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SOUTHERN SCHOOL NEWS—MARCH 1957—PAGE 9
I). C. Experience Is Held
‘Miracle of Adjustment"
WASHINGTON, D.C.
S chool integration in the nation’s
capital was called a “miracle of so
cial adjustment” in two studies released
during February. (See “Under Sur
vey”)
Two southern congressmen said they
intended to investigate personally com
plaints that teachers in a junior high
school were forcing white and Negro
pupils to dance together. (See “Legis
lative Action.”)
A test of lOth-graders in a District
school showed academic improvement
under the new “four-track” program.
(See “School Boards and Schoolmen.”)
reed retires
U. S. Supreme Court Justice Stanley
F. Reed, one of the justices who par
ticipated in the decisions against pub
lic school segregation, announced his
retirement. President Eisenhower re
portedly had a southerner, among oth
ers, under consideration as a replace
ment. (See “Legal Action”)
President Eisenhower said he could
not make a major speech in the South
on civil rights issues, as he had been
urged to do by pro-integration groups.
(See “Community Action.”)
The National Council of Churches is
sued a 12-point program by which it
said local church groups can rid their
communities and congregations of racial
segregation. (See “Community Action.”)
A private research organization said
the fate of civil rights legislation now
pending in Congress could be deter
mined in the next few weeks. (See
“Legislative Action.”)
The U. S. Office of Education reported
that the biggest shortage in classrooms
continues in the southern states, where
construction, despite an increase, lags
farther behind needs. (See “Under Sur
vey”)
SCHOLARSHIP REPORT
A report on a scholarship project said
southern Negroes from segregated high
schools show up poorly on college apti
tude tests but catch up quickly once
they get into college. (See “Under Sur
vey.”)
Federal aid for school construction
continued to be debated in Congress,
with some indication that the Eisen
hower Administration’s plan for a four-
year, $1.3 billion construction program,
Louisiana
(Continued From Page 8)
he said, and is frequently under attack
>n the Communist press.
The NAACP has never and will nev
er advocate defiance of law and order
or the denial of rights to any people be
cause of their color, race or religion,”
Laws said. “No White Citizens Council
can make that statement.”
perez fires back
Perez rejoined: “Everybody wanting
* ormation as to the Commie-front
ac kground of this trouble-making,
race-rioting, agitating NAACP should
write their congressman for a copy of
e Feb. 23, 1956 Congressional Record.”
« ® sa *d it “partially exposes” the
NA 7«unist - front affiliations of the
AACP organizers. . . . including
A pro-integration group, the Unite
“bs, Inc., heard a prediction of “vie
f °r integration” by 1963. It cam
a m ? e ^ing °f about 3,200 persons a
jjColiseum Arena in New Orleans.
he Rev. Martin Luther King c
outgomery, Ala., made the predictior
asing R on contention that “Ne
tj 068 stand together in determina
fcj 1 1° disobey local law and abide b
federal law.”
•'fESSAGE TO PRESIDENT
at ^another New Orleans appearance,
draft j W ^‘ on Baptist Church, King
lj 0w e< i a telegram to President Eisen-
rj„i f r ’ ur ging him to make a pro-civil
If tl SPGech I* 1 the South,
said h P>res ' t i en t did not do this, King
^ vv would face a “mass pilgrimage”
p ro t as hington by both white and Negro
miscellaneous
B 0y ® egre gation law has evicted the
Colk„ C ° Uts f rom the LSU Agricultural
*seum.
JOfT
c Us h P® c ' a l- S sa id the Boy Scout cir-
lOy e el< t there annually for the past
this ^ rS ’ w°uld have to find another site
Boy o ear ' The reason: Negro and white
does fl C0UtS ta ^ e P art > and the Coliseum
c hitie 0t ^ aVe the segregated toilet fa-
Schtielr] re< f u i rec l by law. Richard
cir cil 1 er .’ i n charge of arranging the
yeaj. ’ Sai( l it would not be held this
would be upped. (See “Legislative Ac
tion.”)
Congress had before it a request from
the District commissioners, forwarded
with President Eisenhower’s approval,
asking for permission to spend more
than $1 million annually on additional
teachers—a request growing out of de
segregation problems. (See “School
Boards and Schoolmen.”)
School integration in the nation’s cap
ital has been called a “miracle of social
adjustment.”
An analysis of the citywide achieve
ment scores of Washington school chil
dren rejects the idea of the mental in
feriority of Negroes.
These conclusions appear in two new
booklets on desegregation in the Dis
trict of Columbia.
The first booklet, declaring school in
tegration a “miracle of social adjust
ment,” was published by the Anti-
Defamation League of B’nai B’rith as
one of its Freedom Pamphlets and was
written by Carl F. Hansen, assistant su
perintendent of schools in Washington.
ON WAY TO OBJECTIVE
In this third year of desegregation,
Hansen stated, the school administra
tion is well on its way to the realization
of its primary objective. He described
this as: “The maximum development
of every pupil, regardless of race, creed,
cultural and economic status and sup
posed capacity for learning.”
He continued that the “big fear, that
integration will impair the education of
some children in the community, is
rapidly yielding to the concentrated
drive to effectuate the big solution.”
The school integration story cannot
be viewed in a vacuum, wrote Hansen.
It is part of a changing city and a
shrinking world. He recalled that Mar
ian Anderson was denied use of a
white school auditorium here in 1939
and a high school play was cancelled
in 1950 because Negroes were in the
cast.
‘CHANGE . . . EVERYWHERE’
But in the last few years “change
was visible everywhere.” New ideas
came into the city, among them that:
“People everywhere are more alike
than unlike.” Hansen believes District
schools would have been forced to in
tegrate soon even without the Supreme
Court ruling.
“The extent of the movement to al
leviate problems in race relations was
so great as to have left the schools an
island in a sea of change,” he wrote.
“The action of the board of education
to desegregate at once [after the court
ruling] may be described as an histori
cal inevitability.”
Population shifts brought ever-heav-
ier problems of transferring teaching
positions from one segregated system to
the other and of transferring or build
ing new schools. Action always lagged
behind need.
“In Washington, D.C., where equali
zation was striven for earnestly and
vigorously, it was never achieved,” he
stated.
Hansen reviewed the preparation for
integration, dating back to Feb. 25, 1947
when the Citizens Committee on Inter-
cultural Education asked School Supt.
Hobart M. Coming to set up a commit
tee to seek ways of bettering racial
relations in the schools.
A year and a half before the Supreme
Court ruling, the board of education re
quested community leaders to offer sug
gestions on the mechanics of integra
tion. A public hearing followed. A se
ries of staff meetings scheduled during
1953 produced the segregation plan for
the following year.
ADOPT POLICY
Eight days after the Supreme Court’s
decision was handed down on May 17,
1954, the board of education adopted
its desegregation policy. Schools were
integrated when they opened in Sep
tember.
Coming’s plan, which was followed,
provided for complete desegregation
with the least delay, new school boun
daries (which could be relaxed for
health or emotional reasons), appoint
ment and promotion of school personnel
on a merit system.
Schools opened on Sept. 13, 1954 with
white and Negro pupils attending class
es together in 116 (73 per cent) of the
schools. Newspapers that day reported
the apparent smoothness with which in
tegration began.
But one Monday morning early in
October, 1954, a number of students in
three high schools failed to report for
classes. By Friday most were back in
schools. At the peak of the student
strike, about 2,500 junior and senior
high school students were out of school.
Over 100,000 pupils continued in class
es throughout the city.
“Any reasonable observer would have
predicted a period of turbulence in com
munity relations during the transition,”
said Hansen. “What happened in this
respect was not unexpected.”
By September, 1955, the last signs of
the dual school system had been wiped
away and desegregation was complete,
Hansen said. Not every school had both
white and Negro students. But no child
was denied admission to any school be
cause of race. Teachers were assigned
on merit according to need.
‘ALMOST ROUTINE’
Last fall the opening of school in the
third year “had become almost routine
—with not much more than the normal
complement of problems and confusion,”
said Hansen.
“Anyone who would underestimate
the difficulty of personal adjustment
experienced by many parents, pupils,
teachers and officers in the transition
to integrated schools in the District of
Columbia would fail to give credit to
those who rose above their fears and
prejudices to do much better than they
thought they could.”
During the first year of integration,
Hansen said, principals planned social
programs with considerable caution,
perhaps at times leaning over back
ward to avoid setting the stage for an
unpleasant or misunderstood incident.
But, he declares, most extra-cur
ricular school activities, all of which
include some degree of social experi
ence, have continued without inter
ruption since the schools were integrat
ed in 1954.
Hansen also included the profiles of
two 1956 valedictorians, one Negro and
one white. Both attained an average
grade of 95 or above and both received
scholarships to Yale. Their “comparabil
ity of accomplishments,” Hansen states,
“illustrates how superiority is an indi
vidual and not a racial characteristic.”
SECOND BOOKLET
Similarly, the second booklet—“De
mocracy and the District of Columbia
Public Schools” — disclaims Negro
mental inferiority. It was written by
Ellis O. Knox, professor of education
at Howard University and was released
by the District branch, National Asso
ciation for the Advancement of Colored
People.
From the same test data used by the
House (Davis) subcommittee in its at
tempt to show that Negro children are
inferior mentally to white children,
Knox found that:
• Negro pupils with comparable ed
ucational and environmental back
grounds do not possess lower capacities
to learn than white pupils.
• A large overlapping of achievement
scores by races exists in all integrated
schools, showing that some pupils in
predominantly Negro schools achieve
higher scores than those in predomi
nantly white schools.
• Although the national norm for
tests given to elementary school chil
dren was third grade, second month,
some pupils in predominantly Negro
schools achieved at a sixth grade,
eighth month level, or three years, six
months in advance of national averages.
• Since desegregation, some formerly
white schools do not find their aca
demic standards lowered by the attend
ance of large numbers of Negro youths.
CLASSROOM SHORTAGES
The biggest classroom shortages (ac
cording to need) continue in the South,
according to a report by the U.S. Office
of Education. It said that 69,200 of the
159,000 rooms needed will be completed
this year by state and local govern
ments.
Among states covered were: Alabama,
with 11,354 classrooms needed and 407
to be completed this year; Arkansas,
with a need of 8,324 of which 350 will
be completed; Kentucky, 7,000 needed,
800 to be completed; Mississippi, 6,579
needed, 600 to be completed this year,
and Missouri with 4,000 needed of which
1,300 will be completed in 1957.
APTITUDE TESTS
Reporting on aptitude tests given
more than 3,000 high school seniors in
78 schools in 45 southern cities, the Na
tional Scholarship Service and Fund for
Negro Students said that of 1,700 qual
ifying for colleges, 1,100 expressed a de
sire to seek admission and scholarships
at interracial colleges, and 578 carried
through the effort.
A one-year survey of the college
records of 167 students in the project,
said NSSFNS, showed that “education
ally, almost all of the students studied
were successful. . . . Further data re
vealed that the grades of students tend
—Norfolk (Va.) Journal & Guide
ed to improve between the freshman
and sophomore years. . . . The evidence
is strong . . . that aptitude tests, for de
prived students, tend to measure what
they have learned rather than what
they can learn.”
Two southern congressmen say they
will investigate complaints that white
and Negro children are being forced to
dance together in the Cramer Junior
High School. They were Rep. John Bell
Williams (D-Miss.) and Rep. James C.
Davis (D-Ga.).
Williams made public a letter he said
he had received from a parent and
member of the District public school as
sociation that two teachers “informed
their classes that they were to partici
pate in unsegregated dances . . . unless
they definitely brought notes from their
parents which would specifically assert
that they were not to dance for one of
two reasons: namely on grounds of re
ligion or on grounds of health.”
CIVIL RIGHTS BILLS
Meanwhile, Congressional Quarterly,
a private, non-partisan research publi
cation, said civil rights legislation this
year could be determined in the next
few weeks.
A civil rights bill similar to the one
approved last year by the House but
stalled in the Senate is expected to be
through committee and on the floor by
March 15. Senate Majority Leader Wil
liam F. Knowland of California has pre
dicted that the Senate will be ready to
debate the measure about Easter.
CQ said that if the legislation isn’t be
fore the Senate by the midway point
of the session, southern senators feel
their filibuster threat will prevent final
action this year.
FEDERAL AID
On another legislative front, a press
association survey in mid-February in
dicated approval of a six-year, $3.6 bil
lion school construction program by the
House Education subcommittee. Presi
dent Eisenhower had proposed $1.3 bil
lion for federal aid over a four-year
period.
The United Press said that its survey
“showed also that the Powell amend
ment—to bar federal aid to school dis
tricts maintaining classroom segrega
tion—would be rejected by the subcom
mittee, if proposed.”
During the month the subcommittee
completed two weeks of open hearings
and began an estimated two additional
weeks of hearing further testimony.
Justice Stanley F. Reed, 72, second
oldest member of the U.S. Supreme
Court in length of service, retired Feb.
25. In announcing his retirement earlier
in the month he told reporters it was
“because I am 72 years old.”
The retirement was requested in a
handwritten letter to President Eisen
hower, who congratulated Justice Reed
on his “long and splendid record in
public service.” The justice, a Ken
tuckian, began his term in 1938.
Among those mentioned as possible
successors is Judge Elbert Tuttle of
the Fifth Circuit Court of Appeals in
Atlanta.
SCHOOL BOARDS
AND SCHOOLMEN
Under the school system’s four-track
program, which is geared to the
achievement level of young people, Mc
Kinley High School 10th graders were
tested early in February. The results,
compared to their academic standing
last fall, were startling:
• Seventy-nine pupils made a gain
in reading of between one and two
years.
• Seventy-five gained from two to
five years.
• Forty-seven pupils showed gains of
one year.
• Twelve pupils showed no gain at
all.
The class was 70 per cent Negro.
School officials point out that the re
sults indicate that Negro students can
pull themselves up as well as other
students when stimulated.
The four-track high school plan
places students in four different courses
of study according to abilities. It was
started in September after school offi
cials admitted that too many youngsters
were falling behind in the fundamental
courses of reading, writing and arith
metic.
SEEK APPROVAL
The District commissioners’ request for
permission to spend more than $1 mil
lion annually on additional teachers has
gone to Congress with the recommenda
tion of President Eisenhower. According
to James G. Deane, writing in the
Washington Star, “the main object is to
reduce class sizes so the city’s young
sters can be given better instruction.”
Deane continued: “The impact of inte
gration apparently was decisive in caus
ing the commissioners to grant the
budget increase. Before integration, the
city’s white school children had class
sizes nearly exactly what the pending
budget—if Congress approves it—will
establish next fall. (Editor’s Note: The
present class average is 34.8. The budget
would reduce it to 32.) But Negro class
es were much bigger. In effect, what the
city is now getting around to is to try
to bring all schools up the previous
white standard.”
President Eisenhower will not be able
to make a major speech in the South
on civil rights, as he had been urged
to do by anti-segregation leaders.
This was revealed by the Department
of Justice when it made public a letter
disclosing that Presidential Assistant
Sherman Adams told the Rev. Martin
Luther King Jr., of Montgomery, Ala.,
that “it was not possible for the Presi
dent to schedule a speaking engagement
such as you asked.”
Justice also disclosed, in response to
an inquiry, that it had rejected an
“urgent” request for a conference be
tween Atty. Gen. Herbert Brownell Jr.
and representatives of the southern Ne
gro leaders conference on transportation
and non-violent integration.
Such a conference was sought in con
nection with recent violence attending
attempts to end segregation on public
transportation systems in the South.
‘NOT HELPFUL’
Asst. Atty. Gen. Warren Olney III
wired King that the department “well
understands your interest and position
in this matter and no conference is
needed to make this clear.”
“With respect to specific incidents of
violence, a conference at this time
would not be helpful or appropriate,”
Olney told King, whose home has been
the target of two attempted bombings.
King was the leader of the bus boycott
in Montgomery, Ala.
The telegram suggested that any evi
dence of federal offenses be reported
promptly to the FBI or the local U.S.
attorney. The FBI has been investigat
ing a series of bombing incidents in
Montgomery to determine if any fed
eral statute was violated.
COUNCIL MESSAGE
King drafted the annual message is
sued by the National Council of
Churches for Race Relations Sunday,
Feb. 10, and later adopted as a Council
statement for distribution by the Coun
cil’s Department of Racial and Cultural
Relations.
This message urged local congrega
tions to take a “forthright” stand on the
“crucial” issue of segregation.
“If we are to remain true to the gos
pel of Jesus Christ, we must not rest
until segregation is banished from every
area of American life,” the Council
stated.
Although noting that “some progress
toward integration” has been made, the
statement pointed to segregated hous
ing as a “critical problem remaining in
every section of the nation.”
Also deplored were segregated trans
portation facilities and what was called
slow compliance with the Supreme
Court’s decision on school integration.
As a 12-point guide for action by
chinches in communities, the Council
suggests: obtaining facts, discussing and
formulating concrete proposals for con
structive action on school integration,
supporting legislation designed to guar
antee full opportunity for all, and pro
testing against legislation aimed at
maintaining racial discrimination.