In the 1964–65 school year, ten years after the U.S. Supreme Court’s Brown v. Board of Education decision, Gould schools were still totally segregated. The district covered an area of eighty square miles and contained 3,000 residents. Of these, 1,800 were Black and 1,200 were white. Since Gould and Grady were the only towns in the eastern part of the predominantly rural county, many of the district’s students attended school there. Gould maintained two segregated combined elementary and high schools just ten blocks apart from each other. In 1964, 300 white students attended the combined Gould Schools and 580 black students attended the combined Field Schools. In 1965, the Gould School District adopted a “freedom of choice” plan to remain eligible for federal aid after the passage of the Civil Rights Act of 1964. Following the passage of the act, the Department of Health, Education, and Welfare (HEW) threatened to remove federal funding from school districts that did not comply with the Brown decision. Like other such plans being adopted throughout the South at the time, Gould’s “freedom of choice” plan permitted students to choose a school on an annual basis. If students did not choose a school, they were automatically assigned to the school they had previously attended.

As was almost always the case under such plans, in 1965 no white students in Gould chose to attend the black schools with inferior facilities. The Field Schools were made up of repurposed buildings that had housed Japanese-Americans in internment camps in the Arkansas Delta during World War II. Twenty-eight black students exercised their freedom of choice to attend the white Gould Schools, but they were refused entry on the grounds that there was not enough room for them. Some of the black students denied entry to the Gould Schools filed suit, claiming that they were being required to attend a segregated school, that the district provided inferior facilities for black students, and that the school board was still, in effect, “operating a racially segregated school system.” While the case was pending in the courts, plans were made to replace the black Field Schools with new facilities in the hope that it would encourage black students to withdraw their lawsuit. The plaintiffs instead sought to prevent the construction of the new school facilities, arguing that any new school building should only be permitted on an integrated basis.

In 1967, the school district made another concession by allowing eighty-five black students to attend the Gould Schools. Despite this, over eighty-five percent of black students in the district still attended segregated schools. The U.S. District Court for the Eastern District of Arkansas ultimately dismissed the Raney suit on the grounds that the Gould School District had adopted a “freedom of choice” plan voluntarily, that HEW had approved the plan, and that some black students had already enrolled at the formerly white Gould Schools. These factors, the court said, “seem to indicate that this plan is more than a pretense or sham to meet the minimum requirements of the law.” The Appeals Court upheld the District Court’s ruling. The petitioners in the case then asked the Appeals Court to require the conversion of Gould Schools to a desegregated high school and the Field Schools to a desegregated primary school. The Appeals Court rejected the request.

The U.S. Supreme Court agreed to hear the Raney case on appeal in 1968, along with the Green v. County School Board of New Kent County (Virginia) and Monroe v. Board of Commissioners of Jackson, Tennessee cases. In the Raney case, the court came to three distinct conclusions. Firstly, the “freedom of choice” plan in operation in Gould was “inadequate to convert it to a unitary, non racial system.” Secondly, the plan for converting existing segregated schools into a desegregated high school and elementary school should be heard in the lower courts. Thirdly, the District Court’s initial dismissal of the case was improper, since the court had a duty “to insure (1) that a constitutionally acceptable plan is adopted, and (2) that it is operated in a constitutionally permissible fashion so that the goal of a desegregated, nonracially operated school system is rapidly and finally achieved.”

Although the U.S. Supreme Court stopped short of declaring “freedom of choice” plans unconstitutional, such plans quickly lost their popularity when faced with a court that was increasingly determined not to allow school desegregation plans that merely seemed to desegregate while in fact maintaining the segregated status quo.

Almost immediately, white parents began taking advantage of School Choice laws that allowed them to enroll their students elsewhere primarily Star City and Dumas if not the 'seg academies' that dot the landscape throughout the Arkansas Delta.

Prior to 1991 the Gould School District, which by then had an almost completely black student body, had a transfer policy which allowed area residents to attend other schools. About 100 White children in the district boundaries used the policy to attend other schools. In 1991 the school board unanimously voted to end the program and ruled that students must attend Gould schools beginning in the fall of 1991. Many White parents protested the decision; some threatened to take legal action and some said that they would never send their children to Gould schools. Some area parents feared that the decision would lead to White families moving out of the school district and crippling the district's tax base. Alan Minor, the president of the Gould school board, said that it had no choice because the Arkansas State Board of Education withheld $200,000 ($375,421.45 when adjusted for inflation) in bond revenues since the state believed that the Gould district was promoting segregation. Sharon Streett, the Arkansas Department  of Education's chief legal counsel, said that the state does not want to be perceived to be promoting racial segregation. Minor said that he did not expect for very many additional White students to be enrolled in the fall of 1991, because he heard some parents state that they would move.

Understand when we hear the words "school choice", it is not a freedom of choice as much as a legal reason to resegregate school districts. For example, the largest public school district in a county may have a significant minority population but the neighboring districts are lily-white but those are the ones that some parents clamor to enroll their students even if the tax dollars do not follow them. When it happens, it starves school districts of much-needed tax dollars for building and curriculum improvements, teacher salaries, and in an insidious manner, the same parents find themselves serving on school boards which they hypocritically abhor in the name of maintaining a status quo and minimizing a diversity of voices that could make a larger impact. 

Eventually Gould was consolidated with Dumas but even then, that was a dogfight in itself in 2004.

Sidebar:  This is one reason why School Choice laws are viewed skeptically by African-Americans. As more white parents opt out of the minority-majority schools, they also take not only tax dollars out of the communities but also invaluable life experiences for their students that otherwise would never occur. Gould also holds a special place in my heart since it is my mother's hometown, and many of my family members still reside there.