Newspaper Page Text
I
VOL I, NO. 3
NASHVILLE, TENN.
NOVEMBER 4, 1954
Tension Eases As Court Hearing Nears
* S October passed into November,
bringing closer the Dec. 6 date for
new arguments before the Supreme
Court, the picture in the 17 states
where segregated schools have been
required by law was this:
1. Three areas of earlier tension—
West Virginia, Baltimore and the
District of Columbia—were calm.
Only in Delaware was there evidence
of continued unrest over desegrega
tion.
2. Florida, North Carolina, Arkan
sas and Texas were getting ready to
intervene in the Supreme Court hear
ings.
3. In Georgia and Louisiana, voters
went to the polls to vote on “last re
sort” amendments to their state con
stitutions aimed at preserving segre
gated schools.
4. In Florida, Maryland and Vir
ginia, the race issue was the subject
of widespread public debate, mostly
in political campaigns.
Otherwise the region was quiet, in
cluding Missouri, where the begin
nings of desegregation have so far
produced no incidents whatsoever.
Here is the state-by-state digest,
with fuller details inside:
ALABAMA — Despite increasing
pressure from legislative sources,
Gov. Gordon Persons declined in Oc
tober to call a special session of the
Alabama legislature to act on a re
port by a special legislative commit
tee urging the amendment of the
state constitution to pave the way for
possible abolition of public educa
tion.
ARKANSAS—As the state of Ar
kansas moved ahead with the prep
aration of its brief in the school seg
regation cases, Education Commis
sioner Arch W. Ford revealed that
Arkansas’ position “will not be a
radical approach or one of defiance
• . . (but) a reasonable approach . . .
(which) will try to point out the
problems, financial and otherwise,
brought on by the decision.”
DELAWARE—After the State Su
preme Court stayed a lower court
order requiring the readmission of
Negro students to Milford high
school, an uneasy truce prevailed
throughout the tension areas in
,! aware - Throughout the state,
religious and other organizations be-
gan to take positive stands for the
Preservation of law and order.
DISTRICT OF COLUMBIA—The
desegregation of the District of Co-
unabia school system had proceeded
smoothly for three weeks when, on
ct 4, white students at Anacostia
'gh school began demonstrations
against desegregation. The demon-
f aR °ns spread to two other former
ly all-white schools and six junior
■ ’ kut by the fourth day order
a been restored and enrollment was
normal once again.
ar^° RIDA ~ Until Att V- Gen. Rich "
rvin’s brief was made public, the
gregation-desegregation issue re-
arned fairly quiet. In October, how-
DoPt- i O ues tion began to bob up in
tical campaigns and was the sub-
Trouble Spots
^Because con flict and tension
of p' A ! aro ’ Baltimore and the Distr
Gctob Urn ^' a mat ^ e fbe headlines
spec' ? r ’ dlose three areas are giv
m documentary treatment
issue of Southern School Nev
Wfittt of Columbia repo
Pages 1 ! j „ Jearme Rogers, is
bv wn. and "PR e Delaware repo
and 7 ^ P ' Frank > is on Pages
Edg ar V t 6 Rslhmore report,
u J ones, is on Pages 8 and
A Statement Of Policy
By C. A. McKNIGHT
Executive Director
JN the many letters and postcards received by the South
ern Education Reporting Service since the first issue of
Southern School News was published, the question has
often been asked: What are the objectives of the Re
porting Service?
The question had been anticipated, and it was answered
in the September issue, but now that thousands of new
readers have been added to the mailing list, it may be
useful to restate the objectives of the Reporting Service.
The Service grew out of the conviction of a group of
southern editors and educators that there would be a need
for a full, factual, objective and balanced reporting of
developments arising from the May 17 Supreme Court
decision declaring segregation in the public schools un
constitutional. As stated by Chairman Virginius Dabney
in his letter of July 5 to President Clarence H. Faust of
the Fund for the Advancement of Education:
“We are convinced that a major contribution can be
made at this time to the advancement of education and
to the general public interest by an impartial reporting
service which provides accurate and unbiased informa
tion concerning the adjustments which various communi
ties in the southern region make as a result of the Su
preme Court’s recent opinion and forthcoming decrees in
the five cases involving segregation in the public schools.
“We believe that the primary burden for making these
adjustments rests with the school administrators and
other leaders, both public and private, of each individual
community, and that the appropriate program for any
one community must be tailored to fit the particular cir
cumstances. We believe also, however, that communi
ties can learn useful lessons from the experiences of one
another.
“The Southern Education Reporting Service has there
fore been established with the aim of assisting responsible
local and state leaders, and particularly school adminis
trators, in developing practical and constructive solutions
to their own particular school problems by supplying
them with objective facts about the developments in other
communities. It is our resolve to report the facts as we
find them, and to refrain from taking sides on any con
troversial issues or advocating any particular point of
view.”
In sum, the Reporting Service is not an advocate in the
segregation-desegregation issue. It is neither pro-segre
gation nor anti-segregation. It expresses no opinions of
its own on what is good and bad or wise and unwise. It
adheres scrupulously to the accurate and objective re
port of the facts as it finds them, state by state.
ject of increasing newspaper com
ment. Florida States Rights Inc., a
group opposing desegregation, was
chartered in Dade County.
GEORGIA—Just as the November
issue of Southern School News went
to press, the people of Georgia were
going to the polls to decide whether
to approve an amendment to their
state constitution which would per
mit the substitution of a private
school system for a desegregated pub
lic school system. The entire Georgia
report in this issue is given over to a
complete explanation of the amend
ment, and the arguments advanced
by proponents and opponents.
KENTUCKY—With Republicans
and Democrats alike accepting the
Supreme Court decision when it was
announced, the segregation-desegre
gation issue was kept out of Kentucky
politics in this election year. The “go-
slow” policy of waiting for the Su
preme Court to spell out its decrees
appears to have satisfied most every
one.
LOUISIAN A—The people of
Louisiana, like those in Georgia, were
also voting on a constitutional amend
ment as this issue of Southern School
News went to press. Unlike the Geor
gia amendment, however, the Louis
iana proposal would give legal sanc
tion to segregation in the schools un
der the inherent police powers of the
state.
MARYLAND—As October opened,
Baltimore made the nation’s front
pages with stories and pictures of
picketing and rioting. This issue of
Southern School News carries a de
tailed, documentary account of the
Baltimore unrest including this pic
ture in retrospect: not more than a
half dozen of 52 schools with mixed
How They Voted
At press time for this issue, the
voting on the Georgia “private
school” amendment, with 1,058 of
the state’s 1,810 precincts reporting,
stood: for, 153,576; against, 148,317.
The voting on the Louisiana
“police power” amendment, with
599 of 2,029 precincts reporting,
stood: for, 71,161; against, 15,046.
For complete analyses of the two
proposals, see the Georgia report
on Page 10 and the Louisiana re
port on Page 3.
attendance were involved, and none
of the schools with large percentages
of Negro students; 97 per cent of Bal
timore’s public school students were
not involved in any way.
MISSISSIPPI—Although a state
wide election is still some weeks off,
a strong campaign in favor of a pro
posed “last resort” constitutional
amendment authorizing the abolition
of the public school system began to
pick up steam in Mississippi in Oct-
ber. An advisory committee issued a
question-answer brochure explaining
the amendment.
MISSOURI—With reports in from
466 of Missouri’s school districts, the
pattern of desegregation comes into
sharper focus. The full details will
be found elsewhere in this issue, but
in capsule form, here are the facts:
289 of the 466 districts have no Negro
pupils; of the remaining 177 with
Negro pupils, 110 have begun some
form of desegregation. In no case has
desegration caused any incident.
NORTH CAROLINA — Although
he has not yet made public the de
tails, Atty. Gen. Harry McMullen says
that the North Carolina brief will fol
low the line taken by Florida and ask
the Supreme Court (1) to give ade-
Williams-Ryan Book Slated
(On Nov. 20, the University of
North Carolina Press at Chapel Hill,
N. C., will publish a significant new
book, Schools in Transition, by
Robin M. Williams Jr. and Margaret
W. Ryan. It will be priced at $3.00.
The book carries the following intro
duction by Harry S. Ashmore, author
of “The Negro and the Schools.”)
* * *
QN May 17, 1954, the Supreme
Court of the United States wrote
an end to an era in American educa
tion. Before that date the Court had
interpreted the Fourteenth Amend
ment to the Constitution to mean that
the several states could educate
whites and Negroes separately, pro
vided the facilities made available for
the purpose were substantially equal
—and 17 of the 48 states, including all
those where Negroes were largely
concentrated, had required or per
mitted racial segregation in their pub
lic schools. But from May 17 forward,
the Court proclaimed, no American
could be denied admission to a pub
lic educational institution solely be
cause of his race.
There could be no doubt that the
Court’s unanimous decision removed
legal sanction from the practice of
segregation in education or that it
cleared the way for massive social
change. Yet the nature of that change
remains clouded with uncertainty.
The Court itself recognized that it
had left vital questions unanswered
when it called for re-argument on
the specific decrees to be entered in
the five test cases upon which it based
the new precedent.
Many of these questions, however,
are not legal in character. Many
forces have been at work reshaping
the character of bi-racial education
in the United States—indeed, reshap
ing the whole of the complex rela
tionship between the majority and
minority races. The charting of those
forces has been largely left to social
scientists, and it is to them the public
now must look for guides to the fu
ture.
Intensive social studies in the spe
cific field of bi-racial education were
already well under way when the Su
preme Court handed down its his
toric decision. They had been under
taken under a grant from the Ford
Foundation’s Fund for the Advance
ment of Education, which in the
spring of 1953 had recognized the
need for a new and comprehensive
look at the public school system which
had served the two races throughout
the nation’s history. As a key part of
that project, research teams were
sent into 25 communities which had
lately experienced the transition from
segregated to integrated schools.
See NEW BOOK on Page 16
quate time to work out a desegrega
tion program, and (2) to give federal
district judges broad discretionary
powers to fix deadlines in the various
school districts.
OKLAHOMA—Two legal attacks
on racial barriers in higher education
—one suit seeking admittance to a
municipal junior college and the oth
er challenging restrictions in Okla
homa College for Women—were the
chief developments in Oklahoma in
October. There was still no open op
position to ultimate compliance with
the forthcoming Supreme Court de
crees.
SOUTH CAROLINA—The Su
preme Court decision and pending
decrees prompted more talk than ac
tion in South Carolina last month.
Both the outgoing and incoming gov
ernors voiced grave concern over the
probability of trouble if desegrega
tion of the schools is attempted. South
Carolina’s white teachers urged the
continuance of a system of free pub
lic schools, but did not take any defi
nite stand on the question of segrega
tion.
TENNESSEE — There was no
change in Tennessee’s policy of
“watchful waiting” during October,
and at month’s end it appeared that
the state would not file a brief before
the Supreme Court. About the only
action on the segregation-desegrega
tion issue came late in October when
the Tennessee conference of the Na
tional Association for the Advance
ment of Colored People met in Nash
ville and adopted a three-point
program calling for implementation
of the May 17 Supreme Court opinion.
TEXAS—Atty. Gen. John Ben
Shepperd had a staff of six assistants
at work on the brief that Texas will
file with the U.S. Supreme Court, but
otherwise October produced no new
developments growing out of the May
17 decision.
VIRGINIA—Under the leadership
of State Sen. Garland Gray, the Vir
ginia Commission on Public Educa
tion announced plans for a public
hearing on Nov. 15—its first since ap
pointment by Gov. Thomas B. Stan
ley to study problems growing out of
the court decision. But Chairman
Gray came in for some published crit
icism because of a speech he made.
WEST VIRGINIA—As the end of
October approached, it appeared that
the unrest in three West Virginia
counties where desegregation was
tried had about run its course. Par
ents who were picketing the schools
at Four States, near Fairmont, re
turned to their homes after a stern
warning from a Marion County cir
cuit judge. In Greenbrier County and
Boone County, where demonstrations
were reported in the October issue,
things were quiet.
Index
State Page
Alabama 2
Arkansas 2
Delaware 6-7
District of Columbia 4-5
Florida 3
Georgia 10
Kentucky 16
Louisiana 3
Maryland 8-9
Mississippi 11
Missouri 12
North Carolina 13
Oklahoma 13
South Carolina 14
Tennessee ..... v 16
Texas 16
Virginia 15
West Virginia 15