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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. Return Address Southern Education Reporting Service P.O. Box 6156, Aclden Station Nashville, Tenn. sr U.S POST APRlTSS^i^f ks&sb. u/v/ vt/e s >tv o/= £ 3 A H Q u > 3 /X/ caj &tv/3/e+) Return Postage Guaranteed Texas New Book (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.