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SOUTHERN SCHOOL NEWS—FEBRUARY—PAGE 13
1959 Headlines
(Continued From Page 12)
was elected governor to succeed J. P.
Coleman.
Missouri
sion to Yancey County white schools.
The only Negro school was closed a
year ago and one has not been built to
replace it
The case is scheduled for trial some
time this spring, though no specific date
has been set.
T'he process of school integration in
Missouri, already more than 95 per
cent complete in school districts where
Negro children live, continued slowly
but steadily during 1959.
The great majority of Negro children
in Missouri still attend school with
children of their own race, even though
their school districts are officially de
segregated. This is due largely to resi
dential segregation.
Negro school populations of the
stage’s major urban centers, St. Louis
and Kansas City, continued to grow
during 1959. This growth is attributable
in part to influx of Negro families from
southern states. In rural Missouri the
number of Negroes was said to be on
the decline.
There has been some official action
toward integration of public schools in
all Missouri counties except Pemiscot
and New Madrid counties in the cotton -
growing southeast, or “Bootheel,” sec
tion of the state. In July 1959 two groups
of Negro students made unsuccessful ef
forts to enroll in white high schools in
Pemiscot County. They were told that
integration would have to await action
by district boards of education.
The Missouri advisory committee of
the Federal Commission on Civil Rights
published a 119-page report June 6,
1959 in an effort to update the extent
of school desegregation in Missouri.
Based on a survey of 100 school dis
tricts, the report called attention to the
fact that the vast majority of Missouri’s
77,000 Negro public school children
were still attending segregated schools
despite the fact that most were enrolled
in districts where some type of deseg
regation had taken place. Residential
segregation was blamed.
Earlier, the Missouri Commission on
Human Rights, a state agency, had sub
mitted a preliminary report to Gov.
James T. Blair stressing residential seg
regation and various discriminations
against Negroes. The Missouri General
Assembly extended the life of the com
mission.
On Nov. 16, 1959, the United States
Supreme Court denied a hearing to
seven Negro teachers who charged that
racial discrimination cost them their
jobs in the Moberly school system. The
I Moberly board of education failed to
| renew the contracts of the Negro teach
ers when Moberly schools were inte
grated in 1955. The Supreme Court’s or-
I der left in effect a lower court decision
that race played no part in the matter.
North Carolina.
J^orth Carolina began 1959 with about
a dozen Negro students in predomi
nantly white schools in three cities—
Winston-Salem, Greensboro and Char
lotte.
The year ended with about 50 Negro
students in predominantly white schools
in seven systems. Added during the
year to the desegregated group were
school systems in the cities of High
Point and Durham and the counties of
Wayne and Craven.
No violence was reported. There was
I some name-calling on opening day last
| fall.
Gov. Luther H. Hodges set the tone
of the year in his opening address to
the 1959 Legislature in January:
“North Carolina has moved with
calmness to meet the great problems
forced on us by an interpretation of the
federal court with which most of our
citizens profoundly disagree. In repos
ing trust and confidence and authority
in the people themselves at the local
level I believe our state has dealt wise
ly with this issue ...”
Hodges also said: “I still feel that the
Pearsall Plan, including our pupil as
signment law, is all right.”
The Legislature, in session for six
months, did not consider any changes
in school laws, although at the time
there were indications that the limited
desegregation would spread to more
communities before the year ended.
On the legal front, the U.S. Supreme
Court declined to review two cases—
one from Montgomery County and one
from Raleigh—upholding the principle
that state administrative remedies un
der the pupil placement law must be
exhausted before relief is sought in fed
eral court.
Although several cases were pending
at year’s end, the one likely to be most
active during the coming year is in
Yancey County, where there is no
school for Negroes.
The school board there assigned about
30 Negro students to Asheville city
schools in adjacent Buncombe County
after the students had asked for admis
Oklahoma
’J'he NUMBER of Oklahoma’s de
segregated school districts was
cut from 238 to 187 in 1959 in a gen
eral revision of statistics that followed
a careful study of official records.
The reduction was attributed to an
nexations and to Negro families mov
ing out of districts. The new total in
cludes 16 districts previously identified
as segregated.
Langston University, Oklahoma’s
only Negro institution of higher learn
ing, came under fire for high costs and
duplication of courses. A minor furor
developed over a suggestion to either
abolish the school or make it a junior
college. Alumni and other Negro
groups rallied to its support.
Two more Oklahoma City grade
schools, both located in predominantly
white residential areas, integrated.
Edison, in the northeast section, en
rolled about a dozen Negroes. Wilson,
in the northwest, admitted one.
The faculties of two other Oklahoma
City grade schools with biracial stu
dent bodies were integrated after a
fashion with the assignment of Negro
counselors to the staffs. This was the
first faculty integration in the city.
Residents in the area of the inte
grated Burroughs Elementary School
in Tulsa reported stemming a tide of
departures by white families through
a special neighborhood organization. A
similar plan was under study for
northeast Oklahoma City, where two
committees sought to prevent “panic
selling” by whites.
South Carolina
^ NEW STATE ADMINISTRATION took
office last year but South Caro
lina’s traditional pattern of racially
separated public schools was left un
changed during 1959.
The new governor, Ernest F. Hol-
lings, entered office in January with a
pledge to preserve racial separation in
the schools, along with a request for
more stringent laws to combat bomb
ings of schools, churches, and other
structures. The 1959 General Assem
bly enacted such a law, but otherwise
virtually ignored the subject of segre
gation.
The approach of the 1959-60 school
year brought requests for reassign
ment (to white schools) of some 78
pupils of Clarendon County, but all
such requests were rejected on grounds
that they came too late for considera
tion. These petitions were not related
to the original Clarendon County law
suit (Briggs v. Elliott), which was one
of the five cases that led to the 1954
desegregation decision by the U.S. Su
preme Court.
In the closing days of 1959, a state
advisory committee to the U.S. Civil
Rights Commission was appointed, con
sisting of four white and three Negro
members. The chairman pro-tem, E. R.
Mclver, declared himself a segrega
tionist, with others ranging from “mod
erates” to integrationists.
The committee was described as a
“nucleus” by staff members of the Civil
Rights Commission, who stated their
hope of persuading other segregation
ists to serve on the group to represent
the “conservative” viewpoint.
Tennessee
T T S. Supreme Court clearance of
’Nashville’s stairstep school deseg
regation plan was the top segregation-
desegregation development in Tennes
see last year.
Ranking right behind it were the de
segregation of a Rutherford County
school by court order and admission of
Negro students to Memphis State Uni
versity for the first time.
The high court refused by a vote of 6
to 3 Dec. 14 to consider an appeal from
lower court approval of the Nashville
plan, which desegregates schools a
grade at a time over a 12-year period.
The plan had been approved June 17 by
the Sixth Circuit Court of Appeals.
Rutherford County became the state’s
fourth desegregated school district Sept.
16, when Federal Judge William E. Mil
ler ordered Negro students admitted to
John Coleman Elementary School near
Sewart Air Force Base. The school
serves mostly children of personnel
stationed at the base.
Eight Negro students enrolled at
Memphis State University Sept. 10 and
began classes a week later with 4,500
white students.
Other segregation-desegregation de
Two New Governors
Hold Different Views
Two southern states have installed new governors. Here are their backgrounds
and their views on the segregation-desegregation issue:
velopments during the year were these:
• Few segregation bills were intro
duced in the 81st General Assembly
and only one passed. It allows parents
to withdraw their children from school
provided they get school board permis
sion first, and provided they enroll the
children in another school within 30
days.
• School superintendents from 13
states gathered in Nashville in March
at the invitation of the U.S. Commis
sion on Civil Rights to discuss their de
segregation experiences. From a bewil
dering variety of reports they arrived
at the conclusion that every communi
ty is different and must find its own
solution to school problems.
• Highlander Folk School charged
that its advocacy of racial integration
was behind a lengthy legislative probe
into its activities. A suit to revoke the
school’s charter was under litigation as
the year ended.
• A suit seeking desegregation of
Knoxville city schools was in effect dis
missed on a technicality June 1, and a
new suit was filed at the end of the
year.
• About a dozen Negro children ap
plied for admission to a white high
school at South Fulton, Tenn., just
across the state line from integrated
Fulton, Ky. They were rejected and no
further action has been taken.
Texas
r J , HE National Assn, for Advance
ment of Colored People kept up
the pressure in court to extend inte
gration of Texas public schools during
1959, but made little progress except in
districts already desegregated.
In addition to urging federal district
judges to order immediate desegrega
tion in Houston and Dallas, the state’s
two largest districts, NAACP attorneys
filed new suits for desegregation in
Galveston and Fort Worth.
In Dallas, whose school district is
considered to be the most immediately
involved in litigation over desegrega
tion, U.S. District Judge T. Whit
field Davidson rejected NAACP’s de
mand for an order of immediate com
pliance. But Davidson told Dallas of
ficials they must prepare for certain
integration. He will review the dis
trict’s status on April 4, 1960.
The Dallas district has been caught
in a dilemma. The federal court has
ordered desegregation. But a state law
would penalize the district and its of
ficials if the step is taken without ap
proval of the voters. A referendum
may be held in 1960. State and federal
courts have refused to rule on the
district’s conflict between state-federal
authority so far.
The 125 districts that permit Negroes
to attend class with white students
(actually involving about one per cent
of Texas’ Negro students) extended the
practice to additional grades in some
places.
Two districts have voted to desegre
gate and three have voted against de
segregation since the Legislature passed
the referendum act in 1957. The only
election held during 1959, at Goliad,
resulted in a majority for continued
segregation. Negro patrons had ap
plied to admit their children to Goliad
High School, with whites, rather than
transport them to another town.
A spokesman for Negro teachers said
that at least 1,000 are seeking teach
ing positions in Texas, in addition to
10,271 employed. A shortage of white
teachers continues in some Texas dis
tricts, except where salaries exceed the
state minimum.
Virginia
/'kFFICIAL ABANDONMENT of the state’s
“massive resistance” policy was the
major development in the school segre
gation controversy in Virginia during
1959.
Eighty-five Negroes were admitted
to 16 formerly all-white schools in five
localities. The admissions resulted from
court orders.
Fifty-one of the Negroes entered 11
white schools in Alexandria, Norfolk,
Arlington County and Warren County
in February. Charlottesville was added
to the list in September, as five more
schools in the state were integrated.
Early in the year a legislative com
mission appointed by Gov. Lindsay Al
mond recommended, in effect, the aban
donment of “massive resistance” and
the adoption of a “freedom-of-choice”
school plan. Without a single vote to
spare, this proposal was approved by
the General Assembly in special session
in April. Under this program localities
that wish to integrate their schools may
do so, but tuition grants are made avail
able to any child who desires to attend
a private or public segregated school
instead of the integrated public school
to which he normally would be as
signed.
Prince Edward County became the
JACKSON, Miss.
M ississippi’s new governor is
a tall, mild-mannered 62-
year-old Jackson lawyer with an
uncompromising position on racial
segregation.
He won’t have any part of in
tegration—not even token.
Ross Robert Barnett, who suc
ceeded Gov. J. P. Coleman on
Jan. 19, is one of ten children of
the late John William Barnett, a
Confederate veteran. He was bom
on a small farm in the Standing
Pine community of Leake County
in central Mississippi.
At 16, Gov. Barnett graduated from
the Agricultural High School at Lena,
where he operated a barber shop and
served as janitor to pay his expenses.
At Mississippi College, a Baptist in
stitution at Clinton, from which he was
graduated in 1922, Barnett operated a
barber shop in the science hall base
ment. He sawed logs during the sum
mer and sold aluminum ware.
He taught school and coached ath
letics for two years after graduating. He
graduated from the University of Mis
sissippi School of Law with honors in
1926, finishing a three-year law course
in two calendar years.
Barnett is the senior member of a
law firm composed of seven lawyers,
one of the largest
in Mississippi.
Barnett has for
years taught Sun
day school at First
Baptist Church in
Jackson and plans
to continue.
Barnett won the
governorship in his
third campaign.
This is his first
public office.
During the cam-
psign, Barnett said if elected, “I will
commit myself unreservedly to segre
gation of the races and I will lead the
fight to preserve our heritage and the
traditions and customs our forefathers
so graciously handed down to us.”
His campaign speeches on the race
issue were considered “highly inflam
matory” by former Gov. Coleman, who
backed Barnett’s opponent, former Lt.
Gov. Carroll Gartin.
Barnett’s inaugural message on seg
regation was commended as “temper
ate” by his predecessor. It had none
of the campaign assertions about clos
ing schools.
Instead, Barnett said “we will main
tain segregation in Mississippi at all
costs.”
That was as close as he came to
some of his stronger campaign stump
speeches on that issue. # # #
first locality in the nation to abandon
public education to prevent classroom
integration. A private foundation fin
anced by white citizens opened a school
system in September for the 1,500 white
children of the county. An offer by a
group of white citizens to assist Ne
groes in setting up a similar system for
the county’s 1,700 Negro children was
rejected.
The fight over school policy in the
special legislative session last spring
badly split the usually closely-knit
Democratic organization headed by U.S.
Sen. Harry Flood Byrd. Whether the
split will be healed was a matter of
speculation as the year ended.
West Virginia
fJ'HE consolidation of school desegre
gation gains previously made in West
Virginia was punctuated by many wor
risome disturbances during 1959.
Desegregation of public schools, le
gally recognized for more than two
years now, moved forward slowly. Prog
ress, however, was not without discord.
The National Assn, for the Advance
ment of Colored People threatened new
suits in federal court, charging that five
big southern, coal-producing counties
were discouraging desegregation.
A rash of bomb threats as 1959 start
ed, plus student uprisings in Raleigh,
Fayette and Kanawha counties at the
opening of the fall term, served as warn
ing that the desegregation fight was not
over in this border state.
Big 1959 events were these:
A series of bomb scares, starting in
December 1958, continued in January
of last year. They followed a $200,000
explosion at the racially integrated
FRANKFORT, Ky.
entucky’s new governor,
Bert Combs, plans a number
of changes in the state’s education
program but none concern the
segregation-desegregation issue.
The 48-year-old Combs was
asked during the campaign if he
would “close the schools rather
than accept statewide integra
tion.”
“No—I would follow the law as
enunciated by the Supreme
Court,” he replied.
And, according to Combs’ aides, his
plans call for excluding the integra
tion question from consideration at the
proposed limited-revision convention,
which would meet in 1963, at the
earliest.
In his education program, Combs has
said he wants to concentrate on an
immediate and substantial teacher-pay
raise, prompt construction of class
rooms with state aid, and a revised
transportation formula, an end to the
textbook deficit, substantial capital out
lays for colleges and universities and
a better teachers’ retirement system.
Slight of build and with gray-
streaked hair, the soft-spoken Combs
is Kentucky’s 46th governor and the
first World War II veteran to win the
office.
Bom in eastern
Kentucky’s Clay
County, Combs was
graduated at 15
from Clay County
High School with
highest honors. He
fired furnaces and
swept out buildings
to earn his way
through several se
mesters at Cumber
land College. Then
he worked for the
State Highway Department (at $125 a
month) to finance his law degree from
the University of Kentucky, where he
was second honor student in his class.
Combs practiced law until he enlist
ed in the Army in 1942. He served in
the Pacific, rose to the rank of captain
and won the Bronze Star as well as a
decoration from the Philippine govern
ment. He started up the political lad
der as city attorney of Prestonburg.
Later he became commonwealth’s at
torney, then served on the state’s high
est tribunal, the Court of Appeals.
In 1955 he lost the Democratic nom
ination for governor to A. B. Chandler
by a narrow margin. In 1959 he won
handily, despite Chandler’s backing of
another candidate, and in the general
election scored a record-breaking vic
tory over his Republican opponent,
John M. Robsion. # # #
Osage School in Monongalia, and in ev
ery instance the scares were traced to
youthful pranksters.
The bomb threats stopped after sev
eral children were arrested and either
expelled from school or sent to the
state reformatory at Pruntytown.
Also in January, one of the state’s
largest high schools, Charleston, ap
pointed a Negro as head basketball
coach. James R. Jarrett was coach at an
all-Negro high school before desegre
gation.
In June the Cabell County school
system, second largest in West Virginia,
desegregated further by placing more
Negro teachers in formerly all-white
schools. Earlier, Cabell had been cited
by the NAACP for moving too slowly
with desegregation.
Altogether about 50 Negro teachers in
the state have lost their jobs through
desegregation. Two reinstatement suits
have been brought, but neither of them
in Cabell County.
The school boards of Raleigh, McDow
ell, Mingo, Logan, and Mercer counties
were publicly warned by the NAACP
in July that court action might be
brought against them for not desegre
gating their teachers and, in some in
stances, their pupils fast enough.
Mrs. Anna Starling of Williamson,
first Negro teacher to seek reinstate
ment in the public schools through fed
eral court action, lost her suit against
the Mingo County Board of Education,
She had asked for $50,000 damages.
New racial disorders in the coal fields,
scene of practically all of the unrest
since the state began school desegrega
tion in 1954, broke out again with the
opening of the fall term in September.
Trouble occurred in Raleigh, Fayette
and Kanawha counties. # # #
BARNETT