It’s been 25 years since Woodrow first became a totally desegregated school. Woodrow has been a home to students of Greek, Italian and Spanish ancestry, and Roman Catholics, Protestants and Jews were all part of a great cultural and especially socioeconomic mix, albeit mostly Anglo.

As recently as 1966, Dallas phone books had listings for Black and White schools. That seems incomprehensible.

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That anachronism of ante-bellum anxiety still exists today in the Lakewood area’s longtime rivals, the Park Cities.

When I wrote a column about last year’s Super Bowl parade Downtown, in which the multi-ethnic Woodrow band and drill team marched, I described the McCulloch School band of HPISD as “all-white.” This prompted a nasty response, including a letter berating me and crank phone calls.

To confirm what I had observed, I called the school to check. The school referred me to HPISD administration. After checking, they called me back to say that McCulloch was more than 97 percent white. Only Ivory soap is more pure.

HPISD is touted as a paradigm for public education. But most leading public and private schools, including the nation’s best colleges have sought to diversify in order to prepare students for a multi-cultural national and global future.

HPISD has done nothing.

It fought to be excluded from the DISD desegregation suit, using the argument that no minorities lived there and there had been no past discrimination. Highland Park native son Judge William Taylor agreed.

This dismal, if not mournful, situation contributes to the racial problems that have plagued the Metroplex. Since people in the Park Cities are often accused of running the City by method of plutocratic imperialism, let me offer them a New Year’s resolution from one living in their penumbra:

“Do the Right Thing” as the movie title exhorts.

Desegregating your school will not be the end of the world, rather your entry into the 20th Century and beyond.

Woodrow today has the same number of National Merit Semi-finalists as in 1970. Students still go on to Ivy League schools. Maybe you’ll even get another Heisman Trophy, as we did with Tim Brown ’84.

Better still, your children will grow up knowing people from other backgrounds and cultures – and counting them as lifelong friends – you won’t even have to send them overseas. More than a dozen native languages are spoken at Woodrow.

In Lakewood we grew up wary of any ostentatious displays and learned to appreciate history. The same lessons might stop your tearing down home places from neo-Georgian behemoths.

An exchange program with nearby schools, such as occurred in HPISD recently, might be the beginning of the answer. After all, we already have some HPISD students paying tuition to go to Woodrow.

But please, don’t forget to fill out an application.