About Southern school news. (Nashville, Tenn.) 1954-1965 | View Entire Issue (Jan. 6, 1955)
Factual Southern School News Objective VOL. I. NO. 5 NASHVILLE, TENNESSEE JANUARY 6, 1955 Effects (Note: Publication of the September issue of Southern School News prompted a flood of letters to the Southern Educa tion Reporting Service from groups and individuals who are giving serious study to the Supreme Court ruling of last May. Because these thousands of letters gave such a revealing picture of the regional interest in the subject, the following anal ysis was undertaken. The scores of com ments quoted are typical of many hun dreds of others.) By BONITA H. VALIEN SERS Analyst and Consultant TN its first issue, dated Sept. 3, 1954, Southern School News announced itself as a reporting service which would undertake “a major new jour nalistic assignment—to tell the story factually and objectively, of what happens in education as a result of the Supreme Court’s May 17 opinion that segregation in the public schools is unconstitutional.” After approximately six months of operation, Southern School News seems to have established itself both by definition and performance as a “factual and objective” media. As an instrument for reporting what is hap pening in the 17 states and the Dis trict with respect to implementation or circumvention of the Supreme Court decision, it has found enthus iastic acceptance in both the South and North and among widely diver gent groups. To date, Southern School News has accumulated a mailing list of almost 25,000. A large number of these are governors, chief state school officers, school administrators and board chairmen, newspaper editors, etc., whose names are on the mailing list as a result of letters from the execu tive director announcing that the service would be available and de scribing its objectives. There is, however, another statis tically significant group that is in cluded in the mailing list. In this group are thousands of individuals who, without specific invitation, have requested Southern School News. It *s with this group of requests that the present analysis is concerned. Much °£ what follows as interpretation should be considered both tentative and suggestive rather than definite conclusions. However, the data based u Pon more than 3,000 letters seem to admit the following observations and interpretations: L There is widespread interest in the May 17 Supreme Court opinion declaring segregation unconstitu- wnal, and individuals and groups whatever their interest—whether to continue segregation or work toward *ts abolition—show a deep concern in nnd need for “factual and objective” ata. Requests have come from all the th U ^ ern an d border states and 28 of ® northern and western states. • ft is clear that, while the groups Notice «ffi'° UTHFRN School News is the t, CIa ^ Publication of the Southern Reporting Service, 1109 I t . ^ Ve ' South, Nashville, Tenn. j n( j! * * 3 4 S .distributed free to interested duals and organizations upon S c L” quiries about Southern to c., 1 ' 1 ,, News should be addressed Si a( . ^ O. Box 6156, Acklen °n ! Nashville, Tenn. i tic P , _ UhU s . ‘'“Porting Service was es- aqg , tf h> the southern editors Oq jl Ueat ors whose names appear finap * , n,as thead on Page 4. It is for tj^ C ft'" a grant from the Fund an jjj? 1 d'ancement of Education, hv thJ l Pen de nt agencv established An „° r ‘ l foundation, official - 'ey ,y;u — ‘«iemeni oi ar,n3 poi- ^ead 3 so ft e found in the mast- statement of SERS pol- Of Ruling Given Serious Study New Legislation Slated The Region—At A ‘J'WO major school problems—larg er appropriations and the segre gation-desegregation issue—will vie for attention in southern and border state legislatures which convene in January, reports for this issue of Southern School News reveal. The Georgia legislature is expected to enact at least three new laws to strengthen the state’s segregated school system. The South Carolina legislature will receive new recom mendations, yet unpublicized, from a special state commission which has been studying the Supreme Court de cision of last May. Leaders of the North Carolina Gen eral Assembly do not favor any leg islation on the subject, but the man slated to be Speaker of the House recommends that some expression of the state’s sentiment about segrega tion be sent to the Supreme Court. A Tennessee legislator says he will introduce a bill giving local school boards wide leeway to assign chil dren to designated schools, and in Mississippi, a special session of the legislature will consider a vast new program for equalizing white-Negro facilities as a move to preserve “vol untary” segregation. The Oklahoma and Arkansas leg islatures will be mainly preoccupied with complex school financial prob- requesting Southern School News are by no means homogenous, each has one idea or concern in common— the importance of facts in establishing their particular point of view. The pro-segregationist welcomes South ern School News because he believes that when the facts regarding the particular and peculiar problems of the South are known, the case for segregation will be established. This is clearly revealed in the comments that appear elsewhere in this analysis. At the other extreme are those who are equally convinced that segrega tion can be clearly demonstrated to be economically and morally un sound once the facts are known. The largest group, the middle group, the more or less uncommitted, are those who, realizing that there is a Supreme Court decision, are earn estly searching for an answer as to how the decision might be carried out with the least amount of trauma to either group. They, too, are looking for objective facts. Representatives of this group range from the individual “interested citizen” to some of the more or less formal organizational groupings. 3. Interest in the facts with regard to the consequences of the Supreme Court decision has been greatest among the group that refers to itself as “just an interested citizen” (40.7 per cent), with teachers and educa tional administrators (20.7 per cent), and professional workers associated with organizations (14.0 per cent) evincing interest in the order named. 4. Southern School News is being used as an educational device by religious study groups both formal and informal; civic and professional organizations as discussion material; college professors as basic resource data in their classes and as an ex ample of a new type of journalism; students as a source of data for theses, discussion groups, debates and school newspapers. 5. The range of interest in South ern School News extends beyond lems, but Arkansas Education Com missioner Ford predicts there will be some legislation designed to carry out the Supreme Court ruling. The Maryland and Texas legisla tures will also meet, but so far no specific proposals for new segrega tion-desegregation legislation have been made. The Florida legislature doesn’t meet until late spring, but a struggle is already shaping up between those who favor some variation of the “Mississippi plan” for preserving seg regation, and those who prefer Atty.- Gen. Richard Ervin’s “gradualism” approach to integration. In Missouri, St. Louis made plans for a second major desegregation step —the redistricting, effective Feb. 1, of the city’s seven white and two Negro high schools to eliminate racial seg regation. Full details, including maps, are on Page 11. On Jan. 11, the District of Colum bia will take another step in its one- year integration program when 1,200 graduates of white and Negro junior high schools will start attending high schools nearest their homes. School officials in the District were also giv ing thought to administrative and so cial problems growing out of deseg regation. The first complete summary of those individuals, groups and areas directly concerned with the problem of school segregation. This is ex emplified by the many requests from representatives of organizations working in the field of human rights who, while indicating that they are not directly concerned with the prob lem of school segregation nevertheless express the desire to have Southern School News for the perspective which it can furnish with respect to the problems or areas of their imme diate and direct concern. 6. The international implications of the issues with which Southern School News is dealing are pointed up by the gradually increasing num ber of requests from outside the United States. ANALYSIS OF REQUESTS An examination of 3,194 spontan eous requests for Southern School News, selected entirely at random over a three and one-half month pe riod, revealed that 2,049, or 64.1 per cent of these requests originated in southern and border states with the remaining 1,145, or 35.9 per cent being distributed throughout 28 states of the North, West, Canada, Alaska, Honolulu, England, Germany and India. The five southern states with the largest number of spontaneous re quests are Tennessee (330), North Carolina (298), Virginia (264), Texas (191), and the District of Columbia (145). New York led the northern states with 624 requests, with New Jersey, Pennsylvania, Massachusetts, and Connecticut following in the order named with 66, 63, 62 and 47 requests, respectively. There are no requests from North Dakota, Mon tana and Nevada included in this analysis. The largest number of spontaneous requests (1,299) originated with the “just interested citizen.” Within this group, 38 per cent in the South and 72 per cent in the North indicated active membership in some local or Glance West Virginia’s desegregation pro gram showed that 52,545 white and Negro students are attending 135 in tegrated public schools. Delaware awaited the decision of the State Supreme Court on a suit seeking the readmission of Negro students to the Milford white high school, scene of protests in October. In South Delaware, public opinion referenda piled up large majorities against integration. Virginia saw the chartering of a new organization—the National Pro tective Individual Rights, Inc. — which favors authority for the states and local communities to work out problems posed by the Supreme Court decision. In Alabama, formation of several White Citizens Councils was featured in the news. In Kentucky, the state board of education promised “the most careful consideration” of a plan to minimize problems posed by de segregation of the schools, particu larly the effect on the employment of qualified Negro teachers. And in Louisiana, a federal dis trict court ordered the admission of Negro plaintiffs to McNeese State College at Lake Charles—the second Louisiana undergraduate institution to be so opened. national organization and/or com mittee, while the remaining 62 per cent in the South, and 28 per cent in the North simply identified them selves as a citizen, a parent or a grandparent with a deep con cern and interest in the subject. A clear majority of persons in cluded in this group looked upon SSN as an educational device de signed to help educate citizens toward a positive point of view. This view point was most often indicated by such statements as “I am willing to learn,” “My opinion could be changed through a ‘factual and objective’ re porting of the facts,” or as one Ala bama citizen put it, “I find it informa tive to the point and valuable as a corrective for the Southerner’s think ing.” On the other hand, there were those who, “believing segregation to be es sential to Southern living and schools,” were also interested in SSN, and as one representative of this group put it, an “interested citizen” from Virginia, “I am very much in terested in receiving your paper and trust more states will see the ‘light’ before we have to organize the KKK again.” Another in Maryland indi cated, “I am doing all in my power to help align Maryland behind segrega tion efforts. Please enlist me in your membership and send me all perti nent information.” Those requesting SSN because they were interested in preserving segre gation and their reasons behind this wish might be seen in the following comments at random: A Texas citizen: I cannot understand why among the various objections offered no one has claimed that desegregation is counter to religious rights guaranteed in Amend ment I of the U. S. Constitution. As I read mv Bible, God was the first seg regationist. From Christianburg, Virginia: I am deeply interested in this segrega tion idea, and would like to receive your paper. It is a difficult thing to imagine a white body of men attempting to saddle Negroes upon us. It would be different if the white race asked for it. But to be forced to have them thrust upon us is difficult to imagine. From Dallas, Texas: I am a white man very much against the Supreme Court decision and am in terested in what the Southern States, Del aware and Kansas are doing about the matter. Recently the NAACP help a con vention in Dallas with some reportedly 800 members in attendance. They stated that they had collected (presumably from the USA organization) $300,000 for their 1954. budget, and were asking for one million in contributions before the end of the year. It is my belief, personally, that this money is coming from malcon tents in the North who hate the South, and may be the seventh or eighth genera tion of the Civil War carpetbaggers who will do anything to destroy the South. From Kingston, Tennessee: # I a m interested in maintaining segrega tion in our schools, churches and other public places as I consider segregation a part of God’s plan. I agree whole heartedly with the minister in Chattanooga who recently said, ’Segregation was established for here on earth and we will obey the simple rules laid down by God.’ From Abilene, Texas: As an American citizen, and for 60 years a voter in Texas, I know that non-seg regation of races in our public schools is not and cannot be the answer to equal opportunity for the negro race in these United States. If it were, it has been so for 160 years. When did these wonderful judges ’wake up’? By this one act, the Supreme Court as sumes the right to set aside any and all rights accorded the states when the central government was created by the states. They created and adopted the Con stitution. Apparently the Court seems to assume the right to interpret any part of our Constitution (as the highest Court of Appeals) just any way it wishes to. A citizen from Louisiana: I.was.wondering if the Supreme Court's ruling is to stand, what would prevent darkies from being buried in white ceme teries? Like membership into white secret orders? Would appreciate your putting me on your mailing list. And from Washington, D.C.: Come up to Washington and see the rapidly deteriorating status of the racial situation here in our Capital. EX-SOUTHERNERS Although removed from the region, southerners maintain their interest in the South, some justifying the south ern philosophy and pattern of living, some describing themselves as “li berals ’ who wish to change the south ern “attitudes” and “patterns.” While neither condemning nor con doning the South, there are those who are anxious that the region be under stood in the light of its history and present problems. These individuals evince sensitivity over the “over gen eralized” and “inaccurate” statements of non-southerners and welcome the factual and objective reporting” of Southern School News. The follow- See ANALYSIS On Page 15 Index State Page Alabama j Arkansas 3 Delaware 4 District of Columbia 5 Florida g Georgia 7 Kentucky g Louisiana 3 Maryland 9 Mississippi 10 Missouri n North Carolina 12 Oklahoma 13 South Carolina 14 Tennessee 14 Texas 6 Virginia 13 West Virginia 2
