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SOUTHERN SCHOOL NEWS —Nov. 4, 1954—PAGE 15
Virginia
RICHMOND, Va.
\/'IRGINIA’S school segregation
’ controversy was highlighted in
October by the announcement that
the Virginia Commission on Public
Education will hold its first public
hearing at the State Capitol here at
10:30 a.m. on Nov. 15. The commis
sion is the 32-member group ap
pointed by Gov. Thomas B. Stanley
to study school problems posed by
the Supreme Court’s anti-segregation
decision.
Another major development dur
ing the month was the formation of
the “Defenders of State Sovereignty
and Individual Liberties,” an organi
zation which will work for the re
tention of segregation in Virginia’s
public schools.
Announcement of the commission’s
public hearing was made by State
Sen. Garland Gray of Waverly,
chairman. He said persons who ap
pear before the group will be ex
pected to discuss the question:
“What course should Virginia follow
in the light of the Supreme Court
decision in the segregation case?”
In a prepared statement, Sen. Gray
explained:
This first hearing is intended primarily
for spokesmen for local governing bodies,
members of the General Assembly and
recognized organizations of both races
who are hereby Invited to present the
views of their membership, or constitu
ents, and thus afford the commission the
benefit of the opinions of citizens from
all parts of the state.
The commission will give priority to
these spokesmen, but will hear interested
individual citizens to the extent time will
permit.
Sen Gray added that other public
hearings may be held later, but that
this will be a matter for the full
commission to decide.
DEFENDERS’ ORGANIZED
The “Defenders of State Sovere
ignty and Individual Liberties” re
ceived its charter from the State
Corporation Commission on Oct. 26.
Officers were announced as:
President—Robert B. Crawford,
Farmville dry cleaner, who for about
15 years was a member of the Prince
Edward County School Board. Prince
Edward County’s School Board is
one of the defendants in the five
cases involved in the Supreme
Court’s May 17 segregation decision.
Vice-President—C. D. Jones, a
merchant of LaCrosse, Mecklenburg
County.
Secretary—William B. Cocke Jr.,
clerk of the Sussex County Circuit
Court.
Treasurer—E. Floyd Yates, Pow
hatan County auto dealer and form
er member of the Virginia House of
Delegates.
Mr. Cocke said the organization,
at the time it received its charter,
had approximately 2,000 members in
13 chapters located principally in the
Fourth District. The annual mem
bership fee is $10. He said the group
hopes to organize chapters in every
city and county in the state.
The group’s charter does not men
tion school segregation. But one of
the stated purposes is “to seek by all
honorable and lawful means the
retention by each State of its . . .
right to regulate within its borders,
m the manner it believes to be most
conducive to the happiness and good
°t its citizens, its own domestic ar
rangements, and to . . . advocate
gleans by which the people of each
. te may enjoy this right and power
m any of its domestic matters,
whether education, recreational, eco
nomic, social or otherwise.”
p/^he 4th District includes 13 of the
Virginia counties with school pop-
H®tions more than 50 per cent Negro,
he 1950 census shows that the dis-
rict has 171,211 white residents and
167,139 Negroes.
Sen. Gray spoke on the night of
ct - 5 at Prince George County
^ourthouse at a meeting called to
three county representatives to
g, e Strict-wide session held at
ac kstone two nights later.
GRay STATES VIEWS
Gen remar ks to the Prince
Sup FSe Sen. Gray called the
Preme Court decision “political
and monstrous” and added, “I have
nothing against the Negro race as
such, and I have lived with them all
my life, but I don’t intend to have
my grandchildren go to school with
them.”
At another point in his talk, he
declared:
When I was appointed chairman of the
Governor’s legislative commission on
segregation, I told that group I would
act impartially and hear everything any
one wanted to say on this vital question.
But I also said I have my own personal
convictions on the issue which I do not
intend to sacrifice on the altar of political
expediency.
Sen. Gray’s remarks at the Prince
George meeting led the Virginia
Methodist Advocate, weekly official
publication of the Virginia Method
ist Conference, to question his “com
petence” to serve on the commission.
The Advocate, edited by the Rev.
Dr. George S. Reamey, said Sen.
Gray’s statements “can hardly be
said to represent an impartial judi
cial mind, such as the people of Vir
ginia have a right to expect of the
chairman—and of the entire mem
bership—of this special fact-finding
commission.
“If this is a sample of the speeches
the Senator intends to make prior to
the hearing in November, it raises
serious question of his competence
to serve on the commission in any
capacity, whether as chairman or
member,” the publication said.
Meanwhile, residents of Nottoway
county, in a referendum on Oct. 5,
overwhelmingly defeated a proposed
$900,000 bond issue which had been
designed to help finance construction
of three Negro elementary schools.
The vote was approximately 1,500 to
200.
C. H. Bevell, chairman of the Not
toway county school board, had ar
gued that existing facilities for
Negroes are inadequate and that new
buildings are badly needed. But op
ponents of the bond issue had
claimed, among other things, that the
proposal was ill-timed and should
not be carried out in view of the
uncertainty as to what the future
holds in the matter of school segre
gation.
Approximately 1,300 Negro chil
dren are enrolled in Nottoway coun
ty elementary schools and 350 in
high school, as compared with 1,250
white elementary students and 450
high school students.
WHITEHEAD vs. TUCK
During October, Virginians wit
nessed a sharp verbal exchange on
school segregation between Robert
Whitehead, member of the Virginia
House of Delegates and a recognized
leader of the “anti-organization”
faction in Virginia Democratic Party
politics, and former Gov. William M.
Tuck, now a member of the House
of Representatives from the Fifth
Congressional District.
It started when Mr. Whitehead,
who is considered a probable candi
date for governor in 1957, told the
Norfolk Cosmopolitan Club on Oct.
21 that adoption of proposals to
abolish the public school system
would be “an open invitation to the
federal government to boldly step
into the field of education and take
over.”
He said he favored a middle-of-
the-road approach to the school seg
regation problem, one that would not
force integration on any locality, but
rather would give each locality wide
discretion in deciding whether to
have dual or single school systems,
or a combination of both.
The following day, Rep. Tuck, an
outspoken opponent of integration,
said in a speech to the Virginia Com
missioners of Revenue Association
in Richmond that “middle-of-the-
roaders” are people who “don’t
know which way they’re going.”
“I’ve always thought ‘middle-of-
the-roader’ was another name for
double crosser,” he added.
Retorted Whitehead:
In view of what he did in 1952,1 would
have thought that Bill Tuck would have
been the last politician in Virginia to use
the word ‘double crosser.’ It was he who,
then posing as a Democrat, stabbed the
Democratic Party in the back and helped
the Republicans carry Virginia for Eisen
hower. Who was double crossing then?
SEN. GARLAND GRAY
Heads Virginia Commission
In his reply, R. Tuck said that
Mr. Whithead “has in his attack
upon me made abundantly clear
what I strongly suspected all along,
and that is that he favors integra
tion of the races in the public
schools.” This was strongly denied
by Mr. Whitehead.
BOOTHE’S PROPOSAL
Meanwhile, a proposed plan for
Virginia in carrying out the school
integration decision was presented
by State Delegate Armistead L.
Booth of Alexandria, who in past
years has led legislative fights to
eliminate segregation on public
transit vehicles.
In a speech before District L of the
Virginia Education Association at
Norfolk on Oct. 15, Mr. Boothe sug
gested that the Supreme Court be
asked to grant local governing bodies
or school boards considerable auton
omy in putting the court’s ruling
into effect.
He proposed that the local boards
be empowered to assign individual
students to schools on the basis of
academic backgrounds; health re
quirements of different students;
personality, practices, needs and de
sires of individual children; and the
intensity of racial feeling in the
various areas.
Under his plan, the local authori
ties would exercise the foregoing
powers in three primary ways: (1)
by making individual assignments of
children to local schools, (2) by ar
ranging attendance through new at
tendance districts, and (3) by allow
ing chilldren within proper limita
tions to select their schools.
“If we show good faith and can
convince the Supreme Court of our
good faith,” Mr. Boothe said, “we
must not only ask that discretion be
vested in the state authorities to
bring our practices into harmony
with the Court’s decision, but we
must impress the Court with the
necessity of indefinite time which
these changes may require.”
The Jewish War Veterans, in na
tional convention in Richmond,
adopted a resolution favoring “com
plete integration in the public
schools, according to the mandate of
the United States Supreme Court.”
On Oct. 22, Recreation Director E.
L. Barnwell, issued a permit to allow
the NAAWP to hold a rally at Brad-
dock Field on Oct. 24. But on Oct. 23,
City Manager Ira Willard told Bry
ant W. Bowles, president of the
NAAWP that the permit had been
withdrawn because of a city ordi
nance forbidding carnivals and un
necessary noise at the field.
Notice
Southern School News is the offi
cial publication of the Southern Edu
cation Reporting Service, 1109 19th
Ave. South, Nashville, Tennessee. It
is distributed free to interested indi
viduals and organizations. Requests
for Southern School News should be
addressed to SERS, P.O. Box 6156,
Acklen Station, Nashville 5, Tennes
see.
The Reporting Service is financed
by a grant from the Fund for the Ad
vancement of Education, an inde
pendent agency established by the
Ford Foundation.
West Virginia
CHARLESTON, W. Va.
esegregation in West Virginia’s
schools and colleges, rebuffed in
the early weeks of the present term,
moved along toward a more peaceful
solution during the past month with
every indication that another year
would find almost complete har
mony.
Only one flare-up marred recent
developments, and that was quickly
smothered when a Marion County
circuit judge issued an injunction on
Sept. 28 against mothers picketing
the Annabelle school at Four States
near Fairmont, W. Va.
The angry matrons on two con
secutive days were successful in
sending teachers home in protest
against integrating white and Negro
pupils until Judge J. Harper Mere
dith issued the injunction. Previous
ly, Meredith termed the parents’
action “a rebellion against the
government.”
The Marion County Parent Teach
ers Council voted to support legal
action stopping picketing at the
school after the pickets had succeed
ed in sending Principal Lloyd H.
Securro and the school’s teachers
home. County School Supt. W. W.
Straight then announced that the
teachers would return and he would
seek court action if they were
stopped.
When Chief Deputy Sheriff L. O.
Yeager tacked a copy of the tem
porary injunction forbidding picket
ing on the front door of the six-room
brick and cinder block schoolhouse,
which sits on a hill in the little coal
mining community in northern West
Virginia, there wasn’t a soul around.
The injunction prohibited the 53
parents named as defendants—in
cluding a few fathers—“from in any
way interfering with or obstructing
the entering or leaving of the school
grounds and building” and from “as
saulting, coercing, or threatening
any pupil, teacher or other agent” of
the board.
JUDGE WARNS PARENTS
Judge Meredith told those present,
including Supt. Straight and school
board members:
“It cannot continue and I won’t
permit it to continue. If necessary,
Ill fill the jail until their feet are
sticking out of the windows.”
Some white parents had been
keeping their children home in pro
test against the enrollment of 13 Ne
groes with 157 white pupils in grades
one through seven. There are 799
Negro students and 13,193 whites in
Marion County, the third of 55 West
Virginia counties where attempts at
integration have resulted in demon
strations.
On Sept. 13 about 300 of 475 high
school students in Greenbrier Coun
ty, which borders Virginia, went on
a strike. Parents held a mass meeting
and the school board rescinded its
plans for integration.
The following week, two disturb
ances broke out in Boone County
over partial integration, but the
school board decided to maintain the
status quo while investigating legal
aspects of the case. Both of these
incidents were reported in detail in
the October issue of Southern School
News.
Since these disturbances, state Ne
gro leaders have criticized Gov.
William C. Marland for not taking a
stronger stand on integration, saying
a statement he had issued fell short
of their expectations. The chief ex
ecutive had said that integration
poses no insoluble problems if both
parties make a sincere attempt to
understand the viewpoint of the
other.
Tom G. Nutter of Charleston, pres
ident of the West Virginia Confer
ence of the National Association for
the Advancement of Colored People,
said that while Marland’s statement
wasn’t as strong as the NAACP had
hoped it would be, it should help if
“it causes others to give sober
thought to the situation.” He added
that Negro leaders had hoped the
governor “would take positive ac
tion” to quiet feelings which caused
the strike in Boone and Greenbrier
Counties.
But if Negroes were disappointed
in the governor, they had reason
to cheer the unification of the
West Virginia Education association
(white) and the West Virginia State
Teachers association (Negro), which
was the highlight of the WVEA an
nual state convention in Charleston
on Friday, Oct. 15. All teachers in
the state will henceforth belong to
the WVEA as their professional or
ganization.
The “Declaration of Unification”
follows:
“For many long years, the illustri
ous and honored profession of teach
ing in the State of West Virginia has
worked in and through two separate
associations; namely, the West Vir
ginia Education Association and the
West Virginia State Teachers Asso
ciation. Both have held as their
guiding purpose the advancement of
the cause of education, the improve
ment of the welfare of those who
teach, and the promotion of profes
sional fellowship.
“During those many intervening
years, these two distinguished or
ganizations have worked closely to
gether in the common cause. But, at
the same time, they have been kept
separate because of tradition and
custom and because of needs pecu
liar to the respective groups.
“In the year one thousand nine
hundred forty-eight, a joint com
mittee of the West Virginia Educa
tion Association and the West Vir
ginia State Teachers Association was
established for the purpose of study
ing relationships, problems, and
programs of the two associations.
Subsequent studies revealed a defi
nite sameness of problems accom
panied by a duplication of effort in
arriving at conclusions and answers
to such problems.
“Upon report and recommendation
of the joint committee to the gov
erning bodies of the West Virginia
Education Association and the West
Virginia State Teachers Association,
in the year one thousand nine hun
dred fifty-three-fiifty-four, author
ization was given by each organiza
tion to bring into being a unification
of the two associations under the fol
lowing proviso:
1. That the united professional associa
tions of teachers on a statewide basis
shall be called the West Virginia Educa
tion Association.
2. That the rights and privileges of all
teachers shall be those set forth under
the Constitution of the West Virginia
Education Association.
3. That all life memberships previously
held under either association shall be
honored and recognized as life members
of the West Virginia Education Associa
tion under the unification agreement.
4. That the audit of both the West Vir
ginia Education Association and the West
Virginia State Teachers Association from
the cate of July 1, 1953, to the date of
final merger be printed in the Annual
Report.
TRAINING PROGRAM
Mountaineer Boys State, week-
long citizenship training program
operated annually at Jackson’s Mill
in Marion County with representa
tives from all state counties, here
after will be conducted “without dis
tinction as to race, creed or color.”
A prepared statement of policy to
that effect was issued by Boys’ State
Inc., a state corporation sponsored by
the West Virginia Department of
the American Legion. W. Elliott
Nefflen, former Charleston lawyer
now residing in Washington, D. C.,
is chairman of the group’s incorpo
rators.
Boys’ State is attended each year
by about 300 high school juniors and
was established in 1936. It was the
second such program to go into op
eration in the nation.
A West Virginia Boys’ State for
Negro youths has been operated an
nually since 1941. Also conducted
each year under Legion sponsorship
are the Rhododendron Girls’ State for
white youngsters and a comparable
program for Negro girls. These pro
grams are not affected by the action
on Boys’ State board, which de
clared:
Forthwith Mountaineer Boys’ State
shall be conducted and operated without
distinction as to race, color or creed, to
effectuate for posterity a 100 percent
Americanism in order that the principles
of justice, freedom and democracy in our
great republic may be absolute.