice; some of the more well-known victories of the civil rights movements in education were the 1954 Supreme Court case Brown v. Board of Education of Topeka, Kansas and the story of the Little Rock Nine. One lesser known but equally significant event, however, occurred right here in New Rochelle, that being the battle to tear down the Lincoln school and the 1961 case Taylor v. New Rochelle Board of Education.

What was the issue?

In 1954, Brown v. BoE of Topeka ruled that the separate but equal doctrine did not apply to education, but the ruling did not solve the issue that African American families faced in New Rochelle: gerrymandering. Gerrymandering is the process of changing district boundaries to enforce segregation and the suppression of black people. In New Rochelle, where a student could go to school was strictly determined by what neighborhood, and as such what school district, they lived in. The policy meant students could only attend the closest school in their neighborhood, and was used in tandem with redlining to keep African Americans in specific designated zones and create segregated schools. When black people were forced into a specific neighborhood through redlining and housing discrimination, they were also forced to attend a specific school that was most commonly underfunded and neglected by white supremacists on the school board. 

This was the case of the Lincoln school, which was terribly lacking in resources and even falling apart compared to white schools. Since 1930, the New Rochelle Board of Education used gerrymandering to ensure that any white students living in the Lincoln school district could be moved to a different school district to attend a white school, and in 1949, they forbade any student from transferring out of the Lincoln school. White students could attend any school they wanted, but black students were forced to attend Lincoln and Lincoln only. All of this kept African American students in the Lincoln neighborhood trapped in a poorly-run school that could not offer an equal education. They were unable to seek better educational opportunities elsewhere, ensuring they were always oppressed. It was also a way of working around Brown. BoE of Topeka, because the schools were not technically legally segregated; the policy simply said that students must attend the school in their neighborhood, and housing discrimination prevented black students and white students from living in the same place.

How did people respond?

In 1960, the New Rochelle Board of Education proposed a referendum (public vote) on whether or not the Lincoln school should be rebuilt. Lincoln parents voted overwhelmingly against the rebuilding of their school, hoping that without it their children would be allowed to attend other, much more well funded schools nearby. They argued rebuilding the school would enforce segregation and rob their children of important educational opportunities. They also brought action before the New York Commissioner of Education to prevent the Board from rebuilding Lincoln, but despite all of this the Commissioner ruled against them and the Board of Education planned to proceed.

Attorney Paul Zuber and families meet the press

Several Lincoln parents decided to sue the Board of Education, and on October 21, 1960, prominent civil rights lawyer Paul Zuber filed a complaint against the school district on behalf of the Lincoln parents and students. He gathered and presented an enormous amount of evidence, such as test scores that showed that Lincoln students had proportionally lower comprehension skills than white students in other schools, that proved how the School Board’s policies unfairly discriminated against African Americans and violated the Fourteenth Amendment of the Constitution. On January 24, 1961, after a long legal battle, Judge Irving R. Kaufman Jr. ultimately ruled in favor of the Lincoln parents in the Taylor v. New Rochelle Board of Education case. He decreed that the New Rochelle Board of Education’s actions had intended to establish Lincoln as a segregated school through gerrymandering and the transfers of white students, and that they did not fund all schools equally in order to purposefully make Lincoln worse. The Lincoln school was scheduled to be demolished, and all African American students in the district were allowed immediately to enroll in any other New Rochelle public school. The Board tried to appeal the decision several times, but the Supreme Court refused to hear the case, and desegregation continued.

It is worth noting the downsides to this success, the sacrifices that had to be made; with the school gone, many Lincoln businesses closed and many families moved away, in some aspects damaging the community. Some African American parents did not want the school to close because it meant the loss of friends for their children, the splitting apart of the community that had been there. It is important to consider this side of the case as well, but the destruction of the Lincoln school was overall a sacrifice worth making, because it paved the way for equality, racial justice, and the New Rochelle we know today.

Why is this significant to New Rochelle today?

This marked the end to New Rochelle’s neighborhood-based enrollment system, which was used to enforce segregation and worsen the educational opportunities for African American children. It was an important victory in the fight for civil rights, and set the precedent for other white supremacist loopholes to be dismantled. Taylor v. New Rochelle Board of Education also began the process of integrating all New Rochelle public schools, although black students continued to face conflict from the previously all-white schools they were trying to enroll in. They endured death threats, aggressive mobs, and harassment for every step of the integration process. The story of the Lincoln school is an incredibly important part of the history of racial justice in New Rochelle, as it was a lesser-known but highly influential victory for the civil rights movement that occurred in the same local neighborhoods we live in today, and it likely affected many of us as students without us even knowing. It should serve both to remind us that injustice happens everywhere, that no one is removed from it and thus no one can ignore it – it affects all of us, so all of us have to help – and to inspire us to continue the fight, because victory is possible. When learning about our country’s history of racial injustice, it is very easy to lose hope or to isolate oneself from the many acts of hate; to assume things like that didn’t happen where we live and don’t really affect us. But the reality is that such stories of hate and injustice happened and continue to happen everywhere, which is why the story of the Lincoln school district is such an important victory to us as citizens of New Rochelle. It is something we have to continue to teach new generations so that we do not lose hope and do not lose sight of how connected we all are; we must learn about the past, both its injustices and its triumphs, in order to make a better future.