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SOUTHERN SCHOOL NEWS—Feb. 3. 1955—PAGE 5
Kentucky
LOUISVILLE, Ky.
ELAY by the Supreme Court of
rulings implementing its May 17
decision probably means that a new
state administration will have to
work out the details of Kentucky’s
integration program.
Kentucky’s biennial legislature
does not meet this year. Gov. Law
rence W. Wetherby, who long ago
announced his intention “to comply
with the law as set forth by the Su
preme Court,” and who last Novem
ber refused to join seven other
southern governors in a protest
against integration, is not eligible to
succeed himself. The primaries next
August, when a new governor, other
high officials, all 100 members of the
State House of Representatives and
half those of the 38-seat State Senate
will be nominated, are expected to
be the hottest—at least for the domi
nant Democrats—that Kentucky has
experienced in many years.
Personalities and factionalism,
however, not integration, are expect
ed to account for the heat. Integration
has not yet been injected as an issue
by anyone. Administration support
ers believe that the Wetherby line of
postponing action until the Supreme
Court rules explicitly on what must
be done and how, and then to comply
with that, will keep integration out
of Kentucky’s 1955 politics.
The chief clash, however, is ex
pected to be between Judge Bert T.
Combs, supported by the Wetherby-
Barkley-Clements or “administra
tion” group for the Democratic gub
ernatorial nomination, and A. B.
“Happy” Chandler, former governor,
senator, and baseball commissioner
linked in the past with States’ Rights
forces opposed to integration.
COMMITTEE MEETS
Late in December Gov. Wetherby
held his first meeting with his ad
visory committee on desegregation,
appointed last July. Continuing study
was promised by the eight-person
board, two of whom are Negroes, be
fore its ideas and suggestions are
submitted to the March meeting of
the state board of education.
In Louisville, where roughly one-
third of Kentucky’s Negroes live,
City School Supt. Omer Carmichael
was re-elected for another four-year
term by the city board of education
on Jan. 24. Mr. Carmichael, who last
summer initiated continuing staff-
level studies and parent-teacher dis
cussions of desegregation problems,
told a Negro business club earlier in
the month: “As for me, the govern
ment has spoken, and I expect to im
plement the integration program, as
the board of education has directed,
in whatever way the court decrees.”
On Jan. 24, another Louisville par
ent teacher group, which also in
cludes members from the eastern end
of Jefferson County, devoted a sec
ond meeting to discussion of integra
tion problems. This was the Eastern
Council on Moral and Spiritual
Values, a white organization.
The Council had ended a similar
discussion at its November meeting
with agreement that the next session
would include Negro guests. About
20 of these, parents and teachers,
were on hand for the January meet
ing, including two panel members,
Dr. Charles H. Parrish, professor of
sociology at the University of Louis
ville, and Miss Viola Baker, of the
Duval Junior High School. Other
panel members were Dr. Hugh A.
Brimm, president of the Kentucky
Council on Human Relations and pro
fessor of sociology and human rela
tions at the Carver School of Mis
sions and Social Work, and Dr. Her
bert Waller, Associate Rabbi of
Temple Adath Israel.
FAST CHANGE URGED
Consensus of the panel-and-audi-
ence discussion was that integration
should come, that it was the law of
the land, and that study should be
devoted to achieving it in the best
possible manner. Negro speakers
generally advocated fast progress but
not at the cost of increasing the diffi
culties of transition. “It is the desire
of all parents,” Miss Baker said,
“that their children reach the high
est possible attainments, moral as
well as legal.”
Advocating church participation in
smoothing the way to transition, Dr.
Waller said that “Organized religion
should be an instrument of social
change. On the basis of moral and
spiritual values, no church can up
hold segregation.”
The luncheon meeting, attended by
125 persons, was held at the Univer
sity of Louisville School of Music.
On Feb. 9 police officers from all
over the South will hear a four-man
panel discuss the Supreme Court rul
ing and its implications—and quiz
the panelists. The Southern Police
Institute of the University of Louis
ville will present Thurgood Marshall,
special counsel of the NAACP, on
implications of the ruling and what
can be looked for in the future; Hod-
ding Carter, Pulitzer-Prize-winning
Mississippi editor, on the decision’s
impact on the South; Weldon James
Louisville Courier-Journal editorial
writer, on the historical background
of the segregation fight; and Mark
Ethridge, publisher of The Courier-
Journal, as moderator. The morning
session will be open to university
students, faculty and community
guests; the afternoon session will be
limited to Police Institute personnel.
In neighboring Ohio students of
segregation litigation are awaiting a
ruling on the Hillsboro case, in which
NAACP lawyers contend a school
zoning resolution adopted last year
amounts to segregation. The case was
initiated in 1954, but U. S. District
Judge John H. Druffel in Cincinnati
declined to rule pending a further
ruling by the U. S. Supreme Court.
On Dec. 29, however, after NAACP
attorneys had petitioned the U. S.
Court of Appeals, Sixth Circuit, to
order him to rule, Judge Druffel
heard additional evidence.
The school board contends its zon
ing resolution was designed to pre
vent overcrowding of two schools,
and that as soon as school additions
are completed Lincoln School, now
all-Negro, will be abandoned and its
pupils integrated. Two formerly all-
white schools now have 12 Negro
pupils.
Attorneys for both sides asked for
a transcript of the proceedings in the
two-part hearing. The court reporter
said he could not complete the rec
ord for several weeks, and Judge
Druffel said after the hearing that he
could not rule until the record was
available.
The Carl Braden story continued.
(See earlier issues of SSN for back
ground): Convicted on Dec. 13 for
advocating sedition, Braden was
formally sentenced by Criminal
Court Judge L. R. Curtis on Jan. 17
to 15 years’ imprisonment and pay
ment of a $5,000 fine. Judge Curtis
sustained a motion for an appeal, and
set Braden’s appeal bond at $40,000.
Later Judge Curtis overruled a mo
tion to have Braden declared a pau
per (a transcript necessary for the
appeal would cost him $4,000, the
court stenographer estimated). Earli
er, on Jan. 17, the American Civil
Liberties Union announced appoint-
ent of Louisville attorney Louis Lus-
ky as co-counsel for Braden in his
appeal.
The ACLU’s interest, according to
Executive Director Patrick Murphy
Malin in a New York statement, “is in
the constitutional rights of all Amer
icans; the organization took no posi
tion on the factual questions involved
in the trial.” It was taking action, he
said, “only because of the large num
ber of important civil-liberties issues
in the appeal, some of which have
not been resolved previously by the
courts.”
Florida
MIAMI, Fla.
pLORIDA has had its second inci
dent in which a family was forced
to remove its children from a white
school on the accusation that they
were part Negro. Again the scene was
midstate Lake county and again a
figure in the case was Sheriff Willis
McCall.
The latest incident involved Mon
roe Taylor, his wife and twin step
sons, Lloyd and Floyd, 15. Taylor
came to Florida from Dillon, S. C., to
seek work as a fruit picker. The boys
enrolled in an Avon Park school
where they remained briefly before
transferring to the school at Eustis.
At midnight on Jan. 11, the Taylor
family was aroused by a noise at the
door of their small rented quarters.
This is Mrs. Taylor’s description of
what happened.
‘I told my husband he better go to
the door,
‘When he opened the door he was
SUr Prised to see the crowd of men
standing and walking around the
yard.
The larger of the two men at the
door told my husband: We don’t
w ant any trouble in our schools,’ and
ordered him to take the boys out and
kave town.”
Taylor, a World War II veteran
w ho fought in France, and his wife,
^ ere laid off by their employer earlier
-at day. When Taylor was notified
. 4 be was no longer needed and
?ryen his back pay, he was handed an
envelope which his employer, Elmer
aatam, said had been left for him
at the office.
<,>Jt contained a card with the words,
, u Kltix Klan, Mt. Dora, Fla.”
janted in large block letters. There
as no other message. Mt. Dora is
y a short distance from Eustis, in
e same county.
tr C m atam t°ld Taylor that the
°uble over the school attendance
w accusa tion that his stepsons
wfuf ,f. art Negro had nothing to do
Mr t ^missal. He said Mr. and
tk e ' Taylor were laid off because
;„„ re , Was no more work at the pack-
,n 8 Plant.
'NDIAN BLOOD
htdian 01 " Sa *^ that his wife is part
TT>e father of the boys was a
a ft er e , ^ nan who deserted his family
the K 6y were bom. Taylor married
bvirT J**^ one d wife and adopted the
s^d as tbs own. One has light
tsrk^h ■*’ the other has straight
The boys attended white schools at
McCall, Hamer, Little Rock, and Clio
in South Carolina, as well as schools
in North Carolina where Taylor
worked on farms. Taylor said no
question of their racial origins ever
had been raised and they were con
sidered to be white.
After the incident at Eustis, the
Taylors packed their belongings and
headed back to South Carolina. Tay
lor said he would make no issue. “I
could make a case of it,” he declared.
“But I want to protect my family, so
I’ll leave.”
C. A. Wilson, superintendent of the
schools at Eustis, said the Taylor
twins had been accepted as transfers
from the Avon Park school and were
considered white by the school au
thorities. They mixed well with their
fellow pupils. There had been no
complaints.
THE PLATT CASE
The Taylor episode developed only
a short time after a special investi
gator for Gov. LeRoy Collins had
checked into a previous incident in
volving the Platt family. The five
Platt children were barred from the
school at Mt. Dora, on complaint of
Shreiff McCall that they had Negro
blood. The Platts maintained they
were part Indian.
The study of the Platt case by Col
lins’ emissary was conducted on a
confidential basis. The identity of the
investigator was not disclosed. The
governor said this would allow him
to check the facts without being sub
jected to community or individual
pressures.
Collins had been in office only a
few days when he was faced with
this problem. He received a letter
from Platt, whose situation was al
most identical with that of Taylor.
Platt protested that his children were
being denied an education since they
were forced out of school in October.
“Mr. McCall is sheriff of Lake
county and I am told that it is danger
ous in this county to antagonize him
and that many law-abiding citizens
are afraid of him,” Platt wrote in his
appeal for a state-level investigation.
“My experience with him shows
this to be true. I am helpless under
those conditions. I have no other re
course but to appeal to you to make
a thorough investigation so that jus
tice may be done.”
In announcing receipt of the letter,
Gov. Collins said,
“Platt asked for an investigation
and he makes a prima facie case
which justifies one. An investigation
will be made and made promptly.”
There has been no announcement
of the outcome of this investigation.
No further word has come, either,
from a study by the Federal Bureau
of Investigation requested by Federal
District Atty, James L. Guilmartin,
Miami, to determine if the Platts’
civil rights had been violated.
HOST AT BARBECUE
The incident involving the Taylor
family occurred only a few hours
after Sheriff McCall played host to
the Florida Sheriff’s Association at a
barbecue in Eustis.
At this affair, State Sen. B. C.
Pearce of Palatka praised McCall for
his handling of the Platt case. Pearce
called McCall “one of the greatest
law enforcement officers in Florida.”
McCall is immediate past president
of the Sheriffs’ Association. He has
been active in the National Associa
tion for the Advancement of White
People, and spoke under its auspices
at Milford, Del.
This sequence of events prompted
editorial comment by several news
papers. They called attention to the
“guinea pig” study of public senti
ment on the Supreme Court’s segre
gation ruling which Atty. Gen. Rich
ard W. Ervin had made before prep
aration of his brief suggesting grad
ual approach to integration.
This study cited “a widespread lack
of confidence in the ability of peace
officers to maintain law and order
...” if trouble develops as the result
of integration. “This is particularly
true of the peace officers themselves,”
the report added, pointing out that a
majority of the peace officers re
sponding to the questionnaire fa
vored continued segregation.
CASE BEFORE COURT
A legal action for admission of a
Negro student in which the Supreme
Court decision was specifically cited
came before the Florida Supreme
Court. It was a petition in behalf of
Virgil Hawkins, 48-year-old public
relations director of Bethune-Cook-
man College in Daytona Beach.
Hawkins is seeking admission to the
University of Florida’s law school.
The suit actually was begun in
1949 when Hawkins and four other
Negroes asked the court to order
their admission on grounds that equal
facilities were lacking elsewhere. On
three occasions the hieh court held
that Florida A & M University for
Negroes at Tallahassee did provide
suitable educational opportunities.
In renewing the action and citing
the May 17 decision as grounds,
Horace E. Hill, Daytona Beach at
torney, said the issue raised would
not affect the public schools. Nor
would it break the still-existing ban
in the state constitution against the
mixture of races in public schools.
On this point, Mrs. Constance Mot
ley, New York attorney associated
in the appeal, told the court:
“In this case the court is not faced
with conditions of wide applicabil
ity. This applies only to the graduate
law school of the University of Flor
ida and would not affect file public
schools.”
In legislative caucuses now in
progress over the state, in prepara
tion for the session that begins in
May, opinion is expressed that the
segregation issue must be faced.
Florida’s legislature meets biennially
and if no action is taken this year, the
next opportunity, other than at a
special session, will be in the summer
of 1957. However, no concrete pro
posal has been advanced as a basis
for discussion. The only leader to take
a definite stand is State Sen. Charley
E. Johns, who has just stepped down
as acting governor.
Johns is heading a drive for an ap
peal to Congress for a constitutional
amendment leaving the question of
racial makeup of public schools to
the states.
So far the struggle—if any—is en
tirely behind the scenes.
PUBLIC DISCUSSION
Elsewhere the public discussion re
mained lively. The Tampa Tribune’s
political writer, Jim Powell, selected
Atty. Gen. Ervin as Florida’s “man of
the year,” basing the citation on
Ervin’s ‘leadership in guiding Flor
ida through the first sensitive months
that followed the.... decision against
segregation in the schools.
“Ervin could have chosen the easy
path that some southern states
took, simply ignoring the decision
rather than trying to make the best of
it. He gambled his political future in
a statesmanlike presentation of Flor
ida’s case for long delay and substan
tial local option.
“Only a few men like Lake county’s
Sheriff McCall waved the bloody
banner of racial prejudice. Ervin
urged moderation and calm.
“Despite the early uncertainties
and perils that followed the edict,
Ervin stepped into the vacuum and
helped lead Florida toward a general
ly safe and sane approach.”
Others spoke up. At a public forum
sponsored by the Greater Miami
Chapter, American Jewish Commit
tee, Dr. Kurt Peiser, former vice
president of the University of Penn
sylvania, said:
“The implementation of the Su
preme Court decision on public
school segregation is a responsibility
not only for our law enforcement
agencies but for all private citizens
who are actively involved in the life
of their communities.”
Segregation was the theme of the
national convention in Miami of the
Alpha Phi Alpha fraternity, first
organized at Cornell in 1906 for Ne
gro students and opened to white
membership as well in 1946.
Dr. A. Maceo Smith of Dallas, fra
ternity president, urged the United
States to set a world standard in
handling the segregation issue.
“The time has come for America to
close ranks in its defense to develop
a bulwark and fortress—and ex
amples so set will lessen tensions
throughout the world,” Dr. Smith
said.
He predicted that integration will
be effected throughout the South
without violence, and urged “edu
cation and orientation of both white
and Negro citizens in the moral as
pects of the problem.”
Another national figure, Sen. Rus
sell Long, of Louisiana, discussed
segregation in a Florida address. He
cited the Supreme Court decision as
illustrating “a tendency to use the
ends to justify the means.”
Tuskegee Abandons
Report On Lynehings
TUSKEGEE, Ala.
Tuskegee Institute, in its first an
nual survey of racial problems in
the U. S., praises the Supreme Court’s
May 17 decision outlawing segrega
tion in public schools. The decision,
the survey says, "allows the individ
ual freedom to work out race rela
tions rather than legally denying or
restricting freedom in their being
worked out.”
The new survey replaces the old
annual lynching report which for
many years had been used by the fa
mous Negro school as a yardstick for
measuring racial friction, or the ab
sence of it.
Pres. L. H. Foster abandoned the
lynching survey after the report for
1953. He said it no longer serves as
an accurate index of racial progress.
The 1954 survey points to the
“great body of laws on the statute
books . . . legislating race relations.”
Such laws, the surveys suggests, hin
der rather than help racial rela
tions.
But the Supreme Court’s decision
shows the way toward a “permissive”
doctrine which would remove legal
bans and permit “individual freedom
to work out race relations,” the sur
vey concludes.