TEANECK — Sixty years after the township’s school district became the first in the country to voluntarily integrate its schools, a blue and white historic marker honoring the event was unveiled at William Cullen Bryant School.
The marker at 1 East Tryon Ave., a joint effort of the township’s Board of Education and the Historic Preservation Commission, tells the story of the Board of Education’s efforts in the early 1960s to create an integrated environment for the district’s students.
In September 1964, the school became the sixth-grade building for the entire township, ending an increasing imbalance of races in neighborhood schools. Students previously housed at Bryant School in the other five grades were bussed to integrate into other schools.
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The integration was the result of a push by residents to follow the dictates of the 1954 U.S. Supreme Court Brown v. Board of Education ruling that state-sanctioned segregation of public schools was unconstitutional. Despite the ruling, the country’s schools remained largely segregated 10 years later or integrated under court order.