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PAGE 2—DECEMBER—SOUTHERN SCHOOL NEWS
SOUTH CAROLINA
Clarendon CountyAction
May Be Renewed in Courts
Oliver W. Hill, chief counsel in Virginia for the National Assn, for the Advancement of Colored People, testified Nov. 9
before the state General Assembly’s Boatwright Committee. Facing Hill are legislators John B. Boatwright, committee chair
man, and Frank P. Moncure and Francis B. Gouldman.
VIRGINIA
Segregationist Leaders Aim Campaign
Against Almond’s Administration
COLUMBIA, S. C.
top official of the National
Assn, for the Advancement of
Colored People told South Caro
linians in late November that legal
efforts would be renewed to inte
grate the Summerton District
schools of Clarendon County. That
word came from Roy Wilkins,
NAACP executive secretary, as he
spoke to a Clarendon County Ne
gro audience. He referred to the
long-pending case of Briggs v.
Elliott, one of the original desegre
gation suits which went to the U.S.
Supreme Court and prompted the
Court’s 1954 decision. Meanwhile,
a Clarendon County legislator,
Rep. Joseph O. Rogers Jr., con
tends the state is on firm legal
ground in preserving racial segre
gation in its public schools. (See
“Legal Action.”)
Reports emanating from Washington
again indicate the Civil Rights Com
mission soon is to name an advisory
committe for South Carolina. One
name, that of Cheraw weekly editor
A. M. Secrest, is tentatively confirmed.
(See “Legal Action.”)
Several visitors to the state, includ
ing Georgia’s Sen. Herman E. Tal-
madge, call for continued opposition to
federally-directed integration. (See
“What They Say.”)
Roy Wilkins, executive secretary of
the National Assn, for the Advance
ment of Colored People, told a Negro
audience in Clarendon county Nov. 22
the NAACP intends to press its long-
pending suit for integration of Claren
don County schools in the Summerton
District. It was from that district that
the case of Briggs v. Elliott arose, one
of the five which went to the U. S.
Supreme Court and prompted the
Court’s desegregation decision of 1954.
Wilkins spoke to an open-air gath
ering of between 1,500 and 2,500 Ne
groes at the Negro Fair Grounds at
Manning. Although saying the Sum
merton case would be pursued, he did
not say when it would be reactivated.
The last legal steps taken in the case
came in July of 1955, when a three-
judge federal court at Columbia para
phrased the Supreme Court’s order to
remove racial barriers “with all delib
erate speed.” Since then, however, the
schools have continued to operate on
the traditional basis of racial separa
tion.
ANTT-.TOHNSON
The NAACP secretarv also told his
audience Negroes could not sunoort
Sen. Lvndon Johnson of Texas for
president because of the Texan’s in
volvement with a southern background
of “racial segregation and humilia
tion.” The “shenanigans” of southern
Democrats, he a-Wed, would constitute
a burden that “will nrobablv prove too
heavy to bring home a winner in 1960.”
In an interview Wilkins said integra
tion was coming in the Deep South but
“not as fast as we would like.”
Running counter to Wilkins’ com
ments concerning school integration in
South Carolina were remarks made a
few weeks earlier by Rep. Joseph O.
Rogers Jr., Manning attorney and vice
chairman of the state’s Special Segre
gation Committee.
“South Carolina is on good legal
ground in its effort to maintain sep
arate but equal school facilities,” Rog
ers told the Olanta Citizens Council.
LEGAL DEVELOPMENTS
Other recent legal developments in
volving race relations, although not
specifically concerned with school mat
ters, included these:
• The filing of a suit by a Negro
convict at the state penitentiary con
testing the right of prison officials to
hire only white guards.
• The filing of a suit by an Abbe
ville funeral home contending it was
forced out of business because it was
listed in the classified section of the
telephone directory as catering to col
ored clientele.
• The paroling of one of four white
men sentenced to jail last year for
beating an aged Negro man in Green
ville County shortly after the victim,
Claud Cruell, had befriended a neigh
boring white family.
® The reporting from Washington
by a Greenville News correspondent
that the Department of Justice was
making a preliminary investigation
into an alleged deprivation of civil
rights at Greenville Municipal Airport.
The complaint arose out of an incident
in which Jackie Robinson, first Negro
admitted to major league baseball, was
ushered out of a white waiting room
while visiting Greenville to address a
statewide NAACP rally.
The Civil Rights Commission said in
Washington during November that it
had selected, but not yet officially des
ignated, a panel of members for an ad
visory committee in South Carolina. To
date, South Carolina and Mississippi
have been the only two southern states
without such an advisory group. A
weekly newspaper editor who publish
es the Cheraw Chronicle, A. M. Se
crest, has identified himself as a pros
pective member of that advisory com
mittee. The Civil Rights Commission
confirmed to the Charleston News and
Courier’s Washington correspondent
that Secrest was being considered but
reiterated its refusal to name members
until all were formally identified.
Georgia’s U. S. Sen. Herman E. Tal-
madge, addressing a Democratic Party
rally at Columbia the night of Nov. 20,
said: “The greatest need of the Dem
ocratic Party is a recognition of the
fundamental fact that in a nation as
large and diverse as ours there can be
no single or pat solution to problems
involving human relations. Only a fool
or a knave would think that one man
or one decree could settle all the prob
lems in this great nation. Such prob
lems are so varied and complex that
they can be satisfactorily and amicably
solved only by the individuals who are
confronted with those problems and
who live with them every day.”
Negro Bishop Herbert Bell Shaw of
Wilmington, N.C., speaking to the Pal
metto Annual Conference of the Afri
can Methodist Episcopal Zion Church,
said: “My advice for you is to stay
where you are. Buy land, own your
own homes, register and vote, fight for
more fair play or share in the courts
of the land, fight for more civil em
ployments . . . teach people to respect
the law of the land, whether they like
it or not . . .”
The state Educational Finance Com
mission approved during November
$716,119 for school construction in
South Carolina. This brings to $197,-
856,217 allocations for school construc
tion and improvement since the state
launched a massive equalization and
expansion program in 1951.
A few days after that latest allot
ment was made, the state sold $10 mil
lion in state school bonds to Chase,
Manhattan and Bankers Trust and as
sociates of New York. The successful
bid was 3.25 per cent, with a premium
of $10,999.
Trustees of South Carolina’s tax-
supported State College for Negroes at
Orangeburg reported in November the
institution soon is to become fully ac
credited by the Southern Assn, of Col
leges and Universities. Wallace C. Be
thea, white chairman of the board of
trustees, told the state Budget and
Control Board such recognition would
come in December, giving the state its
first accredited Negro college.
# # #
RICHMOND, Va.
egregationist leaders, angered
by Virginia’s abandonment of
“massive resistance,” struck out
at the Almond administration in
what one newspaper described as
the possible beginning of “an all-
out war” against the governor and
his supporters.
The governor, meanwhile, ap
pointed to the state Board of Edu
cation the man who headed the
commission which recommended
the state’s present “freedom of
choice” school policy. (See “Polit
ical Activity.”)
The Virginia Pupil Placement
Board, acting to avoid contempt of
federal court charges, made its
first assignments of Negroes to
white schools. (See “Legal Ac
tion.”)
Floyd County and the city of
Galax in southwestern Virginia,
where there is now no integra
tion, announced the assignment of
Negro pupils to white schools as
of January. (See “School Board
and Schoolmen.”)
Gov. J. Lindsay Almond, Lt. Gov. A. E.
S. Stephens and Atty. Gen. A. S. Harri
son were the targets of segregationists’
attacks in a rally Nov. 19 at Victoria,
Lunenburg County, in the heart of the
Southside Virginia “black belt.”
“I shall never forget,” declared Dan
ville Councilman John W. Carter “how
Lindsay Almond said in this very town
during his campaign for governor that
he would give his right arm before one
Negro child would enter a Virginia
school with a white child.
“But at the special session of the
General Assembly, he surrendered
your constitutional rights as if he
owned them and had a right to give
them away.”
Addressing a crowd variously esti
mated at from 350 to 500 persons, Car
ter, a vice chairman of the Crusaders for
Constitutional Government, also de
nounced Lt. Gov. Stephens and Atty.
Gen. Harrison. He said one of those two
will seek nomination for governor in
1961.
BROKE AND RAN
“Virginians will not forget,” the
speaker said, “how these men broke and
ran in the face of the enemy. And I pre
dict thas this triumvirate—Almond, Ste
phens and Harrison—will go down in
utter and dismal defeat into political
oblivion.”
Carter said Almond never intended to
enforce the “massive resistance” laws,
but merely waited until he could ar
range for an appeals court to declare
some of the laws unconstitutional.
Almond’s statement in January, that
no useful purpose would be served if
federal authorities put him in jail, was
attacked by Carter. He said segregation
ists understood that the governor was
to be seized and imprisoned for refusing
to integrate the schools, and that then
the General Assembly would step in and
assume control of the schools. Carter
said that if the governor never intended
to go to jail, he should have said so
while he was campaigning for the gov
ernorship.
The Victoria meeting was the first in a
series of 10 such sessions—one in each
congressional district—planned by the
Defenders of State Sovereignty and the
Crusaders for Constitutional Govern
ment. The Richmond News Leader said
the meeting marked the beginning of
“what may develop into an all-out war
against the Almond administration and
its school policies.”
Others who spoke at Victoria included
Charles W. Carter of Arlington, who
read an address by C. Benton Coiner of
Northern Virginia, and Professor E. J.
Oglesby of the University of Virginia
faculty. Oglesby expressed regret that
Charlottesville, when it was faced with
integration, did not follow the example
of Prince Edward County and abandon
public schools.
About 60 Richmond area members of
the Defenders were told in a meeting in
that city Nov. 12 that segregationists
will just have to mark time until Gov.
Almond’s term of office ends two years
from now.
Collins Denny Jr., Richmond lawyer,
told the group:
“The forces of segregation have not
been lost in the Legislature, but we can’t
make any headway under the present
state administration.”
FOR PRIVATE SCHOOLS
He urged segregationists to concen
trate now on organizing the framework
for private schools.
J. J. Jewett, a Chesterfield County at
torney, said the governor, lieutenant
governor and attorney general did not
believe in “massive resistance” and that
they had paid “lip service” to that prin
ciple only because former Gov. Stanley
and U. S. Sen. Harry F. Byrd had advo
cated it.
At both the Victoria and the Rich
mond meetings, speakers said Almond is
attempting to supersede Byrd as head
of the dominant Democratic party or
ganization in Virginia.
PERROW CHOSEN
State Sen. Mosby G. Perrow Jr. of
Lynchburg, who headed the commission
which, in effect, recommended abandon
ment of “massive resistance,” was
named by Gov. Almond to fill a va
cancy on the state Board of Education.
The four-year appointment, an
nounced by the governor on Nov. 13,
is subject to confirmation by the Gen
eral Assembly.
As a member of the seven-man board,
Perrow will serve with at least three
persons who opposed the Perrow school
recommendations. They are State Sen.
Garland Gray of Waverly, State Sen.
Robert Y. Button of Culpepper and Wil
liam J. Story Jr., superintendent of
South Norfolk schools.
Perrow’s appointment will not change
the board’s line-up on the racial issue,
since he succeeds William N. Neff of
Abingdon, who was a supporter of the
Almond-Perrow policies. Neff was in
eligible for reappointment.
NOT SIGNIFICANT
As far as the school issue is concerned,
political observers saw no great signi
ficance in the results of the state legis
lative elections last month. Only a few
seats in the 140-member Assembly were
contested, the contests over the seats in
most instances having occurred in the ,
Democratic primary in July.
In Alexandria, Sen. Armistead L.
Boothe, a symbol of “moderation,” easily I
defeated his Republican opponent by I
4,945 to 1,616.
In that same county, Delegates James
L. Thompson, a symbol of “massive
resistance,” defeated his GOP chal
lenger 3,436 to 3,021. “Moderates” saw
this result as important, since they
said Thomson’s margin of victory this I
time was smaller than in previous
elections.
In general, it appeared that supporters
of Gov. Almond’s program would main
tain a small majority in the Assembly.
In the first co-ordinated political ac
tion by Negro voters in Prince Edward
County, one Negro justice of the peace
was elected, and write-in votes were
cast for Negroes for supervisor in each j
of the magisterial districts.
James L. Carter received nine votes 1
to be elected a justice of the peace in j
Lockett District. Only two names were |
on the ballot but three persons could be
elected.
NAACP CAMPAIGN
The NAACP has been conducting a
campaign to get Negroes registered to
vote in Prince Edward, where public
schools have been abandoned.
Almond announced he would recom
mend to the General Assembly in Jan
uary that it appropriate $20 million to
the State Literary Fund, from which
localities may borrow for school con
struction. This is twice the amount
appropriated for the current two-year
budget period.
After several hundred thousand pu
pil assignments on a segregated basis,
the Virginia Pupil Placement Board
has made its first assignments of Ne
groes to formerly all-white schools.
U.S. District Judge Walter E. Hoff
man on Oct. 22 directed the board to
assign four Negroes to predominantly
white schools in Norfolk. (Beckett «•
School Board of the City of Norfolk•)
The children already were attending
the schools on a temporary basis.
On Nov. 2 the board made the as
signments in a report to the court
which said, in part:
“. . . The board has been advised by
its counsel that the failure of the
board to assign the children mentioned
in the court’s order to those schools
where the children have been placed
by the prior action of the court and
are now being instructed would, in his
opinion, render the members of the
board liable to a citation for contempt
of the court’s order.
CHILDREN ASSIGNED
“Relying upon the opinion of its
counsel, the board, in order to avoid a
citation for contempt, but without sur
rendering its right to respectfully dis
agree with the conclusions and order
of the court covering the matter here
involved, and respectfully objecting
thereto, have met and have assigned
the following children to the follow*
ing schools in obedience to the court 5
(See VIRGINIA, Page 3)