ALTON - In 1908, after 11 years and several appeals to the Illinois Supreme Court, Scott Bibbs was able to integrate schools in Alton.
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Those schools were integrated during the Reconstruction Era following the Civil War. In fact, Alton offered an integrated education from 1872-1897. In 1895, the Alton School Board secretly plotted to establish segregated schools, which were ironically named after notable abolitionists, Elijah P. Lovejoy and Frederick Douglas. Bibb, who was a firefighter at the glass factory, wanted an integrated education for his students.
By the time his case was won, Bibb's children were placed in grades below their levels, and were mocked until they dropped out of school. Alton's schools were not integrated following that for more than 50 years - until Elijah J. Conley made another push in 1949.
Conley, with the help of the NAACP, sued the Alton School District for student access to neighborhood schools, which were all-white. The school district reluctantly agreed to a gradual integration process out of fear of losing state funding. Because of this, former Alton NAACP President James Gray has named Conley "The Father of Integration of Schools in Alton, Illinois."
While Conley may have won the case, his victory was costly. A cross was burnt on his yard, his livelihood had been ruined, he was unable to establish a line of credit and his children had been mocked and ostracized by much of the community.
Conley, a brick mason born in Kentucky in 1899, moved to Ohio to find work. He died in 1998.
Schools were not truly integrated in Alton until the Corridor Plan of the 1970s.
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