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PAGE 12—JUNE 1958—SOUTHERN SCHOOL NEWS
TENNESSEE-
Nashville Awaits Ruling
On Grade-A-Year Plan
NASHVILLE, Term.
ederal District Judge Wil
liam E. Miller’s decision on
the proposed grade-a-year deseg
regation plan for Nashville city
schools still was awaited as May
ended, after both sides in the law
suit had filed briefs.
The city school board contend
ed that community sentiment may
be considered in deciding how
rapidly to continue desegregation.
Plaintiffs in the suit, demanding
complete desegregation in Sep
tember, attacked the student
transfer plan approved by the
court to accompany first-grade
desegregation last year. (See
“Legal Action.”)
Impeached Judge Raulston School-
field of Chattanooga, to go on trial be
fore the state Senate June 10, charged
that he is the victim of a national plot
because of his pro-segregation views.
(See “Political Activity.”)
CHURCHES CRITICIZED
NAACP Executive Secretary Roy
Wilkins told a Nashville audience that
those who are blocking desegregation
are supporting the Communist cause,
while another Nashville gathering heard
Dr. Waldo Beach of Duke University
divinity school criticize churches which
seek to avoid meeting race questions.
(See “What They Say.”)
In Nashville, Federal District Judge
William E. Miller still had under ad
visement the question of how far de
segregation of city schools shall go this
fall. The first grade was desegregated
by court order last year.
The city Board of Education, which
proposes to desegregate grade two this
year, then add a grade annually, de
clared in a court brief that is as fast as
Nashville can go “without serious and
lasting injury to the educational sys
tem.”
Plaintiffs in the lawsuit said in their
brief that such year-by-year desegre
gation does not meet the Supreme
Court requirement of “all deliberate
speed.” They contended members of
the school board had failed to “carry
their burden of showing that additional
time is necessary,” and they called for
complete desegregation this September.
The briefs followed a hearing on the
plan before Judge Miller on April 14.
His decision now is awaited.
TRANSFER PLAN ATTACKED
The Negroes who filed the suit
against the Nashville school system
maintained that the pupil transfer plan
approved by the court for Nashville
when first grade desegregation was or
dered a year ago is constitutionally in
valid. They said the transfer setup ac
tually takes racial issues into consider
ation whereas the court had said it
“merely conferred upon white and
Negro students a nondiscriminatory
right to transfer and thus would not
appear to violate the Constitution.”
According to the plaintiff’s brief, the
transfer provision in Nashville’s grad
ual desegregation plan provides that
pupils may be transferred on applica
tion in writing by their parents or guar
dians “with specific grounds of transfer
based upon whether a Negro or white
child would otherwise be required to
attend a school previously limited to
students of the opposite race or a
school where the majority of students
in that school or in his or her grade
are of a different race.”
The school board stated that “per
haps the fundamental error” in the po
sition of those advocating immediate
desegregation of all grades is “the basic
assumption that a board of education
is not entitled to consider community
sentiment in deciding how rapidly it
will proceed to desegregate the school
system.”
•PRACTICAL PROBLEM'
Judge Miller was told: “This is not
something that can be dealt with in a
vacuum or decided in an ivory tower.
It is an intensely practical problem.”
Attorneys for the board said that when
it considers community sentiment in
making a decision, “it is not . . . sub
stituting popular reaction for its own
responsibility.”
Lawyers representing the Negro pe
titioners, Z. Alexander Looby, a city
councilman, and Avon Williams, cited
testimony by School Supt. W. H. Oliver
to back their contention that transfers
as now provided are based on race and
should be considered by the court. They
said Oliver testified that parents of more
than 50 white children and about 100
Negro children asked and got transfers
from the schools into which they were
zoned but that approximately four Ne
gro parents were “arbitrarily” turned
down when they reconsidered and
sought re-transfers of their children
back into the original zones.
The plaintiffs asserted that in the
Tennessee Board of Education case in
volving desegregation in state colleges,
the U. S. circuit court “has very defi
nitely taken the position that the phrase
‘with all deliberate speed’ does not
contemplate or permit extension of the
process of desegregation over a long
period of years.”
TEACHER RECRUITMENT
Among “numerous additional prob
lems” with which desegregation con
fronts the school board, the brief filed
for the group said, is “increased diffi
culty in procuring and retaining teach
ers.” The plaintiffs replied that in
Nashville’s first year of desegregation
“defendants’ [the board’s] former fears
with regard to teacher recruitment
problems” have not been borne out.
As to the contention that the board’s
step-by-step plan made no provision for
special training or vocational education
of Negroes, the board of education said
this was beyond the issues of the law
suit, which was filed in 1955.
“Not one of the plaintiffs, parent or
student, asserted that he had requested
or desired special training or vocational
training,” said the school board brief.
Here are factors cited by the school
board as probable considerations of its
instruction committee in reaching the
decision to recommend the grade-a-
year plan: (1) Resistance to desegrega
tion last year in Nashville and in Little
Rock; (2) “hardening reaction” to de
segregation in the South; (3) the post
ponement in Pine Bluff, Ark., of a 12-
year desegregation plan to have been
begun this fall.
Criminal Court Judge Raulston
Schoolfield of Chattanooga, impeached
by the Tennessee House of Represen
tatives and scheduled to go on trial be
fore the state Senate in June on 24
counts charging misconduct in office,
claimed that he is the victim of a na
tionwide plot because of his pro-segre-
gationist views and his “stand for con
stitutional liberties.”
Schoolfield, campaigning for renom
ination in a June 3 Democratic primary
while under suspension from the judge
Year-End Summary
1) John Kasper and six others
were convicted in federal court at
Knoxville for criminal contempt
in the Clinton desegregation dis
orders of 1956.
2) Nashville city schools opened
with first-grade desegregation
last September, amid sporadic
violence climaxed by a yet-
unsolved blast which damaged
the Hattie Cotton School $71,000.
Police promptly clamped down on
demonstrations and the school
year was completed quietly with
11 Negroes in five previously all-
white schools.
3) Federal Judge William Miller
held the state school preference
law unconstitutional on its face,
later refusing to permit the Nash
ville school board to invoke the
state pupil assignment law or
adopt a voluntary segregation
plan. He also turned down a plea
for complete desegregation this
fall.
4) The state Board of Education
ordered five all-white state col
leges to admit this fall all quali
fied applicants who meet each
college’s individual entrance re
quirements.
5) Nashville proposed to con
tinue desegregation on a grade-
by-grade basis, starting with the
second grade this fall and contin
uing to add one additional deseg
regated grade each September for
the next 10 years.
ship pending the Senate trial, has re
peated on a number of occasions that
“the movement against me did not be
gin in Tennessee but had its inception
in the minds of certain people in New
York and Washington, D.C.” (This
quote is from a television speech
launching his campaign on May 3.)
NAACP ‘PRESSURE’ CHARGED
The Chattanooga judge said “pres
sure” from the National Association for
the Advancement of Colored People
and others affected Gov. Clement’s ac
tion. Such “pressure,” he contended,
also influenced the report of the U.S.
Senate’s McClellan committee imph
eating him in alleged irregularities
in court proceedings involving Team
sters Union members.
On the night of May 10, a group of
hooded and robed persons held a rally
and burned a cross on a vacant lot near
Chattanooga. They arrived in cars bear
ing election stickers of Judge School-
field and of state Rep. Ward Crutchfield,
now a candidate for district attorney
general. Crutchfield voted against the
Schoolfield impeachment.
Roy Wilkins of New York, executive
secretary of the National Association
for the Advancement of Colored People,
declared in a Nashville speech May 2
that “people who are blocking desegre
gation are supporting the Communist
cause here and around the world.”
Addressing a local NAACP meeting,
Wilkins said the organization is fighting
by American means to enjoy American
democracy. If the NAACP and Negroes
did not believe in the American system,
he declared, “they would not be using
the sound American methods of the
courts and the legislature and the edu
cation of public opinion to attain their
goals.”
Petitions to southern school boards
for desegregation will continue, Wilkins
told his audience, and if the boards deny
the petitions lawsuits will follw. “But
a lawsuit should be the last resort,” he
declared.
POSITION AVOIDED
Dr. Waldo Beach of the Duke Uni
versity divinity school told a conference
on the church and race relations at
Vanderbilt University May 1 that many
Protestant churches are taking “a po
sition of avoidance” on race questions.
This position, he said, harbors no
ill will against Negroes and has a re
vulsion against violence and bitterness
but seeks by various devices to avoid
confronting the race problem directly.
He said such an attitude conveys “love
and kindness for the Negro but is the
solicitude of the superior for the in
ferior.”
Dr. Beach said: “The problem facing
the churches today is how to redeem
the troubled conscience of the moderate
without driving him into further hid
ing, or even into aggressiveness in op
posing change . . . Right now, we are
facing polarization of sentiment, a
drawing off into two opposite camps,
with decreasing communications.”
‘CAN T SIT OUT REVOLUTION'
The address was made to 150 church
leaders from middle Tennessee, north
Alabama and central Kentucky. The
speaker summed up: “Not to choose is a
choice in itself,” and southern churches
cannot “sit out” the “revolution” in race
relations.
A social anthropologist from South
Africa, Miss Violaine Idelette Junod,
visiting Fisk University in Nashville,
said in an interview that continued ra
cial prejudice in the United States is
“far harder to justify than in South
Africa.”
Miss Junod, born of Swiss parents,
said non-whites in Africa are accepted
as poverty-stricken “products of subju
gation” but “the white American daily
sees Negroes in positions of responsi
bility. It is obvious that there is a rela
tively large class of cultured, educate
Negroes whose standards of living ^
equal to those of many whites and bet
ter than some.”
In three years, school enrollment at
Memphis will increase by at least 35
per cent to reach 120,000, requiring ex
penditure of at least $17,500,000 for ad
ditional classrooms by 1961. So School
Supt. E. C. Stimbert told the city board
of education.
The board last month approved a $9.
929,100 building program to be com
pleted for the 1959-60 school year, sub.
ject to a bond issue which would be
authorized by the city commission. But
the superintendent warned that this will
not provide long for the rapidly growing
school population.
Asst. School Supt. O. H. Jones told
Southern School News the Memphis
enrollment now stands at 88,714, of
which 49,877 students are white and
39,077 Negro. He said over the years 1
white enrollment has run about 56 per
cent and Negroes 44 per cent, and this
ratio of races may be expected to con
tinue. That means a projected 67,200 1
whites and 52,800 Negroes in Memphis
schools by 1961, perhaps sooner, the of
ficial reported.
ALLOCATIONS BY RACE
The building program now approved
by the Memphis school board breaks
down to $3,116,029 for new schools for 1
whites and $2,215,760 for new Negro
schools, plus $395,442 for a school where
race has not yet been determined. An
administration building for the school ,
system is to cost $1,676,250.
Scheduled additions call for $813,406
for white schools and $1,711,058 for
Negro schools. ,
# # #
MISSOURI-
Officials Estimate 95 P. C. Of Negro
Pupils In Desegregated Districts
ST. LOUIS, Mo.
ITH THE ADVENT OF THE FIFTH
June graduating class since
the U.S. Supreme Court decision
of May 17, 1954, Missouri public
school administrators estimate
that about 95 per cent of Negro
children in the state live in school
districts which are desegregated
at some level—either in high
schools, at the elementary level,
or both.
This is not saying that 95 per
cent of Missouri’s school districts
are physically integrated, in the
sense that white and Negro chil
dren are attending school togeth
er. Most of the Negro pupils are
in the major urban systems where
segregation has been eliminated.
There are counties and many
school districts which have no Ne
groes, and there are many indi
vidual schools which are all-white
or all-Negro, even though they
are in school systems which have
been integrated.
In Jefferson City, Missouri’s capital,
State Commissioner of Education Hu
bert Wheeler told Southern School
News that the state’s public schools
were substantially integrated and things
were “moving along very smoothly.”
There has been, he said, very little
change in the last year. All reports
reaching his office concerning integra
tion in the public schools have indi
cated the transition is being made suc
cessfully.
Wheeler’s estimate of the situation is
backed up by local school administra
tions in various parts of the state, both
in areas which have carried out deseg
regation to the letter and in areas
where action to implement the Supreme
Court decision has been limited or lack
ing entirely. The same spirit of optim
ism and absence of tension also are
found among Missouri leaders of the
National Association for the Advance
ment of Colored People.
After the court decision, the state
Board of Education discontinued the
practice of keeping records that dis
tinguish between the races. There is,
therefore, no central repository of offi
cial information on the extent of de
segregation in counties and school
districts; no official “scoreboard” as to
the amount of action taken or contem
plated; no state official who is charged
with prodding districts that have not
complied. Administration of the schools
in Missouri is highly decentralized.
There are only two counties in which
no action toward elimination of segre
gation has taken place and in which
none is contemplated at this time. These
are New Madrid and Pemiscot counties.
Both are in the southeastern part of
Missouri known as the “bootheel,” an
area essentially southern in its cultural
attitudes and predominantly rural in
economy. Both counties have substantial
numbers of Negro citizens, but there is
no evidence of pressure to change the
status quo.
Year-End Summary
1) Although there are two
southeast Missouri counties that
have taken no action on school
desegregation, and other areas
where integration is only partially
accomplished, compliance with
the Supreme Court decision else
where in the state has been such
that school administrators regard
Missouri schools as substantially
integrated.
2) The Missouri Commission on
Human Rights, one of the duties
of which is to make public re
ports on discrimination in Mis
souri, was sworn in at Jefferson
City April 14. The commission has
three Negro members.
3) An experimental three-track
program was initiated last Jan
uary in the St. Louis system’s
nine general and two vocational
high schools. It has no direct re
lationship to school desegregation,
but is regarded as having value
in coping with difficulties caused
by inferior background and ele
mentary education of some Negro
students.
4) The senior high school at
Poplar Bluff, in Missouri’s boot-
heel area, was desegregated last
September without difficulty.
5) The Kansas City public
school system, despite publicized
incidents involving white and Ne
gro children, is ending its third
year of desegregation with favor
able reports. Additional steps in
integration of faculties are ex
pected to be taken in September.
One of the functions of the new Mis
souri Commission on Human Rights
(see Southern School News, May
1958) is to make public reports on al
leged discrimination in Missouri. The
agency is interested, among other
things, in school desegregation. At the
present time, however, one looks in
vain for an agency outside the state 1
government that has up-to-date infor
mation reflecting a burning interest in
those parts of Missouri that have not
fully complied. Some observers, white i
and Negro, feel that this is the best
possible evidence that the state is tak
ing integration in stride.
The NAACP in Missouri is active on
a number of fronts, but has not become
militant. As elsewhere, it tends to be
best organized in the major cities ano
somewhat spotty in its representation
outstate. In St. Louis County, NAACP
chairman Morris Henderson told SSjN
the last year had been one of notable
“progress” in school integration. La s
September, he said, was the first year
in which the NAACP had no append
pending before boards of education.
i
NEGOTIATION REPLACES SUITS
“Two or three years ago,” he said.
“it looked as if a series of suits wou
have to be filed. We are proud that al
these things have been negotiated.
Henderson said 23 of the county s 29
school districts now have one or more (
Negroes enrolled. He named one distnc
that still had segregation at the elemen
tary school level, and was transporting
Negro children to a school outside then
logical school area by bus. Another,
said, was maintaining an outmoded Ne
gro elementary school. The NAACP,
indicated, has a satisfactory liaison eve ^
with districts which are delaying thin#
a bit.
The St. Louis County NAACP c ^ a '^.
man said there had been comparative (
little integration of teachers in
county’s school districts, but he poin ^
out that Ferguson district, which f® ^
merly did not have a school for “
groes, now has two Negro teachers,
said the NAACP’s principal conce^
now was with improvement of the s
dent counseling program, as it app
to Negro children.
EMPLOYMENT OPPORTUNITIES
“All Negro boys were going to sh®P
work, and all the girls to home ec^
nomics,” he remarked. He said
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