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SOUTHERN SCHOOL NEWS—July 6, 1955—PAGE 3 Integration Plans Told LITTLE ROCK, Ark. O fficials of school districts serving four of Arkansas’s five largest cities revealed their plans or thinking on integration during June. None of the four called for integration this year. But Hoxie, a small district in Law rence County in northeast Arkansas, announced that it would integrate about 25 Negro children with about 1,025 whites on all levels when the 1955-56 term opens July 11. The four big districts—Little Rock, Fort Smith, North Little Rock and Hot Springs—apparently are taking the general position that eventual in tegration in some form is inevitable and that at least “good faith’’ plans will be necessary to avoid court ac tion. On June 11, the Arkansas State Conference of Branches of the Na tional Association for the Advance ment of Colored People said that any school district which has not an nounced or started satisfactory plans for desegregation by September would be sued. At Little Rock, the superintendent of schools said June 9, for publication June 12, that under present plans— which have been in the making since May 17,1954—integration was at least two years away and the start would be made at the high school level. AWAIT BUILDINGS At Fort Smith, the superintendent of schools said on June 21 that if in tegration comes—and that it wouldn’t until a two-year building program is completed—it should begin at the ele mentary level and be extended grad ually through junior and senior high school. At North Little Rock, the school board decided on June 20 to present a desegregation plan July 14. At Hot Springs, the school board president said on June 16 that a bi- racial committee would be appointed in August to draft plans for ending segregation. The school district officials at Pine Bluff, Arkansas’s fourth largest city, has not revealed its thinking on the subject. Statistically, this is the picture in the five cities. The first figure is the total city population in 1950. The sec ond figure is the percentage of Negro Pupils in the 1952-53 school enroll ment. Little Rock 102,213 24.2% Fort Smith 47,942 9.0 North Little Rock 44,097 24.8 Pine Bluff 37,162 38.8 Hot Springs 29,307 14.7 Hoxie, which announced its action uu June 25, will become the third dis- in Arkansas to mix white and e gro students since the May 17,1954, ecision and the first since the May L 1955, decision. ihe Hoxie action was announced by • L. Howell, president of the Hoxie t e ° arc l Education. He said the in- gration plan was approved unani- mou % by the board, ji . E. Vance, superintendent of oxie schools, said there would be ut 15 Negro children in the ele- entary grades and about 10 in the S school. He said the total enroll- would be about 1,050. er Negro grade school has been op- l,j . e “ * n the past at Hoxie and the Port j C ^ 00 ^ students have been trans it o t0 3 Negro school at Jones- a j,°.’ ‘3 miles from Hoxie and in an fining county. gj. a t° Arkansas school districts inte- en N ast year - At Fayetteville, sev- s °ho ? r ° es were admitted to the high ° ' At Charleston, about a dozen s c k Were admitted to the high ciaj s J* a t all levels but school offi- oa ^ aere have declined to comment in co 6 nu mber, reaction or anything ■jPPection with the action. th e „ e * ey 1° the Little Rock plan is hisb '^Pletion of a new west side > cho °L plan to do anything until V hgil t new high sch ° o1 >” Supt. School • Blossom said. “That high arid s i. 1S ? n Hie drawing boards now 1957 >> ° U ^ he ready by September Integration, under the plan, would begin with three high schools—the new west side school, the present Lit tle Rock Central High School and a new east side school (Horace Mann) now under construction which will open in January, 1956, as a Negro high school to replace the present Dunbar high school for Negroes. At the outset, the west side school would be practically all white be cause of the residential pattern of Little Rock. The east side school, Horace Mann, would have a predom inantly Negro population. TRANSFER REGULATIONS Under present transfer regulations —which permit students to attend schools outside their residential dis tricts if the move is not to a more crowded situation—the east side school could become practically all Negro. And many Negroes in the Central High district probably would transfer to Horace Mann. The Little Rock plan was news to the general public but Blossom for several months had been outlining it privately to interested groups when they asked for a report on what the school district planned to do. “We have to have some process to go through to accomplish a change as big as this,” Blossom said. “I think it will work more smoothly if we take the smallest group first—and the high school group is smaller than the jun ior high group or the elementary group. Also, it involves fewer schools.” The integration plan is subject to final approval by the Little Rock School Board, and, in a sense, by Ne gro leaders. Thus far, there has been no indication that the NAACP is un happy with the Little Rock plan. On the junior high and elementary school level, the school administra tive staff is making studies of white and Negro student population and residence—preparing for the day when integration will come at those levels. Beyond the plan for integra tion at the high school level, Blossom isn’t mentioning any dates for publi cation. At Fort Smith, School Supt. Chris Corbin said on June 21, that racial integration in the public schools would not take place until a two-year, million-dollar building program was completed. PUBLIC MEETING Corbin made the remark at a pub lic meeting called by the Fort Smith School Board to discuss the integra tion problem. The meeting was at tended by about 100 Negroes and whites. If integration ever is effected in Fort Smith schools, Corbin said, it should begin at the elementary level and be extended gradually through ^junior and senior high school. JULY 14 PLAN On June 20, the North Little Rock School Board, which previously had discussed the segregation issue only to agree that no legal counsel was needed, decided to present a desegre gation plan on July 14. The subject came up when the board was trying to decide on a loca tion for a new elementary school in the Tie Plant area, primarily a Negro area. Bogard said he thought desegrega tion was inevitable. He mentioned a statement made June 8 by Federal District Judge John E. Miller of Fort Smith, in which Judge Miller said, in part, “There is no attitude to take other than to enforce the law as it was declared by the Supreme Court.” The meeting had been called to de cide on a location for the new school. Two areas were under consideration —one north of a railroad line and one south of the tracks. The location south of the tracks of fers connections with a regular sewer system. But a school built there, board members said, would bring about immediate integration of the large number of Negro students liv ing north of the tracks with the white students living south of the tracks. By building north of the tracks, the board could take advantage of the natural boundary for an attendance area which the railroad provides. This way, the new school would become a predominantly Negro school, leaving the Rose City elementary school to For 4 Of Arkansas’ Largest Cities the south nearly free of Negro stu dents. But the north-of-the-tracks location would require the installa tion of septic tanks. No location was selected. The board voted to “proceed with final plans for the building on the basis of 10 acres of land in the Tie Plant area.” HOT SPRINGS On June 16 at Hot Springs, it was announced that a special committee composed of Negroes and whites would be appointed by the Hot Springs School Board to study prob lems involved in bringing about ra cial integration in schools there. L. A. Westmoreland, school board president, said the board would name the committee at its August meeting. He said the committee would be asked to draft plans for ending segregation in the schools in compliance with the Supreme Court ruling. Westmoreland said that the board, by appointing the committee, was at tempting to show “intent to comply” with the Supreme Court decision. Arkansas discovered on June 8 that it had a school segregation case pend ing in federal district court—a suit which had been filed in 1952 by Negro patrons against Bearden School Dis trict 53 in Ouachita County. The disclosure was made by the United Press in an interview with Judge John E. Miller of Fort Smith, Western District of Arkansas, who said he would rule on the case in the October term of court at El Dorado. State school officials and NAACP leaders previously had reported that Arkansas had no pending cases when the Supreme Court made its May 17, 1954, ruling. The fact that the Bear den suit still was pending also came as a surprise to Tom Ford, superin tendent of schools at Bearden. Ford and other sources said this was the picture: The suit was filed in 1952 in an ef fort by Negro patrons to obtain equal ization of facilities. It was not spon sored by the NAACP. As was custom ary in a series of suits filed during the same period in other Arkansas school districts, the patrons also asked for integration although their goal was equalization. In all the suits filed during that pe riod, Arkansas’s three federal district judges upheld the state law requiring separate schools and the integration pleadings were a sideline to the main purpose of the suits—equalization. Before May 17, 1954, through con ferences and compromises, agree ments had been reached in all the cases. Final orders, dismissals or withdrawals had been entered in all the cases except the Bearden case. NO FINAL ACTION “We were surprised to learn that the case is still pending,’’ Ford said. “We had held a conference and reached an agreement. We thought it was all settled. But apparently no fi nal order was entered.” Ford said there had been no indi cation by the Negro patrons that they would press for immediate integra tion. “We think we should be in the same category as all other school dis tricts in Arkansas,” Ford said. “We probably will form some kind of plan, as many other districts are doing, to ward gradual integration.” Ford said the district had about 600 white pupils and 300 Negroes. On the Bearden case, Judge Miller said: “I don’t intend to drag it out with a long trial. I’ll just call the lawyers of both sides in for a pre-trial confer ence, point out the Supreme Court decision to them, and say ‘That’s it, boys. What are you going to do about it?’ ” He said each integration case should be considered on its merits “but the fact has now been established that segregation is discriminatory.’’ “When you accept that edict—that segregation is illegal—then you must carry it out by such means as will ultimately put it in force with the least inconvenience and disturbance FINOS PHILLIPS Heads White America as possible,” Judge Miller said. “We may not like what the court did, but it is the law and there is nothing any one can do about it.” On June 11, the Executive Com mittee of the Arkansas Conference of Branches of the National Association for the Advancement of Colored Peo ple announced the policy it will follow in seeking an end to racial segrega tion in the public schools. The policy statement said the NAACP would be prepared to file suit against any school district that hadn’t started or wasn’t ready to start a satisfactory desegregation plan by September. And, the statement said, the NAACP would be ready to file suits against any school board which it believes is not acting in good faith. The statement said that Negro chil dren would be taken to white schools in many districts (not named) for ad mission in September. The committee voted to write let ters to the 228 Arkansas school dis tricts which have white and Negro pupils asking that desegregation plans be adopted immediately. Many For Discussion Does such a vital issue (one of the greatest issues ever to con front the South) deserve to be passed off with “the least that is said about it the better?” That is what the school administrators questioned by The Times last week said. School desegregation is not just a bad dream for the white people of the South. It is a true and real fact which school men and school patrons will have to face sometime within the next few years. Free and rational discussion will help bring about a solution acceptable to all parties.—Osceola Times. €1§=1x=111sM11s11§111§s1=1§i1s===hSsH: school boards, the statement said, will receive petitions this summer signed by parents of Negro children asking that integration plans be adopted im mediately. The committee also suggested a meeting of NAACP and state officials to draw up a state integration policy and, if possible, to prevent the filing of lawsuits. The governor, attorney general, education commissioner and other interested parties should attend the meeting, the statement said. WHITE AMERICA On June 7, the Capital City Chapter of White America, Inc., which was formed April 5 at Pine Bluff, held its first public meeting at Little Rock. The meeting was called through a notice sent to newspapers for release June 5. The notice revealed for the first time that the group was headed by Finos Phillips, operator of a type writer and adding machine company at Little Rock. Phillips said the purpose of the or ganization was “to oppose desegrega tion in the public schools, to encour age lawmakers in promoting the interests of the white race in legisla tures and courts and to maintain a separation of the races, socially, in schools and churches.’’ The mailing address of the Capital City Chapter is Postoffice Box 1977, Little Rock. Other officers are Mrs. Finos Phil lips, treasurer, and Dorance Williams, secretary, who is a sales and service representative for the Phillips firm. Phillips said more than 100 persons had joined the Little Rock branch of White America, Inc.—many of them in the week after the Supreme Court made its May 31 ruling on school seg regation. Phillips said an emblem was being designed for the organization which members could wear. “I assure you that our chapter in cludes some of the most influential citizens of the city,” Phillips said. Phillips said the organization was not against anybody but was “for promoting the welfare of white peo ple.” “We are heartily in favor of colored people having everything they can earn themelves, but we don’t think they should mingle socially, in the schools or in the churches with white people,” Phillips said. Phillips said the organization was charging $5 per person for initiation and 1955 dues and that a separate campaign fund made up of private donations was planned. “Our main plan is to build a state organization of sufficient strength to elect officers who will be for the white people and maintaining segre gation in all social affairs,” Phillips said. ON DEFENSIVE Phillips said the white racg now was on the defensive and that the campaign fund would be used for any purpose that would help protect the rights and benefits of the white race. “We hope to work this thing out peacefully without any violence any where along the line, and we believe we can,” he said. “We will resist integration from every legal standpoint,” Phillips said. A cheering crowd of about 130 per sons attended the Chapter meeting in Knights of Pythias Hall. Speakers included L. D. Poynter of Pine Bluff, president of White Amer ica; Rev. L. D. Foreman, pastor of Antioch Baptist Church of Little Rock; Amis Guthridge and M. V. Moody, Little Rock attorneys who have joined the organization s legal staff, and Joe Foster of England, for mer state representative. BACK DECISION On June 11 at Arkadelphia, dele gates to the annual session of the Little Rock Methodist Conference (South Arkansas) unanimously adopted a report submitted by the Conference Board of Social and Eco nomic Relations which said: “We believe that the recent ruling of the Supreme Court implementing its decision of 1954 with reference to segregation of race is wise. We fur ther believe that, in accordance with our Christian principles, we should support and encourage the state and local authorities in their efforts to ef fect desegregation.” On June 12, Rev. Colbert S. Cart wright, pastor of the Pulaski Heights Christian Church at Little Rock, in his baccalaureate sermon to seniors at the University of Arkansas Schools of Medicine and Pharmacy, urged “full and expeditious” compliance with the Supreme Court decision. Arkansas, with separate boards governing the University of Arkan sas and each of the seven tax-sup- ported colleges, hasn’t adopted a pol icy on how to meet the Supreme Court decision. However, the indi vidual boards are considering a pro posal that they join with the other boards to formulate a joint policy. An announcement may be made in July. A survey of the college presidents (See Arkansas, Page 16)