integration efforts in HISD, beginning in 1960, were characterized by a lack of violence and turmoil as business leaders sought not to cause disruption. Prior to 1960 HISD was the largest racially segregated school system in the United States. In the mid-1960s Gertrude Barnstone and Black board member Hattie Mae White, the sole politically liberal members of the school board, often clashed with more conservative board members in meetings held on Monday nights; the two women made efforts to racially integrate the schools. During the 1960s, HISD's school board instituted a phase-in with each subsequent grade being integrated. Local African-American leaders believed the pace was too slow, and William Lawson, a youth minister, asked Wheatley students to boycott school. Five days afterwards 10% of Wheatley students attended classes. In 1970 a federal judge asked the district to speed the integration process. Simultaneously Mexican Americans were being discriminated against when they were being labeled as whites and being put with only African Americans as part of HISD's desegregation / integration plan. This kept both Mexican Americans and African Americans away from Anglos while satisfying integration requirements set forth by the 1954 Brown v. Board of Education court case decision. Many Mexican Americans took their children out of the public schools and put them in "huelga," or protest schools. On August 31, 1970 and organized by the Mexican-American Education Council (MAEC), they began three weeks of boycotts, protests, and picketing. This action lasted approximately three weeks, during which up to 75% of the student bodies of some high schools participated in the boycotts. During the protests MAEC demanded twenty issues to be resolved and HISD began rezoning school areas within its jurisdiction in response. However, this rezoning encouraged "white flight" since minorities were now entering "white schools" in large numbers. At first the district used forced busing, but later switched to a voluntary magnet school program in order to discourage "white flight". The district eventually integrated races in a semi-peaceful manner. River Oaks Elementary School became the first school to implement the HISD's Vanguard Program in the fall of 1972, with a program for 4th-6th graders. This program was initially named the Elementary School For The Gifted. The Vanguard Program name was adopted a year later. A desegregation busing plan, protested by Anglo White westside neighborhoods not wanting their children bused to predominately black schools, was rejected by the court system but