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PAGE 12—FEBRUARY—SOUTHERN SCHOOL NEWS
Virginia, Florida and Little Rock Made Top 1959 Headlines
V irginia’s abandoment of “mas
sive resistance,” Little Rock’s
school re-opening and Florida’s
first integration ranked among the
top developments on the segrega
tion-desegregation question in
1959.
Gov. Lindsay Almond recom
mended to the Virginia Assembly
late in January last year that the
state abandon its all-out segrega
tion policy. By the end of the
year, five school districts had be
gun desegregation under court
order.
At Little Rock, the school board was
returned to control of those favoring
open schools even if it meant desegre
gation. After the school closing laws
were ruled out, the board re-opened
the four high schools closed by Gov.
Orval Faubus for the 1958-59 school
year. The board admitted six Negroes
to two white high schools.
Florida had maintained complete
segregation up until the 1959-60 school
term. Then the state began limited in
tegration at two schools in Dade Coun
ty under the pupil assignment law.
Alabama
^Jov. John Patterson was inaugurated
Jan. 19 after being elected on a
strong pro-segregation platform. In his
inaugural address he repeated his
campaign pledge that the state would
retain segregation or “in a short time
we will have no schools at all.”
In March, the Birmingham superin
tendent of education rejected the ap
plication of nine Negro children for
admission to white schools. The chal
lenge was interpreted as directed at
the state’s school placement law, which
the Supreme Court had held valid “on
its face” in earlier action.
Patterson called the Alabama Legis
lature into special session June 24, in
the middle of its regular biennial ses
sion, to consider the “greatest financial
crisis” in the history of the state’s
schools.
The Legislature granted most of
what Patterson asked, authorizing 32
million dollars in new school taxes to
support the biggest school budget in
history. Also approved: a 100-million-
dollar school bond issue for classroom
construction—the first state school
bond issue in history and the biggest
issue for any purpose. However, Pat
terson’s request for personal school
closing powers met defeat when Sen.
A. C. Shelton of Calhoun County
pocketed the bills as the clock ran out.
Shelton, and others, feared the meas
ure would undercut the placement
law.
The Legislature enacted a bill to
permit schools to secede from state and
local systems and form their own in
dependent school district and another
to permit state support of private
schools.
Dr. Martin Luther King’s Montgom
ery Improvement Assn, wrote the
Montgomery City-County Board of
Education Aug. 28 to inquire of its
“plan of integration” for the commu
nity. The board did not reply. On Dec.
3 King said it appeared that Montgom
ery Negroes had no choice but go to
court.
Patterson threatened to call out the
National Guard in November if the
federal government pressed its an
nounced plans to seek integration of a
Huntsville school serving children of
Redstone Arsenal personnel. Patterson
saw the government move as the
opening battle of an all-out war to
completely destroy our customs . .
Nov. 24, the Birmingham Board of
Education turned down another peti
tion, this one signed by 135 Negro
parents requesting school integration.
Letters to the parents said it was not
“an appropriate request” under the
state’s placement law.
Arkansas
^^rkansas started 1959 with desegrega
tion in eight public school districts
and ended the year with nine. Added to
the list were Little Rock and the Pulas
ki County Rural School District, while
Ozark dropped off.
In the 1959 session of the Legislature
the major development was the approv
al of a proposed constitutional amend
ment, which will be voted on in Novem
ber 1960. It would kill the constitution
al requirement that the state maintain
public schools and has other provisions.
State laws killed in the courts in
cluded Acts 4 and 5 of 1958, the school
closing laws; Act 115 of 1959, barring
public employment to members of the
National Assn, for the Advancement of
Colored People; and Acts 83 and 85 of
1957, which set up the State Sovereign
ty Commission and required certain or
ganizations to register with it.
Act 10 of 1958 was upheld in state
courts and lower federal courts, but
appeals are going higher.
Three Negro students in the Dollar
way District, at Pine Bluff, filed in fed
eral court for admission to the white
high school, the first desegregation suit
in Arkansas since the Little Rock crisis
in 1957.
A district judge ordered the students
admitted but the appeals court reversed
that and ordered the Negroes to abide
by state pupil placement laws. At the
end of the year, the Negro students were
still going through the placement law
procedure.
A federal grand jury at Little Rock
and a subcommittee of the House Elec
tions Committee investigated the No
vember 1958 victory of Dr. Dale Alford
over Brooks Hays for the Fifth Con
gressional District seat. The grand jury
returned no true bills and the House
Committee concerned Alford’s victory.
Charges of election irregularities had
been made.
At Little Rock, the school board was
returned to control of the group favor
ing keeping school open even if it
meant desegregation when two new
members were elected in a recall elec
tion in May.
When the school closing laws were
ruled out, the board re-opened the four
high schools that had been closed by
Gov. Orval E. Faubus for the 1958-59
school year. Using the placement laws,
the board admitted six Negro students
to two white high schools.
On opening day, about 200 segrega
tionists marched on Central High but
police and firemen broke them up and
arrested 19 persons. On Labor Day
night, three dynamite explosions oc
curred in Little Rock, including one at
the school board office. Five Little Rock
men were arrested and four have been
tried and convicted.
Delaware
r J * 1 2 HE approval by a federal district
court of a grade-a-year desegre
gation plan, the first such decision
applying to an entire state, highlighted
1959 in Delaware.
The gradual plan, submitted to the
U.S. District Court in Wilmington by
the State Board of Education, was ap
proved by Judge Caleb R. Layton HI
in July.
It went into effect in September,
without incident, in nine downstate
schools. But only about two-dozen Ne
gro first-graders registered at the
previously all-white schools. None,
furthermore, applied at any of the
seven schools to which Negroes sued
for admission in 1956.
An appeal of the stairstep plan has
been taken by the Negro litigants to
the U.S. Third Circuit Court of Ap
peals and is scheduled to be heard
Feb. 15.
Throughout the entire year, the state
board and the General Assembly, which
provides the money, remained locked
over school construction, with funds
to build Negro schools a major fac
tor.
Eight senators from Kent and Sus
sex where pupil integration has
reached only a token status, have in
troduced a $10,581,387 school construc
tion bill, including $4,617,152 for Negro
schools.
state board, which will submit
its bill this year, is known to favor
consolidation of some of the Negro dis
tricts.
District of Columbia
X™ proportion of Negro stu
dents in Washington public
schools continued its upward trend in
1959, but so did the average achieve-
r men t level of pupils in the school sys
tem.
Educators said racial problems were
of less concern than at any time
schools were desegregated five years
ago.
The peak enrollment count in Octo
ber showed a record total of 117,884,
including 27,481 white students and
90,403 Negroes. The percentage of Ne
gro students—76.7—was up from 74.1
per cent in 1958.
Commenting on the enrollment fig
ures, School Supt. Carl F. Hansen noted
the “artificial barriers which keep
many Negro families from moving to
the suburbs.”
Standardized achievement test re
sults, a matter of much concern since
desegregation, continued to move up
ward in 1959, though they still lagged
behind national norms in many sub
jects.
Test scores released in June showed
an improvement over 1958 in 15 of the
27 subjects tested, no change in three
subjects and a decline in nine.
Citing a “significant upward trend”
in the test scores since 1955, Hansen
said they showed “it is possible to
overcome educational lags, though
teaching must be extremely competent,
forceful and demanding.”
Referring to the Negro majority in
the schools, the superintendent said:
“These children are demonstrating
their educability and benefiting from
stepped-up education in an integrated
school system.”
In a continuing effort to step up stu
dent achievement, district schools
stressed more thorough instruction in
the basic subjects. The experimental
four-track program of ability group
ing was placed on a permanent basis
in high schools. A similar three-track
plan was introduced at elementary and
junior high levels.
Legislative efforts during the year
included an appropriation by Congress
for a free lunch program for 2,000
needy elementary pupils and an effort
by Rep. Joel T. Broyhill (R-Va) to
tighten the district’s tuition require
ments for non-resident pupils.
Broyhill charged that many Negro
families in the South were sending
children to be educated in the deseg
regated schools of Washington at local
taxpayers’ expense. His bill is still
pending.
Florida
JJlorida embarked on its first school
integration in 1959 when two Dade
County schools opened their doors to
children regardless of race.
In one, integration was routine. The
Air Base School was built by the Dade
school board this year with some fed
eral aid. It is primarily for children of
personnel at the Strategic Air Com
mand base at Homestead, though it is
open to all children in the district.
Since there is officially no segrega
tion in military services, the policy
was extended to the school. There were
28 Negro children among the 721 regis
tering on the first day and the propor
tion has continued with some fluctua
tion since.
At Orchard Villa the situation was
different. This formerly all-white
school is in an area changing from
white to Negro. In the spring of 1959
the school board announced a policy
of integration at Orchard Villa. Four
Negro children were assigned under
the pupil assignment law. An all-white
faculty was selected and given special
training. Biracial conferences of par
ents and community leaders were held
to prepare the way.
There were wholesale withdrawals of
white pupils during the summer. When
doors opened in September, only eight
white children showed up in addition
to the four assigned Negroes. Many
other Negroes tried to register.
For a five-week test period, the
school was operated for only 12 chil
dren. Then, in mid-October, Orchard
Villa was reorganized with an all-
Negro staff and 379 Negro children as
signed. White children have continued
to attend, the number fluctuating from
eight to 14.
Teacher evaluations of integrated
classes stated that both white and Ne
gro children have been helped by the
association and that the limited inte
gration has been successful.
Florida watched Dade’s integration
with interest. No serious criticism de
veloped, but no other county has made
any move to follow suit.
However, legal action is pending to
force further integration in Dade and
to open doors to integrated classes in
Palm Beach and Hillsborough counties.
Georgia
TVTineteen hundred and fifty-nine was
1 ' the year in which Georgia’s state
government lost its fight in federal
courts to preserve school segregation.
U. S. District Court in Atlanta
handed down decisions paving the way
for desegregation in public schools and
public colleges.
Georgia State College of Atlanta was
ordered to stop refusing admission to
qualified Negroes. However, at the end
of the year, no Negroes had been ad
mitted and no new desegregation liti
gation had been initiated in public
higher education in the state.
The Atlanta Board of Education was
ordered to prepare a desegregation
plan for implementation in 1960. The
board came up with a pupil placement
proposal and the federal judge who
heard the suit had it transmitted to
the Legislature, saying it is up to Geor
gians to decide whether to accept in
tegration or close public schools.
Gov. Ernest Vandiver took office at
the beginning of the year, saying
Georgia would not accept “token or
total” integration. The Legislature, at
his request, passed laws permitting the
governor to close any single public
school or University System unit inte
grated.
As the year ended, organizations on
both sides stepped up their efforts in a
debate which has moved from a “seg
regation vs. integration” phase to an
“integration vs. open public schools”
controversy.
Kentucky
T>oth major political parties in
Kentucky excluded race rela
tions as a political issue in the 1959
gubernatorial campaign.
Voters elected a Democratic gover
nor, Bert Combs, pledged to regarding
Supreme Court decisions as “the law
of the land” and to spending vastly
greater amounts on public school im
provement.
They also returned to office as state
school superintendent the school chief
who had initiated the state’s desegrega
tion program in 1955—Wendell P. But
ler.
For the third year in succession, state
officials reported “more than 80 per
cent” of the state’s Negro pupils in
“integrated situations.” The accent is
still heavy on permissive or free-
choice plans and the number of pupils
in integrated classes increased slightly.
University of Louisville trustees in
March named a Negro educator, Dr.
Charles H. Parrish Jr., head of the de
partment of sociology—first of his race
to become a departmental head at a
desegregated southern university.
In a related field, the Louisville
school board accepted the recommen
dation of Supt. Omer Carmichael and
in September added faculty integra
tion to the pupil integration begun in
1956. It assigned 10 Negro teachers to
five city schools formerly staffed with
white teachers only, bringing the num
ber of Negroes teaching biracial classes
in the state to 148. Most of them are
in Louisville, where the student bodies
of several integrated schools remain
under instruction by all-Negro faculty
members.
Federal court orders accounted for
the extension of integration programs
to the elementary schools of two coun
ties where high school integration had
earlier begun under similar orders—
Union County (where disturbances at
Sturgis High School had made news
two years earlier) and Owen County
(where elementary school integration
followed court rejection of a “stag
gered” four-year plan).
Louisiana
T ouisiana’s public schools remained
'*~' i totally segregated at the close of 1959
but only four months remain for the
Orleans Parish (county) school board
to comply with a federal court order to
draft an integration plan.
The all-white board was directed by
U.S. District Court Judge J. Skelly
Wright on July 15 to prepare a plan
by March 1, 1960. He later extended
the time to May 16, suggesting that the
five-member board offer him a grade-
by-grade desegregation plan.
There were reports that the board
would submit no plan, opening the
avenue for a new court battle in which
conflicting state and federal laws
would be argued.
These were other 1959 developments:
1) Civil Rights—A three-judge fed
eral court ruled in October that the
rules of the U.S. Civil Rights Com
mission were unconstitutional.
The ruling came at Shreveport,
scheduled location of a public hearing
into scores of charges that vote regis
trars in north Louisiana were discrim
inating against Negroes.
Its hearing blocked by the decision,
the commission appealed to the U.S.
Supreme Court. The ruling was based
principally on the federal court’s con
clusion that the 16 accused registrars
were entitled to cross examine their
accusers. Commission procedures did
not permit this.
2) Legislation—No new segregation
laws were passed during the year but
the Legislature’s Joint Committee on
Segregation struck down two measures
at the May session, which would have
made it easier to register to vote and
to remain on the rolls once properly
registered.
3) Politics—For the first time since
the turn of the century, segregation
became the prime issue of a guberna
torial campaign. Former Gov. Jimmie
H. Davis, picking up the strong seg
regation bloc vote that had gone to an
opponent in the first primary, was the
winner of the Democratic nomination
(on Jan. 9, 1960). All candidates spoke
up for continued segregation but
fought heatedly over who was the
most dedicated to the fight against in
tegration.
4) Higher Education — Public sup
ported colleges in the southern portion
of Louisiana enrolled increasing num
ber of Negro students in previously
all-white colleges.
Maryland
T\esegregation in Maryland during
* * 1959 followed a course that, after
five years, had become well defined.
The transition to non-segregated
schooling, was being pushed with de
liberate intent in a few counties, was
proceeding slowly on a voluntary basis
in some other countries and had as yet
had no tangible effect in about two-
fifths of the counties having biracial
school populations.
The speed of change corresponded
closely to the percentage of Negroes in
an area, with most of the desegrega
tion occurring where Neeroes were a
small fraction of the population.
Allegany County, with a less than
two per cent Negro school population,
became in 1959 the first Maryland
school district to complete integration.
Three other counties with small num
bers of Negroes made further moves
toward complete integration by closing
out some colored schools or separate
grades. Additional Negroes were ad
mitted to formerly all-white schools in
eight other counties, raising the total
of integrated Negroes in county schools
to more than 5,000, or about ten per
cent of the Negro enrollment in the
counties.
In Baltimore, which began desegre
gation in the fall of 1954. the number
of biracial schools for the first time ex
ceeded 50 per cent of the total. Most
of the increase stemmed from the con
tinued expansion of Negro residential
areas, which carried desegregation to
schools that previously served all-
white neighborhoods.
The year 1959 was notable for the
absence of legal, legislative and com
munity action. No law suits involving
school desegregation were filed, other
than an appeal of a pupil placement
decision to the State Board of Educa
tion. The only legislative action related
to the subject was the General As
sembly’s belated ratification of the
Fourteenth Amendment. And no pub
lic protests were heard over the en
trance of Negroes to at least 28 addi
tional white schools across the state.
Mississippi
Segregation remained in effect at all
levels in Mississippi during the year.
The state, unlike others in the South,
had no court suits to break down its
tradition of racial separation.
Mississippi became the next to last
state (after South Carolina) to form a
state advisory committee to the Civil
Rights Commission. Three whites and
two Negroes accepted appointments on
the board.
In April, a 23-year-old Negro charged
with raping a white housewife was kid
napped from a jail at Poplarville, Miss.
The body of Mack Charles Parker later
was found in a river near the Louisiana
line.
The Federal Bureau of Investigation
prepared a voluminous report on the
case during a month-long inquiry. A
Pearl River County grand jury, how
ever, adjourned in November without
taking action in the case.
U.S. Atty. Gen. William P. Rogers
termed it “a travesty of justice” and
called for a federal grand jury to hear
the case. It later refused to indict any
one.
By year’s end, Mississippi had spent
or programmed an estimated 90 million
dollars for new school buildings in the
Negro-white equalization program en
acted shortly before the 1954 desegrega
tion decision. Ultimate cost of that
equalization effort, designed to discour
age integration movements, is estimat
ed at 144 million dollars.
A strong segregationist, Ross Barnett,
(See '59 SUMMARY, Page 13)