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page 4 —Dec. I, 1954 — SOUTHERN SCHOOL NEWS District of Columbia Southern School News Southern School News is the official publication of the Southern Education Reporting Service, an objective, fact-finding agency established by southern newspaper editors and educators with the aim of providing accurate, unbiased information to school administrators, public officials and interested lay citizens on developments in education arising from the U. S. Supreme Court opinion of May 17, 1954 declaring segregation in the public schools unconstitutional. SERS is not an advocate, is neither pro-segregation nor anti-segregation, but simply reports the facts as it finds them, state by state. OFFICERS Virginius Dabney Chairman Thomas R. Waring Vice-Chairman C. A. McKnight Executive Director BOARD OF DIRECTORS Frank Ahlgren, Editor, Memphis Commercial Appeal, Memphis, Tenn. Gordon Blackwell, Director, Institute for Research in Social Science, University of N. C. Harvie Branscomb, Chancellor, Van derbilt University, Nashville, Tenn. Virginius Dabney, Editor, Richmond Times-Dispatch, Richmond, Va. Coleman A. Harwell, Editor, Nash ville Tennessean, Nashville, Tenn. Henry H. Hill, President, George Peabody College, Nashville, Tenn. Charles S. Johnson, President, Fisk University, Nashville, Tenn. C. A. McKnight, Editor (On Leave) Charlotte News, Charlotte, N. C. Charles Moss, Executive Editor, Nashville Banner, Nashville, Tenn. Thomas R. Waring, Editor, Charles ton News & Courier, Charleston, S. C. Henry I. Willett, Superintendent of Schools, Richmond, Va. P. B. Young Sr., Editor, Norfolk Journal & Guide, Norfolk, Va. CORRESPONDENTS ALABAMA William H. McDonald, Editorial Writer, Montgomery Advertiser ARKANSAS Thomas D. Davis, Asst. City Editor, Arkansas Gazette DELAWARE William P. Frank, Staff Writer, Wilmington News DISTRICT OF COLUMBIA Jeanne Rogers, Education Writer, Washington Post & Times Herald FLORIDA Bert Collier, Staff Writer, Miami Herald GEORGIA Joseph B. Parham, Editor, The Macon News KENTUCKY Weldon James, Editorial Writer, Louisville Courier-Journal LOUISIANA Mario Fellom, Political Reporter, New Orleans Item MARYLAND Edgar L. Jones, Editorial Writer, Baltimore Evening Sun MISSISSIPPI Kenneth Toler, Mississippi Bureau, Memphis Commercial-Appeal MISSOURI Robert Lasch, Editorial Writer, St. Louis Post-Dispatch NORTH CAROLINA Jay Jenkins, Staff Writer, Raleigh News & Observer OKLAHOMA Mary Goddard, Staff Writer, Ok lahoma City Oklahoman-Times SOUTH CAROLINA W. D. Workman Jr., Special Cor respondent, Columbia, S. C. TENNESSEE James Elliott, Staff Writer, Nash ville Banner Wallace Westfeldt, Staff Writer, Nashville Tennessean TEXAS Richard M. Morehead, Austin Bu reau, Dallas News VIRGINIA Overton Jones, Editorial Writer, Richmond Times-Dispatch WEST VIRGINIA Frank A. Knight, Editor, Charles ton Gazette MAIL ADDRESS P. O. Box 6156, Acklen Station, Nashville 5, Tenn. WASHINGTON, D.C. THE District of Columbia told the Supreme Court on Nov. 15 that no further court action is necessary to bring about public school integration in the nation’s capital. In few words the brief emphasized that by next fall the school segregation issue will be “completely moot” in Washington. For all practical purposes, the brief continued, the entire matter is moot now. “. . . . Positive steps have been taken and are well under way for complete desegregation of pupils in the public schools of the District...,” Corporation Counsel Vernon E. West wrote. As proof of this, he submitted School Supt. Hobart M. Coming’s step-by-step, one-year integration blueprint and the Board of Educa tion’s five-point anti-discrimination policy which governs the assignment of both pupils and teachers to schools without regard to race. Two affidavits, one from Coming and the other from School Board President C. Melvin Sharpe were given the court. Corning explained that some big steps in his original plans had been speeded up to put existing school fa cilities to fuller use. He stressed, how ever, that the integration program as a whole still is scheduled for Septem ber 1955 completion. Sharpe attested to a “wide diver gence” of opinion among the nine members of the school board on the method and timing of integration plans. He added, however, these plans had been approved by a board majority and are now in operation. A week before the District brief was filed, Corporation Counsel West and Deputy Milton Korman called the school board to their office to re view the new line of argument. The attorneys explained they originally had urged the case be remanded to the lower courts with instructions that integration be started at the earliest practical date, and be com pleted by a definite future date to be fixed by the Supreme Court. Unless the Supreme Court dis agreed with the premise that imme diate integration was not required, the District authorities said, there was no need for further action. After the meeting with counsel, School Board Member Robert R. Faulkner called the majority of the board “. . . modem John Browns who have forced public school desegrega tion here without waiting for a final Supreme Court decision, regardless of its effect on rights of individuals.” Faulkner’s “modern John Browns” charge referred to the abortive anti slavery rebellion led by the Kansas abolitionist before the Civil War of 1861. From the start, Faulkner has wanted parents to have the right to remove children from schools in which they were in racial minority. He also has advocated a triple set of schools — all-white, all-Negro and mixed. ENROLLMENT FIGURES Mrs. Frank Phillips, school board vice president, gave the lawyers a detailed study of September enroll ments at former white schools. Marked decreases in white registra tions in some of these buildings, she said, have been recorded because of a “coercive” integration program. Her interpretation of official enroll ment statistics, she said, is that they reflect “a desire on the part of the white families to get away from an undesired situation.” Mrs. Phillips, former Government statistician and wife of a builder, said she wanted the Supreme Court to know this effect of school integration. The District brief referred only to a difference of opinion of board mem bers—leaving out detail. The integration time schedule of the school board, the brief said, is “as short as can reasonably be devised to establish in orderly fashion a school system which complies with the (court) decision.” Meanwhile on Nov. 15, lawyers who filed a brief for Negro student Spottswood Thomas Bolling took sharp issue with this contention of the District. The Bolling case, along with those in four states, brought about the May 17 anti-segregation edict of the Su preme Court. At that time, the high tribunal asked participants in these cases to file briefs on the methods of carrying out this ruling. In this brief, Negro attorneys James M. Nabrit Jr. and George E. C. Hayes urged the Supreme Court to direct the school board “forthwith” to admit all children to the schools of their choice. The brief attacked the so-called “Corning integration plan,” charging that its “gradualist element” caused not only the denial of “present consti tutional rights” of Negro children in the District but had been the genesis of many administrative difficulties in the past and presaged more for the future. The brief continued: It is our appraisal of the Coming plan put in operation in the District that the respondents have advanced on the as sumption that this court has accepted the theory of an effective gradual adjustment from a segregated system to a system not based on color distinctions: that they have discounted the propriety of a forthwith disposal of this matter upon its merits, and have launched upon this gradual plan which is replete with errors and pitfalls. OPTION PLAN SCORED The brief objected particularly that the Corning plan would “delay in completely desegregating the public school system here.” It said the plan contains a method of “student op tions” designed to defeat effective in tegration. The attorneys said the “op tions” feature (of allowing students to remain in last year’s schools, if de sired) was hard to understand. The option system, the brief said, took authority from the superintend ent to operate an orderly integrated system and delegate it to the parents of the children. Investigation, it was charged, failed to show where a single Negro child had been transferred from a school he attended previously, because of his race, to a school from which he previously had been excluded on that basis, if, “to do so would have meant the displacement of a white student.” On the contrary, the brief said, in stances had been found where white students required to attend pre viously all-Negro schools have been permitted to transfer to schools where the students were predominantly white on the alleged ground of “hardship.” The Negro attorneys urged the court to order immediate admission of pupils to schools of their choice within normal geographic school dis tricting. TWO FUTURE STEPS All District schools were redis tricted last summer and the new boundaries were observed this Sep tember by students new to the school system, regardless of their race. In February, the new boundaries must be observed by junior high school graduates, and next September by all students. Aware of the approaching mid-year graduation, delegates from six citi zens’ associations of southeast Wash ington urged school officials to change the new Anacostia and Eastern high school boundaries. Under the new school district map, students living in one section of the Southeast must cross the Anacostia River to attend Eastern high school instead of nearer Anacostia high. The parents declared their children will have to travel a much greater distance to class and face hazards of heavy bridge traffic in crossing the river each day. They added that fam ilies will be separated as students now enrolled at Anacostia high will remain there while younger brothers and sisters graduating from junior high, for the most part, will have to attend Eastern. Real estate values will decline, the parents said, as residents will move to other parts of the city to avoid this situation. School officials promised to make a new student count in the area to see if a compromise line can be drawn without overcrowding Ana costia high. Both Anacostia and Eastern, for mer white schools, now have mixed classes. At present, Anacostia has 1,279 students, 44 Negro. Eastern has 1,850 students, including a junior high unit, with 885 of this number Negro. Since the advent of school integra tion in Washington, word-of-mouth rumor has persisted that white fam ilies were leaving town in great num ber because of the end of a dual edu cation system. The Washington Evening Star pub lished an unofficial comparison of sec ond day school registration and that of last year, stating that the recorded drop in white enrollment was influ enced to some degree by integration. This was followed by Mrs. Phillips’s similar study and conclusions. MIGRATION CONTINUES Supt. Corning during a press con ference said the drop in white enroll ment in Washington is due to a 8 to 10-year migration of residents to the suburbs. “For years, school superin tendents in large cities have been be moaning the fact that this thing has been happening everywhere, regard less of the race question,” Corning said. He added that the superintendents termed the migration to the suburbs the “decadence of American cities,” pointing out that business follows the residents out of the metropolises. Coming admitted this migration has been “stepped up” to some degree by school integration. “We don’t know to what degree,” Corning added. He said “it cannot be contended” that the degree of loss of white enrollment in the school sys tem or in individual buildings en tirely is due to an end of segrega tion. Children have changed residence within the city, some are absent for illness when the rolls are taken, oth ers have moved out of town and some teen-agers finished their senior year during night classes, Corning said. Unofficial enrollment counts based on early days of school attendance which showed a drop in white enroll ment in specific schools cannot be considered “too significant,” Coming said. TOTAL ENROLLMENT UP Later, Corning released District school enrollment for November 4, 1954 as compared with November 5, 1953 in a school-by-school racial breakdown. It showed total public school enrollment has increased slightly more than 1 per cent since last year to reach a record high of 105,409 students. The figures reflect a drop in white pupil enrollment of 7.6 per cent since November 1953, while there has been an 8.6 per cent rise in Negro enroll ment in this period. The 1954 total shows 64,501 Negro pupils and 41,358 white. Negro pupils number more than 60 per cent of the total. Pupils of white and Negro races are enrolled at 120—or three-fourths—of the city’s 158 schools, the figures show. Twenty-six remain all-Negro, and 12 all-white. Integration has begem at seven of the District’s 11 senior high schools. Three of the former Negro schools, Armstrong, Cardozo and Spingarn report no white pupils. One former white high school, Woodrow Wilson, reported no Negro students this year. In the 22 junior high schools, seg regation has ended in 15, while stu dents of both races attend all but 27 of the District’s 125 grade schools. Many District schools now have in tegrated faculties. The latest count shows that of a faculty of 3,620, there are 1,943 Negro and 1,677 white teach ers. Breaking down the enrollment changes according to educational lev els, the latest survey shows these to tals: Elementary schools—White, down 2,735 to 25,024; Negro, up 3,701 to 41,- 390. Junior highs—White, down 351 to 8,830; Negro, up 307 to 13,573. Senior highs—White, down 402 to 6,066; Negro, up 591 to 6,263. Teachers College—White, down 140 to 431; Negro, up 251 to 648. Vocational high—White, up 20 to 972; Negro, up 301 to 1,381. A drop in white pupil enrollment has taken place in 14 of the 18 years since 1936. Sharp drops were regis tered during World War H and the Korean War, but totals climbed back slightly after hostilities ceased. FIGURES DISPUTED During the Nov. 17 school board meeting, Mrs. Margaret J. Butcher, member, deplored the national pub licity given the drop in white enroll ment in Washington. She said “cer tain unofficial studies” had over weighted integration as a cause and factor. Mrs. Butcher also asked the board to order Coming to submit a time- schedule for the integration of top officer jobs in the school system. Cur rently, Negro and white officers with parallel positions are serving as teams in administering all the schools. Corning said this is preferable during the “period of transition” from segre gation. Mrs. Butcher failed to get a second from board members, includ ing the two other Negroes, West A. Hamilton and Wesley S. Williams. On a second motion by Williams, however, the board directed Corning to present a December progress re port on reorganization of his admin istrative staff. A plea has been made to District Court judges by several white citi zens’ groups to remove Mrs. Butcher from her school board post on grounds she now is serving as a paid worker for the National Association for the Advancement of Colored Peo ple. The citizens charge that in this new capacity, Mrs. Butcher cannot represent the “interests of all chil dren” as a member of the school board. Mrs. Butcher has taken a year’s leave as English professor at Howard University. Currently, she is touring the country as a “reporter” of inte gration on trouble spots for the NA ACP. She has attended all monthly board meetings and declares her plane trips here and there do not “keep me from being up-to-date on school happenings in Washington.” ASSEMBLIES HELD Assemblies were held this month at two of the three former white high schools where students in Octo ber participated in brief demonstra tions against integration. At McKinley high, Coming talked to students about integration and the meaning of the Supreme Court de cision. He received “the biggest ova tion I’ve ever gotten during a speech in Washington.” A mixed chorus san? on the stage. At Eastern high school, students marked the first Veterans Day ob servance. The program was the stoD of this nation’s wars. When the CiV" War or the War Between the States (it was given both titles) *** reached, a mixed girls’ chorus sal* the “Battle Hymn of the Republic-^ The assembly climaxed with a sho talk by a disabled Negro veteran 0 the Korean War. Student grievance committee 5 which were formed to work out pr°^ (See DISTRICT on Page 10)