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Kentucky LOUISVILLE, Ky. OUPT. Omer Carmichael of the ^ Louisville schools and his aides began staff-level informal “explora tory discussions” on integration al most a year ago. Their consultants in cluded educators in Pennsylvania and New Jersey, where areas of segrega tion existed until fairly recently, and in New Albany and Jeffersonville, In diana, across the Ohio River from Louisville, where an integration pro gram began six years ago and was completed only two years ago, with a reported minimum of friction. (Note: Integration will affect Louisville more than any other area of Kentucky, in terms of numbers. Of the state’s present population of 3,144,000 (est.), Negroes constitute 7 per cent. Nearly 38 per cent of the state’s Negroes are in Louisville (pop ulation 401,000), where they consti tute about 16 per cent of the total. Louisville’s school enrollment in 1953-54 totaled 46,465, including 10,- 294 Negroes. The state census of school-age children for 1954-55 totals 698,052, of whom only 42,052 are Negroes. (In 30 of Kentucky’s 120 counties and in 71 of its 224 school districts there are no public schools for Negroes—there being no school-age Negroes in 39 of the districts in the 1952-53 school year, and fewer than 600 in the other 32. The latter were sent to school in neighboring dis tricts). Directors of the Kentucky Educa tion Association on April 21, 1954, voted unanimously to appoint a com mittee “to study what could be done to ease the situation in Kentucky if the Supreme Court rules to end seg regation.” This committee was in structed to work jointly with another subsequently appointed by the Ken tucky Teachers Association, state wide Negro group. Neither commit tee has issued any progress report as yet, or any other public statement. None is expected before October. CONTROL DIVIDED Kentucky divides the control of public education between the State Department of Education and the state’s 224 local school districts. Board policy, the setting of standards, su pervision and enforcement belong to the former. But the local districts are responsible for the actual operation and control of the program. They have wide latitude in (1) determining the nature of the educational pro gram, (2) selection, retention, pro motion, and remuneration of em ployees, (3) determining the school budget and the tax rate necessary to produce the funds needed, (4) pro viding the necessary physical facili- ites such as buildings, equipment and supplies, and in (5) the assignment of pupils to particular schools in the district. A fact of fundamental importance, however, is that the regulations of the State Board of Education, in matters not covered by existing law, have the force of law itself. The board is com posed of eight members: seven lay men appointed by the governor, and, ex officio, the superintendent of pub lic instruction, an elected official, currently Mr. Wendell P. Butler, who serves as the board’s executive offi cer. The board’s policies are admin istered, of course, by the State De partment of Education, headed by the superintendent and a selected pro fessional staff, and the sub-agencies of which include, to date, a Division of Negro Education. STATE AUTHORITY Specific state controls over local units in Kentucky are considerable. They include (1) power to remove local board members for cause; (2) power to decide controversies; (3) power to call conferences of board members and professional employees; (4) power to discontinue independent school districts when the census of white pupils falls below 200; (5) ap proval of school building plans, of bonds of treasurers, of school budg ets and salary schedules; (6) audit ing of financial accounts; (7) require ments of financial and statistical re ports, and (8) the making of rules and regulations for all schools on minimum courses of study, care and distribution of free textbooks, grad ing and accreditation, sanitary and protective construction of school fa cilities, health, transportation (buses, routes, protection), holidays, prepa ration of budgets, uniform reports, etc. Kentucky’s per capita income in 1950 was $913. It spent on its public schools (in millions) $2,688, or 2.4% of its total income. In 1952, average attendance of white children in Kentucky schools was 446,909. Average attendance of Negro children was 30,696. This was a de crease of 2.4% for whites since 1940, and a decrease of 13.3% in Negro at tendance. The announced per capita of State support for 1954-55 is $37.51 for all school-age children regardless of race Maryland Continued from Page 6 white and Negro members, in about the same proportion as our total school pop ulation. And this is working so well that the viewers-with-alarm could not have been more wrong. But, some say, what about the parents? How will they react? Since 1947 when our Coordinating Council of Parent-Teacher Organizations was formed, it has been a unified group. Established on the basis of councilmanic districts, the executive board of the Council has included every year men and women of both races. Has it worked? The record of the Council’s ac complishments is proof enough of success. Will it work? Review, if you please, ev ery activity of our school system for the past 15 or more years in which Negro and white children, adult students, or staff members have been associated. You will discover that, without exception, every one has succeeded. talk well received Ur. Fischer’s talk was well received by both the Sunpapers and Afro- American. A few teachers, he reports, wrote him letters of praise, and a few others wrote him letters expressing anxiety over the new bi-racial com petition for administrative and su pervisory jobs. As for public reaction, he estimates that his department re ceived about 100 phone calls and let ters of protest after the Supreme Court decision, and a few letters of praise. Many of the protests, he says, were from people who either didn’t understand the function of the Su- !? eme ^ ourt an d complained that e y were given “no chance to vote” °r who believed that “blood would run down the stairs” if school integra tion were carried out. One immediate result of the school board’s decision to end segregation was the canceling of plans to install expensive printing equipment in Carver Vocational School, then under construction, to duplicate the equip ment in the formerly all-white Mer- genthaler Vocational School. Negro students the previous year had sought admittance to Mergenthaler and had been turned down on the ground that separate but equal facilities would be provided at Carver. The Negroes had then sued the city for admittance to Mergenthaler this fall. The suit was still pending when the integration course was adopted and it became possible to drop the plans for a Carver printing course and to admit the Negro applicants to Mergenthaler. The evening adult summer courses in subjects ranging from literacy and citizenship classes through high school academic and commercial studies were Baltimore’s first large- scale integration attempt following the segregation decision, but had been planned before the decision was made. About 1,000 students, 16 years of age or older and one-third of them Negroes, attended mixed classes three and four times a week under both white and Negro teachers. Dr. Fischer reports that “not one single incident of unpleasantness” took place in the classes, which lasted through July, and that nobody dropped out because the classes were mixed, as far as school officials know. FUTURE STILL UNCERTAIN Since the school board’s desegrega tion policy was enunciated at the very (Kentucky has made no differentia tion on the basis of race since 1882.) It is worth nothing that this figure is based not on average attendance or enrollment (average attendance in 1952-53 was only 477,605) but on the total number of school-age children, which for 1954-55 is 698,759, and that, in addition to the per capital allot ment for these, the state later will distribute $8,573,000 to its poorest school districts as the beginning of its new “minimum-foundation” program. The state’s per capita total, exclud ing the minimum-foundation grants, is $26,212,500. This fund is earmarked specifically for teachers’ salaries, to which the state’s 224 local school dis tricts will add another 24 million dol lars. EVENTS SINCE MAY The story since May 17 in brief: Kentucky has quietly accepted the implications of the Supreme Court’s ruling of May 17, and will implement it in whatever manner the Court sub sequently decrees. But there will be no integration in 1954. Kentucky’s official reaction was promptly established by Gov. Law rence Wetherby with the announce ment on May 17 that “Kentucky will do whatever is necessary to comply with the law.” On the same day Atty. Gen. J. D. Buckman said that the ruling (a) knocks out Kentucky’s famous Day Law, which made it il legal for whites and Negroes to attend public or private schools together, and (b) nullifies a portion of Section 187 of Kentucky’s constitution, which required that separate schools be maintained for whites and Negroes. Kentucky’s senior Senator, Earle C. Clements (Democrat), said he anticipated that “orderly steps will be taken” to implement the Court’s decision. Senator John Sherman Cooper (Republican) said the deci sion “is a logical result under the Constitution.” The only member of the state’s congressional delegation to criticize the decision as “most un fortunate” (Democratic Rep. Frank L. Chelf) nevertheless concluded “be that as it may, the Court has decided, and that is final.” On June 17 the State Board of Edu cation advised local boards that, pending a finalydecree on desegrega tion by the Supreme Court, they should plan their 1954-55 term under Kentucky laws requiring segregated classes. The advisory statement, which has the effect of law, was ap proved by the board on a motion by its only Negro member, A. E. Mezeek of Louisville, who said: “I think it is the only thing we can do.” On July 2 Gov. Wetherby appointed a seven-member committee, includ ing two Negroes, to advise the state on problems of ending segregation in the public schools. No report is ex end of the school year, school officials will not know how much integration will actually take place until the fall registration is completed. At the mo ment Dr. Fischer can only say that “a number of schools will have Negro pupils,” with the heaviest Negro en rollment coming in the formerly white elementary schools serving borderline Negro-white neighbor hoods. On the secondary level, in addition to Mergenthaler, it is also known that about 20 Negro girls will be attending the all-girl, formerly all- white Western High School. A lawsuit had been pending to admit Negro girls to this academically high ranking girls’ high school which has an ac celerated pre-college course of na tional renonwn. In mid-July Dr. Fischer reported to the school board that a complete teaching staff had been assembled for the fall term—the first time in several years that the city had not found Sep tember approaching with not enough teachers to go around. At that time, with the no-vacancy sign out, no Negro teachers had been assigned to white or mixed classes. That phase of integration, Dr. Fischer said, would be slow to develop, but the break may come in secondary schools, where the shortage of white teachers is most troublesome. The supply of Negro teachers is relatively strong. On June 4, just 24 hours after the decision to end segregation in Balti more public schools, the Rev. Dr. Leo J. McCormick, superintendent of schools in the Catholic Department of Education, Archdiocese of Baltimore, SOUTHERN SCHOOL pected from this committee before October. Negro groups on July 10 elected a special committee of lawyers and educators to study the problem of desegregation. Represented on it are branches of the NAACP, the Ken tucky Teachers Association, and vari ous PTA units. The chairman is James A. Crumlin of Louisville, president of the Kentucky state conference of NAACP branches. At its first meeting the committee heard a State Department of Educa tion spokesman, Sam Taylor, director of the department’s division of edu cational supervision, explain that the state has said it will abide by the de cision of the Supreme Court, that the department has no definite plans as to how and when desegregation will be accomplished, that the state is waiting for the court to say how its decision should be implemented. Bishops of the A.M.E. Zion Church at their national convention in Louis ville on Aug. 7 urged Negro leaders not to “enter into any collusion or compromise” on desegregation and resolved that “by no means should we in any place permit ourselves to become adjusted to voluntary segre gation, professing that we think it necessary to keep the peace.” In a related field, Louisville’s Mayor Andrew Broaddus announced this summer that henceforth all city jobs would be open to Negroes. Louisville has 2,182 civil service jobs, about an equal number of others not under civil service. But the Mayor stuck to his June 1 announcement that he in tends to continue the present prac tice of segregation in city parks and swimming pools. He made this state ment to a five-man delegation f>- the Louisville branch of the NAACP, headed by President George T. Cord- ery. (The delegation had sought but failed to obtain an appointment with the Mayor on May 17 in order “to strike while the iron is hot.”) ‘PRESSURE’ CHARGED Mr. Cordery said that Negroes are “increasingly perturbed” over seg regation in the parks. Mayor Broad dus said that the group was bringing “undue pressure,” that Louisville had done “a good job” in improving race relations, and that “we are marking time until the Supreme Court cases (on various segregation issues) are settled.” An NAACP spokesman said that a suit now pending before the State Court of Appeals might settle the park issue. A public opinion survey subse quently made for Mayor Broaddus reported that 73 per cent of the whites and Negroes interviewed wanted park segregation to continue, but that slightly more than 70 per cent of the Negroes interviewed op posed continuation. announced that “we will certainly abide by the decision of the Supreme Court.” His announcement concerned the extensive Roman Catholic school system in the Baltimore area, consist ing of 66 elementary schools, one special school, 9 high schools and 11 commercial schools in the city and 44 elementary schools and 16 high schools in the counties, with a total enrollment of about 56,000 students. College-level Catholic schools were already on a nonsegregated basis. “We must give due consideration,” Dr. McCormick said, “to the means and methods of making the (desegre gation) decision effective,” indicating that it had not yet been determined how integration was to be carried out in the Catholic schools, which on the elementary level are districted by parishes. But the fact that the Cath olic educational leader had spoken out promptly on the segregation issue was believed by public school officials to enhance the chances of having a quiet, orderly change-over in the city’s schools in September. UNIVERSITY ADMITS NEGROES On June 25 the Board of Regents of the University of Maryland voted to admit qualified Maryland Negroes to all levels of college work. Previously Negroes had been accepted only in the graduate schools and, in rare cases, in undergraduate courses not offered elsewhere in Maryland. The new policy is limited to quali fied students who are “residents of Maryland” is believed to exclude Negroes who are residents of the Dis- NEWS —Sept. 3, 1954 —PAGE 7 Here are some relevant background facts on the Louisville situation: There already is no segregation on public transportation, in the city li braries, at the University of Louis ville, at three Catholic colleges, at the Baptist and Presbyterian theo logical seminaries. Negro firemen work and live in the same stations as white firemen. The city’s General Hospital is open to Negro nurse trainees. The city employs Negro po licemen. As of August, 1954, Louisville’s Supt. Carmichael reports that: Staff- level discussions and exploration of the problem of desegregation, begun last year, are continuing. We are moving slowly and cautiously. No definite plans will be announced until after the Supreme Court speaks, but we are working on them in fine with the May 17 instructions of the Louis ville Board of Education. MILD REACTION Public reaction in Kentucky to the court’s decision has been mild, save for the burning of a cross on the lawn of Lexington’s Supt. John M. Ridg- way on the night of May 18 after he had said that the decision would make “relatively little difference” to the Lexington system where schools are located in relation to the pupils they serve (Mr. Ridgway condemned the burning as “a crime ... of ig norance”). The flow of letters to newspaper editors has been a trickle compared with that excited by other controversial matters; few have been extreme in tone. Louisville’s Supt. Carmichael had received only six letters of protest (only two “extreme,” but all anony mous) by mid-August. Said he: “Our community is already past the shock period.” The Rt. Rev. Felix Pitt, secretary of the Louisville Catholic School Board, predicted that integration would be accomplished without seri ous trouble. John Kenna, local secretary of the National Conference of Christians and Jews, deemed Louisville “an ideal testing place,” doubted “if we will have much trouble.” Charles Steele, secretary of the Ur ban League in Louisville, said: “Frankly, there’s resentment on the part of some people. The people in positions of leadership in the neigh borhoods are going to have to be given some sort of indoctrination. A lot is going to depend on school boundaries. In all probability they will have to be changed.” And Mrs. Herbert Zimmerman, president of the Louisville PTA Council, put it this way: “There has been a great deal of quiet discussion about the matter and I think that once we get used to the idea, inte gration will be fairly orderly.” trict of Columbia. The university is close to the District line and presum ably would be as attractive to Wash ington Negroes, if open to them, as it now is to white Washingtonians. Baltimore Negroes have Morgan State College close at hand and are, therefore, less likely to be drawn to the College Park campus. The admittance of Maryland Ne groes to the College Park campus of the University of Maryland “auto matically” closes out the out-of-state scholarship fund for Negroes, in the opinion of the attorney general’s of fice. The scholarship program, estab lished in 1933, was Maryland’s answer to the need either to open College Park facilities fully to Negroes or to build extensive duplicate facilities elsewhere for them. In the last fiscal year, ending June 30, the State de frayed the added expenses incurred by some 1,000 Negroes taking courses in colleges and universities outside of Maryland which were not available to them at home, at a total cost of $244,000. The principals, supervisors and presidents of the Negro schools and colleges in Maryland met in a con ference at Morgan State College on June 19 to consider “how they might contribute to a smooth and orderly adjustment of our public school sys tem to the recent decision of the Su preme Court of the United States.” The conference, under the chairman ship of Dr. Martin D. Jenkins, presi dent of Morgan, commended the edu- See MARYLAND On Page 15