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PAGE 2—JANUARY 1959—SOUTHERN SCHOOL NEWS
Segregation-Desegregation No Nearer Solution
(Continued From Page 1) that the commission was using state personnel and 2) The Rev. Clennon King, former professor at
the Alford-Hays election, the five Little Rock
Board members except Alford resigned in a body
on Nov. 12, calling their position “hopeless and
helpless.”
6) Van Buren and Ozark both had outbreaks of
mild trouble in September in their desegregated
high schools. At Van Buren the 13 Negro students
returned to school, after failing to get federal court
help, on Sept. 22, and no more difficulty has been
reported. At Ozark the three Negro girls left school
Sept. 8 and have not returned.
Delaware
1) The U.S. Supreme Court refused to review a
federal district court order calling on the state
Board of Education to draw up a desegregation
plan. On Nov. 19 the district court ordered the
state board to submit a desegregation plan by
March 4 for court approval. The state board indi
cated it would comply with the order.
2) Apparent approval was given a Dover de
segregation plan, whereby Negro pupils are ad
mitted at the ninth grade level to academic courses
only. Dover’s plan was approved originally by the
state board in 1954, and has not since been broad
ened to include elementary grades or to admit Ne
groes to other courses at the high school level.
State Board President Vincent Theisen said the
board will not include Dover in the plan it submits
to the court.
3) An integrated school was opened in a segre
gated district on Dover Air Force Base.
4) The Delaware General Assembly’s most active
segregationist as well as the one who fought hardest
to prevent anti-integration legislation were de
feated in state elections.
District of Columbia
1) The annual “peak enrollment” census of Dis
trict schools showed a record high pupil member
ship of 114,219, including 84,650 Negroes and 29,569
whites. The figures represented a decrease of 2,434
in the number of white students and an increase
of 5,539 in Negro enrollment.
2) On Feb. 28, Dr. Hobart M. Coming retired
after 12 years as Washington school superinten
dent. In his final report, he called desegregation
“the most significant, far-reaching and difficult
problem” of his tenure of office.
To succeed Dr. Coming the school board named
Dr. Carl F. Hansen, an assistant school superin
tendent who had played a major role in setting up
the desegregation program.
3) The lag in achievement continued to be the
school system’s major concern. In January, of
ficials disclosed that almost 50 per cent of Wash-
[ Ington school children fall into the “low normal”
or “poor risk” groups in reading readiness, though
the majority are average or above in intelligence.
Standardized test results made public in June
showed gains in most areas, but left District aver
ages trailing behind national norms.
4) In July, Supt. Hansen announced an all-out
drive to bring student achievement levels up to
national standards. With the new school year,
special honors classes, previously operated in the
senior high schools under the four-track plan,
were extended down to the junior high level.
Florida
1) For the first time since the University of
Florida opened its doors a century ago, a Negro
student is attending the law school at Gainesville.
University officials said there had been no reper
cussions or incidents.
2) In Dade County, the board of public instruc
tion ordered studies to determine if the Orchard
Villa School, in an area rapidly changing from
white to Negro, should be integrated. Studies are
still in progress, but members of the school board
said consideration is being given to voluntary
integration, with both white and Negro parents
having full and free choice between Orchard Villa
and segregated schools.
3) Two suits seeking to end school segregation
are close to decision. In the Dade County case
evidence has been taken and briefs filed. The case
already has been to the Fifth Circuit Court of Ap
peals which ordered trial on the merits. In the
Palm Beach County case the Court of Appeals
ordered the school authorities to produce an ac
ceptable plan for integration. So far none has been
forthcoming.
A third suit has just been filed in Hillsborough
County (Tampa).
4) With the biennial session of the Legislature
scheduled for May 1959, House and Senate mem
bers are working on stronger segregation measures.
Senate leadership has announced that emphasis
will be on setting up a state-aided private school
system, if necessary to avoid court-ordered inte
gration.
Georgia
1) A desegregation suit was filed in January
against the Atlanta Board of Education. Ten Ne
groes asked on behalf of their 28 minor children
that segregation be ended throughout the system.
Federal court judges in Atlanta promised a de
cision in the case before September, 1959.
2) Lt. Gov. Ernest Vandiver, an ardent segrega
tionist who has promised to use state troopers and
state guardsmen to keep schools segregated, was
elected governor on Nov. 4.
3) In November and December, Georgians de
bated local option on public school closings even as
segregation leaders showed concern over court
decisions endangering private school plans.
4) The Georgia Commission on Education came
under fire during primary campaigning, and its
director resigned in July after charges were made
facilities for political purposes.
Kentucky
1) Kentucky in June quietly completed the third
year of its school desegregation program, in Sep
tember increased the number of desegregated dis
tricts by 15 per cent—to 123 of its 175 bi-racial dis
tricts—with brief and minor disturbances in two
districts—and reported “over 80 per cent” of the
state’s school-age Negroes now included in de
segregated districts.
2) Gov. A. B. Chandler continued to reflect an
official “climate of compliance” by (a) praising the
state’s record in desegregation, (b) criticizing Ar
kansas Gov. Faubus for his non-compliance in
Little Rock, and (c) seeking the 1960 Democratic
presidential nomination as a “moderate thinker” on
integration but one who believes the Supreme
Court’s ruling on school desegregation must be
obeyed.
3) Kentucky Negroes won new prominence in
educational and legislative fields. For the first time,
Louisville elected a Negro, Woodford R. Porter, to
its school board. For the first time, the Legislature
named a Negro, the Rev. Felix S. Anderson, chair
man of a standing committee of the House of Rep
resentatives. Gov. Chandler re-appointed the only
Negro member of the state Board of Education. She
is Mrs. John H. Walls.
4) Two successive Jefferson County grand juries
rejected Citizens Councils’ charges of “crime and
official misconduct” in some of the desegregated
Louisville schools. One report endorsed instead the
Louisville Board of Education policies and “the
manner in which they were applied,” and warned
parents against “persons who seek to influence
their children in such a manner as to purvey
hatred and defiance of law and order.”
5) Church officials announced that two Metho
dist colleges—Wesleyan, at Owensboro, and Lind
sey Wilson, at Columbia—would be desegregated in
1959. This would bring the state’s total of desegre
gated colleges to 30 of 40, including all tax-sup
ported institutions and more than a score of pri
vate and denominational colleges and seminaries.
Louisiana
1) More than 50 Negroes were admitted, along
with 1,400 white students, to the new branch of the
Louisiana State University at New Orleans. The
admissions, result of a federal court order, mean
that half of Louisiana’s eight tax-supported, for
merly all-white colleges and universities have be
gun desegregation.
2) In other legal actions, federal courts (a) issued
a permanent injunction against segregated public
schools in Orleans Parish, a decision that will be
appealed; (b) declared unconstitutional a state law
that would prevent Negroes and whites participat
ing against each other in sports events; (c) de
clared unconstitutional laws requiring segregation
in public transportation.
The board of commissioners of City Park at New
Orleans, largest public recreation area in the city,
abolished racial segregation on Dec. 21. “This
means,” said an official statement of the board,
“that Negroes are now permitted to use all the park
facilities—the tennis courts, the baseball fields, the
golf courses, the amusement rides ... all facilities.”
The decision followed by four days the action
of the U. S. Supreme Court in reaffirming for a
second time an injunction prohibiting segregation
at City Park. The case has been in litigation since
1949.
4) The Louisiana Legislature adopted five new
laws designed to preserve segregation in the
schools and sent a constitutional amendment for
that purpose to the voters. The laws (a) permit
the governor to close schools ordered to desegre
gate; (b) permit private operation of public schools
in the event of desegregation; and (c) set up
criteria, other than race, for pupil assignment. The
amendment, approved in referendum Nov. 4, per
mits the Legislature to make public funds avail
able for operation of private, non-sectarian schools.
5) The State Democratic Executive Committee
voted to oust Camille F. Gravel Jr. as Louisiana’s
national committeeman. The Democratic National
Committee in December voted to retain Gravel as
the member from Louisiana. The state committee
charged Gravel espoused integration, but Gravel
said he merely supported the national Democratic
civil rights position.
Maryland
1) Figures released by the state Department of
Education in March and again in November indi
cated the admission of Negro pupils to white
schools was proceeding at roughly 5,000 a year,
with increases of about 1,000 recorded annually
in the counties and the remainder in Baltimore
city.
2) The Supreme Court in June declined to re
view the Harford County school case, letting stand
a seven-year desegregation program that includes
a special screening process for Negroes seeking to
enter white high schools in advance of the estab
lished timetable.
3) The Fourth Circuit Court of Appeals in No
vember upheld Chief District Judge Roszel C.
Thomsen’s ruling that a Negro plaintiff had a per
sonal constitutional right to be admitted to a white
12th grade in St. Mary’s County even though the
county’s desegregation program only extended to
the ninth grade.
4) While voluntary desegregation is the more
common policy in Maryland, compulsory integra
tion was effected in four counties in September as
school officials moved to close small Negro units.
Mississippi
1) No suits have been filed to break down the
state’s segregation barriers in schools or other
fields.
Alcom College for Negroes, attempted unsuccess
fully in June to enroll at the all-white University
of Mississippi for the summer session. He later said
he would attempt to enroll his daughter in a white
elementary school but nothing came of it.
4) A three-judge federal court at Jackson dis
missed a suit by the Rev. H. D. Darby, Negro of
Jeff Davis County, challenging the constitutionality
of Mississippi voter registration statutes as dis
criminatory against Negroes.
Missouri
1) In January the St. Louis Board of Education
put into effect its new three-track plan for high
schools. The plan was designed to provide educa
tional opportunities corresponding to different
levels of achievement. While the plan had no official
connection with integration of St. Louis public
schools, now more than 46 per cent non-white, it
was regarded as useful in coping with problems
caused by educational and background differences
between students.
2) On April 14 Missouri’s new state commission
on human rights was sworn in at Jefferson City.
Task of the 11-member group is to receive and in
vestigate complaints of racial or ethnic discrimina
tion, and recommend means of eliminating in
justices.
3) On June 27, U.S. District Judge Roy W.
Harper at St. Louis ruled that the Moberly school
district, in north central Missouri, had not shown
discrimination in employing its faculty for the
1955-56 term. Eight Negro teachers had brought
suit for damages and sought an injunction against
the town’s school board, charging they lost their
jobs because they were Negroes. In October, seven
of the teachers filed notice of appeal.
4) Three more school districts in September in
augurated desegregation programs. They are
Booneville, Brookfield and Keytesville. This
brought to 211 the number of bi-racial districts
desegregated, out of the state’s total of 244 districts
which have both white and Negro pupils within
their boundaries. It was estimated that 95 per cent
of the state’s 79,000 Negro pupils are in districts
which have begun or completed the desegregation
process.
North Carolina
1) Token integration continued in three North
Carolina cities during 1958. In all, 11 Negro pupils
completed their first year in mixed classes in Char
lotte, Greensboro and Winston-Salem, and one of
them was graduated from a Greensboro high
school. Thirteen enrolled in the same three cities
in the fall.
2) Negroes continued their legal attacks against
the state Pupil Assignment law and other laws
which make up the North Carolina Pearsall Plan.
Developments included federal district court de
cisions requiring exhaustion of administrative
remedies in the Raleigh case and the Montgomery
County cases, and the filing of new cases in Durham
and Caswell County.
3) On Jan. 18, near the village of Maxton, a Ku
Klux Klan rally was broken up by several hundred
Lumbee Indians with gunfire.
4) A group of Haliwa Indians, who objected to
their children attending Negro schools as they have
done in the past, applied for tuition payments
under provision of the Pearsall Plan to help finance
a private school they have set up.
Oklahoma
1) Financial pressure on smaller bi-racial school
districts forced some of them to give up their sep
arate schools out of budgeting necessity. Bristow
desegregated its schools for 1958-59 and Lenapah
extended integration to the elementary grades at
the same time. Two Little Dixie districts, Fox and
Graham, sought continued state financing of segre
gated schools but were turned down.
2) In one of the few instances of violence which
have accompanied desegregation in Oklahoma a
school board member at Springer, in Carter
County, was beaten in August by one of a group
protesting the board’s plans to integrate for 1958-
59.
3) A federal judge ruled in October the state is
under no mandate to maintain only integrated
schools. He made the statement in denying a re
quest for an injunction against a Negro principal
who tried to influence Negro children to remain
in his school. However, he ordered four Negro
pupils admitted to a white school in the same dis
trict.
4) The total of Oklahoma school districts which
have begun the desegregation process rose to 238
with the beginning of a new school year in Septem
ber.
South Carolina
1) January 1958 brought a flurry of applications
from Negro students seeking enrollment at the
University of South Carolina, but none was ac
cepted and the year ended without incident or
litigation.
2) In June, the state Board of Education restored
Allen University, a Negro Methodist college at
Columbia, to approved standing for teacher certi
fication of its graduates, thus ending a nine-month
controversy based primarily on Gov. Timmerman’s
repeated contention that Communist-connected
persons were on the Allen faculty.
3) A Cherokee County jury in July acquitted
two persons on trial for the November 1957, dyna
miting of the residence of a Gaffney physician and
his wife. The wife, Mrs. J. H. Sanders, had con
tributed an article to a booklet entitled, “South
Carolinians Speak,” compiled by five ministers as a
reflection of “moderate” sentiment on the question
of race relations. Mrs. Sanders had suggested in her
At Year’s End
contribution that racial integration might be
started at the first grade.
4) In August, two new petitions seeking inte
gration of public schools in Clarendon County were
filed with school authorities of the county. They
were from areas other than Summerton, from
which arose one of the cases (Briggs v. Elliott)
ruled upon by the U.S. Supreme Court in May
1954. The new petitions were rejected.
Tennessee
1) Federal district court on June 19 approved a
grade-a-year desegregation plan for Nashville city
schools with liberal provisions for pupil transfers.
Schools opened uneventfully Sept. 8 with 34 Ne
groes enrolled in first and second grades at seven
previously all-white schools. The total later
dropped to 28.
2) Clinton High School, in its third year of de
segregation, was badly damaged by three dynamite
blasts on Oct. 5. A dynamite explosion damaged
the Jewish Community Center at Nashville March
16, and anonymous telephone calls related the ac
tion to school desegregation. Both crimes remained
unsolved.
3) Desegregation of Memphis State University
was postponed another year, until next September.
4) Meharry Medical College, an endowed in
stitution at Nashville which graduated more than
half the Negro physicians and dentists now prac
ticing in the U. S., disclosed it had quietly enrolled
two white students in September 1957, its first.
5) Racist Frederick John Kasper, free after
serving time in a Federal penitentiary on a con
viction for contempt of court in the Clinton dis
orders, was found guilty on Nov. 10 of inciting to
riot in the 1957 school disturbances at Nashville.
He appealed a six-months sentence and $500 fine.
Texas
1) Dallas, a city held to be a key to further de
segregation in Texas, delayed the step at least
until 1959 pending court action. The federal courts
have ordered Dallas to desegregate “with deliberate
speed.” But the Fifth U.S. Circuit Court of Ap
peals in May dismissed the Dallas board’s effort to
get a ruling on its legal dilemmas involving a con
flict of state and federal authority. In November,
state Dist. Judge W. L. Thornton also dismissed the
case.
2) Houston, the nation’s largest segregated
school district, also under court order to desegre
gate, took some tentative steps toward integration,
such as seeking to improve the teaching of Negro
children.
3) At the November election, a Negro, Mrs.
Charles E. White, was elected to the Houston
school board.
4) Bloomington, a small south Texas district, de
segregated its schools by election in August; while
voters at Boerne, in southwest Texas, defeated a
proposal to admit the town’s only two Negro stu
dents to an all-white school. A special teacher is
employed for the two Negroes.
Virginia
1) Nine Virginia public schools, with a total en
rollment of 12,729 pupils, were closed in the Old
Dominion’s battle against school integration. The
schools—located in Norfolk, Charlottesville, and
Warren County—automatically shut down under
state law after local school boards were forced by
federal courts to enroll Negroes in what formerly
were all-white institutions.
As the year ended, about 10,000 of the displaced
students were attending classes in community
tutoring groups, private schools especially set up
for the purpose, or in other public schools.
2) There was a sudden rise, late in the year, of
widespread talk of a possible shift in the state’s
“massive resistance” policy. Some former all-out
segregationist leaders began urging adoption of
new laws which would permit integration at a
locality’s option but which would provide tuition
grants for children who preferred to attend private
segregated schools.
3) On the legal front federal courts ordered
Arlington County to admit Negroes into white
schools in February 1959, and gave Prince Edward
County until 1965 to begin integration. Desegrega
tion suits against Richmond, Alexandria, and
Newport News are pending.
5) Residents of Norfolk on Nov. 18 voted 12,340
to 8,712 against asking the governor to permit the
re-opening of Norfolk’s six closed schools on an
integrated basis.
West Virginia
1) The public schools opened in September in an
atmosphere of calm. For the second straight year
all 43 bi-racial districts and four of the all-white
districts operated under policies of desegregation.
Where protest demonstrations had occurred in 1957
there were no repeats in 1958.
2) On Nov. 10, an explosion caused an esti
mated $200,000 damage to a desegregated school at
Osage in Monongalia County. Despite good race
relations in the community, the school blast gen
erally is assumed to have stemmed from the segre
gation-desegregation factor.
3) Earlier, in January and February, several
schools burned on the opposite side of the state.
There was evidence to link the fires with the fact
the schools were desegregated.
4) State School Supt. R. Virgil Rohrbough Aug-
1 named a Negro supervisor, C. C. Carter of Mercer
County, to work among Negro groups in the state-
Carter’s chief duty will be to explain the process
of desegregation. In some areas Negroes oppose the
program; and in one community, Edwight, white
junior high school patrons petitioned for desegre
gation of schools, over Negro objection, to g lV< j
white children access to the superior Negro sehoo
facffity.
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