Hidden U.S. and Dallas History - Slavery & Segregation

Those who grew up in the 1950's know how "equality" has been since 1954. Was it the same "equality" that led 70,000 White-non-Hispanic students to leave Dallas ISD from 1965 to 1977, the first 12 years of 45 years of Dallas ISD White Flight?

The 1964/65 school year was the highest White enrollment on record for DISD, 127,124. Then White numbers began to decline in 1966, but minority numbers grew faster than the White decline until 1970.

DISD Administration has rarely been more wrong in an enrollment prediction than in May and August 1970. In May 1970 DISD was predicting as many as 180,000 students for the next school year. By August that prediction was down to 177,000 students. The final full enrollment count for 1970/71 was only 164,726! They had terribly underestimated White Flight!

The 1969/70 DISD full enrollment of 173,799 students became the largest annual enrollment in DISD History! DISD thought they would be growing, but then suddenly started to shrink. The loss of White students was for the first time thousands greater than the increase in minority students that had sustained total DISD enrollment growth since 1965. A new stage of White flight began as DISD full enrollment began to shrink. That shrinkage continued until 46,337 students had been lost in just 14 years! The full DISD enrollment of 173,799 in 1970 was down to 127,462 by 1984.

The summer of 1970 was the highest loss of White students in all 44 years of White Flight, 1965-2009, and in all of DISD History! It was estimated at far over 10,000 students.

In 1971/72 DISD had the second highest loss as another 8,698 students left. White Flight continued with thousands leaving annually for three decades, until 2002 when the annual White loss fell to and remained in the hundreds for a total of 8 more years.

White Flight ended in 2009 when White enrollment hit 7,207. From 1964/65 to 2008/09 over 120,000 White students had left Dallas ISD to achieve the lowest DISD White enrollment in over 120 years. In 2010 White enrollment went up, for the first time in 45 years, to 7,232.