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Desegregation a Reality,
\\ . \ a. Abandons Bureau
CHARLESTON, W.Va.
O acial desegregation, already a
r reality in most school systems
of West Virginia, moved another
tentative step last month.
Meanwhile, disclosure was made
of the admission of six Negro stu
dents to Martinsburg High School
in Berkely County last fall. School
authorities said the six were ad
mitted upon their own application.
Elementary schools remain segre
gated.
In one decisive stroke the legis
lature wiped out the Bureau of
Negro Welfare and Statistics by
approving no funds for its opera
tion next fiscal year. It will, there
fore, pass out of existence on
June 30. A lobby of Negroes
worked to save the 30-year-old
agency but without results.
Mrs. Bird Forney, bureau di
rector, said the lobby couldn’t
change the attitude of the legisla
ture, which two years ago toyed
with the idea of discontinuing its
services.
T. G. Nutter of Charleston,
president of the West Virginia
branch of the National Associa
tion for the Advancement of Col
ored People, said its fate was
sealed when the session opened,
this because of the attitude of
holdover members from the last
legislature.
JOB CURTAILED
’ Moreover, he said, there was no valid
reason for continuing the bureau in the
manner in which it was being supported.
“The state was giving it only enough
i money to exist,” he observed. “There
was never enough to do the job intended
when the bureau was formed.”
So, when word leaked out of commit-
, tee rooms late in the session that the bu
reau was to be stricken from next year’s
budget, no concerted efforts were made
to save it. (See “Legislative Action.”)
Abolition of the bureau was, however,
one of the few definite efforts to effect
economies by the 1957 legislature.
Otherwise, this month, the NAACP
mounted a new drive for members (see
Miscellaneous”) and announced plans
to press for desegregation of schools in
Jefferson County (see “Legal Action”).
Negro leaders in Charleston already
, ^ ve conferred with Gov. Cecil H.
nderwood relative to having activities
Sb*. - Bureau of Negro Welfare and
wistics transferred to another depart-
ent. But nothing definite has resulted
?? the conferences.
.hie governor, according to these peo-
a e ’ that after the crush of his re-
la5 miZationa l P roblems has ended he’ll
Re hie matter. Underwood, first
Publican elected governor in West
Vginia in 28 years, has been engaged
sweeping changes in the executive
• UI «neh.
form the new agency will take,
aj e ” ere the bureau’s activities will go
questions not yet resolved. They
Gm, rr discussed at a later date with
■ Underwood.
DUTIES
0‘ory duties of the bureau have
of j. to study the economic conditions
bure 6groes throughout the state. The
^ilitv a ^ SO ' s charged with the respon-
of v y °f encouraging the ownership
5i a ^ o rries and farms, to furnish infor-
te res ^ to persons and corporations in-
^opie ^ *** ass isting Negroes in building
' ^Uom ^hnulate thrift, industry and
■bote n? amon S Negroes, and to pro-
TV general welfare of the race,
op a j, ° Ur eau has served as coordinator
r e aUs Questions referred by state bu-
M Q an< f departments, county offices
i er agencies on Negro problems,
re commended solutions to them.
" te bU’ s r ’ 111 commen ting on the bu-
past record, said appropriations
7 er e too meager to permit the
out ?t sufficient personnel to carry
^’t vf r ° a d responsibilities. In fact, it
<, °rk er 6en a hle to hire even one field
?>OOo *’ this past year has had only
Xj 0 an J° function over and above $12,-
Pfopriated for salaries.
The economy fever first struck at the
bureau in 1955 when a budget of only
$9,680 was approved. Last year $13,000
was granted for its operation, and at the
recent legislative session, though the
Board of Public Works recommended a
similar grant for the coming year, it
noted in its proposed budget that:
“With the integration program under
way in West Virginia, the responsibili
ties and duties of this department could
probably be assumed by other state
agencies, and allow for elimination of
this expense.”
Also by legislative act, the 240-bed
Denmar Sanitarium in Pocahontas
County, an all-Negro institution since
its founding in 1917, was closed March
12 and its 71 patients were transferred
to previously all-white Pinecrest Sani
tarium at Beckley—the state’s largest
and finest hospital for care of tubercu-
lars.
The legislature made effective from
passage an act abolishing the institution
as a sanitarium and reconstituting it as
a hospital for the chronically ill of all
races. The legislature left here March
12, and two days later the patients were
transferred to Beckley by bus.
Recently-appointed president of the
Board of Control Theodore T. Dorman,
who has jurisdiction over such institu
tions, said the move was made without
incident or complaint.
Pinecrest is a 600-bed hospital, but
because of new methods of treatment
developed in recent years neither it nor
Denmar was full. The Beckley institu
tion had approximately 200 empty beds
at the time of the move.
SCHOOL FINANCE
School finance and its shortcomings
became a major issue of the 1957 legis
lature toward the end of the session, and
before adjournment the lawmakers ap
proved a five-point program shifting a
larger share of the future financial bur
den back on the counties.
Opposition appeared from rural coun
ties, but the majority, incensed by the
fact that 67 per cent of the cost of coun
ty schools is supported by state taxes,
pushed through the bipartisan program.
It had the governor’s blessing.
This leaves almost altogether to the
counties the responsibility for improv
ing their public schools. The legislature
provided nothing more at the state level
for relief of educational infirmities,
other than the annual budget which
included $51 million in state school aid.
This is only slightly higher than what
was approved a year ago.
INCREASE SOUGHT
Recently-inaugurated State School
Supt. R. Virgil Rohrbough, who with
Underwood slipped into office last fall,
the only Republicans elected to state
wide offices, was given $50,000 addition
al for his department.
Rohrbough made a special appeal to
the legislature through its Finance Com
mittee for the funds. He said the money
was needed to reorganize along lines
outlined by a special legislative study
committee a year ago.
He proposes to create separate divi
sions of curriculum development, in
structional supervision, school plant
planning, and research.
In other acts, the legislature:
1) Granted increased teacher retire
ment benefits amounting to approxi
mately $16 per month per teacher and
made eligible teachers 65 years of age
who served 25 years prior to 1941.
RACE MENTION REMOVED
2) Removed racial restrictions on stu
dents admitted to the West Virginia
School for the Deaf and Blind at Rom
ney, and moved the maximum age for
enrollment in the school from 25 to 20
years.
3) Eliminated West Virginia State Col
lege (an all-Negro institution until four
year ago) as a beneficiary of federal ap
propriations for land grant colleges and
designated West Virginia University as
the sole beneficiary of such appropria
tions.
4) Amended a statute governing the
business and educational affairs of West
Virginia State College, striking from it
any reference to the school being a Ne
gro institution.
5) Created 100 teacher trainee scholar
ships of $500 each per school year, with
each county to be awarded as many
scholarships as it has members in the
legislature. Three renewals of scholar
ships will be permitted any individual,
and persons receiving them will be re
quired to give notes payable on demand.
At the expiration of each school year
of service as a teacher, the oldest of the
SOUTHERN SCHOOL NEWS—APRIL 1957—PAGE 5
Civil Rights Legislation
Seen on Floor by Easter
existing notes will be cancelled. No dis
criminatory features were written into
the act.
LEGAL ACTION
State NAACP President T. G. Nutter
announced near the end of the month
that he is contemplating within a week
to ask the Jefferson County school board,
a holdout on the desegregation question,
what action it intends taking for bring
ing the Negroes and whites together.
If he receives no definite answer from
his inquiry, Nutter said the “NAACP
will have to take some action.” He meant
by this he’ll seek recourse through the
courts.
The NAACP has been successful on
more than a half-dozen occasions in
forcing county school boards into an ac
celerated program of desegregation by
bringing suits in federal court and win
ning its point in pre-trial conference.
ONE CASE TRIED
Only once did a case go to trial, and
that was the first—in Greenbrier Coun
ty. All other decisions have hinged on
that one case, which ended in an in
formal agreement between the court, the
board of education and the NAACP to
desegregate the schools in two steps.
Two out-of-state educators told the
State Board of Education at its regular
monthly meeting that it is time to think
of turning Marshall College into a uni
versity.
Dr. Earl W. Anderson, chairman of the
department of education at Ohio State
University, and Dr. Clarence W. Kreger,
provost of Miami University in Ohio,
said in a report to the board:
“Marshall College has now reached a
degree of complexity and educational
eminence that clearly takes it out of the
‘college’ class as an institution of higher
education.
“In view of this fact and in view of the
impending growth which simply cannot
be averted or ignored, it is strongly rec
ommended that the West Virginia Board
of Education give immediate and seri
ous consideration to changing the insti
tutional designation of Marshall from
‘college’ status to ‘university’ status by
changing the name to Marshall State
University.”
Their report noted that Marshall’s en
rollment in January was 3,573, includ
ing 2,755 fulltime students. They also
recommended the hiring of a provost to
assist in major administrative matters.
FORMER NEGRO COLLEGE
Anderson also presented a report on a
study at West Virginia State College.
The study was undertaken in view of
mounting enrollment in the period since
State ceased to be an all-Negro school
and also in view of discontinuance of its
former status as a land grant college.
The report indicated that from the fall
of 1953 to last fall, equivalent fulltime
enrollment jumped from 820 to 1,694 and
total enrollment rose from 837 to 2,228.
It showed also that an increase of 108
per cent in equivalent fulltime enroll
ment has been accompanied by an in
crease of only 7 per cent in the staff.
“West Virginia is far more advanced
than Philadelphia as far as school in
tegration is concerned,” a Pennsylvania-
educated school official told Charles
ton’s NAACP this month.
You can be proud of the advances
our state has made in desegregating its
schools,” said Earl C. Smith, assistant
principal of desegregated Mt. Hope High
School.
Smith, a graduate of the old Garnet
High School here, has completed resi
dent studies for a doctor’s degree in
human relations at the University of
Pennsylvania.
He kicked off the annual membership
drive of the Charleston NAACP.
“We must meet the problems of inte
gration squarely,” he warned. “We can’t
wish them away.”
DISTINGUISHES TERMS
Smith distinguished between desegre
gation as the immediate removal of ra
cial barriers and integration as a “indi
vidual process involving the heart and
head.”
Integration must be gradual because
we must feel it in our hearts,” he said.
But integration can’t begin until segre
gation s undemocratic barriers are re
moved, he added.
Smith suggested that a state human
relations commission could attack “the
psychological problems of integration,”
helping white and Negro children ad
just themselves in the new social en
vironment.
# # #
WASHINGTON, D.C.
Congressional leaders hope to
see the controversial civil
rights legislation, blueprinted by
President Eisenhower, hit the
Senate floor for action before
Easter recess—April 19-29.
Should this measure, subject to
weeks of parliamentary delay, be
approved, key congressmen pre
dict a rapid passage of the equally
controversial and slow-moving
federal aid to school construction
bill, also pushed by President
Eisenhower.
The civil rights proposal has moved
at a snail’s pace through the legisla
tive mill. The President’s plan under
went two months of House Judiciary
subcommittee hearings before winning
full committee approval.
National Now, the bill is awaiting
Affairs clearance by the powerful
Rules Committee, headed
by Rep. Howard W. Smith (D-Va.).
This committee’s greenlight is necessary
for legislation to reach the House floor
for action.
A Senate version of the administra
tion’s civil rights views has moved out
of a Constitutional Rights subcommit
tee and is backed up behind the full
Judiciary Committee, headed by Sen.
James O. Eastland (D-Miss.), who has
promised early consideration. This
could entail renewed hearings.
APPROVAL PREDICTED
Senate leaders say, however, the
measure will be reported out and ap
proved by the senior chamber.
If this happens, these same leaders
foresee early action on the school build
ing bill, which last year was stymied
in the House after a bitter battle cen
tering around an anti-segregation
amendment authored by Rep. Adam
Clayton Powell Jr. (D-N. Y.). This
amendment, brought up again this year
by the Negro congressman, would cut
off funds to school districts until they
agreed to integrate their public schools.
There have been indications, the
congressional leaders admit, although
not for publication, that the National
Association for the Advancement of
Colored People might moderate its in
sistence on adoption of the Powell pro
viso if the civil rights measure is passed.
BUDGET-SLASHING DANGER
Actually, the federal aid proposal
currently is endangered more by bud-
get-slashing congressmen than by any
hooking on of a racial amendment.
During recent closed-door budget
testimony on Department of Health,
Education and Welfare requests, HEW
officials had this to say about the effect
of an integration amendment on school
bill passage.
A House Appropriations subcommit
tee member, Rep. Henderson Lanham
(D-Ga.), asked HEW Secretary Marion
B. Folsom: “Now on this matter of the
school bill, isn’t it going to founder
again on this question of integration,
even if it should get by the House with
out the so-called Powell amendment.
Wouldn’t the southern states be denied
any of that money by executive order?”
NO INDICATION’
Folsom replied: “I don’t see why you
can assume that, and I don’t know un
der what rule we could do that or under
what law we could do that. The exact
parallel is the federal impacted area
grants. There is no [such] indication
there.”
Lanham: “Well, of course, Powell has
threatened to get his amendment onto
this bill, but that has been chicken-
feed, and it has been so small that they
haven’t bothered about it.”
Folsom: “I don’t see how we can
arbitrarily say that one of these days
we will take money away from a state
because they are not integrated.”
‘SOUTHERNERS DISTURBED’
Lanham said an executive order de
nied the city of Atlanta funds for sep
arate toilet facilities in connection with
an airport program. “We southerners
are disturbed,” Lanham added, “even
if this Powell amendment isn’t adopted.”
Folsom: “Of course, the only thing I
can say is that as the President stated,
we hope the Powell amendment will not
be adopted.”
The secretary reminded that in a re
cent Gallup Poll people were asked all
over the country whether they thought
the money for schools should be with
held from the states where they practice
segregation. He said “72 per cent of the
people said they [the funds] should
not, which gives a pretty good expres
sion of public opinion on this subject.”
So, he concluded, “we are certainly
hopeful that it will not hold up the
school bill this year.”
ASSURANCE NEEDED
Lanham: “I am afraid the southern
congressmen won’t vote for it unless
there is some assurance that it won’t
be done by executive order, and I don’t
know whether anybody can give any
assurance on that or not.”
Rep. Winfield K. Denton (D-Ind.),
another subcommittee member, asked:
“... How far would the administration
go in order to see that the Powell
amendment is not added to the school
construction bill?”
Folsom: “The President indicated in
his State of the Union message a pretty
forthright statement and he has indi
cated that very clearly.”
Denton: “Do you think that is a so-
called must of the administration?”
STICK TO POSITION
Folsom: “I think the President will
stick to this position on that.”
Denton: “Do you think you will have
the help of the administration leaders
in Congress to see that that amendment
is not added to the so-called school
construction bill?”
Folsom said he believed this depend
ed on the type of bill which gets to the
floor. There are several pending.
U.N. EDUCATION REPORT
At United Nations, N. Y., last month,
plans evolved to combat alleged dis
crimination in education. They were the
result of meetings of the U. N. Subcom
mission on Prevention of Discrimination
and Protection of Minorities. The group
completed work on a report on discrim
ination in education in 82 countries and
sent the final product plus an action
program to the Commission on Human
Rights.
The report called for an international
campaign to combat discrimination in
education arising from race, religion,
nationality and sex. It urged that na
tional and local governments be asked
to support the campaign with all legis
lative, administrative and financial
steps possible.
Justice Philip Halpern, United States
representative on the U. N. minorities
subcommittee and associate justice of
the Appellate Division of the New York
State Supreme Court, praised the re
port as a “step forward in international
studies” because it established “the
right to make statements critical of
governments.”
The report (prepared by Charles D.
Ammoun of Lebanon) “presented fair
ly” the situation in the United States,
and particularly the South, regarding
racial discrimination in education, Jus
tice Halpern said. According to The
New York Times, “the report contrasted
the United States, which it said was
moving away from such discrimination,
with South Africa, where it was said
to be rigidly maintained.”
In Washington, a southern editor told
the National Association of Secondary-
School Principals (NEA) he hoped the
NAACP will “exhibit a statesmanlike
restraint” in the current interracial up
heaval in the South.
Virginius Dabney, editor, Richmond
(Va.) Times-Dispatch, told the educa
tors in a major address:
“... We are heading into stormy seas,
I fear. The Deep South, it must be said
in all frankness, has no present inten
tion of integrating its public schools.
Several of those states have
District a fixed determination to close
Affairs their schools entirely, rather
than mingle the races in
them. All courts, as far as I know, agree
that this would be legal, however de
plorable from an educational and social
standpoint. Let us hope, therefore, the
NAACP will see the folly of forcing
the issue in these states ...
“Enormous gains have been made by
the Negro race in education and every
other sphere throughout the entire
South, and additional gains will be
made, if only the responsible leader
ship of the race will assert itself.
“... the course of wisdom for the
NAACP today is for that militant or
ganization to ‘back up,’ to consolidate
its gains, and to refrain from pushing
matters so fast and so far as to pass the
‘point of no return.’ Otherwise it will
do irreparable harm to the cause of
Negro advancement and to interracial
amity.”
In a description of the progress of
integration, Dabney said: “Here in this
great city of Washington, where 70 per
cent of the school population is colored,
[these] problems are acute. Although
integration is now in its third year here,
solutions are a long way off... It seems
clear to me that mixed schools were
put into effect here with too much haste
and too little preparation.”
# # #