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PAGE 16—JANUARY 1958—SOUTHERN SCHOOL NEWS
Bus Segregation, Gradual
Plan Raised in Maryland
BALTIMORE, Md.
he issue of school bus segre
gation is to be carried to the
Maryland Board of Education in
an appeal from a Charles County
school policy that permits a Ne
gro second-grader to attend a
white school but bars him from
the white school bus. (See “Legal
Action.”)
Lawyers for the National As
sociation for the Advancement of
Colored People are also challeng
ing the gradual desegregation
program in St. Mary’s County in
a case that is expected to be
heard by the state board along
with the bus issue. Also this
month, the U. S. Fourth Circuit
Court of Appeals will hear the
NAACP’s arguments against de
segregation policies in Harford
County, where school officials ob
tained lower-court approval of
plans to screen Negro transfers to
white high schools during the
transition period. (See “Legal
Action.”)
Preliminary school enrollment figures
in Baltimore indicate that the ele
mentary school population is nearly 50
per cent colored and that Negroes will
be in the majority by next fall. En
rollment figures for secondary schools
and the system as a whole are not as
yet available. (See “Under Survey.”)
WOULD CLOSE SCHOOL
An administrative school staff com
mittee in Montgomery County has rec
ommended to the county school board
that the Negro junior high at the
county seat be closed at the end of the
current school year. The move would
combine the Negro junior and senior
high school programs at the existing
all-Negro Carver High School and
force at least 167 Negro students to
enroll at integrated secondary schools.
Montgomery County, which borders on
Washington, presently has 1,245 Ne
groes enrolled at 48 mixed schools in
its third year of desegregation.
The hearing scheduled for Jan. 16
before the Fourth Circuit Court in the
case which originated as Stephen
Moore Jr. v. Board of Education of
Harford County is an appeal from a
decision during the summer by Chief
District Judge Roszel C. Thomsen.
Judge Thomsen approved a gradual
desegregation program in Harford
County that called for completion of
elementary school integration in 1958
and secondary schools thereafter.
An unusual feature of the program
was a provision that Negroes would be
permitted to transfer to white high
schools in advance of the desegregation
timetable, if approval were obtained
from a special screening committee.
NAACP lawyers argued that the
screening, applied to Negroes only, im
posed a “clearly unconstitutional bur
den” and said that Harford County,
with only a 10 per cent Negro enroll
ment, should desegregate all grades
immediately. Notice of their appeal was
filed last July 26.
ALSO A CHALLENGE
The St. Mary’s County hearing be
fore the State Board of Education,
expected to take place in the latter
half of January, is also an NAACP
challenge of gradual desegregation
plans. St. Mary’s desegregated its ele
mentary schools last fall, but has
no mixed classes because none of the
four Negro children whose admission
to white schools had been approved
actually entered white classes.
Secondary grades were not desegre
gated last fall, and when Negro sec
ondary students applied to enter white
schools, they were turned down. Two of
those refused, Thomas Conrad Groves,
age 13, and Joan Elaine Groves, age 14,
are exhausting their administrative
remedies by taking an appeal to the
state board. Their lawyers have asked
the board to consider:
“1) Whether compelling the appel
lants in this appeal to travel greater
distances, solely because of their race,
while denying them admission to the
school nearest their homes, is unrea
sonable discrimination against Negro
children of school age.
“2) Whether compelling the Negro
children in this appeal to travel greater
distances to school than the nearest
school where their applications were
made is not a violation of Maryland
gujtl federal law>
“3) Whether under the facts and cir
cumstances of this case, the appellants
should be admitted to the school nearest
their home.”
BUS CASE RAISED
The Charles County case, expected to
be heard by the state board along with
the St. Mary’s issue, involves public
school bus transportation, which has
not previously been a subject of legal
or administrative question in Maryland.
In most of the counties that have mixed
classes, school buses also have been
desegregated. This has not been the
case in Charles County, where nearly
half (46.1 per cent) of the school popu
lation is Negro and where desegrega
tion so far is represented by the pres
ence of four Negroes in one otherwise
white elementary school at Indian
Head.
The appellant is a second-grader,
Gilbert Hart Jr., who is represented by
Tucker R. Dearing, a Baltimore Negro
who frequently participates in Mary
land school cases which are of concern
to the NAACP. The young Hart boy
could ride a Negro bus to the Indian
Head school but seeks to ride in the
bus that takes his white classmates. In
explaining the case, Dearing said that
it was difficult enough for children to
make the adjustment to integrated
schooling without being stigmatized at
the outset by having to ride in a sep
arate bus. The boy is now brought 1%
miles to school by his parents.
TEXT OF LETTER
In his letter to the state board asking
for a hearing, Dearing wrote: “Mr.
Barnhart’s letter [C. Paul Barnhart,
county superintendent of schools] of
Oct. 21, 1957, while stating that ‘public
bus transportation is available for Gil
bert Hart Jr.’ just as resolutely and
unequivocally states that the trans
portation is not integrated but segre
gated. This issue is the one basic thing
of my appeal of Aug. 2, 1957, which is
now pending before the state board.
“Since, therefore, our negotiations on
the county level have failed to bring
about a satisfactory adjustment of the
matter, please have the appeal in the
above styled case \Hart v. Barnhart1
set for a hearing before the State Board
of Education at the earliest possible
time.”
The hearing for the St. Mary’s and
Charles County cases had been set for
Jan. 16, but the NAACP lawyers sought
postponement when their Harford
County case was set for the same day
before the Fourth Circuit Court.
The long process of obtaining a racial
breakdown of Baltimore’s school popu
lation was continuing in December,
with school statisticians reaching the
point at which they could strike a pre
liminary total for elementary schools.
The tentative figures: 51,968 white
children, 50,975 Negro children.
The Negro elementary total repre
sents a rise from 47.033 in October
1956, or a gain of 3,942 in a year’s time.
In the same period the number of white
elementary pupils dropped by 1,784.
The change is in fine with a trend that
is expected to see Negro elementary
pupils outnumber white ones by next
fall.
The population of Baltimore as a
whole, according to the most recent
estimate of the Health Department’s
vital statisticians, has increased by
6,000 persons in the past year, rising
from 974,000 to 980,000. If the educated
guess is correct, all of the increase has
been among Negro residents, who now
represent 29 per cent of the city popu
lation. The white population, which
previously had been declining, is be
lieved to have remained constant at
694,000 between November 1956 and
November 1957.
SUBURBS GAIN
While the city’s white population has
only been holding its own, the white
population has been surging upwards in
suburbanized Baltimore County, imme
diately to the north. The shift is re
flected in the school population, which
showed an increase of 4,904 white pupils
this past fall over the previous fall,
while the number of Negro pupils rose
by only 23 children. Negroes now rep
resent 5.6 per cent of the 72,779 enroll
ment, in contrast to 6 per cent in Sep
tember 1956.
Baltimore County ranks second
among Maryland counties in the num
ber of Negroes attending mixed classes,
with 839 in 49 integrated schools, or
20.5 per cent of the Negro enrollment.
In the previous school year less than
10 per cent of the Negro children were
integrated. Nine schools remain all-
Negro, and 37 are all-white.
Since desegregation in the county has
been on an optional basis—that is, Ne
groes may remain in all-colored schools
or enter designated white schools —
there may be both segregation and in
tegration in the same small community.
Thus, in the town of Sparks there are
10 Negroes in the one-teacher Negro
elementary school. At the same time,
57 Negro children attend the formerly
all-white Sparks elementary school,
along with 291 white pupils.
MOST EXTENSIVE
The 57 Negroes in a total school en
rollment of 348 at Sparks represent the
most extensive integration (16.4 per
cent) among Baltimore County schools.
The next highest is 38 Negroes in an
enrollment of 256 (14.8 per cent) at the
Halethorpe elementary school, and
after that comes the 82 Negroes in a
student body of 1,023 (8.0 per cent) at
the Hereford Junior-Senior High
School.
Counting the three schools mentioned
above, only seven of the 49 integrated
schools in Baltimore County have more
than 5 per cent Negro enrollment. At
25 of the schools the Negro children
are less than 2 per cent of the enroll
ment, and of these 25, the Negro enroll
ment is less than 1 per cent in 14
instances.
Gov. Frank G. Clement of Tennessee
in an address to the annual meeting of
the Baltimore Bar Association indicated
that he personally favored segregation,
“if it can be carried out with Christian
principles and under the law of the
land,” but he said that the major issue
was the preservation of law and order
and that “law and order in Tennessee
will be upheld by Tennesseans.”
Gov. Theodore R. McKeldin in an
address in Montreal before the Ca
nadian Council of Christians and Jews
put the school trouble in Little Rock
into a larger context by saying “the
country still believes that life, liberty
and the pursuit of happiness are in
alienable rights, belonging to every
man, regardless of the color of his skin.
The fight is over the definition of these
rights as regards a specific issue,
namely, the practice of segregation in
the schools.”
Speaking at the “kick-off” luncheon
of Baltimore’s fair-employment pro
gram, John A. Roosevelt said, “The un
fortunate episodes of the ‘Little Rocks’
did more damage to our prestige and
way of life than we could build up
with billions in grants-in-aid.” The son
of the late President who now serves
on the federal committee for fair em
ployment in government contract work
told his audience, “It is not only morally
right, but it is good business to elim
inate all the vestiges of discrimination.”
Resistance to school desegregation
was described from another platform in
Baltimore as action that “may yet
bring us once again to the edge of
disaster.” The speaker was Dr. Robert
K. Carr, Joel Parker professor of law
and political science at Dartmouth Col
lege, who said: “At the moment we
cannot be certain that Faubusism may
not yet do greater damage to Ameri
can democracy at home and through
out the world than ever did McCar-
thyism.” Dr. Carr’s audience was 1,500
students at Morgan State College, a
public Negro institution, observing Bill
of Rights Day.
Montgomery County had a preview
of the next step in desegregation, now
in its third school year with 1,245 Ne
groes enrolled at 48 mixed schools.
The school board’s committee on de
segregation, composed of county edu
cators, recommended in December that
Lincoln Junior High at the county seat
of Rockville be closed and that Carver
Senior High become a junior-senior
high school. The move would force at
least 167 Negroes to transfer to nine
and possibly 12 predominantly white
secondary schools and close out the
academic courses at Carver, now nearly
90 per cent vocational.
Transfers out of the Lincoln and
Carver schools have been encouraged
hitherto but now have become manda
tory, the professional staff committee
believes, because the Lincoln school
cannot remain open without extensive
repairs. A complicating factor, raised
by principals involved in the transfers,
is the absence of shop and vocational
programs in some of the schools to
which Negroes would be sent.
Two school board members ques
tioned the advisability of closing Lin
coln until there were more accommo
dations elsewhere and were told that
the school could not be used even one
more year without costly improve
ments. Another board member asked
that Carver be made an integrated
junior high, with all the Negro senior
high students transferred to white and
mixed schools, and was told that lack
of space and program precluded this
move. The school board accepted the
committee’s recommendations as a
progress report.
The Council of Churches and Chris
tian Education of Maryland and Dela
ware has elected as its president the
Rev. Arthur Jerome Payne of the
Enon Baptist Church in Balitmore.
Payne, elected by an assembly of dele
gates representing 23 Protestant de
nominations, is the first Negro to hold
the high office.
Eighteen ministers and staff members
of 14 churches served by the Bethesda
Council of Churches, in Montgomery
County, have issued a “statement on
race relations.” The statement said that
the signers would “stand together . . .
in support of the following simple con
victions and purposes:
“1) We believe the principle of en
forced racial segregation is a contradic
tion of our Christian faith.
“2) We commit ourselves to uphold
the enforcement of law and order in
the community.
“3) We pledge ourselves to resist
any organization which incites race
prejudice and undermines respect for
laws.”
The Baltimore Afro-American has
reported no apparent alarming increase
of pregnant, unwed girls in Baltimore
schools. The Afro said that it had taken
note of the reports of sharp increases
in the number of girls under 16 being
dismissed because of pregnancy in such
places as New York and had queried
school officials locally. The assistant
superintendent in charge of secondary
education was quoted as saying,
far as I know there has been no in.
crease in the Baltimore public schools.”
Maryland’s most prominent segrega
tionist, George Washington Williams,
said just before Christmas that he
might find it necessary to try again f or
the Democratic senatorial nomination,
in the absence of segregation sympa
thizers among the current contenders
for the seat now held by Sen. J. Glenn
Beall, a Republican.
“I may feel obligated to try again to
fill the breach,” the Baltimore attorney
said, “if some other person of like mind
does not care to assume the onerous
burden. We should not consider the
present condition to be endemic.”
Pointing to a crisis in the “dual sys
tem” of American government, Wil
liams said that the system includes the
right to control school systems as well
as local affairs, “without molestation by
the federal government.” In the sena
torial primary race of 1956 Williams re
ceived 12,061 votes, while the two lead- i
ing Democratic contenders drew 140,596
and 134,285.
If Williams decides to run again, he
will be opposed by George P. Mahoney,
who came in second last time with
134,285 votes, and also by at least two
other candidates, Dr. Clarence D. Long,
economics professor at Johns Hookins
University, and Mrs. Nellie Marie
Marshall, a Baltimore orphans court
judge. Other likely contenders include
James Bruce, a former ambassador to
Argentina; State Sen. John Grason
Turnbull, and O. C. Miller, a Hyatts-
ville newspaperman. i
# # #
Of the Top 10 News Stories
in the South in 1957 ...
Four Concerned
School Segregation-Desegregation
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• 1 rei t, R lL k r- and ,“ Seof L U, ?; tro °P s: < 3 ) trial of John Kasper; (6) Nashville school
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