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PAGE 14—FEBRUARY 1958—SOUTHERN SCHOOL NEWS
Kentucky’s Adair County
Reported ‘Pretty Quiet’
LOUISVILLE, Ky.
"CVerything is “pretty quiet” in
Adair County nowadays, first
Kentucky school district desegre
gated under a court order issued
back in 1955, and “people just
don’t talk about it any more.”
(See “Community Action.”)
Desegregation in Kentucky has
occurred quickest in large cities,
slowest in poorer, rural commu
nities, where the “poor white
farmer” is the biggest delaying
factor, according to a Harvard
sociologist’s report. (See “Under
Survey.”)
In a budget request for more money
for the public schools, Gov. A. B.
Chandler stipulated conditions some
observers say would speed up integra
tion. And the state House of Repre
sentatives for the first time in Ken
tucky’s history named a Negro chair
man of a standing committee. (See
“Legislative Action.”)
Owen County filed an answer to a
suit for school desegregation, pleading
lack of classroom space. A suit against
Scott County was dropped from a fed
eral district court docket on notice that
the system had complied with a deseg
regation order. (See “Legal Action.”)
The poor white farmer—not only in
Kentucky and Missouri but perhaps
throughout the South—may be the
biggest stumbling block to integration
in the public schools, according to a
study made by Thomas F. Pettigrew of
Harvard University and published in
American Sociological Review.
Pettigrew reported that desegregation
in both Kentucky and Missouri pro
ceeded, up to May 1957, quickest in
large cities and slowest in the poorer,
rural counties.
Integrating counties, he found, were
more urban and “significantly more
prosperous” than those still maintain
ing complete segregation, and fre
quently had a higher ratio of Negroes
to the total population.
TABLES SHOW FINDINGS
For Kentucky, Pettigrew reported
these findings on integration in urban,
partly urban, and totally rural coun
ties:
URBAN PARTLY TOTALLY
(50% or more) URBAN RURAL
(1 to 49%)
Some
desegregation 8
Complete
segregation 0
31
14
35
27
Pettigrew’s findings on the relation
ship between poverty and segregation
in rural Kentucky counties are shown
in this table:
66 Desegregated
Rural Counties
47 Segregated
Rural Counties
Median family
income (1949) ....
Population change
.$1,600
$1,400
(1940-50
Median years of
. -2.7%
-10.8%
schooling
8.3
8.1
Dwellings with central
heat
. 10.6
6.4
Dwellings with mechanical
refrigerators
Average farm value
. 57.5
51.6
(land and
buildings)
.$6,560
$5,604
Pettigrew’s conclusion, based on the
Kentucky-Missouri study: “The Negro
ratio factor may interact with economic
variables in the Deep South’s future
educational integration process; low
Negro-ratio, prosperous rural commu
nities desegregating first, and high
Negro-ratio, poor rural communities,
desegregating last.”
Convening for its biennial session
early in January, Kentucky’s General
Assembly was asked by Gov. A. B.
Chandler to appropriate a record
$668.7 million to rim the state govern
ment for the next two years, with nearly
63 cents of every general-fund dollar
going to public education at all levels.
In round figures, the public school
minimum-foundation program would
get $60.7 million in 1958-59, $83.1 in
1959-60, compared with the current
fiscal-year appropriation of $57.8 mil
lion.
The budget bill stipulated that local
school districts must meet these condi
tions before qualifying for a share of
the fund: (1) Set teacher-salary
schedules so that their totals are no
less than the current fiscal-year totals.
(2) Pay no teacher less than 90 per cent
of the minimum salary specified by
law for the various ranks of teachers,
with each rank to average at least the
legal minimum for that rank. (3) Not
allow the number of basic classroom
units claimed for support purposes to
exceed the number of classroom teach
ers. (4) Not provide for more teachers
than one for each 27 pupils in average
daily attendance. (5) Operate all
schools and all grades for at least nine
months.
SPEED UP DESEGREGATION
Qualifying for state funds under this
program, some educational observers
hold, will speed up integration in the
state, particularly in districts still main
taining separate Negro schools with
small enrollments.
Gov. Chandler told the legislature
that, under the state’s minimum-foun
dation program, average salaries of in
structional personnel have risen from
about $2,400 in 1955-56 to $2,943 in
1956-57, and over $3,200 in the current
year. (There is no racial differential in
Kentucky.)
For the first time in Kentucky’s his
tory, a Negro, the Rev. Felix S. Ander
son of Louisville, was named chairman
of a standing committee of the House of
Representatives — the Committee on
Suffrage, Elections, and Constitutional
Amendments.
A native of North Carolina who
taught school and preached there and
elsewhere before coming to Ken
tucky, the 66-year-old Democratic
legislator is pastor of the Broadway
Temple, A.M.E. Zion Church in Louis
ville. He is the fourth Negro to serve
in the General Assembly (the first, a
Republican, was elected in 1936), has
been in the House since 1954. His com
mittee normally has charge of all bills
dealing with voting and election pro
cedures.
ton amplifying their contention, already
reported, that shortage of classroom
space prohibits the immediate desegre
gation sought by eight Negro children
and their parents.
Terming this an “unjustifiable” rea
son for delay, James A. Crumlin,
NAACP official and attorney for the
plaintiffs, said he would ask for a pre
trial conference in February and file
motion for summary judgment.
In the same court on Jan. 13, Federal
Judge H. Church Ford ordered the
Scott County case (Dishman v. Archer)
dropped from the docket after U. S.
Attorney Henry J. Cook reported the
court’s order for complete desegregation
beginning last September had been
complied with. The suit was filed Nov.
13, 1956.
The Owen County integration suit
(Grimes v. Smith, reported in Southern
School News last month) advanced one
step in January. Defendants filed a re
ply in federal district court at Lexing-
COMMUNITY ACTION
Back in 1955 the consolidated school
system of Adair County became the
first school district in the state to face
a federal court order to end compulsory
racial segregation.
An advisory committee earlier in
1955 had recommended desegregation.
And Negroes in the county seat, Co
lumbia (population about 2,600), were
permitted to enroll in September be
fore, a day later, they were “disen-
rolled” from the Adair County High
School. The NAACP had sought only
high school desegregation that fall,
(elementary schools manifestly were
overcrowded), but then it went to court,
and on Dec. 1, 1955, won an order for
high school desegregation in mid-year
and elementary school desegregation
the following September.
There was talk of trouble then,
though not much. Some white parents
vowed they would never let their chil
dren “go to school with niggers.” But
Mayor Ralph Willis of Columbia said,
“It was bound to come. I think it will
work out all right. Of course, there may
be a little hell-raising on both sides,
but the good people aren’t going to
cause any trouble. We have to educate
the Negroes too, because in these days
we need the best citizens we can get.”
‘HOW’RE THINGS?’
How have things gone in Adair Coun
ty since. How are they today?
The reporter finds a variety of an
swers. Most of them add up to saying
the mayor was right—“it’s worked out
okay, without any ‘hell-raising,’ and
everything’s pretty quiet ... so quiet
that nobody even talks about it any
more, unless they’re asked . . . not
everybody likes it, not at all, but...”
And a local NAACP official, asked
what accounts for all this, says unhes
itatingly, “There’s a lot of good white
people in Adair County. They got be
hind it—that’s why everything’s worked
so wonderfully well.”
He is Joe Tayor Jr., a slender, soft-
spoken Negro of 42 who lives on the
outskirts of Columbia, one of the plain
tiffs in the 1955 suit.
RENTED ‘SCHOOL’
He lives in a pleasant white frame
house and owns “two or three others.”
When the Negro school in his area
burned down several years ago, he
rented his home, then a four-room
affair, to the school board for $40 a
month, helped turn over a Negro
church for the same purpose at the
same rent, all as “a temporary expedi
ent.” But in 1955 he wanted his home
back, and he joined other Negroes in
keeping his two daughters out of school
until they could go to the desegregated
Adair County High School.
“The board said then,” he recalled,
“that they’d take our children to Camp-
bellsville, 23 miles away. But we said
‘no,’ and then we tried for admission,
which we had to do before we could
sue, and then we sued.
“All we had in the old days was a
shell of a school—four rooms, no play
ground, toilets out in the woods. At
Adair County High our kids have room
in a splendid modem school only five
years old, with everything, and good
teachers, too.
TEACHERS LIKED HER
“My daughter, Norma Jean, just
graduated from there, and she’s going
to college this fall. Made mostly A’s,
too, in this report I’m going to frame.
Just loved her teachers, too, and from
the way they keep asking about her
now I think they were fond of her, too.
“I’m a basketball fan, and I go to all
the school’s basketball games. No seg
regated seating. Nothing at the school’s
segregated.
“One of the best things that has hap
pened to us is this—our Negro-school
players used to study nothing at all but
still got to play, but now if they get to
play they have to make their grades.
That made three or four of ’em quit,
but I think that’s fine—no sense in be
ing in school if you’re not learning any
thing.”
CONFIRMATION, STATISTICS
From County Supt. Harbert Walker
came confirmation that “everything is
going very well”—and some statistics.
The high school enrollment is 596 white
and 29 Negro, with 25 white teachers.
The Columbia Graded Center enroll
ment, in a building that up to five years
ago also served high school students, is
698 white and 75 Negro, with 27 white
teachers.
Integration reportedly has saved the
county some money by enabling ; t
close two one-room Negro schools tl
teachers in these schools “accepted **
sitions in other counties.” The co JUI
system, in addition to the integr-^
schools in Columbia, has two other v
tegrated grade-center schools, k""
maintains a total of 54 all-white sch j
and four all-Negro institutions, e 4
latter employing four Negro teachers f
a total of 59 pupils. White enrolling
is about what it was in 1955, (3j>qi '
but the total Negro enrollment of
now is 60 higher than in the days whe n
many Negroes went to schools in other
counties. Overcrowding is serious onlv
in the Columbia Grade Center (40 to
41 students in each of six classrooms
33 to 40 in each of the other 15).
INTEGRATED SPORTS
Basketball is the major sport at Adair
County High School. Back in 1955
Coach John Burr had said that the
color of his skin wouldn’t keep anv
qualified boy from playing on his team.
It hasn’t. Michael White, a Negro junior
is a regular forward this year, and two 1
other Negroes are on the squad of 27.
Coach Burr, a graduate of Kentucky's
Georgetown College who has taught and
coached at Adair for 15 years, said he*
had lost no white players because of in
tegration and that his squads had had
“no trouble.”
On the town square a businessman*
ventured the opinion that Negro ath
letes had “helped to smooth” the inte
gration program. And young White saidi
he was “completely satisfied” with it-
“even to having to make good grades to
play.”
NO POLITICAL ISSUE
Back in 1955 the mayor, a ruddv-
faced, bespectacled businessman of 58
who is also a Baptist deacon, was in his
second four-year term. Last fall, withi
integration no issue, he won a third
term as a Democratic vote-getter in a
largely Republican area.
He still thinks “we need the best,
citizens we can get.” And he said he is
pleased with the way the integration
program has gone in Columbia and
Adair County, pleased particularly that
“you never hear anything said about it
any more—though I know not every
body likes it.”
The Mayor was reminded that a cou
ple of teachers had spoken despairingl)
of the scholastic aptitude of a few 0
the Negro pupils, with the guess that
“it might take a second generation of
integration before Negro pupils couldl
average out with the white.”
“It could be,” he said. “A lot of ’em
haven’t had much in the way of good^
schooling heretofore. But we’re making
progress.” # #
Opposition Seen to Louisiana School-Closing Move
NEW ORLEANS, La.
^"^pposition to proposed state
laws for closing public schools
rather than integrating them was
reported gaining strength among
school board officials around the
state. (See “School Boards and
Schoolmen.”)
With the legislative session com
ing up in May, the drafters of the
new segregation laws, members of
the Rainach committee, were
working diligently but in strict
secrecy. The committee majority
was reported favoring actual
transfer of ownership of public
school properties to private “edu
cational corporations” if the
schools are forced to close to avoid
integration. The schools would be
re-opened as private, segregated
institutions. (See “Legislative Ac
tion.”)
The Orleans Parish suit (Bush v.
Orleans School Board) was back in
federal courts again, this time on the
hearing of an appeal involving a bond
posting technicality. This was believed
to be the final appeal of a temporary
order, issued Feb. 15, 1956, restraining
the operation of segregated schools in
New Orleans. The two-year-old federal
district court ruling withheld applica
tion of the injunction until appeals were
exhausted. (See “Legal Action.”)
A mayoralty campaign was on in
New Orleans. The three major, faction-
backed candidates, including incum
bent deLesseps Morrison, were avoiding
the race issue. But the issue has been
injected into the campaign by an in
dependent candidate, jeweler Leonard
W. Gunzburg. He has made continued
segregation the number one plank in
his platform. (See “Political Activity.”)
So far their opposition has been ex
pressed privately only, but a growing
number of members of the Louisiana
School Boards Association is reported
to be dissatisfied with the Rainach
committee’s plan to close public schools
in any district faced with a final court
integration order, and re-open them as
quasi-private schools.
A highly reliable source, close to the
state’s leading school district officials,
says “many are genuinely worried
about the Rainach approach. They
want to have public schools much more
strongly than they want to not have
integration.”
Schoolmen from the larger cities, the
source said, tend to this point of view
more than those from largely rural
districts.
The association held its annual con
vention in New Orleans late in January.
The agenda dealt mainly with revenue
matters, and not at all with the race
question. But there was considerable
discussion of the segregation-desegre
gation problem behind the scenes.
The Rainach committee has been
holding conferences with school board
heads around the state. One prime pur
pose was to explain the features of the
new segregation laws which would pro
tect teacher tenure and retirement
benefits. The schoolmen’s feelings about
the broader aspects of the legislative
plan, the last-ditch closing of public
schools, is believed to have surprised
committee members. Attempts to ques
tion State Sen. William Rainach on this
development were unavailing.
LEGISLATIVE ACTION
It is generally assumed around the
state that any bill the Rainach commit-
drafts of segregation laws is for a I»
per sale” of school properties to P
vate” educational corporations w
would operate the schools. Some se ^ .
gation laws from the last biea n
general legislative session still re
on the books. . ,
Rainach said he has never recogn’*
the validity of federal court rulings
validating 1956 or 1954 segregation
laws. Louisiana was the first sta .
reply to the May 1954 U. S. “P
Court’s integration order witti ^ ,
segregation laws. These designs e .
state’s “police powers” for_ main j
peace and order as the basis f° r
segregation.
STATE SEN. RAINACH
Segregation Advocate
tee presents on the floor of the legisla
ture in May will pass without a dis
senting vote, just as the 10 segregation
bills did in 1956.
Rainach confidently predicted, in an
interview with the Shreveport Times
“no school integration in Louisiana in
1958.” The enactment of new state seg
regation laws, he said, will maintain a
faster pace than the federal courts in
invalidating them.
The segregation committee chairman,
however, is being extremely close
mouthed about details of the laws now
in-the-making. He has promised that
for every white school closed because
of the integration threat, a Negro school
will be closed, too.” The white schools
won t stay closed, he added, but will be
quickly re-opened—as nominally pri
vate schools, it now appears. The tax
revenues now being spent on public
schools would be deeded to the “pri
vate schools as “scholarship grants,” it
is indicated.
Another proviso of the preliminary
The U. S. Fifth Circuit Court d ^
peals took under advisement a P { jt
the Orleans Parish School Board ^
set aside Judge J. Skelly Wrig s
injunction on a technicality.
Judge Joseph C. Hutcheson
sided over a three-judge pane* ,^- ar -
included Judges E. P. Tuttle an
ren L. Jones. They also heard
of district court orders which Te ^ e ^ e ~.
in integration of four state c ° ^" r s.
(Ludley v. LSU Board of Supy
Bailey v. State Board of Educatunf- ,
Lark v. State Board of Education- ^
School Board Attorney Gerard
argued that the failure of Earl ^
and the other plaintiffs to P°^\ <
bond at the time the Wright or e ^ oD .
handed down invalidated the inj un ^ ^
Judge Wright ordered posting
bond, which is required by a »
courts to compensate for damages
party to a suit later found to ha'
“wrongfully enjoined.” ; n -
Without the bond, there w ’ aS ^j e ral
junction, Rault argued both in jjs-
appellate court in January, a n °
(Continued On Next Page)