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PAGE 8—July 6, 1955—SOUTHERN SCHOOL NEWS
Kentucky Board Advises Schools
To Begin Desegration
LOUISVILLE, KY.
JN the four weeks following the
Supreme Court’s May 31 decree,
Kentucky moved further toward de
segregation than it had in the pre
ceding 12 months. Most significant
state-wide step: On June 23 the
State Board of Education, which a
year earlier had advised maintenance
of the status quo, officially urged lo
cal school authorities to begin inte
gration of white and Negro pupils “as
rapidly as conditions warrant.”
In Lexington, the first instance of
public school desegregation in the
state occurred on June 6 with the ad
mission of a Negro girl to the sum
mer session of Fayette County’s La
fayette high school—the first such
admission since the state’s invalidated
Day Law was enacted in 1904.
In southeastern Kentucky, Wayne
County (population 17,000) became
the first in the state to announce that
Negro students will be admitted to
formerly all-white schools this Sep
tember. The announcement was
made on June 15 by County Supt.
Ira Bell after getting an opinion
from the state attorney general’s
office that the Day Law had been “de
stroyed” by the Supreme Court and
no longer exists. “That’s all I want
ed to know,” said Bell as a preface to
his announcement.
1956 INTEGRATION APPROVED
In Louisville, on June 6 the City
Board of Education voted unani
mously to begin preparing imme
diately a definite plan for admitting
Negro and white pupils to the same
schools in September, 1956, and ac
cepted proposals by Supt. Omer Car
michael that (1) he present, no later
than mid-November of this year, “at
least a tentative plan” for integration,
and (2) that general integration
studies initiated in 1954-55 be contin
ued in 1955-56.
On June 27 the Jefferson County
Board of Education took comparable
action, setting the same target date
and expressing hope that Supt. Rich
ard Van Hoose would have the inte
gration plan ready for consideration
by December at the latest. Chairman
Paxton M. Wilt said that unless some
thing unforeseen comes up, complete
integration would be effective by
September, 1956. (Jefferson County
outside of Louisville has fewer than
6,000 Negroes; Louisville has an es
timated 62,000—about 16 per cent of
its own total population, and, in turn,
38 per cent of Kentucky’s total Ne
gro population.)
In Frankfort, on June 24 it was re
ported that the Kentucky School for
the Blind at Louisville might become
the first fully desegregated below-
college-level school in the state. The
institution (130 white, 15 Negro pu
pils) is administered directly by the
State Board of Education. The board
has referred a request for immediate
integration, made by Supt. Paul J.
Langan, to the Bureau of Vocational
Education. State Supt. of Public In
struction Wendell P. Butler indicated
that integration would be effected as
soon as the bureau has reviewed the
request. Plans for the school’s teach
ers (16 white, four Negro) have not
been announced. Negro pupils cur
rently are taught and housed in a
single building, which under integra
tion, Langan suggested, would be
used as a dormitory only.
The State Board of Education’s
four-point resolution was adopted
unanimously after the fourth point
was rephrased by Chairman Wendell
P. Butler to satisfy an objection to
the word “study” raised by Albert E.
Meyzeek, Negro member. (“Study,
study, study,” said Meyzeek. “That’s
an old excuse for delay. We had a
year for study . . . Now the court
says desegregation is mandatory.”)
Chairman Butler framed the reso
lution. Its four points called upon
him, as chairman of the board at the
request of the board, to:
(1) Begin immediately a study of
the Supreme Court directive of May
31 in terms of the responsibilities of
state and local boards.
(2) Direct the attention of local
school boards to the court’s instruc-
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Board Praised
The State Board of Education is
to he commended for urging local
school authorities to begin integra
tion of white and Negro pupils “as
rapidly as possible.” For while it
acted only with commonsense and
in clear accord with the spirit of
the Supreme Court ruling, these
qualities have not yet been evinced
by a large number of other state
boards.
The Board’s major recommenda
tion, it is true, might well have been
made earlier. But it still puts Ken
tucky in the vanguard of those
states committed to sensible and or
derly compliance with the Supreme
Court’s ruling, and it is fully in line
with Governor Weatherby’s prom
ise last year and this that Kentucky
would do whatever the Court re
quired. Chairman Wendell P. But
ler, the State Superintendent of
Public Instruction, and his Board
may well feel that they have met
the challenge of duty.—Louisville
Courier-Journal.
: ■ =
tions and direct the boards to begin
immediately a study of appropriate
steps toward carrying them out.
(3) Recommend to school superin
tendents that desegregation study
groups be appointed in every com
munity where the question of seg
regation is involved (30 of Ken
tucky’s 120 counties have no school-
age Negroes).
(4) Write letters to local school au
thorities directing them to begin in
tegration “as rapidly as conditions
warrant.”
OF REAL SIGNIFICANCE
Significance of the board’s action
is very real: Under Kentucky stat
utes, when other legislation does not
apply, its advice has the effect of law.
The board took no action on an
other resolution offered by Meyzeek.
This would have urged all local
boards to begin integration this fall
and would have set September, 1956,
CHARLESTON, W. Va.
^7EST VIRGINIA moved a step
closer to integration of schools
at the end of its fiscal year on June
30 when the West Virginia School
for Colored Deaf and Blind at Insti
tute, near Charleston, was officially
closed.
The move was the result of legis
lative action last February and offi
cials predict a considerable saving to
taxpayers as a result. Equipment pre
viously had been transferred to the
once all-white Romney School for
the Deaf and Blind, and plans for
enrolling the 45 Negro deaf and dumb
children from Institute next term
have been completed.
Final closing of the 30-year-old
school will be only a matter of form
to state officials, but to the taxpayers
of West Virginia the event will have
far greater significance than appears
on the surface.
The merger of the two institutions,
prompted by a year-old ruling of
the U. S. Supreme Court outlawing
segregation, means an annual saving
of approximately $40,000.
COST IS CUT
Total cost of operating the Institute
specialty school was $70,290 in the
fiscal year. For maintaining the 45
Negro children at Romney, the cost
will be $29,800 next year.
H. K. Baer, executive secretary of
the State Board of Education, says
the merger was accomplished with
out incident. Four teachers who
wanted to continue their employ
ment were transferred to Romney,
and Dr. E. A. Bolling, superintend
ent, and Mrs. Lucinda C. Sanders,
secretary, retired at their own re
quest at 65.
Physical facilities at Institute were
transferred July 1 to the State Di
vision of Vocational Rehabilitation
for use as a rehabilitation workshop
as the completion date for full inte
gration of Kentucky’s public schools.
It would also have recommended that
the 1956 legislature make “adequate”
appropriations to three institutions
now all-Negro (Kentucky State Col
lege, Lincoln Institute, and West
Kentucky Vocational Training
School) and continue them as a part
of the public education system “ded
icated to the service of all children,
regardless of race, creed, or color.”
Admission of 16-year-old Helen
Cary Caise to Lafayette high school’s
summer session on June 6 followed a
prior decision by the Fayette County
School Board that admission could
not be denied any Negroes who
might apply. But it does not neces
sarily mean, County Supt. N. C. Tur-
pen said, that the county schools will
be integrated this fall—since the
county board has an advisory com
mittee considering all aspects of the
desegregation issue, and it has not
yet recommended a plan.
The Fayette County district, which
does not include the city of Lexing
ton, operates 14 schools for white pu
pils (7,887 in the school year just
ended) and two for Negroes (571 at
Douglass high school, 27 at Pricetown,
a one-room school for grades one to
four). Douglass does not have a sum
mer session. Of the county’s school-
age (6 to 18) population of 10,746,
only 645 are Negroes. In Lexington,
where the county pays tuition for 400
of its Negro pupils because of the
county schoolhouse shortage, the
school-age population is 5,356 white,
2,470 Negro.
NO REPERCUSSIONS
Miss Caise, studying history in a
class of 20 white students, told news
papermen she “was nervous at first”
when she registered but that “after
I got out there everyone was so hos
pitable and nice, I felt fine.” Since
then, she said, she has been fully ac
cepted by the students and teachers.
Like all other summer seassion stu-
and homebound industries center.
The transfer, in compliance with a
legislative act, was approved by the
Board of Education in April.
IN THE COLLEGES^
Meanwhile, integration is moving
ahead gradually at eight of the state’s
nine colleges. Baer says that only
Glenville has no Negro students, and
this is due largely to its location in
the midst of rural counties which
have no Negro population.
Other colleges have noted a volun
tary trend toward integration in the
three terms since the Supreme
Court decision of May, 1954. But
final figures on the summer term
breakdown of white and Negro stu
dents are still unavailable.
An inquiry into the problems re
lating to integration at the college
level, ordered by the legislature in
March, will be discussed at a meet
ing here in July when the joint Sen
ate-House subcommittee on educa
tion meets with a team of experts
from George Peabody College for
Teachers in Tennessee.
The investigators have been asked
to determine whether integration
will permit the closing of certain
state colleges as a means of strength
ening the curricula of surviving in
stitutions.
A report will be made to the sub
committee prior to the budgetary
meeting of the legislature next Janu
ary.
STORER CLOSED
First college casualty of the Su
preme Court ruling is little Storer
College at Harpers Ferry. Trustees
dents, she pays tuition ($10 per half-
year course). She plans to return to
Douglass high this fall.
To date there have been no public
repercussions to the board’s state
ment or the desegregation action—
first of its kind in Kentucky in 51
years.
THE WAYNE COUNTY STORY
The six children of Clark Stone
wall, Negro farmer in the mountain
ous Rocky Branch section, have nev
er been to school. They live “too
many mountains away” from the
county school-bus route that takes
other Negro children to a modem ele
mentary school in Monticello, the
county seat. Their father, borrowing
texts up to the fifth-grade level from
the school board and using other oc
casional volumes from the donated
stack of County Supervisor Garnett
Walker, has been teaching them him
self.
But mere walking-distance away
from the Stonewall farm is the Griffin
one-room school for white children,
35 of them. The only Negro parent in
the district, Stonewall applied to
County Supt. Bell for admission of
his children to Griffin this fall. On
receipt of the official advice that the
Day Law had been “destroyed” by
the Supreme Court’s May 31 action,
Bell announced that (1) the Stone
wall children will go to Griffin this
fall and that (2) Wayne County high
school and Monticello high school
also will be opened to Negroes.
PARENTS PREFER OWN SCHOOL
Other white elementary schools in
the county might have been opened
to Negroes this fall. But later in June
Bell reported, after meetings with
Negro parents, that a majority of
them preferred to retain their own
consolidated elementary school in
Monticello for the next year, at least.
This modern plant is described as be
ing vastly superior to the one-two-
and three-room elementary schools
for white pupils scattered around the
county.
The number of Negroes involved
in Kentucky’s first county to an
nounce the beginning of integration
is not large. There are fewer than
130 school-age Negroes in the county.
of the 88-year-old private school or
dered a suspension of activities as of
August 31 after the state withdrew
its annual appropriation of $20,000.
Withdrawal of state aid was the
final blow for the college, which has
been plagued by increasing debt and
declining enrollment for a number
of years. Storer was founded after
the Civil War to teach the newly
freed Negroes to read and write.
Trustees had recommended clos
ure in June, 1954, when the state
first announced the $20,000 grant
could no longer be given due to the
appellate court’s ruling. Alumni
pledged financial help at the time.
Gifts and endowments failed, how
ever, to take up the slack.
No decision has been made on fu
ture use of the college facilities.
Their value is estimated at $1,009,000
by the Rev. L. E. Terrell, president
of Storer.
In the State Department of Edu
cation, which is responsible for pub
lic school desegregation, Supt. W. W.
Trent says Carl T. Hairston will join
the department July as assistant su
pervisor of instruction.
He replaces James W. Robinson,
who died last winter, and will carry
on Robinson’s work among Negro
schools directed at integrating Ne
gro and white children. Hairston was
former director of the Washington
Carver 4-H Camp at Clifftop.
Dr. Trent now is preparing a new
report on the progress made toward
ending segregation in the state’s 55
county school units. His last report
was released in November, 1954.
Until now Negro high school students
have gone to school in Somerset, Ky.
with the school systems either trans.
porting them there or paying their
board in Somerset, or to Lincoln In.
stitute in Shelby County. Eight or lo
of these are expected to enroll in
Wayne County high school this fall,
another six in Monticello high school,
Bell said.
THE LOUISVILLE STORY
The Louisville Board of Education’s
June 6 action setting an initial inte
gration target date of September,
1956, followed submission of this
memorandum by Supt. Carmichael:
“During the current school year
our administrative and supervisory
personnel and all our school facul
ties have been engaged in studies to
define and understand the problems
involved (in desegregation) and to
create a climate in which the change
can best succeed.
“Ministers and their churches, par-
ent-teacher associations and their of
ficers, clubs and other organizations
and their leaders, and many inter
ested individuals are helping in care
fully planned programs and in many
other ways.
“The decision of the United States
Supreme Court on May 31 completed
its action ... It places on local boards
of education the responsibility for
ending racial segregation in the pub
lic schools as rapidly as is reasonable.
The district federal courts are to de
termine what is reasonable if the is
sue arises.
ACTIONS BASED ON DECREES
“These final decrees are consistent
with the fundamental principle that
has guided public education from
the beginning, namely, that it shall
be kept as dose as possible to the
people. Fortunately both decisions
were unanimous and the program
for carrying them out is left very
flexible with respect to time and
method.”
On the same date the Louisville
branch of the National Association
for the Advancement of Colored Peo
ple called on the Louisville board to
make its plans for integration. The
group voted to instruct its education
committee to seek information on the
board’s plans so it would know “if
the board is acting in good faith.”
“Only if the school board makes
the plans public will the federal court
know if it (the board) is not stalling,”
said George T. Cordery, chapter
president. “We want to make sure it
(the court) knows.”
The chapter did not vote on a floor
suggestion that it “force” the school
board to begin integration this fall-
Opposing the idea, Atty. Harr}’
McAlpin warned that a suit to force
integration this fall could lead to le
gal entanglements “that might hold
up integration for some time after
1956.” Instead, the group passed a
motion instructing its education com
mittee “to put forth every effort to
aid the board to complete integra-
On June 13, the University of K e ®
tucky began a three-week sem 1 ®
for school administrators on proble
of adjusting to the Supreme Court
desegregation rulings. Sponsor
jointly by the university and the
tional Conference of Christians &
Jews, this year’s interracial semW^
is being attended by more than ^
persons holding key positions
schools over the state. .
Problems under study include
gal, social and disciplinary rna■
the probable timing of desegrega ^
ways and means of achieving c
munity harmony, job-protection ^
Negro teachers, the handling ^
teacher as well as parental Te <c,
lion,” and reduction of group
understandings. e3 r
Staged first in 1952 and every .
since, the Seminar in Intergroup
lations at U. K. was the firs* ^ a
racial seminar of the kind he
publicly supported college in
South. Special advisers this
some 15 professors, school sup ^
tendents, school board member >
(Continued on Next Pagw-
W. Va. Merges Deaf-Blind Schools