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SOUTHERN SCHOOL NEWS—JANUARY 1958—PAGE 13
Charlotte Pupils Reject Advice to ‘Welcome Back’ Negro Girl
RALEIGH, N. C.
r. Frank P. Graham, former
president of the University of
^orth Carolina and now a United
Rations mediator, asked students
0 f Harding High School in Char-
'|otte to “welcome back” a Negro
jjrl driven from the school in
September, 1957.
I “The majority of the student
body is not interested in asking
her back,” said Jennie Lee Sat
terfield, 17, president of the
Harding student body. (See
••What They Say.”)
Voters of Guilford County approved
a $7 million school bond issue for cap-
! tal improvements by a margin of 8 to
l (See “Community Action.”)
will ask hearing
A Negro youth denied admittance to
a white high school in Raleigh an
nounced through his attorneys he will
ask for a special federal court hearing
, of his case. (See “Legal Action.”)
A study of desegregation attitudes
in Guilford County, where six Negroes
are attending white schools, produced
, the conclusion that people without
children and those with four or more
are most resistant to desegregation.
(See “Miscellaneous.”)
Dr. Graham received a long ovation
at the conclusion of his speech at
' Harding High in Charlotte, but his re
quest that Dorothy Counts, Negro, be
welcomed back by the students was
tamed aside.
Harding High, he said, “is not asked
to solve the race problem. But it is
confronted with the problem of this
one girl.” Miss Counts left school after
she was jeered and struck with small
objects.
“You take your own time, in your
own way, through your own leaders to
• invite her back with welcome and se
curity,” he said. He said that 800 mil
lion of the world’s colored people are
i now swaying between the free world
and the totalitarian world and “the
I way they go is the way the world
goes.”
‘So what we do about colored peo
ple in Charlotte, N. C., makes a great
deal of difference in what the world
does about the United States,” Dr.
' Graham concluded.
IDENTICAL REQUEST
Dr. Graham’s request that Miss
Counts be welcomed back by the
, ^rding students was followed by an
■dentical request by the Carolinas-
uginia section of the National Stu
dents Association.
| J Jennie Lee Satterfield, 17, Harding
^dent body president, said, “Of
C0Urse > everyone appreciated Dr. Gra-
‘Follow Me, Y’All—What’ve
You Got to Lose?’
Greensboro Daily News
ham’s advice, but right now we have
no movement under way to invite her
back . . . and I don’t think there will
be one.”
In Boston, Mass., Harry Golden of
Charlotte, editor of The Carolina
Israelite, told a regional meeting of the
American Jewish Congress that North
Carolina parochial schools have dem
onstrated that “stereotyped fears” of
southerners on school integration
“have no basis in fact.” Golden added,
“While bigots are making the most
noise, actually there are many thous
ands of southerners who know that
racial segregation cannot be tolerated
any longer on any moral, religious or
legal basis.”
In Raleigh, Jonathan Daniels, editor
of the Raleigh News and Observer,
told a Shaw University audience he
learned as a child that true under
standing between the races “is based
on character and not color.”
HODGES HEARD
Also in Raleigh, Gov. Luther Hodges
and a number of other state officials
told a congressional subcommittee
studying federal-state relations they
favored continued federal aid but
“without strings.”
At one point during the hearings,
Rep. Clare Hoffman (R-Mich.) told
Hodges North Carolina and other
southern states “are sending us a good
many of your citizens.” He referred to
the Negro migration.
“We’re sending them as fast as we
can,” Hodges said.
“I don’t think that’s very charitable,”
Hoffman said. “The time is coming
when we won’t be able to take care
of them.”
“Then we’ll sit down together and
talk over our problems,” Hodges said.
“Exactly,” said Hoffman, “and we’ll
keep our nose out of your business.”
Only 10,082 of 82,770 voters cast bal
lots, but those who did favored a $7
million bond issue in Guilford County.
The vote was 8,589 in favor of the is
sue, 1,493 against it. The $7 million will
be added to $3 million from current
revenues and spent for capital im
provements—on the basis of need—in
Greensboro, High Point and rural Guil
ford.
In Johnston County, less than 7 per
cent of the registered voters went to
the polls and approved a $500,000
school bond issue. The vote was 1,474
for, 335 against. Weather conditions
were blamed for the light vote.
In Greensboro, the Interracial Com
mission urged the city council “to re
consider and repeal its decision” to sell
its white and Negro swimming pools.
The commission said it doubted the
morality and the legality of the pro
posed sale.
In Durham, the city council approved
creation of a nine-member biracial
“Human Relations Committee.” Three
of the nine members are Negroes.
Chairman of the new group is the Rev.
Warren Carr, white pastor of the Watts
Street Baptist Church.
NEGRO YOUTH NAMED
In Asheville, The Asheville Times
named a local Negro athlete to its
seventh annual All-Scholastic (western
North Carolina) football squad. The
paper said: “For the first time a Ne
gro youth appears among the all-stars.
He is Joe Boseman, sensational end
from Stephens-Lee’s state champion
ship group. Joe’s talent for the game,
in kicking, pass receiving, blocking and
tackling in big time fashion won him
an undisputed berth.
“The consensus in the Citizen-Times
sports department is that Boseman has
what it takes to play major college
football anywhere.”
The paper named a Cherokee Indian
player as utility back on its first all-
star squad and another Stephens-Lee
youth to its third team.
Approximately 10 per cent of the
1,037,362 children enrolled in North
Carolina public schools in September,
1957, were housed in inadequate facili
ties, according to a survey by the State
Board of Education.
Although 853 obsolete classrooms
were abandoned during the 1956-57
school year, and 2,113 new classroooms
built, 6,121 students are housed in
classrooms which accommodate two
shifts daily at 25 schools. Of the 25, 23
are in city administrative units.
In Raleigh, the State Board of Edu
cation in a statement of principles em
phasized need for an educational pro
gram “conceived and administered in
the framework of true democracy
which must not be shaken from its
course of thorough and appropriate
preparation of all of its citizens by a
totalitarian philosophy. . . .”
In High Point, the North Carolina
Citizens Committee for Better Schools
said in a statement that education
“should be constantly reappraised and
kept responsive to the needs of the
changing times within the framework
of our education traditions.” C. A. Mc-
Knight, editor of The Charlotte Ob
server, headed a special committee
which drafted “three immediate goals”
for the group:
“1) To keep North Carolinians alert
to the importance of our public schools;
“2) To give thoughtful study to the
nature and proper function of the pub
lic schools for our time;
“3) To stimulate in each community,
in cooperation with existing school
agencies, the collective intelligence and
the will to improve our schools.”
In Raleigh, attorneys for Joseph H.
Holt Jr., 14, Negro youth twice denied
admission to white Needham Broughton
High School, said they will seek a spe
cial hearing in his case in federal court.
The request will be made sometime
in January. U. S. District Judge Don
Gilliam of Tarboro already has denied
a school board motion to dismiss Holt’s
suit. Holt contends in the legal action
that he has met the requirements of the
state’s Pupil Assignment Act. He is
asking that he be permitted to attend
the white school, located eight blocks
from his home, instead of the Negro
school three miles away.
The Raleigh school board rejected his
application on grounds it was acting in
behalf of Holt’s and the school sys
tem’s “best interests.”
Guilford County’s “Desegregation
Attitudes” was the title of a report
JOE BOSEMAN
Western Region All-Star End
made by Melvin M. Tumin, associate
professor of sociology and anthropology
at Princeton University, in the Prince
ton Alumni Weekly.
Some of Prof. Tumin’s points:
1) The most resistant to desegrega
tion are those people with no children
at all, and those with four or more
children. Tumin reasons that persons
with children have more of a stake in
the successful conduct of the schools
and they seem to prefer good desegre
gated schools to bad segregated schools
or to no schools at all.
“By contrast, the people with four
and more children turn out to be the
low-educated low-status, low-income
people—the same who form the hard
core of resisters. They are apparently
so alienated from the ordinary rewards
of social life that they cannot share
with their higher-status neighbors that
minimum expression of a concern for
the future which shows up in concern
for the welfare of the schools, as in
struments of social advance for their
children.”
SECOND FINDING
2) The higher the education and in
come, and the more prestigeful the
occupation, the more responsible does
the person show himself to be. He
has enough concern for the importance
of the law and peaceful social change
to be willing to put aside his personal
feelings when he is asked to choose a
course of public action, Tumin wrote.
3) The hard core of resisters (to de
segregation) who, for instance, would
use force if necessary to prevent the
desegregation of the public schools, are,
on the average, the low men in rank
in the South, Tumin concluded.
“It is they who are more alienated
from the ordinary rewards of social
life,” Tumin wrote. “They have least to
lose if there is social conflict and vio
lence. They have most to lose if their
already denigrated positions are low
ered even further in the pecking order
by the relative improvement and up
lifting of the average positions of the
Negro.”
12 ARE FINED
In Statesville, 12 Negro youths were
convicted and fined on charges of dis
orderly conduct growing out of a
racial disturbance which followed a
police report that two Negroes had
been found in a car with two white
teenage girls.
Police estimated that crowds, num
bering up to 600 whites, demonstrated
for two nights before the residence of
the white girls, aged 17 and 15. A cross
was burned on the lawn, and rocks
were thrown at the home. The girls’
family moved from Statesville to an
undisclosed destination.
While the white demonstrators were
in action, police said that a group of
Negro youths in downtown Statesville
was shouldering whites off the side
walks and shouting insults at the
motorists. Twelve of the Negro youths,
ranging in age from 16 to 22, were ar
rested and the fines followed.
# # #
West Virginia
(Continued From Page 12)
J®t bodies. This practice of brc
Average for a relatively small studi
resulting in low pupil-teacl
and small-classes, results in h:
COs *' Per-student.”
EXPAND ADULT EDUCATION
_ spite of this situation, 1
r^suttee recommended that Bluefi
continued, because of the rapii
wing population in the Unii
tcs, as a teacher training and libe
. college. Also, the committee fi
now small program of adult edu<
'J should be expanded.
^Rlher, it was felt that termii
/Wrams in the technologies could
j^ngurated as a replacement for vo<
- J(1 ildj^ curr i cu la in the arts and era
jibing that the college can aecoir
• u , ,' rom 800 to 1,000 students a ye
tori* 133 room i° r only 200 in its don
khwi Ehe committee observed tl
^efaeld State’s future lies in servi
j^ents who would commute from 1
funding area.” (One of Bluefiel
tut 651 P°E touched on in this rep>
phoned elsewhere is that it
on -ly 15 miles from larger, bi
■hi-O.'upped Concord College, anotl
£ lr >stitution.)
6 committee said, “It is unlik<
^ 6a ^ r °hment can be substantially i
ion f Er° m among the Negro popul
' '-0 j? s °uthem West Virginia and d
itat- t? er tuition charges for out-<
Rodents it is unlikely that enro
G 0rn nn 11 be increased apprecial
^ ot her states until the curricuh
^he 8611 strengthened as recommend
<< tj. ^^niittee respects the judgrm
6 State Board of Education in s'
ting higher tuition charges for non
resident students and does not recom
mend a change. This policy accords
with that of other states.”
In sizing up the white enrollment
since 1954, the group said that “it ap
pears only a matter of time until white
students will constitute a large per
centage of the enrollment.” As one
means of bringing this about, desegre
gation of college faculty and adminis
trators was deemed desirable.
There has been some feeling within
the State Board of Education that a
white president be hired as replace
ment for Dr. Wright, but the board is
searching for another Negro. It isn’t
known when the replacement will be
named.
State School Supt. R. Virgil Rohr-
bough took the wraps off his program
of educational improvement late last
month. His proposal was that the state
should spend $15 million additionally
annually but that the program can be
successful only if matched by the coun
ties.
He explained that 25 per cent of the
state’s share would go into the founda
tion program and the remainder should
be used for enrichment. Rohrbough
said that the program will be delivered
to the legislature after it comes into
session January 8.
Questioned at a meeting of lay and
professional leaders about whether he
would propose new taxes for raising
the $15 million at the state level, he re
plied, “That is out of my province.”
BUDGET SESSION
Gov. Cecil Underwood hadn’t said
whether he’ll include education in the
call to the legislature. The coming ses
sion is for the making of a budget only,
and can be expanded only if the gov
ernor includes specific items in the
call.
Rohrbough said it is imperative that
counties bring their property assess
ments up to provide the money that’s
needed for schools. He outlined three
ways they can participate better in the
maintenance of schools through revenue
sources already in effect:
1) Raising property valuations to 50
per cent of actual value.
2) Passing special levies.
3) Using permissive taxes approved
by the 1956 legislature.
West Virginia’s decline in population
since the 1950 census can be traced to
mechanization of coal mines and job
discrimination, the Charleston chapter
of NAACP was told last month.
Coal mine mechanization has created
a surplus of older workers who have
been forced to leave the state in search
for jobs, said Neil Riden, instructor in
economics at West Virginia State Col
lege.
Riden noted that the state’s popula
tion declined 2.1 per cent in six years,
and in only three other states—Ver
mont, Mississippi and Arkansas—were
losses recorded.
WHY NEGROES LEAVING
G. E. Ferguson of Charleston, a busi
nessman, was another who said job dis
placement is forcing Negroes to leave
the state. “We spend public funds
educating Negroes whose skills are
needed, and then they’re forced to look
for jobs elsewhere,” he declared. “It’s a
senseless waste of funds and of skilled,
badly needed manpower.”
Low salaries drove out most of the
1,300 public school teachers who have
left the state in the past three years,
said Phares E. Reeder, executive secre
tary of the West Virginia Education
Association. (Most of the teachers who
have left are white.)
A fourth person who spoke at the
meeting was Grant Gray, physical edu
cation instructor at West Virginia State,
who told the group that poor public
schools and a lack of community cul
tural and recreational facilities keep
skilled persons from settling in West
Virginia.
In another community-type action
last month a citizens advisory commit
tee was appointed to help the county
board of education determine Kanawha
County’s school building needs.
6 DOUBLE-SHIFT SCHOOLS
The Kanawha County school popula
tion has increased from 33,466 in 1933-
34 to more than 58,000 today, which is
double that in any other county system
in the state. At least six elementary
schools are operating on split sessions
this year to accommodate the growth.
Kanawha desegregated in the fall of
1956 and at that time several previously
all-Negro schools were mothballed with
the explanation that they would have
to be enlarged to meet desegregation
needs of their respective areas.
The late Virgil L. Flinn, former
county superintendent, prepared a
study of building needs last year. He
brought out that over 90 per cent of
the county’s elementary schools are
crowded. He estimated that the county
school population will grow to 60,000
by 1961.
The state forestry camp in Tucker,
pressed into service as a desegregated
operation last year to take the load off
the Boys Industrial School at Prunty-
town, has begun an educational pro
gram, announced Institutions Commis
sioner Theodore T. Dorman.
The forestry camp was opened after
a Negro industrial school was closed
and the Negro youngsters were sent to
the larger and better equipped white
school at Pruntytown.
Dorman reported that classes at the
camp are being conducted on days
when bad weather curtails outside
work for the boys. They devote most
of their time to conservation practices
in Blackwater Falls State Park, a re
cently-opened million-dollar summer-
winter recreation spot.
Dorman’s proposed budget for next
year includes salaries for two teachers
at the camp. It must be approved by
the legislature before it becomes effec
tive. # # #