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SOUTHERN SCHOOL NEWS—SEPTEMBER 1958—PAGE 5
DISTRICT OF COLUMBIA
Supreme Court To Hear Further Arguments In Little Rock Case
WASHINGTON, D.C.
ittle Rock, in its day of reck
oning before the U.S. Supreme
Court, gained a respite—if only
temporarily—when the high court
held a special session in Washing
ton on Aug. 28 to hear arguments
on the Central High School de
segregation case.
After listening to representatives of
the school board, the NAACP and the
Justice Department, the court set Sept.
11 for further arguments. (See Supreme
Court text, page 4.)
The court assembled in its extraor
dinary session to hear an appeal by
Thurgood Marshall, NAACP attorney,
on an Eighth Circuit Court order stay
ing its reversal of the order of Judge
Harry J. Lemley postponing desegre
gation of Central High for two and one-
half years. (See text of Eighth Circuit
Court decision, page 3.)
SCORES INTERFERENCE
Marshall contended the court should
act on merits of the case, rather than
on legal technicalities. He said the tri
bunal should leave no doubt there can
be no interference by the Arkansas
Legislature or anyone else with the
rights of the Negro students involved.
He summed up his argument: “You
don’t close the banks. You put the bank
robbers in jail.”
Marshall’s arguments were supported
by J. Lee Rankin, U.S. solicitor-general
representing the Justice Department,
who said “. . . no court of law in this
land, state or federal, can recognize that
you can ever bow to force and vio
lence in setting aside, vacating or mod
ifying a decree of the court.”
PREDICTS TROOP RETURN
Presenting the Little Rock School
Board’s position, Richard C. Butler, its
attorney, said, “There will be troops
back in Little Rock to maintain order.”
Butler argued further troops could
keep the school integrated but that it
would not mean the children would
get an education.
EISENHOWER ON SLOWDOWN
President Eisenhower spoke of slow
ing down desegregation efforts at his
Aug. 27 news conference.
A reporter read an item from a
weekly magazine. It said the president
had told friends privately he wished
the Supreme Court had never handed
down it’s 1954 desegregation decision.
The article quoted the President fur
ther as feeling integration should pro
ceed more slowly.
The President said the story was in
correct. He added, “But the story is
this: I have said here that I would
never give an opinion about my con
victions about the Supreme Court de
cisions because such a statement would
have to indicate either approval or dis
approval, and I was never going to do
it about any of their decisions.
“Now with respect to the other one,
it might have been that I said some
thing about slower, but I do believe
we should—because I do say, as I did
yesterday or last week, we have to
have reason and sense and education
and a lot of other developments that
go hand in hand as this process—if this
process is going to have any real ac
ceptance in the United States.”
Marshall subsequently criticized
Eisenhower’s statement as ill-advised.
“If we slow down any more,” Marshall
said, “we’ll be going backward.”
OBSERVERS REPORTED
Gordon M. Tiffany, staff director of
the federal Commission on Civil Rights,
declined to comment when asked if the
commission had observers at school cri
sis points in Little Rock or Virginia. He
said the commission had received some
valid complaints related to school seg
regation and alleged denial of voting
rights, but he refused to say what areas
of the country were involved.
,.® y a v °te of 41 to 40, the Senate
1 led a measure which would have pre-
' en fed the Supreme Court from strik
ing down state laws not in conflict with
cderal laws on the same subject. Pre
viously the Jenner-Butler bill which
would have countered all the court’s
recent security case rulings was tabled
° f a vote of 49 to 41.
HIGH COURT ATTACKED
While weathering anti-court feeling
in the Senate, the Supreme Court was
the target of the Conference of Chief
Justices meeting in Pasadena, Calif.,
Aug. 23. A resolution and report adopt
ed by the conference by a vote of 38
to 8 criticized the Supreme Court as
lacking in judicial self-restraint and in
vading the field of legislation. But mi
nority spokesmen charged the school
segregation issue, rather than any com
plaint about the Supreme Court men
tioned in the report, was the real basis
for the censure move.
U.S. Atty. Gen. William P. Rogers in
a speech before the American Bar
Association in Los Angeles declared
that the 1954 Supreme Court integra
tion decision “represents the law of
the land today, tomorrow, and, I am
convinced, for the future, for all re
gions and for all people.”
Rogers recalled that the Supreme
Court in calling for the ending of seg
regation “with all deliberate speed”
laid down no hard and fast rules for
the transition from segregated to non-
segregated schools.
“The crux of the matter, then, is one
of intention,” Rogers said. “The prob
lems are difficult at best, but they be
come hazardous if the underlying in
tent of those who are opposed to the
decision of the court, particularly those
to the decision, is one of defiance.”
WHITE CONFIRMED
Two Republicans, Sens. John J. Wil
liams (Del.) and Milton R. Young
(N.D.), joined 18 Democrats in the un
successful move to block the confirma
tion of W. Wilson White as Assistant
Attorney General in charge of the Jus
tice Department’s Civil Rights Division.
Southern Democrats opposed White
because he was legal counsel to former
Atty. Gen. Herbert Brownell when the
administration decided to send troops to
Little Rock last fall.
SCHOOL AID BILL
Major features of the four-year $887
million school aid bill, which cleared
Congress Aug. 23, include:
• Long-term, low-interest loans to
help gifted students through college.
For this program, $295 million will be
provided.
• Post-graduate fellowships for 5,500
college graduates with special talent in
science.
• Earmarking of $300 million to help
the nation’s schools buy up-to-date
equipment for instruction in mathe
matics, science and language.
• Provision of $61 million for teach
ing rare languages and for institutes in
which language teachers can improve
their abilities.
• Extension of vocational education
to skilled technicians.
• Aid to help states establish super
visory departments to guide local
schools in establishing good mathe
matics, science and language programs.
• Strengthening of aptitude testing
and guidance counseling services for
students throughout the states, thereby
helping to reduce drop-out rates and
to make better use of student abilities.
The compromise school aid measure
eliminated all provisions for college
scholarships, thereby falling short of the
administration’s original proposals.
Rep. James Roosevelt (D-Calif.) said
he regretted that conferees struck out
the anti-discrimination clause put into
the bill by the House. That clause, he
was told, is considered implicit in the
bill.
Sen. Strom Thurmond (D-S.C.) said
the new program might “further irri
tate race relations” if the government
failed to make its provisions available
to segregated schools.
DISTRICT SCHOOLS
Washington public schools begin the
fifth year of integration with an in
crease in enrollment, a reduction in
part-time classes and across-the-board
innovations in instruction.
The anticipated school enrollment in
October will be 113,505, an increase of
2,391 over last October. No racial count
will be taken until then but it is ex
pected Negro enrollment, which was 71.2
per cent of the student body last year,
will increase slightly. All public schools
at all levels are desegregated in the
District.
School Supt. Carl F. Hansen esti
mated there will be about 3,850 pupils
attending 112 part-time classes in 25
elementary schools. This compares with
5,446 students in part-time classes last
year.
A major reason for the decrease is
the addition of 147 new teaching posi
tions, bringing the total number of
teachers to 4,285. School officials, Han
sen said, will begin a major drive to
recruit qualified teachers and reduce
the number of temporary teachers in
the system. There now are about 935
temporary teachers.
NEW TEACHING PLAN
To keep up with new concepts in the
teaching of mathematics, the District
schools will initiate new teaching meth
ods in two seventh grades. Further
more, a stepped-up course in general
mathematics will be offered 575 seventh
graders in the junior high honors pro
gram which begins this year. Honor
students therefore will be able to take
algebra and geometry a year ahead of
schedule and college math in the 12th
LOUISIANA
NEW ORLEANS, La.
LTHOUGH SEGREGATION SUITS
have been almost constantly
before state and federal courts
the past year, with decisions con
sistently favoring Negro plain
tiffs, Louisiana’s public school
system still will be segregated
when the fall term opens.
The test case for the state, Bush
v. Orleans School Board, still has
some legal mileage left in it some
31 months after Federal Judge J.
Skelly Wright handed down a
temporary injunction against ra
cial segregation in the system.
Neither side’s attorneys were
openly predicting how much
mileage was left. But the deci
sion, made during the past two
months, to attempt to get a seg
regation-sustaining decision from
state courts, indicated to some ob
servers Louisiana officials had
virtually capitulated in the fed
eral court fight. (See “Legal Ac
tion.”)
Attention was shifted from this case
last month to a new college suit.
Eleven Negroes petitioned for admit
tance to the new branch of Louisiana
State University at New Orleans (Hen
ley v. LSU Board of Supervisors).
If successful, they would make
LSUNO the fifth state college to be de
segregated by court order. An esti
mated 300 Negroes will enroll for the
fall term at LSU, Southeastern at
Hammond, Southwestern at Lafayette
and McNeese at Lake Charles.
AT LEAST TWO YEARS
On the elementary and high school
level, officials were privately predicting
desegregation is at least two years
away. It is already too late for court
ordered integration to take effect this
term, they reason. And the officials add
that, even assuming final defeat for
pro-segregation forces in the Orleans
Parish case, the courts would likely
grant at least one year’s delay for
planning.
The state Board of Education pre
pared to handle 640,000 enrollments as
schools opened Sept. 2 and to spend
roughtly $200 million for the year. En
rollment is expected to be about 15,000
more than last year.
Total number of school-age children
in the state, the education department
reports, is 881,295. Some 25 per cent of
the “educables” usually enroll at pri
vate schools, principally Catholic paro
chial schools in the southern part of
the state. The racial ratio of the total
is about two-thirds white, one-third
Negro.
In an interview with Southern
School News, Superintendent of Edu
cation Shelby Jackson said the school
grade.
A new physics course will be tried at
two high schools, and Russian will be
introduced into the language curricu
lum at two other high schools.
As reported previously in Southern
School News, a junior primary pro
gram will be established for children
too immature to do first grade work.
“Enrichment” programs will begin in
the elementary schools and for the first
time 12th graders will be enrolled in
the four-track program which includes
a difficult honors track, a regular col
lege preparatory program, a general
program for students not planning to go
to college and a remedial basic track.
REMEDIAL READING ADVANCES
Meanwhile, District school officials re
ported that grade school pupils scored
gains averaging five to seven months in
reading ability during a five-week sum
mer session. Gains this year were about
a month ahead of last summer when
the remedial reading program was in
troduced as an experiment.
system will be better off physically
than ever.
PROBLEMS, IMPROVEMENTS
“Where crowding in classrooms ex
isted last year, you will generally find
improvements this term,” he said.
“We’re building as fast as bond issues
can be approved. Special problems may
exist in comparatively small communi
ties where there has been rapid indus
trialization, increasing population be
yond the school district’s immediate
ability to meet the situation. But gen
erally we have the school facilities to
do the job.”
State Attorney General Jack Gremil-
lion has asked state courts to sustain a
pupil asignment law (Act 319 of 1956)
which Federal Judge J. Skelly Wright
declared unconstitutional July 1.
The law makes the legislature the
authority for assigning pupils in cities
over 300,000 population (a provision
which limits the law’s application to
New Orleans). Judge Wright called it
a “legal artifice, cleverly contrived”
which was “unconstitutional on its
face.”
The federal case involved is Bush v.
Orleans School Board.
Immediately after the latest Wright
decision, school attorneys announced
their intention to ask for a rehearing.
But, instead, the Bush litigation was
shifted to state courts, with the state
becoming an active litigant for the first
time. Assistant Attorney General M. E.
Culligan filed the suit in Orleans Parish
Civil District Court Aug. 3. No hearing
dates have been set.
WHO’S FINAL ARBITER?
The state is asking for affirmation of
its stand that the Louisiana Supreme
Court, and not the U.S. Supreme Court,
is final arbiter of racial policy in the
state. The petition said, in part:
“ ... It is urgent and necessary that
this [district] court and ultimately the
supreme court of the state of Louisiana,
as final interpreter of the laws of the
state of Louisiana, declare that Act 319
of 1956 provides for the classification of
public schools in cities wherein the act
applies and gives to the Legislature of
the state of Louisiana exclusive author
ity to integrate any school or schools
in such cities.”
BOARD NAMED DEFENDANT
The Orleans School Board was named
as a defendant in the suit “because of
its interest in the outcome of this ac
tion.”
Deadline for Negroes’ attorneys to
file their replies passed Aug. 15 with
out action. Alexander P. Tureaud, rep-
resentating Earl Benjamin Bush and
other minors, said Aug. 23, “We have
not decided whether to make a court
appearance in this case.”
School Board Attorney Gerard A.
Rault said he would “most likely” ask
federal court, early in September, to
delay any further action in the Bush
case until after the new state suit has
run its course.
Tureaud said he has “no plans at this
School officials also announced plans
for a “crash attack” on reading prob
lems. Reading experts from the curricu
lum department and from the District
Reading Clinic will be assigned to spe
cific schools where reading levels are
low to help teachers provide better
remedial instruction.
TEACHERS PAY RAISED
The new pay scale for District school
teachers authorizes a starting salary of
$4,500 for teachers with a bachelors de
gree. This is a $600 increase over the
present scale.
Starting salaries for teachers with a
masters degree are $5,000, and teachers
with 30 academic credits beyond the
masters receive $5,200.
Teachers in each category receive 13
step increases totaling $2,100. This will
bring top pay for teachers with a bach
elors degree to $6,600, for those with a
masters to $7,100 and for those with the
masters plus additional credits to $7,300.
Former maximum was $6,500.
# # #
time to ask federal court to make its
temporary injunction permanent and
set a date for the start of integration.”
COLLEGE SUIT FILED
About 75 Negroes applied for admis
sion to the new LSU branch at New
Orleans—and all were turned down by
Registrar W. R. Burleson. He told each
Negro applicant he was acting in ac
cordance with state law and the policies
of the LSU Board of Supervisors.
So, when LSUNO’s first group of
freshmen, numbering 1,300 to 1,500
starts classes Sept. 12, there will be no
Negroes among them.
The turned down applicants, how
ever, did not let the matter drop there.
Eleven of them filed suit in federal
district court on July 29, claiming they
were being deprived of their legal
rights. Mrs. Jamesetta Henley was the
first-listed plaintiff, and her name will
be used to identify the case. Defendants
are the LSU Board of Supervisors, act
ing board chairman Theo Cangelosi of
Baton Rouge, LSU President Troy
Middleton, and Burleson.
TRADE SCHOOL CASE
On the same day, Ed S. Allen sued
the state Department of Education for
admission to the now all-white Shreve
port trades school.
At a meeting July 29 of the Gentilly
Citizens Council in a New Orleans
suburb Emile A. Wagner Jr., Orleans
Parish School Board president, said:
“If our present appeals [from Judge
Wright’s desegregation order] are un
successful, then your school board is at
the end of the judicial road.”
Wagner added that closing the
schools, which the governor is now em
powered to do in an integration show
down, “would do desperate harm to the
progress we have been making with
education.”
C. E. Vetter, chairman of the Gen
tilly Citizens Council, said: “What’s the
matter with you white people? Aren’t
you interested in preservation of the
white race? To me, the whiteness God
put in me is the supreme thing in me.”
Vetter went on to say Citizens Coun
cil membership is “very low” and the
lack of interest in the transit integra
tion which started in New Orleans June
1 was “very surprising.”
Congressman F. Edward Hebert of
the First District was a 6-to-l winner
over NAACP attorney Alexander P.
Tureaud in the Aug. 23 Democratic
primary. A voter turnout of nearly
three times normal for an “off year”
election gave lOth-termer Hebert 60,936
votes to 9,924 for Tureaud.
The racial issue was raised obliquely
in the campaign, but Hebert credited
the “threat” implied by Tureaud’s pres
ence on the ballot with the size of the
vote and his winning percentage (83
per cent of the total).
Negro registrations in the district
number about 17,000.
# # #
Complete Public School Segregation
Unchanged; Court Action Continues