Newspaper Page Text
SOUTHERN SCHOOL NEWS—Feb. 3, 1955—PAGE II
Virginia
Continued from Page 10
tentative statewide organizations. In
addition, the sentiments of a large
number of individuals have been ex
pressed through the medium of peti
tions opposing integration.”
Dr. E. B. Henderson, of Falls
Church, vice-president of the Vir
ginia State Conference of the Na
tional Association for the Advance
ment of Colored People, took issue
with the commission’s statement that
the “overwhelming majority” of Vir
ginians are opposed to integration.
Dr. Henderson said that 2,071 Ne
groes in nine northern Virginia coun
ties had signed a statement express
ing opposition to all forms of segre
gation in public schools and in pub
lic life. He said less than one per
cent of those approached hesitated to
sign, which would indicate that “over
95 per cent of the Negro population of
Virginia is opposed to segregation.”
He added:
“The governor’s commission hence
must speak almost entirely for the
white citizens. Of this we have doubt,
since practically all of the responsible
church leaders are on record as fa
voring integration. Many white
spokesmen of other groups also fa
vored compliance with the decision
of the Supreme Court at the hearing
of Nov. 15.”
Virginia Papers Vary
In Reaction To Report
RICHMOND, Va.
yiRGINIA newspapers which edi-
' torialized on the subject appeared
to be in unanimous agreement that
the segregation study commission
was correct in saying that the “over
whelming majority” of the people of
this state oppose racial integration.
But certain other aspects of the com
mission’s preliminary report did come
in for some criticism. Editorial ex
cerpts follow:
The Norfolk Virginian-Pilot:
“A primary weakness of the com
mission to this point has been its neg
ative attitude toward a problem that
can never be dealt with intelligently
by harsh limitations. The commission
has seemed to be concerned chiefly
with establishing a point of view in
Virginia. On the other hand, it has
done nothing, so far as the public
knows, about scholarly research into
extremely pertinent school conditions
m Virginia. It has made no study, so
far as the public knows, of any areas
(if such areas exist) where adjust-
m ents may be made with reasonable
satisfaction and public approval. It
has attempted no objective examina-
hon, so far as the public knows, of
various methods, procedures, and
Programs under discussion elsewhere
■—some of them seemingly extreme in
°ne direction or the other, but some
Possibly helpful in suggesting what
can or cannot be done in Virginia....
ff the commission is to present
something more than a purely nega-
Ive program, it has an enormous
amount of work to do in areas which,
so far as the public knows, it has not
J?t entered. Its duty is to do so. The
nnt fact is that, even under the
commission’s own definition, large
j an Ses in Virginia educational pol-
V and procedure are coming. To
repare for and guide wisely those
anges, the State needs a far higher
th^ sfntesmanlike leadership
D an ~f° this point—government has
shaded’ commission itself has
„, 0 ', vn - or the people themselves have
Produced.”
Vh »
.■Lamport News Times-Herald:
advi ® question ... is ... of the
Co nbility of shaping probable
cree S6S f ac ^ on before the final de-
ten 1 Supreme Court are writ-
before • 6 ^ VG desegregation cases
take tt, 1 *' ' ‘ ‘ "^be decrees may not
Prino’ i an ticipated form and the
deej. lp es fafd down in advance of
light % may have to be revised in the
cisi ons °,, bnal Supreme Court de-
Jl»
■ A ***°k. Times:
Work C ° mrr fi ss !° n which has been at
statem ° r mon ths comes up with a
°f the problem of which
a\v ar 0 y in this State has been
’ 6 ” ~ Court
Text Of Talk To N. C. Press Group
(The following is the text of a
talk by SERS Executive Director
C. A. McKnight before the North
Carolina Press Association in
Chapel Hill., N.C., Jan. 21.)
* * *
I N , talking to public groups about
the Supreme Court school deci
sion, I have found it useful—indeed
essential—to make an opening “Dec
laration of Independence.”
The Southern Education Reporting
Service of which I am currently serv
ing as director is NOT an advocate
in the segregation-desegregation is
sue. It is neither pro-segregation nor
pro-integration.
Accordingly, you will get no ex
pressions of opinion from me today,
no evaluation of what is good or what
is bad about what you in North Car
olina or the people in the other
states are doing to meet the problems
posed by the court decision.
Instead, I propose to give you a
brief factual review of regional de
velopments as we have watched them
from Nashville; to trace for you a
few of the trends that are shaping
up, though not yet definitive; to make
a plea for the “forgotten man” in
the discussion of the Supreme Court
decision; and to say a few words
about press coverage of the biggest
regional story of the century.
THREE CATEGORIES
In their reaction to the Supreme
Court decision, the 17 southern and
border states where segregated
schools have been required by law
range themselves roughly into three
loose categories:
1. The “do it now” states, includ
ing Delaware, West Virginia and
Missouri. In this group would come
the District of Columbia, also, though
here the legal authority of the Fed
eral Government was a major fac
tor in the decision to move toward
complete desegregation in 12 months.
These states have not waited for the
Supreme Court to issue its decrees,
but have begun desegregation in
varied measure in the current school
year.
2. The “wait and see” states. In
this group would fall Maryland,
Florida, Kentucky, Oklahoma, Ten
nessee, North Carolina, Virginia,
Texas, Arkansas and Alabama. In
Maryland, of course, the city of Bal
timore would be an exception. Balti
more desegregated its schools at the
beginning of the current school year.
In Alabama, a legislative study com
mission has recommended that legal
steps be taken to circumvent the
court decision, but until the Alabama
legislature acts favorably on that
recommendation, Alabama belongs
with the “wait and see” states. Ar
kansas, too, is almost an exception,
since two western Arkansas school
districts—Fayetteville and Charles
ton—desegregated their schools last
September without incident.
The “wait-and-see” states have
either done nothing, or have set
study groups to work analyzing the
probable impact of the court decision.
Once the formal decrees are issued,
some of these states will doubtless
move into the “do-it-now” cate
gories, and others may well move
into the third category:
3. The “unyielding resistance”
states, including Georgia, Mississippi,
South Carolina and Louisiana. In
these four states, statutory or consti
tutional changes have been made to
permit a drastic revision of their
school systems, even the abolition of
the public schools, if necessary to
preserve segregation.
TRENDS SHAPING UP
The developments of the past few
months permit the following obser
vations:
1. Among the “do-it-now” states,
Missouri appears to have moved to
ward desegregation with the least
maladjustment. Whether this is be
cause of extensive planning or strong
leadership, Missouri’s desegregation
program has been without incident.
2. Wherever desegregation has
been accomplished smoothly, school
boards and school administrators
have taken forceful, positive stands
and adhered to them.
3. Despite the headline prominence
given student strikes and picket lines
in Delaware, the District of Colum
bia and Baltimore, the number of
pupils engaged was never more than
a small fraction of the total integrat
ed student body. Since October,
there have been no further incidents
in these three places.
4. In virtually all of the states,
schools on military posts and Cath
olic parochial schools have under
gone some degree of desegregation.
5. Organized resistance to imple
mentation of the Supreme Court de
cision has developed in practically
every state, with varying degrees of
effectiveness.
6. In several instances in the “do-
it-now” states, there has been some
degree of faculty integration, usually
without tangible repercussions.
7. In an ever-increasing number,
parent-teacher associations, teachers’
associations, medical societies and
ministerial alliances are desegregat
ing.
8. In the “unyielding resistance”
states, there has been no perceptible
growth of a spirit of Klan-type vio
lence. Instead, leaders of the various
resistance organizations usually
stress that they will stay “within the
law” in maintaining segregated
schools.
9. In many of the states, unprece
dented state spending to equalize
white-Negro facilities is planned or
under way, perhaos in the belief that
equal facilities will persuade Negroes
to accept voluntary segregation.
10. Those states which have filed
briefs and the attorney general of
the United States agreed on the scope
and complexity of the desegregation
problem, and asked the Supreme
Court to give Federal district courts
wide latitude to consider variations
among the states and within each
state. The NAACP, on the other
hand, criticized “gradualism” in its
brief and set September, 1956, as the
“outside date” for full desegregation.
SUMMARY
If I may sum up, the South ap
pears to have weathered the May 17
decision so far without serious dam
age either to its public schools or to
the steadily-improving pattern of
race relations. It remains to be seen
whether there has been any appre
ciable change in the southern atti
tude toward desegregation, or
whether the events of the past offer
any clue to the end of events after
the Supreme Court issues formal de
crees in the five cases now before
it. In my opinion, the most signifi
cant single fact evident since last
May 17 is that the democratic proc
esses have been followed in all states,
including the “unyielding resist
ance” group. This, of course, is as it
should be.
THE SCHOOL ADMINISTRATOR
That having been said, I would
now like to turn your attention as
newspapermen to a man in your
community who has been overlooked
all too often in the public debate over
the Court decree. I speak of the
school administrator. And what I say
on this subiect are not my views, but
those of administrators with whom I
have talked these last few months.
The reversal of the “separate-but-
equal” doctrine raised many per
plexing new questions for a region
■which has long had more than its
share of problems. These questions
are of many kinds—social, cultural,
economic, political. In the months
following the decision, all of them
seemed difficult to answer. But none
appeared more complex than the
questions facing southern school ad
ministrators if desegregation in fact
as well as in law is to become a
reality in the next few years.
It is of considerable significance
that most of the discussion of the
court decision and its impact on ed
ucation has taken place in the po
litical arena rather than the educa
tional, and that most of the planning
either to comply with or evade the
court opinion has been done by poli
ticians rather than educators. This is
understandable, and it is not neces
sarily bad, for it shows how closely
school policy and public policy are
interwoven.
Even so, it means that the school
administrator will be largely limited
by the decisions made by others—
either governors and legislatures, or
state boards of education.
It is also important to remember
that the school administrator is
somewhat of a prisoner in another
sense. He is acutely conscious that
in his community or district, there
are sharp cross-currents of opinion
on this delicate issue. He cannot, save
at considerable personal risk, take a
very active role in the public dis
cussion of the issue.
HE SHOULD BE HEARD
Yet his voice ought to be heard.
The administrative problems alone
which would result from general de
segregation are as complex as the
larger socio-politico-economic prob
lems of the region. Let us look at a
few of them through the eyes of the
administrator, once again assuming
that the Supreme Court meant what
it said and said what it meant, and
that its decrees, whether flexible or
rigid, will either encourage or impel
the southern region toward deseg
regation of its public schools.
The first of these is the equaliza
tion of school facilities. In spite of
the tremendous investment in Negro
schools in the postwar era, facilities
for Negro children are still substan
tially inferior to those for white chil
dren in most of the region. Desegre
gation at a time when classroom
space is still at a premium would
inevitably mean that some white
children would have to go to schools
in inferior buildings formerly used
exclusively by Negroes. This would
create a new source of dissatisfac
tion with the inferior facilities from
white narents and a corresnonding
demand for their improvement.
Yet this greater demand for equal
ization of facilities may run into in
creased resistance in influential
quarters to new expenditures of tax
funds for schools. No clear-cut pat
tern has yet been established, but
there is evidence in the region that
local bond issues and local tax leg
islation for the improvement of Ne
gro school facilities are meeting
stronger resistance growing out of
public uncertainty about desegrega
tion—even in those states where
there is large state spending.
TEACHER PROBLEM
The teacher shortage is not new,
but it may well taken on different
proportions if desegregation becomes
a reality. The shortage of qualified
Negro teachers is relatively small,
and presumably it will remain small
because of the superior economic ad
vantage that teaching offers the
Negro in the South. Under de
segregation, however, many school
administrators fear that public re
action to integrated faculties would
be even less favorable than to in
tegrated classes. If this should prove
to be true, desegregation might re
sult in a decreasing number of
teaching opportunities for Negroes
without a corresnonding increase in
the supply of white teachers, thus
creating an even more critical teach
er shortage.
Redistricting in one degree or an
other is almost a certainty if the Su
preme Court opinion is translated
into realistic decrees. For nearly two
decades, the trend in the South has
been toward larger, more efficient
school districts. “Gerrymandering”
to circumvent the court’s decrees,
especially in the rural sections where
there is little segregated housing,
might well reverse that trend and
create thousands of new districts,
some of them tiny pockets. From the
standpoint of the administrator, this
would approach chaos.
INSTRUCTIONAL PROBLEM
The southern administrator who
has done any thinking at all about
integrated classes is conscious of still
another problem—for the first few
years at least. Not because of any
racial characteristic but because of
uneaual opportunity beginning at the
family level and continuing through
the schools, the average Negro child
is not so far along educationally as
the white child in his same age
group. The administrator and his
teachers already have to cope with
the instructional problem growing
out of the normal classroom division
of the less able, the average, and
the gifted students. If suddenly this
division should become heavily
weighted at the lower end. new in
structional policies would have to be
adopted. In fact the opinion has al
ready been expressed by one noted
southern educator that desegregation
may nullify one of the most cher
ished principles of modern progres
sive education by restoring the
grouping of children according to
ability.
Perhaps the greatest problem of all
facing the southern school adminis
trator in the new decade will be the
providing of the kind of leadership
that will encourage a sane, unemo
tional, objective attitude on the part
of the community, the faculty, and
the children. His work has to go on,
regardless of what the Supreme
Court does. There are teachers to be
employed, classrooms to be built,
children to be educated. Schools can
not be run successfully in an at
mosphere of tension, emotionalism,
dissatisfaction. Yet the southern
school administrator himself, in more
cases than not, is personally oriented
to segregation. Large-scale deseg
regation would force him not only
to overcome his own reservations,
but to find some way to enlist
broader community support for de
segregated schools than is now in
prospect.
A YEAR OF CHALLENGE
So it was that the South in the
year 1954 moved toward what will
perhaps be the greatest test of dem
ocratic principles in the region since
1860. And because the school is both
the producer and the product of de
mocracy, the school administrator
was caught squarely between the
crossfire from those who would com
ply with the court opinion and those
who would defy it, even to the point
of abolishing the public school sys
tem.
The administrator’s lot was not a
happy one, but it was not entirely
dismal. He faced not only a big prob
lem, but also an opportunity of large
proportions. For the first time in
modern history, there was no longer
public apathy about the schools, but
rather a burning new public inter
est—interest, it is true, that was kin
dled by the Supreme Court decision,
but an interest which went far beyond
the issue of whether or not white
and Negro children should sit side by
side in the classroom. In sum, here
was an opportunity for the school
administrator to direct this new pub
lic interest not only toward the so-
luion of the segregation-desegreoa-
tion problem, but also toward the
solution of the manv other educa
tional problems that have tradition
ally beset the region.
NEWSPAPER OPPORTUNITY
It is also an opportunity for the
newspaper editor. There is more to
the story of the Supreme Court de
cision than the discussion of its phil
osophical aspects, the unrooting of
established legal precedents, the ma
neuvering of legislatures and the
outcome of constitutional amend
ments referenda. There are many
hard practical administrative prob
lems that go straight to the core of
our public school system.
The newspaper that looks at all
dimensions of this story is rendering
a real service to its readers. I can
testify from my own experience in
Nashville that the people of the
South are hungry for more news on
the subiect. Regardless of their con
victions. they want to know what is
hannening elsewhere, and thev
would like to have events elsewhere
interpreted in terms of their own lo
cal conditions.
I can testify further that objectiv
ity can be attained in covering even
so controversial a story as this, and
that people on both sides of the issue
want objectivity.
That is the newspaper’s job—to
give the people all the obiective facts
that can be had, so that they may ar
rive at wise decisions by democratic
processes.
Many subjects compete for your
attention, but I know of no regional
story in this century that is closer
to the minds and hearts of your read
ers, that may have a greater impact
on our vital system of public ed
ucation, or that is a greater test of
our democratic processes, than the
segregation-desegregation story. If
through your news and editorial col
umns vou help the people resolve
the philosophical and practical nrob-
lems posed by the Supreme Court,
you will accomplish the journalistic
miracle of the Twentieth Century.