Morgan v. Hennigan working files

This collection has been arranged in five series spanning from 1975 to 1993: Office of Superintendent's Morgan Case Master File; Morgan Case Files; Log Officer’s Correspondence File; Subject File; and Lawsuits Other Than Morgan. The working papers in the case files contain drafts, memos, notes, etc. documenting the thought process behind the official record. Papers in this collection include original drafts of defendants’ answers to complaints; orders; memoranda; motions; depositions; rulings; appeals; various drafts of student assignment plans; various drafts of unified facilities plans; newspaper clippings; case related research; correspondence; briefs and research.

The original order was maintained as much as possible for its evidentiary value of documenting the myriad of issues the Office of General Counsel engaged in on a daily basis. Some files were shifted to consolidate a topic. Date spans overlap from box to box, as do subjects.

The Morgan Case Files seem to have been collected separately from the Office of Superintendents Morgan Case Master File. Main topics of the Morgan Case Files include: The Unified Facilities Plan, Affirmative Action, School Closings, Finances, Log Officers’ Files, and Student Assignments.

The Office of Superintendents Morgan Case Master File contains correspondence between defense counsel and the superintendent, court submissions, reports and working papers. Included in this sub-series, are the papers of outside counsel Dimento and Sullivan; Nutter, McClennen and Fish and Goodwin; Proctor and Hoar.

Also of interest is the Lawsuits Other Than Morgan series. This series contains case files on several unsuccessful collateral attacks on the Morgan Case. Alan O’Dea vs. Massachusetts Board of Education, a collateral attack on district court orders of Morgan vs. Hennigan. In 1975, O’Dea sued the state on behalf of the parents and children in the city of Boston, challenging that the Racial Imbalance Act was unconstitutional as it was implemented by Arthur Garrity’s court orders. Similar cases to this are Katz vs. Garrity, 1975 and Callinan vs. Garrity, 1975. All of these cases were eventually dismissed. Yet another case of interest in this series is Mitchell vs. the City of Boston School Committee, 1975, in which the city was sued for its policy of lending books to parochial schools. The case was ruleda gainst the plaintiffs. Finally, in Kelly vs. Anrig, parents and students of South Boston sought to restrain involuntary busing. They also lost the case.