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PAGE 8—JULY 1959—SOUTHERN SCHOOL NEWS
ARKANSAS
Federal Tribunal Holds School-Closing Laws Unconstitutional
The Little Rock school board as it was constituted on June 11 following appoint
ments by the Pulaski County Board of Education was made up of the men shown
here. They are, from the left, top, Russell H. Matson Jr., Henry Lee Hubbard and
B. Frank Mackey; bottom, Ted Lamb, Everet Tucker and J. H. Cuttrell Jr. Matson,
Lamb and Tucker were elected to the board in 1958 and were retained in a recall
election in May when three pro-Faubus members were removed by popular vote.
Hubbard, Mackey and Cuttrell were appointed by the county board June 11. Hub
bard resigned June 15 and a new appointee has not yet been announced.
LITTLE ROCK, Ark.
T he Arkansas school closing
laws, Acts 4 and 5 of 1958,
were held unconstitutional by a
three-judge federal court. They
had been used by Gov. Orval E.
Faubus in September, 1958 to close
the four Little Rock high schools
to prevent a second year of deseg
regation at Central High. (See
“Legal Action”).
Three new members were ap
pointed to the Little Rock School
Board, to replace the three re
called by the voters, but one of
them quickly resigned. The two
new ones agree with the three con
tinuing members that the public
schools should be kept open. (See
“School Boards and Schoolmen”).
A federal grand jury at Little Rock
completed an investigation of the Al-
ford-Hays congressional election with
out indicting anybody and without ex
planation. A House subcommittee in
vestigating the same election arrived at
Little Rock to inspect the ballots. (See
“Political Activity.”)
A federal court upheld the law re
quiring teachers to list all their mem
berships but ruled out another law bar
ring public jobs to members of the
NAACP. (See “Legal Action.”)
The Dollarway School District has no
integration plan, doesn’t intend to have
one and isn’t required to have one, its
attorney argued in federal court. (See
“Legal Action.”)
The Ku Klux Klan was chartered in
Arkansas. (See “Community Action.”)
Three federal judges ruled unanimous
ly June 18 that Acts 4 and 5 of 1958
were unconstitutional (Aaron v. Mc
Kinley). The two laws, produced by a
special legislature at the request of Gov.
Faubus, gave him power under Act 4 to
close a school about to be integrated
and under Act 5 to withhold state aid
from a closed school and transfer it to
whatever schools the displaced students
went to. Faubus used the laws, once, to
close the four public high schools at
Little Rock last September. Both laws
had been upheld by the state Supreme
Court which based its Act 4 ruling on
the theory that the law was a proper use
of the state’s police power.
OVERTURNS DECISION
The federal judges—John B. Sanborn
of St. Paul, Minn.; John E. Miller of
Fort Smith, Ark. and Axel J. Beck of
Elk Point, S. D.—took note of the state
court’s holding but rejected it. For one
thing, they said, the U. S. Supreme
Court has already ruled that violence
or threat of violence cannot justify a
state’s using its police power to deprive
a citizen of his constitutional rights.
They also remembered the finding by
District Judge Harry J. Lemley a year
ago that conditions had been “deplor
able” inside integrated Central High,
and that his order for a two and one-
half-year delay in integration because
of that had been knocked down by both
the Appeals Court and Supreme Court.
From that, the judges wrote, “we can
see no basis whatever for a ruling by us
that Act 4 constitutes a valid and rea
sonable exercise of the police power of
Arkansas to meet an emergency.”
ORDER REPEALED
The ruling renewed the order to the
Little Rock School Board to proceed
with the plan of gradual integration
originally approved by the Court in
1956.
Faubus said he was disappointed, es
pecially about Act 5, and indicated that
he would appeal.
A few days earlier another three-
judge court—Sanborn, Miller and J.
Smith Lemley of Harrison, Ark.—had
ruled on two other state laws. They up
held Act 10 of 1958 but ruled out Act
115 of 1959. Act 10 requires teachers to
list their memberships and contribu
tions for the last five years; Act 115
barred public employment to members
of the NAACP. B. T. Shelton, Little
Rock teacher and member of the
NAACP, was the plaintiff and filed
notice of appeal.
Two new suits against Act 10 were
filed immediately in the Chancery Court
of Pulaski County (Little Rock) by Max
F. Carr, music instructor at the Uni
versity of Arkansas, and Ernest T. Gep
hardt, Central High printing instructor.
Unlike Shelton’s suit, these two admit
that school authorities have a right to
all the information required by Act 10
except that of a private nature, such
as church membership. Their suits were
filed as class actions for all teachers
and they asked for an injunction to
stay Act 10 while the suits are being
tried.
But the Chancery Court also up
held Act 10 and refused to give an
injunction.
DOLLARWAY CASE
In the suit for desegregation of the
Dollarway School District in Jefferson
County (Dove v. Parham), District
Judge Axel J. Beck of Elk Point, S. D.,
spent June 17 taking testimony, then
called for briefs. The Negro plaintiffs
testified to asking the school authorities
in January 1957, September 1957 and
September 1958 to be transferred from
the all-Negro Townsend Park High
School to the all-white Dollarway High
School and of being refused each time.
School officials testified that they were
using Initiated Act 2 of 1956, a pupil
placement law which provides for the
assignment of pupils for 17 different
reasons but specifically forbids assign
ing them on the basis of race. They
said the Negroes had not completed the
appeals available to them under the pu
pil placement law.
Attorneys on both sides made vigor
ous closing statements. For the plaint
iffs, George Howard Jr. of Pine Bluff
and Robert Carter of New York City,
both Negroes, said the Negro students
hadn’t known of the pupil placement
law and that the school board should
have told them if it was using that law.
They went on to argue that if the Dol
larway Board was using the placement
law on the plaintiffs, it would have
tc use it on all Dollarway students but
wasn’t. Carter said Dollarway was not
using the placement law and hadn’t
tried to, but brought it up only when
the issue of race was involved. He called
the law “part of a pattern on the part
of the state to circumvent integration.”
NO PLAN
Herschel H. Friday Jr. of Little Rock,
for the Dollarway Board, told the court
that Dollarway had no plan for inte
gration and didn’t intend to have one.
He said it was a misconstruction of the
Supreme Court decision that school dis
tricts had “to get out and integrate.”
The Court didn’t mean that, he said, it
meant only that schools could not dis
criminate on racial grounds. He said
Dollarway was not discriminating on
racial grounds but was assigning pu
pils under the terms of the 1956 law.
At Washington, the Supreme Court
lefused June 14 to accept for review a
lawsuit by Atty. Gen. Bruce Bennett
against the NAACP. Bennett sued Aug.
26, 1957, in Chancery Court of Pulaski
County (No. 108363, State v. NAACP),
alleging that the NAACP had been op
erating illegally in Arkansas for seven
years because it was a foreign corpora
tion and had not paid the corporation
franchise fee of $50 a year. To prove
this he demanded a look at the NAACP
books. The NAACP posted the $350 with
the court but refused to produce its
books. The chancery court ruled against
the NAACP and was upheld by the
state supreme court. That’s what the
NAACP appealed to the U. S. Supreme
Court.
Bennett then filed a motion in Circuit
Court of Pulaski County for a summary
judgment of $5,000 against the NAACP,
a penalty he sought Oct. 10, 1957, in a
suit based on the NAACP’s alleged
failure to register (No. 44851, State v.
NAACP).
CASES ACCEPTED
On the same day the Supreme Court
agreed to review another appeal by the
NAACP from Arkansas. This is against
the Bennett ordinances of Little Rock
and North Little Rock under which the
cities may require certain organizations
to furnish their membership and finan
cial records. The NAACP has refused
to comply and its presidents, Mrs. L. C.
Bates of Little Rock and Mrs. Bertie
Williams of North Little Rock, have
been fined $25 each. The fines were up
held by the state supreme court.
A week later the Supreme Court
ordered a three-judge court to recon
sider its refusal to rule on a suit by the
NAACP, filed Dec. 4, 1958, in federal
court, against Acts 12, 13, 14 and 16 of
1958. The laws are part of Atty. Gen.
Bennett’s announced campaign of
harassment of the NAACP. The three
judges—Sanborn, Henley and Miller
—declined to rule on the four laws in
January because the state courts had
not ruled on them.
Seventeen days after the election in
which three men, or half the member
ship, of the Little Rock School Board
were recalled, three replacements were
appointed by the Pulaski County Board
of Education. Two of them—J. H. Cot
trell Jr., loan executive and a state rep
resentative, and B. Frank Mackey, in
surance salesman and former detective
—joined the holdover board members
in declaring their intention to keep the
schools open if possible. The third, Hen
ry Lee Hubbard, building contractor,
never gave a clue to his views on the
racial situation and resigned four days
after being appointed, saying he had re
alized that he was ineligible to serve.
He would not explain but the Arkansas
Gazette said Hubbard had been con
victed in 1938 of a felony which de
prives him of the right to vote. That
would disqualify him as a board mem
ber. Next day Hubbard admitted the
Gazette was correct and said he would
sue the paper for libel on the grounds
of persecution.
Hubbard’s resignation left a quorum
of five on the board and nobody seemed
to be in a hurry to fill the vacancy.
Besides, there was a legal question as
to whether the school board or the
county board of education would get to
make the new appointment.
REINSTATE TEACHERS
The five-man Board at its first meet
ing expunged from the record the purge
of 44 teachers and everything else done
by a three-man session of the board on
May 5, the meeting that led to the recall
of the three members. The board talked
of plans to reopen the four closed high
schools in September, in a way accept
able to the federal courts, but did noth
ing definite.
At its next meeting the board an
nounced officially that it intended to
reopen the four closed high schools in
September and, without violating the
federal court order, would use the
state’s two pupil assignment laws.
Three days later the federal
court invalidated Gov. Faubus’ school
closing laws, thus returning the
closed schools to the jurisdiction of the
school board and again placing the
board under orders to integrate under
the plan previously approved by the
court.
POLITICAL ACTIVITY
The federal grand jury at Little Rock
completed its investigation of the Al-
ford-Hays congressional election but re
turned no indictment. A few days later
a House subcommittee arrived to carry
on its own investigation, started at
Washington.
While the grand jury indicted no one,
it said nothing to affirm or deny the
charges of irregularities in the election,
made by John F. Wells of Little Rock,
which were the basis of the investiga
tion. These were that an Alford cam
paign circular was used without a sig
nature, a violation of law, and that in at
least six polling places in Pulaski Coun
ty, the election officials counted more
votes than they had voters.
WASHINGTON HEARING
At almost the same time a House
Elections Subcommittee headed by Rep.
Robert T. Ashmore (D-SC) held two
days of public hearings at Washington
with Rep. Dale Alford (D-Ark), Brooks
Hays, the man Alford defeated, and
Wells as witnesses. Hays, though not
contesting Alford’s election, insisted that
the investigation involved an important
principle, “the preservation of honest
elections.” Representing Alford, Claude
Carpenter Jr. cross-examined Hays—as
it happened, on the day after Carpenter
and others had testified about the un
signed Alford circular before the Grand
Jury—and at one point Carpenter asked,
“Did you put that circular into circu
lation, Mr. Hays?” The former congress
man was indignant at the question. He
described the picture on the circular
as disgusting, sinister and shocking. The
picture showed Hays, then president of
the Southern Baptist Convention, seat
ed between two Negro ministers at a
Negro Baptist meeting at Chicago. Al
ford denied having any knowledge of
the unsigned circular and repeated that
he did not want to serve in Congress
unless he had been properly elected.
BALLOTS SCANNED
Four members of the subcommittee
went to Little Rock June 21 to start
checking the 60,222 ballots cast in the
election, won by Alford, 30,739 to 29,483,
after a nine-day write-in campaign in
which Alford, supported by Gov. Fau
bus, campaigned against the Supreme
Court and its desegregation decisions
and attacked Hays for his moderate po
sition.
A few days after the Little Rock
School Board recall election in which
Gov. Faubus campaigned for three
board members who were recalled,
Faubus gave his view of the outcome:
He did not see it as a hands-off notice
to him from Little Rock voters; he
could not see any shift in sentiment to
ward the basic desegregation issue; his
position on forced integration was un
changed and only time and events
would tell whether the election was a
political setback for him.
COMMUNITY ACTION
The Little Rock Private School Corp.
announced that it would charge tuition
of $15 a month at T. J. Raney High
School next year. It did not charge any
tuition this year.
Raney High with 827 students is the
largest of the private schools formed
last fall after Gov. Faubus closed the
four public high schools at Little Rock.
It operated on donations, solicited with
the help of Faubus, and about $78,000
in state aid.
With Faubus as commencement
speaker, it graduated 190 seniors at the
end of June. The governor said they
had played a historic role in the history
of education and that the name of their
school might become as significant to
Americans as those of Valley Forge,
Gettysburg and Omaha Beach.
The Anthony School, a private kin
dergarten-elementary school which ex
panded to high school classes this year,
plans to continue on the high school
level. The other private schools are
waiting to see whether the public
schools will be open.
KKK ACTIVE
There was considerable publicity
about the Ku Klux Klan during June.
Chronologically it went like this:
R. E. Davis of Dallas, Tex., wrote the
Texarkana Gazette that he was the na
tional imperial dragon of the Knights of
the Original Ku Klux Klan, U. S. A.,
and that the Klans at Little Rock, Pine
Bluff and Texarkana (SSN, June 1959)
were not real Klans but had been ex
pelled by him from the KKK. The ban
ished klansmen, he said, formed the As
sociation of Arkansas Klans and also
the Arkansas Minutemen’s Association
of Pine Bluff. He said the banished
Klan at Texarkana was headed by a
well-known attorney.
Then George F. Edwardes, Texarkana
attorney, wrote to the Texarkana Ga
zette disclosing his connection with the
Association of Arkansas Klans. He said
the Arkansas Klan had not been
expelled by Davis but had disavowed
any connection with Davis “when we
obtained all the information on that
group.”
Two weeks later A. C. Hightower, a
Little Rock barber, filed a charter with
the secretary of state for the U. S. Klans,
Knights of the Ku Klux Klan, a Geor
gia corporation. The papers showed that
Hightower had been appointed grand
dragon for Arkansas by Eldon Lee Ed
wards of Atlanta, imperial wizard and
president of the corporation. Hightower
said the groups represented by Davis
and Edwardes at Texarkana were com
posed of banished klansmen and were
using KKK rituals without authority.
Atty. Gen. Bruce Bennett in a
speech at a union meeting said the KKK
was not welcome in Arkansas. He clas
sified it with the NAACP as “a foreign
organization with unlawful designs on
the peace and order of our state.” Gov.
Faubus said he wanted nothing to do
with the Klan. Little Rock peace officers
said they would enforce a 1909 law on
nightriding which was designed to curb
the Klan of that day.
APPROVE CHURCH REPORT
At Fort Smith, the North Arkansas
Methodist Conference adopted a report
calling free public education indispensa
ble to Methodism and Christianity. “In
the critical situation which exists in Ar
kansas at the present time, we call upon
all Methodists to support the cause of
free education and, if need be, to work
actively for its continuance,” the report
said. A similar report was adopted by
the Little Rock Conference in a meet
ing at Hot Springs.
A Negro organization, Save The Ed
ucation Program (STEP), formed dur
ing the Little Rock School Board re
call election, decided to continue as a
permanent organization. Mrs. D. D.
James was elected president.
One of the eleven 1959 graduates of
the Arkansas Law School, a private
school at Little Rock, was a Negro busi
nessman, the third of his race to grad
uate since the school began accepting
Negroes in 1953.
It is easier to draw to an inside
straight, according to the Arkansas
State Press, than for a Negro to safely
complete a journey by car below the
Mason and Dixon line. Southern police
pay little attention to the rights of Ne
groes, the Press said. The paper, a
Little Rock weekly, is owned by Mrs.
L. C. Bates, state NAACP president,
and her husband.
The Press also undertook to explain
to Gov. Faubus why Little Rock Ne
groes voted with STOP in the school
board recall election, even though STOP
made a point of avoiding the integration
issue. It was because STOP wanted to
preserve the public schools and keep
them open, the Press said to the gov
ernor, whereas “Under your program,
the Negro has no chance—not even in
the courts.”
Besides the warning to Negroes and
the explanation to the governor, the
Press continued to comment on the fact
that many Negro leaders, principally
the clergy, fail to take an active role in
fighting for Negro rights. Why do Ne
groes of means stay in their shells and
let the “Uncle Toms” and the whites
decide how they must live? the Press
asked. Is it that they don’t care? Are
they afraid of being hurt or killed? Do
they just enjoy sacrificing for the white
man? Or are they afraid of losing their
economic standing and their big cars?
All these reasons the Press rejects just
as in several previous editorials it has
never found a satisfactory answer.
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