Newspaper Page Text
SOUTHERN SCHOOL NEWS—June 8, 1955—PAGE II
Questions
Continued From Page 10
much leeway in details to the federal
district courts, which it need not have
done. Presumably it will allow sim-
j] ar leeway in future cases that come
before it. Undoubtedly, the court
chose this non-rigorous course for
reasons which it deemed to be of vast
importance.
16. Is the Supreme Court’s decision
sufficiently definite that a lower fed
eral court sitting on one case will
necessarily be guided by it to the
same result as is reached by another
federal court sitting on another case?
A. No. Differences in details both
as to administrative arrangements
and as to timing of desegregation are
expressly permitted by the court’s
decision. But general patterns of de
cision may be expected to emerge
as time goes on.
17. Who has the responsibility for
initiating specific plans for compli
ance with the decision?
A. The officials of each school dis
trict. But if and when such plans
come before the courts (as in the
cases now pending or in future liti
gation in other districts) the federal
courts will have broad supervisory
powers, not only to approve or dis
approve specific plans submitted to
them but also to suggest, discard and
select among alternative plans, and
ultimately to require submission of
an acceptable plan.
18. If a local school board fails or
refuses to submit a plan that can be
judicially approved, what sanctions
may a federal district court apply?
A. Punishment for contempt, which
may be either by fine or imprison
ment.
19. How detailed must local plans
be?
A. That is as yet undecided, but
clearly depends on the problems in
each community. A plan for com
plete and immediate integration
could be quite brief, with little detail,
or it could be detailed and complex.
20. Is a federal district court free
to order desegregation in a particu
lar district at any time it thinks prop
er, for example in September, 1955
or February, 1956?
A. Yes. But the procedure required,
whereby the district first submits a
plan, will probably preclude any
court from acting by September, 1955.
And of course, the power of any
court to act is limited to parties and
cases actually before it.
21. Are the federal district court
Permitted to take into account loca
Public opinion in determining wha
Plans they will approve?
A- Not necessarily. It is very clea
hat public opinion must not be al
°wed to override the constitutions
mandate. But it will be difficult fo
mdges to overlook such opinion i]
Passing upon certain matters whic]
. expressly authorized to con'
SI j 1 ! n a PP rov ing the administratio]
aod timing of desegregation plans.
2. Is it possible that some scho<
astricts may submit plans whic
°uid Permit gerrymandered attend
ce districts, or circuitous admin
rative procedures, designed to kee
setf 1 ^ stuc ' ents ou t of particuls
Prdbabl 1S DOt ° nly P ossible but high]
»■?' any federal district court
“PProve such a plan?
Mo t ^°. me lower courts may do so.
that' n °t- It can be anticipated
Dot <J n attendance districts which are
r tlent Compact units,” student assign-
on a s y s tems that are administered
\vj]i r a°ial basis, and similar evasions
most f 6 inv alidated eventually and
the c° them will be invalidated by
st court that deals with them.
disi.-^f a Plan is approved by a
v ers=? c °urt is Supreme Court re-
SaJ assured?
Court* the Case gets to the Supreme
req U] - ’ eva sion of the constitutional
d°,., li r( vj len t will surely be struck
to ^°t all cases automatically go
Whett, 6 Supreme Court, however,
• pa-.- 61 ibe Supreme Court reviews
h°W J, C r, ar case w iH depend both on
Wy e 6 Ibe case is handled by the
cro,;^ P re senting it, and on the
Co,. ,, condition of the Supreme
n s docket.
25. What is the status of Negro
teachers now?
A. The Supreme Court does not
mention this problem. Under another
decision, however, their rights are
within the “equal protection of the
laws” clause of the constitution. A
proved policy of firing Negro teachers
and retaining white teachers, on ra
cial grounds, would entitle the Negro
teachers to judicial relief.
26. Will the court approve a plan
under which Negro children may
“voluntarily” waive their right to
attend non-segregated schools, and
instead continue to attend schools set
apart for Negroes?
A. This has not been decided. The
matter was dealt with in argument
before the Supreme Court, but was
not mentioned in the court’s opinion.
It is therefore left to be dealt with
by the district courts in passing on
proposed plans.
27. May Congress by legislation
supersede the Supreme Court deci
sion, or implement it?
A. The Congress may not lawfully
set aside the constitutional require
ment announced by the court, but
it may enact implementing statutes
which could supersede in whole or
in part the discretionary authority
given to federal district courts as to
the timing and administration of de
segregation plans.
28. Is it possible that some school
districts, or even some entire states,
may evade the decision for a substan
tial future period?
A. Yes. This will be possible until
actual litigation is successfully con
cluded against such law violators.
The ultimate outcome of such litiga
tion is certain, but various factors
may delay initiation of lawsuits and
may delay them procedurally after
they are initiated.
29. Is there any way in which the
electors of a school district, or other
local or state taxing authorities, can
be compelled to levy adequate taxes
to support non-segregated public
schools?
A. There may not be. But the courts
may restrain the unconstitutional use
of public funds that are expended for
educational purposes, if any are so
expended.
30. Does the Supreme Court’s de
cision affect the validity of state leg
islation and plans for current con
struction or improvement of “sep
arate but equal” school facilities for
the use of Negro students?
A. Racial limitations which are ex
pressly or by clear implication made
a part of these programs are clearly
unconstitutional. If however an edu
cational facility will be available for
any use the school authorities may
make of it, the construction or im
provement as such presumably will
not be invalid, but only the racial
limitation on its use.
31. What is the status now of plans
in some of the southern states for
abolition of the public schools and for
state aid to private schools or to pu
pils attending them?
A. These plans will presumably be
held in abeyance, at least until actual
litigation in specific cases proceeds
to the point where specific school
districts, or a substantial number of
districts in a state, are in fact being
forced to desegregate. At that point,
now obviously somewhat delayed,
these plans may again be brought
forward.
32. How many federal district courts
are there? And where are they?
A. There is at least one federal dis
trict court in each state. Some states
have two or more. Each district has
at least one federal judge. Some dis
tricts have more than one judge. In
each district there may be two or
more “divisions,” with the court sit
ting first in one division then in an
other. The divisions may be quite
small geographically.
Robert A. Leflar, Professor of Law at
New York University and Associate Di
rector of the Institute of Judicial Admin
istration, was associate justice of the Su
preme Court of Arkansas from 1949 to
1951 and dean of the law school at the
University of Arkansas from 1943 to 1954.
He directed the legal research underlying
The Negro and the Schools, and with
Wylie H. Davis, former Professor of Law
at the University of Arkansas School of
Law, wrote a summary of the findings in
an article entitled “Segregation in the
Public Schools—1954,” published in the
January 1955 issue of the Harvard Law
Review.
South Carolina
COLUMBIA, S. C.
rpHE FIRST ANNIVERSARY of
the U. S. Supreme Court’s de
cision banning racial separation in
public schools found South Carolina
schools operating in the same racially
separate pattern heretofore in effect.
The year between May 17, 1954 and
May 17, 1955 had brought further
change in the physical facilities pro
vided for students of both races, but
no admixture of whites and Negroes
in public schools at any level.
Legislatively, the South Carolina
General Assembly had adopted sev
eral measures intended to strength
en the control of local school author
ities over student placement and
other administrative matters. The
General Appropriations Act for
1955-56 embraces the following pro
vision, written into the state’s per
manent law at this session:
“Appropriations of state aid for
teachers’ salaries, and all other
school district, county, and state
appropriations for the operation of
the public school system, shall
cease and become inoperative for any
school from which, and for any
school to which, any pupil may trans
fer pursuant to, or in consequence
of, an order of any court, for the time
that the pupil shall attend a school
other than the school to which he
was assigned before the issuance of
such court order.”
Legislative approval of that pro
viso was routine in both the Senate
(where it originated) and in the
House of Representatives. In addi
tion to the statewide measure, how
ever, similar legislation was adopted
by legislative delegations from sev
eral South Carolina counties.
CLARENDON PROVISIONS
Claredon County legislators (par
ticularly sensitive on the school seg
regation issue since the South Car
olina lawsuit arose in that county)
incorporated this paragraph into
their annual supply bill for county
operations in 1955-’56:
“All appropriations herein for the
operation of the public school sys
tem shall cease and become inoper
ative for the time that any pupil or
pupils shall by order of any court
attend a school other than that which
he or she is now attending or may
be assigned by local board of trus
tees or other governing body of such
school. This provision shall not in
any way affect the operation of any
school other than the school affected
by such court order.”
The supply bill for Calhoun Coun
ty (which, like Clarendon, has a Ne
gro population of about 70 per cent
of the total) contained verbatim the
same provision embraced in the
statewide general appropriations bill.
The Colleton County supply bill
contained this statement:
“The County Board of Education
is authorized to establish and oper
ate schools in such locations as will
best serve the educational needs of
the county . . . The county board in
its discretion may establish a new
high school or high schools wherever
the same will best serve the educa
tional interests of the county.”
Neither the statewide nor local
bills of this nature stirred debate in
the General Assembly, but there was
a measure of discussion over several
proposals which would have resulted
in loosening the statewide standards
for school consolidation. Legislators
from two counties (Chesterfield and
Orangeburg) sought to gain state
recognition (and, thereby, financial
support) for school districts which
had been split in their counties over
local considerations. The legislature,
however, refused to accede to their
requests. The opposition was led in
the Senate by two members of the
15-man committee studying school
segregation: Sens. L. Marion Gres-
sette, of Calhoun, and R. M. Jef
feries, of Colleton.
THREATENED BREAKDOWN
They argued successfully that re
laxation of consolidation standards
in these few counties would lead to
a breakdown of standards through
out the state, with the result that
small districts would come back into
existence. Small districts, they point
ed out, would not permit continua
tion of the equalization program un
dertaken in 1951 to provide compar
able facilities for white and Negro
students in the same districts.
The equalization program thus far
has brought about the construction,
or approval for construction, of
$136,842,000 in public school build
ings and improvements. Of that
amount, more than 57 per cent has
been spent for Negro schools, which
took top priority when the program
got under way four years ago.)
The General Assembly enacted in
to law a bill eliminating the auto
matic rehiring of teachers. The bill
was sponsored by the special segre
gation committee as a means of
avoiding the automatic, implied con
tracts which heretofore have ripened
from year to year in the absence of
specific notice of dismissal of teach
ers. The House of Representatives,
where some slight opposition to the
bill developed, was told that Claren
don County, for one, would give up
its public schools before permitting
desegregation. Passage of the pro
posed bill, it was argued, would free
Clarendon from the obligation of
hiring teachers for a year and then
shutting down the schools.
One school teacher member of the
House, however, protested passage of
the bill. Rep. Richard L. Breeland,
a high school teacher in the capital
city of Columbia, said that abolish
ing tenure for teachers reduces them
“to the same status of itinerant crop
gatherers” insofar as job tenure is
concerned.
South Carolina’s legislature, he
added, had “walked backward for
25 years” in school matters because
of the segregation problem. The
Richland County legislator found
himself in the minority, however,
just as he had been on earlier legis
lation wiping out the state’s com
pulsory school attendance law.
Throughout the 1955 session, which
ended May 27, the legislature con
curred in every recommendation of
the special school segregation com
mittee, and made only a few changes
by way of amendment.
NEWSPAPER COMMENT
Several newspapers noted the an
niversary date of the 1954 Supreme
Court decision with editorials, all re
flecting a hope and desire that the
state and the South would be al
lowed to work out their own future
in race relations. Although not on
the anniversary itself, The News and
Courier (of Charleston) complained
editorially of the North’s refusal to
hear the South’s case in the matter
of segregation, and said that “The
South Has Lost Its Voice” nationally
through the refusal of Northern
press, radio and television to accord
Southerners a fair hearing unless
they subscribe to the “liberal” point
of view which supports integration.
The Greenville Piedmont gave
editorial endorsement to an address
by South Carolina’s Lt. Gov. E. F.
Hollings. Speaking before the coun
ty auditors and treasurers associa
tion of the state, Mr. Hollings had
declared that the public school sys
tem is designed for education rather
than as a laboratory for solving social
problems. The Piedmont picked up
that idea and added these thoughts
to it:
“Both the opponents of segrega
tion and the court itself have either
ignored, or have discarded as ‘irrele
vant,’ the probable effect on the
learning process of efforts to mix the
races by force ... It doesn’t make
sense . . . from the standpoint of the
best educational opportunity for all
children to further complicate the
learning scene with still more and
even more delicate and difficult so
cial problems.”
Different viewpoints were voiced
at the graduation exercises of two
Negro colleges in Columbia. At the
Allen University commencement ex
ercises, Dr. J. Curtis Dixon, execu
tive secretary of the Southern Edu
cation Foundation, of Atlanta, com
pared the Supreme Court decision of
last year with the Declaration of In
dependence and the Emancipation
Proclamation. He said the segrega
tion problem was not one for the
South alone, but for the nation and
the world. Its solution, he said,
“comes down to two people sitting
down together.”
The commencement speaker at
Benedict College was Judge Harold
A. Stevens, South Carolina-born
Negro and Benedict graduate who
now is a judge for the Court of Gen
eral Sessions in New York City. He
condemned prejudice and discrimi
nation as negating “the essential dig
nity of human personality” and said,
“ability is being recognized and col
or minimized ... No man can claim
superiority by the pigment of his
skin.”
The segregation issue apparently
was intimately involved in a mid-
May episode at Furman University,
white Baptist school located at
Greenville. All 1,500 copies of the
student literary magazine, the Echo,
were seized by university officials
prior to their distribution. College
officials would make no comment on
the occurrence, but Charles King,
editor of another student publica
tion, said he felt the seizure was due
to the magazine’s inclusion of an ar
ticle sympathetic to integration and
a book review criticial of some atti
tudes and actions of Southern Bap
tists.
The Greenville Piedmont of May
19 published excerpts from the race
segregation article, which had been
written for the Echo by Joan Lips
comb, co-editor of the publication.
In it, she described the Supreme
Court decision as “a fact which all
the emotionalism of Southern politi
cians cannot alter with all their ora
torical eloquence.” She said that
many students “themselves favor in
tegration” and called on “the leaders
of the day to lead the way, not back
ward by adding to already existing
prejudice, but forward by promoting
a program of adjustment to the sit
uation as it stands.”
‘ECHO’ EDITORS RESIGN
The two editors of the Echo, Miss
Lipscomb and Huby Cooper, re
signed their posts as a result of the
incident.
Meanwhile, the school segregation
decision of 1954, coupled with a
Fourth Circuit Court of Appeals de
cision of this year, seem destined to
open another field of racial litigation
in South Carolina. A group of
Charleston Negroes, through Atty.
John H. Wrighten, have called for
the opening of Edisto Beach State
Park to Negro patronage. If that is
not done, recourse to corut action
has been threatened.
The request has been turned down
by State Forester Charles H. Flory,
chief administrator for the State
Forestry Commission which operates
the park system. Flory called atten
tion to the fact that certain parks
within the system are designated ex
clusively for Negro use, just as some
are earmarked for white use, and
said he could not comply with the
request that the white park at Edis
to Beach be opened to Negroes. (The
state operates 22 parks, five of which
are for Negroes.)
Other court action is under way in
a case growing out of racial separa
tion on a Columbia city bus. The
case is that of Sarah Mae Flemming
vs. the South Carolina Electric and
Gas Company. The Negro woman
was ordered to change seats in com
pliance with state law requiring sep
arate seating on such common car
riers. She brought suit in the Eastern
District Federal Court, but the case
was dismissed by Judge George Bell
Timmerman. In his order, he noted
(with reference to the wording of the
Supreme Cotut decision in the school
segregation cases) that “education
and personality is not developed on a
city bus.”
Judge Timmerman said that the
1954 decision had been based “on such
intangibles as opportunities to engage
in discussions and to exchange views
with students of a different race, and
the supposed sociological effect which
See SOUTH CAROLINA on Page 23