De Facto Superintendent

Almost half the public school children of Chicago -- 225,000 of them --played hooky for a day last week, and 8,000 grownups circled city hall, waving signs and singing. It was the biggest demonstration ever held in the U.S. against de facto school segregation, which is measured in Chicago by new figures showing that enrollments in three-fourths of the schools in the city are 90% or more Negro or 90% or more white.

The target was School Superintendent Benjamin C. Willis, 61, who has long resisted Negro pressure, exerted through the board of education, to take drastic measures to mitigate segregation. Early in October, protesting that the board was moving into his area of authority, he resigned.

By this unyielding stand, Ben Willis confirmed himself as the symbol of the position that the job of the schools is education, not breaking down de facto segregation. In telegrams to the school board and by packing public meetings of the board, white homeowners backed Willis. Businessmen and educators chimed in to doubt the wisdom of dropping an expert administrator under pressure from one minority over one issue. The board majority, which had hoped to make Willis compromise on Negro demands but never intended to lose him, recognized that it was out on a limb and refused his resignation. After a week of reconsidering, Superintendent Willis withdrew it.

The Negro "Freedom Day" protest last week was vastly bigger than most Chicagoans had predicted, and set the white-Negro school issue up in sharper terms than in any other big U.S. city. Yet Willis, having had the board plead for his return and having shown massive political support from whites, seems to be in a stronger position than ever.

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