Hillburn School (Ramapo Central School District Administration Building)

More than a decade before the landmark case, Brown v. the Board of Education, Thurgood Marshall represented African American parents in Hillburn in a movement to desegregate the city's schools. Though the state of New York passed a law outlawing segregated schools in 1938, the Hillburn school board made no changes in the city's schools, where African American children attended school in a substandard building with limited resources. Local parents sought legal help from the NAACP, who sent Thurgood Marshall. The result was the end of one of the state's last formally segregated schools. The building, which now houses the Ramapo Central School District Administration, is listed on the National Register of Historic Places.

The town of Hillburn was racially segregated going back to the 19th century when it was a community alongside ironworks on the Ramapo River. As the twentieth century dawned, the town's white residents were concentrated along its organized streets, while African American residents were relegated to a hollow to the west of town. In 1912, a new school building known as the Main School was built for the town's white students. African American students, meanwhile, were left with the wood frame Brook School, which was unheated and lacked basic resources. Over the years, discontent among Hillburn's African Americans regarding the substandard school continued to grow. The two schools were roughly a mile apart, but the conditions inside them were a world away from each other.

In 1931, local action and work on the part of the NAACP failed to challenge the town's segregated schools. Segregation was still sanctioned by law in the state. In 1938, the law allowing segregation in New York was overturned, the local school board failed to enact changes, and the divided schools continued. In 1943, the new central Suffern Central High School was completed and housed the district's students in 7th through 12th grades. The move left enough space at the Main School for all the district's elementary school students of both races, but again, the school board failed to act.

In 1943, the parents of children at the Brook School, led by Mrs. Marion Van Dunk, decided to challenge the school board. They enlisted the help of the NAACP and its young attorney, Thurgood Marshall, with the organization's Legal Defense Fund. Marshall launched a petition against the school board and an appeal to the New York State Board of Education. In September of 1943, African Americans kept their children home from school to protest the poor conditions at the Brook School. By October of that year, their tactic, as well as their legal support, were successful. The New York State Commissioner of Education closed the Brook School and ordered that its 49 students be transferred to the Main School, also known as the Hillburn School, The decision effectively brought an end to one of the last formally segregated schools in New York.

The ruling was a victory for African Americans students, but it didn't come easily. White Hillburn parents immediately withdrew their children from the Hillburn School, quickly putting them into private and parochial schools. That trend continued for several years, until the schools gradually became integrated, perhaps as a result of newcomers moving to the area as well as the realization by white residents that integration did not do irreparable harm to their town. Additionally, many of the white residents of Hillburn were working-class people with large families, and it is possible that tuition for multiple children in a public school simply became too much of a burden.

The Hillburn School is listed on the National Register of Historic Places. In 2002, a historic marker was placed in front of the building to acknowledge the historic desegregation battle that took place in Hillburn.

Main School, NP Gallery . Accessed February 13th 2022. https://npgallery.nps.gov/GetAsset/8ba3e341-5ea5-467f-b871-1b5d7950e666.

Batson, Bill . Rockland County, Thurgood Marshall's 1940s Desegregation Case, New York Almanack. May 15th 2014. Accessed February 13th 2022. https://www.newyorkalmanack.com/2014/05/rockland-county-thurgood-marshalls-1940s-desegregation-case/

Hillburn Main School, African American Historical Society of Rockland County . Accessed February 13th 2022. https://aahsmuseum.org/dt_portfolios/hillburn-main-school/.