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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- :55===E===iS5=|||=l==|===|====|=||||||| 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