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PAGE 16 —Nov. 4, 1954 — SOUTHERN SCHOOL NEWS
Kentucky
LOUISVILLE, Ky.
CCHOOL integration was no issue
^ in Kentucky’s November elec
tions. The hope of “keeping it out of
politics” in the 1955 gubernatorial
campaign may help to explain the
state’s go-slow policy, adopted a few
weeks after the Supreme Court
ruling last May.
That is the “informed opinion” of
some veteran reporters of Bluegrass
politics. Their summary:
Republican and Democratic office
holders alike “went along” with the
Supreme Court decision when it was
announced. Democratic Gov. Law
rence Wetherby, who is not eligible
for another term, put the Barkley-
Clements-Wetherby or dominant
wing of his party on “politically un
assailable grounds” by announcing
simply that “Kentucky will do what
ever is necessary to comply with the
law” and then leaving further action
hanging until the Court spells out the
“musts” of its ruling.
That leaves no opening, it is
argued, for either Republican or
Dixiecrat temptation to use school
integration as a partisan or factional
issue.
It also means, pending new de
velopments, that for some months
Kentucky is likely to produce little
school integration activity except on
the line of quiet study, discussion,
and tentative preplanning by educa
tors of both races.
NO COMPLAINTS
Negro spokesmen, here as else
where, want a faster pace. But they
have publicly aired little or no argu
ment against the go-slow policy. “We
feel we have got to bring pressure
to speed things up,” President
Charles Cordery of the Louisville
branch of the NAACP put it. “But we
are trying first for a series of individ
ual and small group meetings with
education board members and ad
ministrators on the local level. Our
aim is to encourage more public dis
cussion and public planning on the
problems to be met in every com
munity, and to speed up the inevit
able with a minimum of friction.”
In October two college officials
added newsworthy quotes to the
record of collegiate integration in
Kentucky.
Commenting on the University of
Kentucky’s September registration of
some 20 Negro undergraduates
(graduate Negro students have at
tended U.K. since a district-court
ruling in 1949), University Vice-
President Dr. Leo Chamberlain in
mid-October noted that the change
had come quietly and without inci
dent. Of the new admission policy he
said: “After the (Supreme Court)
decision last spring, there was no
reason to make any distinction at
all.”
And at Pikeville Junior College, a
Presbyterian-supported school in
Eastern Kentucky which admitted its
first three Negro students this year,
the President, Dr. A. A. Page, said
integration had caused “not a ripple”
among the student body or the
faculty “and it was truly gratifying
to see these colored students accept
ed.” The Negro students, he said, “are
treated just exactly like the others.”
Tennessee
NASHVILLE, Tenn.
'T'HE Tennessee conference of the
National Association for the Ad
vancement of Colored People held its
annual meeting here Oct. 29-31—the
first meeting since the Supreme
Court ruling on May 17.
In the program adopted for the
forthcoming year, the Tennessee
Conference will:
1. Urge a strong and more posi
tive stand by the state government
in support of the high court ruling.
2. Work for the establishment of
an interracial committee of respon
sible citizens to study ways and
means of implementing the Supreme
Court ruling in local communities.
3. Call upon such agencies as civic
groups and church groups to support
efforts aimed at implementing the
Supreme Court ruling.
The NAACP also announced that it
will act as a “watchdog” over the
next legislative session, which begins
in January 1955, to prevent the in
troduction of any legislation aimed at
circumventing the intent of the Su
preme Court ruling.
FOOTBALL GAME
In another development in Tennes
see, the first intercollegiate football
game between a Negro and a white
university in the “Deep South” was
played here Oct. 30 between Fisk
University of Nashville and Taylor
University of Upland, Ind.
Dr. Charles S. Johnson, president
of Fisk, said arrangements for the
game with Taylor “in no way stem
med from the Supreme Court ruling
last May.”
Johnson said negotiations between
the two institutions for the game
were started about three years ago.
“Interracial intercollegiate athletics
is something that will come about
just as easily as it did in professional
baseball,” Johnson declared.
The Fisk president added that the
university received no protests about
the game from residents or officials
of Nashville.
In past years, Fisk basketball teams
have played teams from white col
leges.
The action of the Tennessee
NAACP stands as practically the
only illustration of either pro- or
anti -desegregation sentiment ex
pressed by any group or agency in
Tennessee in the past month.
On the state level, the govern
ment’s policy of “watchful waiting”
remains intact, and there is no rea
son to believe at this time that Ten
nessee will participate in the im
plementation hearings of the Su
preme Court in December. Gov.
Frank G. Clement and his official
family still decline to discuss the
matter for quotation or attribution.
As pointed out in the October issue
of Southern School News, one rea
son for the present state policy is
the fear of alienating legislators if
the administration takes a stand on
the issue one way or another. This,
so the reasoning goes, would jeop
ardize the school program in the 1955
General Assembly.
BATTLE OVER FUNDS
One observer of educational de
velopments in Tennessee declared
that the recommended appropriation
for the school program by the state
Legislative Council of more than 150
million dollars for the 1955-57 bien
nium will be cause for controversy
enough without having the deseg
regation issue to consider at the same
time.
The council’s recommendation
calls for an appropriation of $75,550,
399 for the year 1955-56 (compared
to $65,516,700 for the 1954-55 school
year) and an appropriation of $78,
366,459 for the year 1956-57.
In perhaps the only other develop
ment bearing on the school segrega
tion issue in Tennessee, a plan for a
special study committee discussed by
the Davidson County Board of Edu
cation in early September, remained
in its formative stage.
At a meeting on Oct. 21, the board
received a list of 25 to 30 names
from which committee members
were to be chosen. Board Chairman
Ed Chappell declared, however, that
no further action would be taken on
the committee until each member of
the board receives a copy of the list.
The meeting adjourned without
setting any date for the appointment
of the committee, and with the warn
ing of one board member that “if we
sit here and don’t try to work out
some plan, we will be faced with a
most serious situation” when the Su
preme Court delivers desegregation
decrees.
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Nashville, Tenn.
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(Continued from Page 1)
These communities, of necessity, were
outside the South, for no Southern
state had then undertaken to aban
don dual education below the college
level.
When these field studies reached
the project’s central research staff in
Atlanta, which I served as nominal
director, it became apparent that the
material thus gathered was far too
abundant, and far too valuable, to be
compressed into the brief volume
originally contemplated. The studies
served as the basis for several chap
ters in the summary report, The Ne
gro and the Schools, published (by
fortuitous accident, I must confess,
and not by design) coincidentally
with the Supreme Court decision. But
all of us concerned with what came
to be called the Ashmore Project felt
that they deserved publication in
their own right.
Much additional editorial work was
necessary, however, to put this raw
data together as a coherent picture
of American communities in tran
sition. For that essential task we
turned to Professor Robin M. Wil
liams Jr., a native Southerner who
is now director of Cornell University’s
Social Science Research Center and
who had served the project as a con
sultant. In collaboration with Mrs.
Margaret W. Ryan, he has prepared
this volume for publication.
The purpose of Schools in Transi
tion is the same as that of The Negro
and the Schools—not to argue the
case for or against segregation, but
to make available factual information
which may throw light upon this
shadowy area of the nation’s total ed
ucational structure. Owen J. Roberts,
former Associate Justice of the Su
preme Court of the United States and
now chairman of the Board of the
Fund for the Advancement of Educa
tion, thus defined the mission of the
Ashmore Project in his introduction
to the initial volume:
This volume and those that follow It are
intended to bring into focus the dimen
sions and nature of a complex educational
problem that in many ways provides a
significant test of American democracy.
The ultimate solution of that problem will
rest with the men and women who make
and execute public school policy in thou
sands of local school districts, and their
actions will be conditioned by the degree
of understanding of the general public
which supports their efforts with its tax
dollars. If this project serves to assist
them in their task the Fund for the Ad
vancement of Education will feel that it
has wisely invested a portion of the risk
capital of American education with which
it is entrusted.
My thanks, and those of the offi
cers and directors of the Fund, go
to Professor Williams and Mrs. Ryan
for their skillful preparation of this,
the second of the four volumes which
represent the end product of the Ash
more Project.
Back Integration
HOT SPRINGS, Ark.
Leading Negro educators and
school officials from 14 Southern
states and the District of Columbia
declared here Oct. 27 that they wel
comed the Supreme Court decision
on segregation in public schools and
urged that “immediate steps be taken
to implement the decision.”
“We believe that by virtue of the
position which we occupy in Ameri
can life we are obligated to express
our views,” the group said in a state
ment released after two days of closed
sessions.
AUSTIN, Tex.
ctober was a quiet month in
Texas as far as the school segre
gation problem was concerned.
Atty. Gen. John Ben Shepperd had
six assistants, headed by Burnell
Waldrep, working on the brief which
Texas will present in the United
States Supreme Court. Mr. Shepperd
is undecided whether oral argument
will be made by a Texas spokesman.
Details of the Texas brief will be
unavailable until sometime shortly
before the Nov. 15 deadline for fil
ing. But it is known that Texas will
bear down hardest on its plea for the
court to let local authorities work
out the integration of schools, under
broad direction from the court.
The Texas attorney general also is
expected to emphasize practical
problems involved, such as whether
Negroes already attending its public
schools can be integrated in white
schools without further educational
preparation.
No further effort by Negroes to ob
tain entry to public schools and col
leges was reported during October.
NEGRO COUPLE FLEES
The Houston Informer, a newspa
per mainly for Negroes, reported
that a Negro couple from Sulphur
Springs, Texas, was “forced to flee
the state in fear of their lives.”
The newspaper’s account of Oct.
20,1954, follows:
Texas, the place Governor Allan Shiv
ers recently dared to tell a group of
Negroes was the "grandest place on God’s
green earth” again supplied grist for anti-
American propaganda mills when the
head of the Sulphur Springs Branch
NAACP and his wife were forced to flee
the state in fear of their lives, the In
former learned here this week.
Hardy W. Ridge, a former grocery store
proprietor and NAACP head at Sulphur
Springs, and his wife Eleanor are now
in Cleveland, Ohio. Their Sulphur Springs
home was shot up last July when Mr.
Ridge petitioned the courts of that Texas
town to integrate public schools there.
The NAACP leader’s action was in line
with that of other branch offices of the
organization which sought to have the
Supreme Court’s ruling for school inte
gration carried out in their communi
ties.
Mr. Ridge said after he filed the peti
tion, two men visited his store and asked
him to sell it but said he gave no definite
answer to that effect. Later, while he and
his wife were away from home, vandals
shot up his house with shotgun blasts.
When he returned, he found glasses
broken, ceilings and walls blasted and
other evidence of the shooting.
He said the persons who had fired the
blasts must have thought the couple to
be home asleep.
Before he had left home, the men had
created a disturbance at the house that
attracted a crowd of neighbors. He said
they told other Negroes in the neighbor
hood “what would happen to those
uppity n s.”
He said when he visited the mayor and
other city officials, one of the officials
told him, "If you don’t like the way we
are running things here, why don’t you
try living in another part of the coun
try?” Mr. Ridge said the man added, “We
don’t like nine men in Washington telling
us what to do,” referring to the members
of the Supreme Court.
Mr. Ridge said he reported the inci
dent to the police and gave them the li
cense number of the car in which the
men who asked him about selling the
store rode but that no arrests were made.
Three days later, Mr. Ridge said he was
told to leave town because “you are a
marked man.”
The Ridges arrived in Cleveland last
week and plan to live there permanently.
They were presented at an NAACP meet
ing.
The shooting incident occurred in
July. It was reported in the first issue
of Southern School News on Sept. 3,
1954.
The Associated Press reported that
Negro children are attending Catho
lic parochial schools with white stu
dents at San Antonio, El Paso, Marfa,
Austin, Fort Worth and Corpus
Christi. Numbers ranged from two to
five or six Negroes per school. Cath
olic spokesmen said the admission of
Negroes had been without incident.
The El Paso diocese reported that
Negroes have been accepted for two
years at its schools in West Texas
and Southern New Mexico.
The Most Rev. W. J. Nold, bishop
of the Catholic diocese of Galveston,
said segregation is maintained there.
The AP quoted him as saying:
“There is no change contemplated
for this school year. By reason of
pre-existing conditions, segregation
has obtained.”
Six Negro students enrolled at St.
Mary’s Catholic school at Gainesville
in grammar grades in September.
They left in about a week. There was
no report concerning where they
went.
LUTHERAN SCHOOLS
M. M. Groeschel, principal of Lu
theran High School in Houston, said:
“Desegregation has not been re
quested or suggested to Lutheran
schools in this area.
The Texas Baptist General Con
vention meeting at Fort Worth urged
members to take “initiative at once
in working out a Christian solution of
our race problem.”
But the convention resolution
failed to take a definite stand on seg
regation. It warned Baptists not to
let “demagogues or radicals rob us as
Christians of that moral leadership
which God wants us to exert in the
solution of this problem which is pri
marily moral and spiritual.”
Dr. Foy Valentine of Dallas, direc
tor of the church’s Christian Life
Commission, said the world is watch
ing to see what Southern Baptists do
about race relations.
“And what is more important, God
is watching,” he said. “We cannot af
ford, under God, to sit around and
whine about what the Supreme
Court has done.”
Two Baptist colleges in Texas have
admitted Negroes for several years.
These are Wayland College at Plain-
view, in northwest Texas, and the
Southwestern Baptist Theological
Seminary in Fort Worth. Other Bap
tist colleges in Texas have no Ne
gro students.
Several theological seminaries ®
Texas teach Negroes as well 85
whites for the ministry.
EDUCATOR HONORED
A 73-year-old educator, Dr. W. R-
Banks, was honored at this years
Texas State Fair in Dallas as the
state’s most distinguished Negro f° r
1954.
Dr. Banks headed Prairie Vie' v '
A&M for 20 years before his retire
ment in 1946. He now serves on the
governing boards of seven college*
and universities—Atlanta University’
Morehouse College in Atlanta, PahJ e
College in Augusta, Ga., Miles Co '
lege in Birmingham, Ala., Lane Col
lege at Jackson, Tenn., Texas Col
lege at Tyler and Texas Southern
University in Houston.