Below is the OCR text representation for this newspapers page.

Factual VOL. 5 NO. 4 So •vo vI0H030 303-nao 3N fcO g Z ( 10 I - b • ‘But We’re Not Mad At Anybody lAJhere Schools —^re C^foAecl —Northern Virginia Sun LegalOther Issues Are By PATRICK McCAULEY IRGINIA AND ARKANSAS dis tant and dissimilar allies— last month took up their defen sive positions at the “last ditch.” Thirteen closed public school buildings constituted the new ramparts as the South moved into a new stage of its battle against court ordered desegregation. Sev en other states have laid the legis lative groundwork for similar defenses at the point viewed since 1954 as the final resort. First to close, on Sept. 12, was the Warren County High School at Front Royal, Va. Initially closed on orders of the local school board, it later was re moved from the state’s public school system by Gov. J. Lindsay Almond. On the same day, Gov. Orval Faubus or dered ! Central and three other high schools in Little Rock, Ark., closed, effective Sept. 15. A week later, a high school and an elementary school in Charlottesville, Va., and six high schools m Norfolk were ordered not to open. In every case, the action followed court orders that Negroes be admitted to the schools. The actions left some 16,000 youngsters without public schools to go to. 'Hie controversy thus moved to the point of determining whether this final defense against court ordered school desegregation shall stand or fall. varying viewpoints 1 don’t think federal authorities have any legal right to stop me from closing the Little Rock high schools,” Arkansas Gov. Faubus said. “There is no doubt about the suscep tibility of these provisions [for closing schools] to legal attack,” said Jack Greenberg, legal counsel for the Na tional Association for the Advancement of Colored People. Greenberg spoke specifically of events in Arkansas and Virginia where certain schools within a school district, or all schools within a single school district, are closed. However, the possibility that all schools in a state might be closed or that a state public school system might be abolished outright raised other ques tions. “There is nothing in the federal constitution that requires a state to pro vide public education,” said James C. N. Paul of the University of Pennsyl vania law school who made an extensive study of the legal aspects of the school segregation-desegregation issue in 1954 as assistant director of the Institute of Government at the University of North Carolina. But, “I don’t think any of the states propose abolition [of their school sys tems] as an immediate next step,” Greenberg said. CONSTITUTIONS AMENDED Alabama and South Carolina already have put themselves in a position from which public schools could be abolished outright. In 1956 Alabama adopted an amendment to its constitution which replaced the prior requirement that separate free schools be maintained with this statement of policy: “. . . nothing in this Constitution shall be SSN Exclusives . . . n this issue—20 pages instead of the usual 16—full state reports plus: ® Segregation-desegregation talk unofficial but dominant at governors’ con ference—page 1. ® Pros & cons of private segregated schools—page 1. ® Meharry integrates just a little—page 10. Education superintendents in byliners tell of their situations in Alabama, Texas & West Virginia—pages 20, 14 & 9. T U pdated statistics, state-by-state—page 2. INDEX Alabama Arkansas Delaware of Columbia .20 Louisiana . . 15 Oklahoma ... . ... 13 . 5 Maryland . . 19 Tennessee .... .... 10 . 16 . 8 Mississippi Florida . .16 . 17 Texas West Virginia . .14 .9 Georgia Kentucky . 18 Missouri II South Carolina .18 . 7 North Carolina . . .12 Virginia .3 &4 ‘SN3H1V JO •ain n 010 4 0 £ SO * 1 •y 3Nnr chool News Objective _E, TENNESSEE $2 PER YEAR OCTOBER 1958 13 Schools Remain Closed As Court Scores ‘Evasion’ P ublic schools stayed shut in four Southern cities at the end of September after the U. S. Supreme Court hit at “evasive schemes” to circumvent desegregation. All told, 13 schools with an enrollment of about 16,000 were closed. They included four high schools at Little Rock, Ark., one at Front Royal, Va., six at Norfolk, Va., and a high school and a grammar school at Charlottesville, Va. The Supreme Court decision, on Sept. 29, amplified a previous edict for Little Rock to proceed with desegregation at its Central High School. (See text Pages 6-7.) LEASE PLAN HALTED It resulted in shelving, for the time being at least, of a plan at Little Rock to lease its closed school facilities to a corporation to operate as private, seg regated schools. With the first full month of the fall school term gone by, the count in the South stood at 790 districts desegregated out of a total of 2,890 bi-racial districts. The 17 southern states and the Dis trict of Columbia had a total of 12,629,- 434 pupils enrolled in public schools. Of these, 2, 970,344 were Negroes. And of this latter total, 402,402 Negroes were integrated situations. Other developments by states: Alabama Although no Negroes appeared for en rollment, a flareup developed outside Phillips High School in Birmingham, where violence erupted last year when several Negroes attempted to enroll. Arkansas With Little Rock’s high schools closed, trouble developed at Van Buren Discussed construed as creating or recognizing any right to education or training at public expense.” South Carolina in 1952 repealed its constitutional provision requiring “a liberal system of free public schools for all children between the ages of six and twenty-one.” And a Mississippi constitutional amendment of 1954 would permit either the local school district electorate or the state Legislature to close public schools. In other states, the school closing provisions are statutory. In Georgia (Continued On Page 2) and Ozark where Negroes were harassed by white pupils. No trouble was reported in Arkansas’ six other integrated school districts. Delaware New Castle completed its stairstep plan and moved into complete desegre gation. An integrated school within a segregated district opened on Dover Air Force Base. District of Columbia School authorities anticipated an in crease in Negro enrollment in public schools from 71.2 to 73.8 per cent. There was an estimated total enrollment of 113,000, including 83,763 Negroes and 29,737 whites. Florida The first Negro to enter the Univer sity of Florida enrolled without inci dent. It was the state’s first public school integration anywhere. Georgia Lt. Gov. Ernest Vandiver, who said he’d use the National Guard and High way Patrol, if necessary, to prevent integration, was overwhelmingly nom inated governor. In Democratic Georgia that’s equivalent to election. Kentucky U. S. marshals were sent to Madison- ville after several incidents developed over enrollment of Negro children at an elementary school. Louisiana Louisiana State University opened a new branch at New Orleans with 59 Negroes enrolled under federal court order. Maryland An estimated 5,000 additional Negroes were enrolled in integrated public school classes. Mississippi NAACP branches in the state called for immediate integration in public schools to put a stop to what they called acts of intimidation against Negro pupils. Missouri A psychologist reported a study showed teachers in integrated schools undergo a change of attitude and be come “inconsistent” in intergroup rela tions. North Carolina Three Piedmont cities entered the sec ond year of limited integration without public outbreaks but with a sub-surface strain evident. Oklahoma Thirty Negroes were reported serving on integrated faculties in 12 School dis tricts. The number of Negro teachers displaced by desegregation in Oklahoma City showed a decline for the second year. South Carolina Public schools opened with a record attendance nearing 600,000. Negro en rollment reached 69 per cent of the total in Charleston. Tennessee Memphis State University postponed acceptance of Negroes. Nashville com pleted integration of second grade classes. Texas A district court set Oct. 27 for a hear ing in Dallas on a test of state laws affecting school desegregation. Virginia Nine schools remained closed while the state pondered the next move in its “massive resistance” to federally- ordered desegregation. West Virginia For the first time since the Supreme Court’s 1954 decision the state’s schools opened this fall without demonstrations. # # # ‘SiLi J SSue Governors Talk But Take No Action By WELDON JAMES LEXINGTON, Ky. I T wasn’t on the agenda. But the school segregation-desegre gation controversy, and what the governors had to say about it, stole the show at the 24th annual Southern Governors’ Conference, a four-day blend of Bluegrass hospitality and diverse politics that attracted record coverage by a press-radio-television corps numbering more than 130. Such a national spotlight frightened not one single governor. They paid scheduled respect to such topics as nu clear energy and narcotics addiction, but they made the headlines and the television screen by talking about “the school crisis”—and they surprised some observers by the many-shaded diversity of views expressed. SAID IT BEFORE Some Deep South reporters guessed that no governor said anything much that he hadn’t said in his own state before. The school-closing crises in Little Rock and Virginia had set the stage for the conference—just as the first Little Rock crisis had done for the governors’ meeting in Sea Island, Ga., last fall. Some governors said publicly that the school-closings “had had no impact in the South.” But the aide to one of them told the Associated Press “some of these governors are a lot more wor ried than they admit,” and the A.P.’s Reiman Morin concluded “this has been a distinct impression at the conference ... Privately, there was an undertone of uneasiness.” STATES’ RIGHTS Georgia’s Gov. Marvin Griffin, a strong supporter of Arkansas’ Gov. Orval Faubus, wanted a conference resolution reaffirming the governors’ belief in “states’ rights.” Said he: “We ought to talk about segregation and be resolute about it ... It is no longer an issue of integration versus segrega tion: It is a question of state sovereignty versus an all-powerful federal govern ment.” At the other extreme, but in agree ment on having the conference record its views, was Maryland’s Republican Gov. Theodore McKeldin. His proposal was a resolution calling on all the South to take the lead in hastening “complete compliance” with the su preme Court’s mandate on school inte gration. Somewhere in between was Tennes see’s Gov. Frank Clement. He wanted a resolution affirming the doctrine of states’ rights—but he wanted it coupled with “a clear statement of state re sponsibilities.” RESOLUTIONS FAIL Result: No resolution for or against integration. McKeldin got but one vote—his own—in the six-man resolu tions committee. Griffin’s was then with drawn. He explained afterward: “We thought it was better to beat the Mc Keldin resolution than to push for mine.” Said McKeldin: “The masks of mod eration have slipped from the faces of some who had managed for four years to pose in that position. It is good to have the alignments clarified.” Other members of the resolutions committee, besides McKeldin were Republican J. Caleb Boggs of Delaware, chairman; North Carolina’s Luther Hodges, South Carolina’s George Bell Timmerman, Ok lahoma’s Raymond Gary, Mississippi’s James P. Coleman. Arkansas’ Faubus, otherwise in great demand at the conference, missed out on the new conference chairmanship. He had the seniority, but his colleagues chose another segregationist, Mississip pi’s Coleman. COLLINS SPEAKS OUT The outgoing chairman, Florida’s Le- (Continued On Page 2)