Judge Gerald Bard Tjoflat ’57
by William F. Jung
The Last Unlikely Hero: Gerald Bard Tjoflat and the Jacksonville desegregation crisis – 35 years later
Resistance to public school desegregation in this country was often contentious, and sometimes violent. Little is more precious to parents than the education of their children, and few things evoke more loyalty than the local school. Yet dual black/white school systems had existed in many parts of the country since the Civil War, and their necessary replacement invoked intense passion among many, and physical resistance among a few.
The 35th anniversary of the final injunctive order in the Jacksonville, Florida desegregation case of Mims v. Duval County School Board is a fitting time to review a positive page in this difficult chapter of our national history. The desegregation of the Jacksonville school system 35 years ago involved a 100-year-old dual black/white school system in a city that was very much a part of the old South. It came at a time of intense crisis in our nation, both in terms of race relations and the general social upheaval now called “the 60’s.” The resolution of the Jacksonville school crisis was generally peaceful and successful. The credit for this success belongs to the good citizens of Jacksonville and to the federal district judge who led them, Gerald Bard Tjoflat.
Florida’s Reaction to Brown
In Florida prior to 1954 it was illegal under both the state constitution and statutes to educate children in an integreated classroom; Florida laws not only required that the children be kept separate by race, but even their books could not be stored together. This system of educational apartheid was obliterated, in theory at least, in 1954 by Brown v. Board of Education.
… the Jacksonville school board asked Judge Tjoflat to delay or modify the second phase of integration. Tjoflat would have none of it. He knew that the unpleasant medicine of reordering a school system was best taken without hesitation once, rather than piecemeal. The time for “gradual adjustment” or “deliberate speed” was well past.
The Supreme Court’s holding in Brown, of course, was that “separate but equal” education of white and black children was neither equal nor constitutional. Florida school boards and state judges generally disagreed with this logic at the time, and some outright resisted it. Florida joined the rest of the South, collectively, in rejecting the decision.
No action was taken to desegregate Jacksonville’s dual system until 1962, when U.S. District Judge Bryan Simpson ordered submission of a desegregation plan. In 1963, Judge Simpson approved a plan that provided integration of one grade per year. Still, the Jacksonville schools case simply bogged down. Eleven years after Brown, in 1965, only 60 black schoolchildren out of 30,000 were attending integrated schools in Jacksonville. Desegregation accelerated slightly in the 1960’s, but not significantly.
Swann Lights the Fire
Two things happened in 1971 that would change that speed for the Jacksonville schools. The first was the Supreme Court’s pronouncement in Swann v. Charlotte-Mecklenberg Board of Education. The second was the assignment of newly-appointed U.S. District Judge Gerald Bard Tjoflat to the case, [taking over from District Judge William A. McCrae, Jr. who had made some progress with it].
Swann v. Charlotte-Mecklenberg caused the smoldering Jacksonville schools case to burst into the full flame of crisis. In Swann, which addressed a desegregation plan in North Carolina, a unanimous Supreme Court said, in very plain terms, “do it now.” In strong language, the Court stated that authorities must take all steps necessary “to convert to a unitary system in which racial discrimination would be eliminated root and branch.” The Supreme Court stressed in Swann that if school boards failed to fix the problem immediately, the federal courts would. Swann also made clear that the High Court viewed busing to achieve integration a permissible, and often necessary, step.
After Swann, all parties in Jacksonville, especially the newly-assigned Judge Tjoflat, had marching orders. The judge took the task at hand and, borrowing positive elements from the plan submitted by the school board, issued his operative order two months after Swann. This was no small task given that Jacksonville had the thirteenthlargest school district in the country.
Many desegregation orders throughout the country had resulted in civil disturbances, and some in widespread rioting. Jacksonville’s experience in this regard was brief and fairly mild.
One school, Ribault High School, was the site of rioting and had to be closed on several occasions. After a state judge declined an injunction, both the school authorities and sheriff petitioned Judge Tjoflat to enjoin the troublemakers. He conducted prompt hearings into the matter, finding that organized acts of disruption had occurred. As one commentator [quoted in Frank T. Read and Lucy S. McGough’s Let Them be Judged: The Judicial Integration of the Deep South] noted:
Judge Tjoflat responded swiftly ... In response to a courtroom charge by an attorney representing various black groups that he was attempting to “restrain the world,” Judge Tjoflat reportedly leaned across the bench and retorted, “that’s exactly what I’m trying to do. Nobody is going to interfere with the schools and that means nobody.”
The judge’s injunction concerning Ribault High School listed some people individually, was read to every Ribault student, and was personally served on every student who had been suspended or expelled. U.S. Marshals were posted to enforce the order at Ribault. Several persons were convicted of criminal contempt and jailed. Order returned to Ribault High.
Exercising judicial diplomacy
In the face of these national and local pressures, the Jacksonville school board asked Judge Tjoflat to delay or modify the second phase of integration. Tjoflat would have none of it. He knew that the unpleasant medicine of reordering a school system was best taken without hesitation once, rather than piecemeal. The time for “gradual adjustment” or “deliberate speed” was well past.
Although he spurred hesitant school board members, and jailed those committing physical disruption, Tjoflat’s leadership was not bullying. He had a court of appeals looking over his shoulder, but more importantly he knew that losing public opinion would cause failure. He convinced Jacksonville’s main newspaper, the Florida Times-Union, to publish the final operative order in its entirety in their daily edition. This order, in plain language, devoid of legalese, has been labeled by historians Frank Read and Lucy McGough a “masterpiece of judicial diplomacy” in its ability to respond to the various concerned parties: white parents, black parents, the appellate court, the school board, and the teachers. The Fifth Circuit affirmed Tjoflat in short order, finding a “solid basis” for his conclusions.
Judge Tjoflat was careful with public opinion because he knew that persons of good will would enlist in the difficult task. And indeed they did. Citizens from all walks of life worked together to make the social upheaval as negligible as possible. His task, too, was made easier by an able school superintendent, Dr. Cecil Hardesty. Most important for the schools case, the Jacksonville/Duval County merger caused a new, nonpartisan school board to come into existence in 1969, without prior involvement in the earlier illegal system.
The case took a toll on the judge. Although the community responded well as a whole, a vocal minority vilified him. U.S. Marshals guarded the Tjoflat family, day and night, after credible threats were made. An “Impeach Tojo” billboard was erected.
Judge Tjoflat was careful with public opinion because he knew that persons of good will would enlist in the difficult task. And indeed they did. Citizens from all walks of life worked together to make the social upheaval as negligible as possible.
Judge Tjoflat was blamed for “forced busing,” but if one compares his order to Swann, it is clear he used Swann as a template without expanding the intrusiveness of Swann’s very blunt command. His mandate was to immediately eliminate, “root and branch,” all vestiges of racial discrimination that had existed, as official governmental policy, for a century. The crisis was caused by this 100-year history and the 17-year delay since Brown.
The system operated under Judge Tjoflat’s order for 19 years. Judge William Terrell Hodges finally dismissed it in 1999 after a three-week trial and an exhaustive order in NAACP v. Duval County School Board, finding the Duval County school system to be fully unitary.
In a well-received book, the author and professor Jack Bass described the role of Fifth Circuit Judges Rives, Wisdom, Tuttle, and Brown, as well as District Court Judges Skelly Wright and Frank Johnson, in the civil rights struggle in the old South. Bass titled the book after these men, whom he called “Unlikely Heroes.” Judge Tjoflat was younger than these men, and did not take part in their larger civil rights struggles in the 1950’s and 1960’s that predated his judgeship. But his unflinching application of Brown and its progeny, and his courage under fire and decisiveness in the Jacksonville schools case, puts him very much in their class. Gerald Bard Tjoflat, approaching his fourth decade in federal judicial service, is the last unlikely hero.
Excerpted, with permission from the author, from “The Last Unlikely Hero: Gerald Bard Tjoflat and the Jacksonville Desegregation Crisis — 35 Years Later,” first published in the March 2006 issue of the Florida Bar Journal. William F. Jung is an attorney practicing at Jung & Sisco, P.A. in Tampa.< He previously served as a law clerk to the Hon. Gerald Bard Tjoflat, United States Court of Appeals for the Eleventh Circuit, and to the Hon. William H. Rehnquist, Supreme Court of the United States. The author acknowledges and has relied upon the masterful chronology set forth in F. Read ’63 and L. McGough, Let Them be Judged: The Judicial Integration in the Deep South (Scarecrow Press 1971). Footnoting to Read & McGough present in the original article has been omitted in this excerpt.