Newspaper Page Text
Factual
VOL. Ill, NO. 9
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V I 98039 30 All S6 3A I Nfl
VIVH aaiONVD
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NASHVILLE, TENN.
$2 PER YEAR
Objective
MARCH, 1957
Legislation, Court Orders Draw Attention
35 New Suits,
45 Decisions
Are Counted
A t least 35 new cases related to seg-
' regation-desegregation issues have
been filed in federal and state courts in
the South in the past seven months, and
no less than 45 court rulings have been
rendered.
This means that approximately 130
cases have been handled through the
courts since the 1954 decision in Brown
v. Board of Education. About 85 of this
number sought desegregation of public
schools at the secondary, primary and
college levels. Thirteen were filed in
efforts to enforce segregation statutes
or to halt the use of state funds for de
segregated education.
The remaining 30 or so cases out of
the 130 were brought for a variety of
purposes, such as to test the validity of
school bonds; to halt the activities of
the National Association for the Ad
vancement of Colored People, principal
protagonist in the segregation-desegre
gation controversy; and to seek pay
equalization or tenure benefits for
teachers. At least four of the cases were
libel or criminal actions.
BORDER, MID-SOUTH
Much of the new litigation was in
border or mid-south states. Since
Southern School News* last court sur
vey in August, 1956, six new cases have
been filed in Kentucky, four in Mary
land, four in Tennessee, three in Texas,
two in Oklahoma and one in West Vir
ginia. In the mid-South states, four
cases were filed in North Carolina,
three in Tennessee, two in Florida and
one in Virginia. Of the deep south
states, four new cases have been filed
ui Louisiana, two in Georgia, one in
bouth Carolina, and one in Alabama.
No new action has been brought in
Arkansas, Delaware, the District of
olumbia, and Missouri, and no action
0 any kind has been brought in Mis-
sissippi.
The Alabama case was a suit for
amages brought against the NAACP by
ersons who had been accused of con-
Pirmg in the University of Alabama
ots of February, 1956. The Virginia
Na A rt> S an , action introduced by the
,j, L j seeking to overthrow six laws
tivi? ted : , n 1956 aime d at curtailing ac
hes of the organization.
decisions listed
In hke manner, many of the cQurt
h sions rendered since August, 1956,
state P- 6n in border and mid-South
in FlVe ° f them were in Texas, five
^ Ve ' n Maryland, two in
in nui [ rg ' nia ’ one * n Missouri and one
cis j ah °ma. In the mid-South, five de-
’p en ° as Were rendered by courts in
CarnV SSee ’ Six in Virginia, two in North
y ° T lna ’ two in Arkansas, two in Flor
in a ■ ? ^ ee P South, there have been
gia eas j oas in Alabama, two in Geor-
• one in South Carolina and five in
^msiana.
have been rendered in the
lowing cases:
^ALABAMA—Lucy v. Adams, a dis-
h arnr| C 2 urt ™led the University of Ala
in ev n ^ rd °1 Trustees was “justified”
b^/Peliing Miss Autherine Lucy. Ala-
fin e f re L Patterson v. NAACP, a
a sta( . *10.000 was raised to $100,000 by
ootirt e , d * str i c i court, for contempt of
niajj a er the orgganization refused to
br° u h recor ds available in this case
^ACP t0 . ? ee ^ injunction against
activities in the state.
'T a ] I^SAS—Aaron v. Cooper, fed-
^ es eer!f court approved a gradual
(ri ct v £ a ll° n plan. Hoxie School Dis-
Tewer ' ibe Eighth Circuit Court
re Sati 0 - an injunction against pro-seg-
^erin 1StS restrain ing them from in-
the desegregation process.
I’tJfrttef —Gibson v. Board of Public
lack* 0 ? County, dismissed
hjtion., • , s P ec ified violation of consti-
j. —Ward v. Board of Re-
lr, 8 th a i 1Sn ^ isse< I by federal court, hold-
^‘Pistrati a ' nti ^ had not pursued ad-
a n e remedies. In a second case,
ee COURT CASE, Page 2)
One of the many, visitors to browse through the Southern Education Reporting
Service reference library is Lawrence Derthick, former superintendent of schools
in Chattanooga and now U.S. commissioner of education. Patrick McCauley as
sistant to the director of SERS, displays for him a few of the 55,000 items which
comprise the collection of data on all aspects of the school segregation-desegregation
question.
SERS Reference Library
Now Has 55,000 Rems
■pwo YEARS AGO this month, Southern
Education Reporting Service, pub
lishers of Southern School News, an
nounced the establishment of “a library
of comprehensive materials on the seg
regation-desegregation issue” at SERS
headquarters in Nashville.
Today that library has grown to some
55,000 items which are constantly in de
mand by news media, scholars and re
searchers all over the world. The SERS
collection, writes a well-known maga
zine contributor, “has become Mecca
for the inquiring mind.”
Nearly every day inquiries arrive
from many parts of the South, from
other regions of the United States and
from foreign countries. They come from
newspaper editors, press associations,
gubernatorial and legislative offices, na
tional governmental agencies, students
and scholars.
LIBRARY STAFF
The collection, which is microfilmed
for protective purposes, is maintained
by a library staff headed by Mrs. Imo-
gene Morgan McCauley. Her associates
are Mrs. Marybeth Wrenne, Mrs. Her-
schel L. Estep and Miss Nina Cooley.
Every working day this staff clips,
catalogues, files and microfilms clippings
from some 50 leading newspapers and
numerous magazines. Texts of court
decisions, legislative acts, special studies
and pertinent public addresses go into
the collection.
As of March, 1957 the library houses
an estimated 55,000 items, including
2,000 magazine articles and pamphlets.
Some 225 newspapers are represented
in a special file of editorial opinion and
letters to the editor.
PRESS COMMENTS
“Nashville’s Operation Information,”
the Nashville Banner recently described
it, listing a score of news media as “a
typical cross section of calls” that come
to SERS. “A Service Located Here
Quietly Gets the Facts,” headlined the
Nashville Tennessean in reporting this
incident:
“Last Friday, a messenger delivered a
telegram to a quaint looking, two-story
brick building at 1109 Nineteenth ave. S.
“It requested that the sender, a
Louisiana newspaper editor, be wired
collect, as soon as pssible, a list of all
states which have officially adopted res
olutions of interposition.”
NO CHARGE MADE
This request, like all requests coming
to SERS, was processed without charge.
(In cases where reproductions of
clippings or other printed material are
requested, SERS is able to furnish these
promptly at cost.)
Comments from users of the SERS
library include the following, who vis
ited the reference facility in person:
® W. B. Ragsdale, U.S. News and
World Report: “Your library has proven
very useful to me in the course of vari
ous assignments, especially one in which
I visited the library and worked for a
day or so. Your library is the best,
indeed, the only well-equipped one that
I know of, in its field.”
• John Bartlow Martin, Saturday
Evening Post: “When the time comes
to write the full history of the most
divisive American crisis of 100 years,
the crisis in the southern schools, schol
ars will find in the files of the Southern
Education Reporting Service the plain
truth about what happened during these
years a gold mine of materials that
has no counterpart on this issue and
few on any other. Meanwhile, these ma
terials are indispensable to anyone cur
rently working in the field, and in col
lecting them SERS is performing a
unique and invaluable public service.”
• Dr. Glen Robinson, former Assist
ant to the President, Peabody College:
This agency, which has become widely
recopiized for its objective fact-finding
services, is the primary source of in
formation for persons wishing to re
port, analyze, or interpret events re
lating to the Supreme Court decisions
regarding segregation. For the past
eight months I have used the materials
of the SERS library almost daily while
writing a series of articles for The Na
tions Schools. This series would have
been impossible if it had not been for
the vast store of catalogued informa
tion at SERS.”
• William Emerson, Newsweek mag
azine. SERS and its facilities are an
invaluable aid to me in my week to
week news work in my nine southern
states. I am and have been our unoffi
cial ‘segregation’ editor; the job has
been delicate and difficult, and could
not have been done as well or accurate
ly regardless of expense—without your
library and Southern School News.”
• Russell B. Porter, The New York
Times: “The facilities of the reference
library, which you so kindly made
available to me, were of the greatest
possible value to me in covering my
assignment in the South earlier this
(1956) year. I do not know how I could
have got along without the background
stuff you had gathered and classified so
painstakingly, so intelligently and so
impartially.”
, * Lahey, Knight newspapers:
Your file has been most valuable for
national appraisal of segregation prob
lems.
(See LIBRARY, Page 2)
J^EGISLATIVE ACTION IN FIVE STATES TO MAINTAIN school Segregation
and court desegregation orders in two states (affecting six school
districts) claimed attention as southern and border states schools moved
well into the last half of the 1956-57 academic year.
Court-ordered desegregation was directed for Norfolk and Newport
News in Virginia and for Hopkins, Scott, Webster and Union counties
in Kentucky. Court action was anticipated to force integration in two
areas of Oklahoma schooling.
Arkansas’ legislature enacted four bills, one setting up a state
sovereignty commission. The Georgia General Assembly adopted six
measures, including a resolution of impeachment against six U.S.
Supreme Court justices. Texas and Tennessee legislators passed resolu
tions reasserting states’ rights, and in South Carolina an anti-barratry
law was added to legislation aimed at the National Association for the
Advancement of Colored People.
Maryland
Thirteen southern and border state
legislatures are meeting this year. Leg
islation adopted thus far brought to 120
the number of measures dealing with
segregation-desegregation enacted since
the 1954 Supreme Court decision against
school segregation.
In further court actions, John Kasper,
figure in the Clinton, Tenn. school dis
turbances last fall, was ordered re
arrested by a federal judge. In Georgia
the seven-year-old Horace Ward case
reached another milestone when a fed
eral court held that the Negro, who has
sought to enter the University of Geor
gia law school, was not the object of ra
cial discrimination. And a North Car
olina school entry suit was on its way
to the Supreme Court.
Pro-segregation group activity was
reported to be increasing in Florida
and Maryland. In St. Louis a 50-50 ra
cially mixed high school reported in
creasingly successful operation in its
second year of integration.
A state-by-state summary of major
developments follows:
Alabama
A University of Alabama spokesman
told Southern School News after re
ports of an exodus of “shocked and
shamed” professors as an aftermath of
the 1956 Autherine Lucy incident that
there had been a “normal” turnover al
though six departing faculty members
had given this explanation as a major
reason for leaving.
Arkansas
Four pro-segregation bills have been
enacted by the general assembly and
approved by Gov. Orval Faubus. One
sets up a state sovereignty commission
with investigating powers.
Delaware
As public school desegregation slowed
down in Delaware, negotiations were
pursued for a merger of white and Ne
gro parent-teacher associations.
District of Columbia
Two studies, one by a school system
official, called integration in the Dis
trict a “miracle of social adjustment.”
Two southern congressmen charged
that a junior high school was forcing
mixed dancing.
Florida
Pro - segregation group activity
stepped up with the entry of persons
from other states who are critical of
Gov. LeRoy Collins’ stated position that
mixed schools are inevitable.
Georgia
A case in which a Negro had made a
seven-year effort to get into the Uni
versity of Georgia law school was dis
missed in part on grounds that no ra
cial discrimination was involved. The
legislature passed five pro-segregation
bills together with a resolution asking
impeachment of six U.S. Supreme Court
justices. A bill to ban interracial ath
letics meanwhile was shelved.
Kentucky
Three western counties and a fourth
one in central Kentucky were ordered
by a court to desegregate their schools
this fall. Louisville Supt. Omer Car
michael blamed the National Associa
tion for the Advancement of Colored
People for much of “the chaos in the
South” and the organization replied this
was due rather to “open defiance of
some southern spokesmen” to court de
cisions.
Louisiana
One hundred Negroes out of some
200 previously enrolled reentered inte
grated state colleges under injunctions
restraining application of new state
laws which would have excluded them.
Pro-segregation groups were more
active at the current legislative session
than at any time since the 1954 Supreme
Court decision though no legislation
they advocated was introduced.
Mississippi
Saying the state must preserve the
“domestic peace and tranquility which
is surprising our friends as well as our
worst enemies,” Gov. J. P. Coleman,
who is expected to run against Sen.
James O. Eastland in 1960, outlined a
four-point program which he hopes to
achieve before leaving the governor’s
chair.
Missouri
A St. Louis high school reported af
ter its second full year of desegregation
that it was operating more smoothly
with a 50 per cent Negro enrollment
than it did with a 33 per cent Negro
minority the first year.
North Carolina
As the teacher pay issue dominated
the 1957 legislative session, the U.S.
Supreme Court was asked to review a
lower court decision denying Negroes
entry to an all-white school.
Oklahoma
New federal court action was ex
pected in an effort to force integration
of a state training institution and a
public school district.
South Carolina
The general assembly added an anti
barratry (soliciting law suits) statute
to a body of legislation aimed at the
NAACP and considered other pro
segregation laws.
Tennessee
An arrest order was issued by federal
court for John Kasper, segregationist
leader and figure in the Clinton inci
dents. Meanwhile, the Tennessee Sen
ate passed by voice vote the House-
passed “Tennessee Manifesto” while re
jecting a resolution of interposition.
Texas
The lower house of the legislature has
adopted a states’ rights resolution
which avoids the term “interposition.”
Houston’s school board president said
it was hoped that desegregation could
be avoided at least until 1959.
Virginia
Two more localities—Newport News
and Norfolk—received court desegre
gation orders as legislative investiga
tion of the NAACP continued.
West Virginia
The general assembly wrestled with
proposals to strengthen the minimum
foundation school program while a bill
was considered to revise statutory ref
erence to integrated West Virginia State
College as a Negro institution.
Index
State Page
Alabama 12
Arkansas 13
Delaware 6
District of Columbia 9
Florida 16
Georgia 3
Kentucky 12
Louisiana 8
Maryland 5
Mississippi 10
Missouri 2
North Carolina 11
Oklahoma 10
South Carolina 6
Tennessee 7
Texas 4
Virginia 14
West Virginia 15