About Southern school news. (Nashville, Tenn.) 1954-1965 | View Entire Issue (March 3, 1955)
Maryland Continued From Page 10 segregated residential blocks, home- owner resentment over property changes, transient workers of south ern sympathies, and the presence of some colored families more well-to- do than some of their white neigh bors. Yet in late September and early October when at a few schools in Baltimore mothers were picketing, students were parading, and the police were moving in to break up the beginnings of violence—all be cause of a minimum amount of racial integration—School 74 went right along with its classwork unin terrupted. PRINCIPAL’S ROLE The key to successful integration at School 74, by all accounts, is Miss Elizabeth Storm, its principal since 1942. Miss Storm was bom in Meridian, Miss., and went to school in New Orleans and Virginia. She has been a part of the school com munity during nearly all the period of old families breaking up and new groups moving in. If she has any feelings of her own on the subject, however, she keeps them to herself. Her whole purpose in life is to keep her school running smoothly and to give her pupils—all her pupils—the best possible training. They come before anything else. Miss Storm believes, and has proved, that adjustments to a racial ly integrated school system can be made without rancor if parents have confidence in their school, its prin cipal and its teachers. She knew, as soon as the Baltimore School Board adopted a policy of immediate com pliance with the Supreme Court de cision, that the character of the neighborhood which her school served was such that she was go ing to have a heavily mixed enroll ment—the heaviest in the city, as it turned out. And she lost no time in preparing for it. Miss Storm does not believe in trying to indoctrinate children with new concepts, or to adjust their at titudes in advance, or to make them psychologically ready for integration, or anything of the sort. Miss Storm believes, as Baltimore’s superintend ent of schools, Dr. John H. Fischer, believes, that if integration is treated naturally by the teachers, the chil dren will treat it naturally—and the less advance talk about it, the easier the adjustment. talked to staff So Miss Storm from the start had long talks with her all-white staff, Pointing out that the change of policy had been made and that it was their responsibility, regardless °f personal feelings on the subject, to make the change as easy as possi ble for the children and for the school. One point that she particu- a rly stressed, Miss Storm now re calls, was that they would be work- mg with a new generation of colored children, children whose impressions of white people would be based for e rest of their lives at least in part on their school experiences and their re r a tl°ns with their teachers. Then came the parents, with their questions, anxieties and precon- ceived ideas of what would or would hot work. Miss Storm’s theory is , hf parents are reasonable if given u 1 time to talk frankly, if given full ®hd frank answers, and if given a chance to see for themselves. She d her staff put the theory into Practice through the late spring, “Urrimer and fall. The door was al- ays °pen. All questions were dis- hssed and answered. And the neigh- rhood had confidence that when oi f S ] ‘?f° rrn said things would work all right at School 74, they really would. th^hen classes opened in the fall, th* 2 Shhool was jampacked, with all ® problems that overcrowding al- m brings. Miss Storm gives tre- 0 j hdous credit to her staff, a group can^ ri ° Usly devoted teachers, for f as , yin S on in their natural, normal tg for not trying to force in- j^atron, for letting the children Sea , ar 33 Possible choose their own e ach Partners and for handling t}j a) . the questions and problems wnc arose on an individual basis, no set rules. Whi l 111 ® the school disturbances, began in South Baltimore ‘ SOUTHERN SCHOOL NEWS—March 3, 1955—PAGE II .Louisiana Louisiana’s Negro School Population THE SIZE OF Louisiana’s equaliza tion problem is graphically illustrated by this map of the state. The numbers represent the percentage of Negro “per-educables” in the individual parishes (counties). The “per-educa- ble” figure is the number of school- age children for which support is paid by the state to the local school board. GULF OF MEXICO Louisiana NEW ORLEANS, La. about three weeks after the opening of classes in the fall, School 74 was a subject of some of the general un rest. Someone using the names of teachers called white parents and told them that trouble was brewing, that there might be riots and that they should keep their children at home. But there was not much absenteeism at School 74 during the troubled period. Many parents checked with Miss Storm, in whom they had confidence, and when she said that it was perfectly safe for children to come to school, they be lieved her. When a group of white mothers on one occasion gathered in front of the school, Miss Storm went right out and asked what was troubling them. They said they had heard the Negro children were carrying knives. Miss Storm told them that it wasn’t true, but that the street was no place to discuss it. “Come inside,” she told the mothers, “and we’ll talk about the whole thing and you can see for yourselves.” The white mothers went inside and were satisfied that everything was going smoothly. And then when Negro mothers gathered to learn what the white mothers had been after, Miss Storm told them, too, to come in off the street and talk about it inside. There she explained to them exactly what was bothering the white parents and the impor tance of not having anyone duped into being afraid and starting trouble that would do nobody any good. Throughout the three days of school disorders elsewhere in the city, Miss Storm kept the street in front of her school free of crowds by the simple process of inviting moth ers inside to talk and see for them selves that the rumors they heard were unfounded. She carried the process straight through to after noon closing time, having mothers come inside to pick up small chil dren instead of waiting for them outside. With no crowd on the street, parents had no hesitation about sending their children to school; also, with no crowd present, there was no chance for a few hotheads or professional troublemakers to stir up mob action. NO TENSION NOW Today at School 74 white and Negro children can be seen sitting naturally together, working together, whispering together. No tension, strain or uneasiness is apparent. White children are withdrawing from the school as their families move to other neighborhoods, but new white pupils are entering the school, too, along with the new Negro pupils. Anyone watching as School 74 lets out will see the sight familiar every where at such a time: kids pouring out, yelling, pushing, chasing each other, making faces, etc.—all on a racially mixed basis. But after the initial scramble, the white children go off together in one direction, the colored children in another, and the neighborhood pattern of segregation prevails, with a few exceptions, until nine o’clock the next morning. Under the Baltimore system of letting parents choose, as far as is possible, the schools which they want their children to attend, the parents of white children at School 74 have had the privilege of asking that their children be transferred to some other school with fewer or (for the time being) no Negro chil dren. But only about half a dozen such transfers have taken place. Nearly all the white parents want their children in the neighborhood school, where they have confidence in the principal and the teachers. This does not mean that problems of one sort or another do not con tinue to arise. As late as February, when the Southern School News reporter was at School 74, a white mother had expressed concern over who her daughter’s partner in a Virginia reel was to be and had to be reassured that nobody at School 74 was forcing children to mix or interfering with the natural process of selection when children choose partners. But all such problems are being handled quietly and with the mutual understanding between staff and parents that was developed earnestly and early. “We simply lived with our people,” Miss Storm explains. “We talked and we tried ■to explain things.” And it worked. A MAMMOTH state school build ing program designed to equal ize white-Negro facilities is shaping up in this Deep South state after a lengthy series of conferences. Louisiana’s untold oil riches have been the object since early this year of a tussle between proponents of a big highway building program and the supporters of a school building program. The extent of the stateowned tide- lands wealth is not known. Last year some 49 million dollars came from oil bonuses, a large increase over the previous year. In only one bid ding thus far this year, 21 million dollars poured into the state’s coffers from oil companies seeking choice locations. The state still has some two million acres of potential oil lands not under lease. A survey is presently being made by an independent geological firm to determine, approximately, the state’s oil potential. A preliminary report is expected within 30 days. Furthermore, the oil bonus money is only one of three sources of oil revenue for the state. In addition there are the state’s oil royalties— last year at 21 million dollars—and the state’s oil rentals. It is over this large source of rev enue that the highway and school forces have been battling. COMPROMISE PLAN Following a series of conferences in Baton Rouge, it now appears that this compromise agreement was set tled upon: • Schools will receive 220 mil lion dollars over the next five years, with 99 million dollars to be given out next year. • Highways will receive 450 mil lion dollars over the next 20 years to help pay for an overall 1.6 billion dollar highway program over the next 10 years. One final series of conferences is scheduled before definite commit ments are made. Gov. Robert F. Kennon has said, publicly, that he believes there will be enough money from the tidelands to take care of both the highway and school needs. State Sen. W. M. Rainach of Sum- merfield, chairman of a state legisla tive committee to find means of cir cumventing the Supreme Court ruling, has said before that 99 mil lion dollars will be needed next year to begin an all-out “equalization” building program. Sen. Rainach’s committee has re cently completed a survey of the state’s school needs. SPECIAL SESSION If complete agreement is reached between highway forces, led by Sen. James Sparks of Monroe, and the education group, led by State Supt. of Education Shelby Jackson, it is very possible that a special session of the legislature will be called in mid-March. The Louisiana legislature meets every two years to discuss general business. The last general session, in May of 1954, set aside a 30-day fiscal session in the off-years. However, by constitutional amendment, this ses sion cannot consider any business other than that dealing with finances unless there is a three-fourths vote of the legislators. There has been some doubt that the dedication of these vast sums of money for long-range projects would fall in the province of a “strictly fiscal” session. Legislation is also needed to en able the highway department and the education department to set up their long-range programs. Therefore, political reports from Baton Rouge have it that a special session—the second of this year— will be called for mid-March. The fiscal session will meet May 9. The constitution prohibits the governor from calling a special session within 30 days of the next regularly sched uled session. On Jan. 3 the governor called the first special session of the year. The two legislative bodies met and ap proved the appropriation and pledg ing of 50 million dollars in tidelands surpluses to the highway program. SCHOOL PLAN PROBLEMS Before the school equalization plan goes to the legislature, some major problems will have to be ironed out. By provisions of the state consti tution, every parish (county) and municipality of the state is em powered to assess a property tax dedicated to local schools. Some cities—New Orleans and Shreveport, for example—have gone beyond the minimum. Other cities have not. Therefore, the education group will have to draw up some standards for local tax assessments. There is also the problem of whether or not the state should bear all the cost of building schools—or whether local governments should be asked to furnish some percentage of matching funds. In the past, Louisiana schools have been built entirely with local funds. As a consequence, some sections of the state—Shreveport is a good ex ample—have adequate equal facili ties. Others do not. As one upstate legislator put it: “Should we lose our share of this money and be forced to give it to somebody else just because they were too lazy and didn’t want to tax themselves before?” OTHER DEVELOPMENTS On other fronts, Gov. Kennon has said that he will ask “emergency” legislation on a bill to build a Negro state college in Lafayette, La. By court order, Negroes have been admitted to Southwestern Louisiana Institute in Lafayette since the fall semester. In ruling on the case, Federal Judge “Chug” Hunter said that Southwestern must admit Ne groes beause there is no state college for Negroes in that area of the state. Gov. Kennon has estimated that it will cost between three and five million dollars to build the new col lege. If approved, it will give Louisiana three state colleges for Negroes— Grambling at Ruston, Southern at Baton Rouge, and the new college at Lafayette. In addition, there are two private Negro colleges at New Orleans— Xavier and Dillard. Also on the college front, A. P. Tureaud, New Orleans attorney for the National Association for the Ad vancement of Colored People, has said that he will again ask the fed eral district court to order Louisiana State University to admit his son as its first Negro undergraduate. Louisiana State is already accept ing Negroes in its graduate schools. The United States Fifth Circuit Court of Appeals recently handed down a judgment sending the long- pending case back to the district court to be considered in the light of last May’s Supreme Court decision. Young Tureaud applied for ad mission to LSU in August, 1953, and was rejected. A suit was filed, and District Judge J. Skelly Wright ordered Tureaud accepted by LSU. In October, however, the court of appeals reversed Judge Wright and Tureaud, who had by then been accepted as a student by LSU, was again rejected and left the univer sity.
