Newspaper Page Text
PAGE 2—MARCH I960—SOUTHERN SCHOOL NEWS
Tennessee
(Continued From Page 1)
worth’s, McClellan’s, Kress’ and W. T.
Gran’t. All four shut down their
lunch counters.
On Feb. 23, when the NAACP leader
said he was “ready now” to file a de
segregation suit, Chattanooga’s first ra
cial rioting in more than 30 years broke
out. About 50 Negro students marched
in a body to the downtown business
area in midaftemoon and entered the
Kress store. About 150 white boys and
girls showed up. Disorders soon started.
The store management, which al
ready had closed the lunch counter,
sounded the closing bell and started
turning off lights. Police called for
everyone to leave. Fighting broke out
at the crowded rear exit. A blow was
struck. Shrieks sounded. The crowd
swayed in the doorway. Things were
thrown; a plate glass was broken;
merchandise was damaged.
Most of the Negroes followed officers’
directions and got out, but some were
recalcitrant. Outside, Negro and white
groups moved along the street. Brick
bats and other objects were thrown.
Some reports were received of knives,
a shovel and a “bull whip” being car
ried.
MINOR INJURIES
Several minor injuries were reported.
Twelve arrests were made, 11 of them
white boys. Afterward, gangs of white
boys toured other variety stores, jeering
Negro customers.
Meantime, police had to disperse a
“pushing, shoving” crowd of some 2,000
people at the scene, most of them on
lookers.
Public officials moved rapidly in ef
forts to ward off further trouble. Mayor
P. R. Ogliati and his commissioners
readied police and firemen for emer
gency duty. Meetings were held, one of
them with white and Negro ministers in
an effort to ward off further trouble.
School Supt. John W. Letson met with
high school principals, and they agreed
to tell students they should remain
away from the downtown area unless
a trip there was absolutely necessary.
Next day, it happened again—this
time with perhaps 3,000 people jamming
the streets. Numbers of whites and Ne
groes in the crowd appeared to be about
equal.
In two areas where there were groups
that police considered militant, firemen
pointed hoses into the cold winter air
and the water fell on the crowds. One
of the groups consisted of whites, the
other of Negroes. Drenched, the demon
strators scampered for cover, and the
break-up of the activities began.
GET-TOUGH ATTITUDE
Authorities by this time had adopted
a “get-tough” attitude. The stores had
said they would close at 3:30 p.m., when
schools were out, but at that time had
closed only their lunch counters. How
ever, teenagers of both races were kept
out of the stores.
Crowds of young whites—many of
them considered older than high school
age and some classed by police as
“toughs”—had assembled in front of the
four variety stores by the time Negro
youths arrived. Police led by Chief Ed
Brown directed a column of Negro
marchers away, after it had met a band
of white walkers at close quarters on
the sidewalk.
Mayor Olgiati stood in the middle of
the street. Police Commissioner H. P.
Dunlap jumped in front of a Negro
group that had warned, “We’re going to
town, man.” His answer: “No, you’re
not . . . We stopped the white group
from coming this way and we’re going
to stop you from going down there. Now
get going.” The crowd turned back.
Rocks, bottles and other objects were
thrown, some at passing autos. Arrests
totaled 20—11 Negroes and nine whites.
All in all, however, the violence did not
match that of the previous day.
DEPLORES VIOLENCE
Mapp, the NAACP president joined
community leaders in deploring the
situation. “This has been terrible,” he
said. “This is something we do not want
and must not have.”
“We do not want violence. That de
stroys everything. I saw a Negro boy
arrested today with a gun. I have
nothing but contempt for anyone who
carries a gun or knife in a situation like
this.”
On Feb. 25, there was no demonstra
tion. Police, firemen with police author
ity, auxiliary officers and others were
on guard. A few white teenagers visited
lunch counters but soon left.
NASHVILLE SIT-INS
In three days, arrests in connection
with the Chattanooga disorders totaled
41. The charges included disorderly
conduct, carrying concealed weapons
and drunkeness. During the Nashville
demonstrations, there had been no ar
rests until the afternoon of Feb. 27
when 70 Negroes and five whites were
charged with disorderly conduct and
loitering at McClellan’s and Wool-
worth’s.
Students of Fisk University, A&I
State University and American Baptist
Theological Seminary called their dem
onstrations “sit-ins.” Their movement
extended to a Walgreen drug store as
well as to the same variety chains vis
ited in Chattanooga, and it also in
cluded later a department store, Cain-
Sloan Co. All stores refused them serv
ice.
On the day of the mass arrests, Luther
Harris, a Fisk student directing the
demonstrators, told reporters the youths
would take their seats “scattered ... to
give the whites a chance to sit.” He
added: “We want the people to remain
seated and business to continue.”
Another Fisk student said the number
of demonstrators was being reduced be
cause “we are stressing the moral issue.
We do not want to hurt their (the
stores’) business.”
Hundreds of police were concentrated
downtown after a student spokesman
had asked Police Chief Douglas Hosse
whether protection would be provided
peaceful demonstrators. Harris said the
Negroes were supplied with copies of
city ordinances defining disorderly con
duct and other offenses. Copies also
were issued to police.
THREE INCIDENTS
Orders to evacuate the closed lunch
counters, and subsequent arrests, fol
lowed these incidents:
1) A white youth attacked a white
student of Fisk, who was seated with
the Negroes. 2) A white man attacked
a Negro student after the Negro had
complained of cigar smoke being blown
in his face. 3) A group of young whites
attacked two Negro boys after getting
no reaction to their taunts, and a third
Negro was pushed down a stairway.
The McClellan’s manager ordered
counter stools vacated. When they were
not, he called on police. When the stools
were vacated by arrests, they were
taken over by new groups of Negroes.
As those arrested were loaded in police
vehicles, white bystanders applauded.
Non-participating Negroes in the crowd
were silent.
Later, as Negroes sat at two food
counters in nearby Woolworth’s, groups
of white youths—some wearing leather
jackets—harassed the Negroes with re
marks, pushing, picking, spitting and
dropping lighted cigarets down their
backs. Several times, police stopped
near break-outs of fighting. Then, white
groups moved to the other lunch
counter on another floor and soon two
Negroes had been struck and another
rolled downstairs.
CRITICIZES POLICE
By the time police arrived on the
upstairs scene, the assailants had run
away, leaving the Negroes, newsmen
and six non-participating white teen
agers. Harris later complained that
“police abandoned the Negroes when
they were in danger.” Authorities re
plied that they did the best they could.
At police headquarters that night, the
arrested persons were released on $100
bonds posted by officials of their schools,
although some of them at first expressed
preference for remaining in jail.
The Nashville activities had been
presaged by a statement from the
Nashville Christian Leadership Council,
a Negro ministers’ group, that the or
ganization was campaigning for food
service to Negroes at department stores.
But a spokesman for young Negroes
who “sat-in” at four “five-and-dime”
stores and a drug store lunch counter,
said their move was spontaneous.
On Feb. 13, about 100 Negro college
students, and a few whites enrolled at
Fisk University, braved heavy snowfall
to take seats at Woolworth’s, McClel
lan’s and Kress’. Unserved, they sat at
the lunch counters two hours. Five days
later, about 200 went to these stores and
also to Grant’s. Within the same week,
the number rose to 350 and Walgreen’s
drug store was added.
PAST YEAR REVIEWED
The Memphis Committee on Commun
ity Relations, a biracial group, holding
its annual meeting Feb. 12, was told
that its most important accomplishment
perhaps “is the fact of its existence—
that it is in being.
That statement was made by Lucius E.
Burch, Jr., president of the organiza
tion, as he read reports of the past
year’s activities.
Burch said admission of Negroes to
Memphis State University for the first
time last fall “was accomplished in a
manner highly creditable to the admin
istrators of the university, to the press
and to the public.” He said “a local
precedent was established, showing that
these problems can be handled in a ra
tional, nonviolent way, with a minimum
of friction when plans are made quietly
and in advance.”
Circuit Judge Chester C. Chattin,
revoked the charter of Highlander Folk
School near Monteagle on three charges
instituted by the district attorney gen
eral. Chattin declared Tennessee’s
school segregation law still constitu
tional so far as private schools are con
cerned.
The judge, sitting at Altamont in
mountainous Grundy County, cited a
58-year-old Tennessee law, which was
declared unconstitutional by the State
Supreme Court in 1956 in the light of
the U.S. Supreme Court’s 1954 decision
against public school segregation. The
state law said:
“It shall be unlawful for any school,
academy, college, or other places of
learning to allow white and colored
persons to attend the same school,
academy, college or other places of
learning.”
Judge Chattin noted in his 11-page
opinion that Highlander admitted it
practiced integration and was a private
institution. He recalled the school’s con
tention that the state segregation law is
invalid and that the Fourteenth Amend
ment to the U.S. Constitution forbids
“state action based on race.”
Then, Chattin quoted from the U.S.
Supreme Court opinion: “We conclude
that in the field of public education the
doctrine of separate but equal has no
place.”
VOID IN PART
He said the state, through Dist. Atty.
Gen. A. F. Sloan, “insists that this hold
ing does not render the statute uncon
stitutional as to private schools. The
statute may be unconstitutional and
void as to their application to a part of
their subject matter, invalid as to other
parts, or, to state the problem more con
cretely, they may be constitutional in
operation with respect to some persons
and states of fact, and unconstitutional
as to others.”
The judge then ruled: “The court is of
the opinion that the segregation laws of
the state as applied to private schools
are constitutional and valid.”
Almost immediately, Cecil Branstet-
ter, attorney for the long-controversial
Books And
The Issue
The library at Southern Education
Reporting Service recently received
these books:
WHEN NEGROES MARCH
by Herbert Garfinkel. The Free Press of
Glencoe, Ill., 220 pp., $4.
Describes the political character of A.
Philip Randolph and his March-on-
Washington Movement of the 1940s.
THE CHRISTIAN PROBLEM OF RA
CIAL SEGREGATION
by Humphrey K. Ezell. Greenwich Book
Publishers, 31 pp., $1.25.
A Baptist minister’s approach of ra
cial segregation from the viewpoint
that the Old and New Testaments con
firm that segregation is not only a so
cial necessity but is divinely ordained
by the Word of God.
THIS IS THE SOUTH
edited by Robert West Howard. Rand
McNally & Co., 288 pp., $6.
The South from numerous aspects il
lustrated with a wide selection of prints
and photographs. The 31 authors include
Paul Green, Hodding Carter, Harnett
T. Kane and W. D. Workman Jr.
THE NEGRO VANGUARD
by Richard Bardolph. Rinehart & Co.
369 pp., $6.95.
A study of Negro leaders from 1770
to present, based on years of research
and personal interviews.
THE SEARCH FOR AMERICA
edited by Huston Smith. Prentice-Hall,
Inc. 176 pp., $2.95.
Sixteen contributors probe the prob
lems confronting the United States. The
writers include Eleanor Roosevelt, Har
old Stassen, Paul Hoffman, Harry Ash
more, William Simmons, Benjamin
Mays, J. K. Galbraith, Mark Van Doren
and Reinhold Niebuhr.
CAUCASIANS ONLY
by Clement E. Vose. University of Cali
fornia Press. 286 pp. $6.00.
Describes the background of Supreme
Court decisions on restrictive covenant
cases and appraises the practical results
of the rulings. # # #
adult education center, which has prac
ticed integration throughout its 27-year
history, raised the question of whether
charters held by major colleges such as
Vanderbilt University and the Univer
sity of the South (Sewanee) might be
revoked for admitting both whites and
Negroes.
Branstetter said he would file a mo
tion immediately for a new trial and,
failing that, would appeal Judge Chat-
tin’s decision. He indicated he expected
the case to advance to the U.S. Supreme
Court if he loses in his appeal to the
state’s high tribunal.
NOT UNEXPECTED
Branstetter, a former state legislator
who is legal counsel for various labor
groups in the Nashville area, said the
decision against Highlander was “not
altogether unexpected since in question
ing all the jurors and people in the
community, . . . they all said they did
not believe in and many said it was
against their religion for whites and
Negroes to sit in the same classroom.
Any other comment might be improper
since the matter is still pending before
a duly constituted court.”
Judge Chattin, in addition to the in
tegration issue, based his ruling on
charges that Highlander sold beer and
other merchandise without a license and
that its president, Myles Horton, oper
ated the school for personal gain in
violation of its “general welfare” char
ter from the state. The judge said proof
of each charge was enough to justify
forfeiture of the charter.
The court denied a prosecution re
quest that the school property be
turned over to the state. The judge said
he would retain the right to name a
receiver to liquidate the property—a
300-acre farm, a dozen or more build
ings, bank accounts and bonds—but for
the time being he ordered the school to
present an inventory of its possessions
by March 9 and not dispose of any
thing.
Meantime, an emergency session of
Highlander’s executive council was
held. The group backed taking the case
to the highest court if necessary. Chair
man B. R. Brazeal, dean of Morehouse
College in Atlanta, said the charges as
to beer and Horton’s personal gain
“were merely smoke screens to cloud
the major issue of integration.”
“Highlander will not die,” Horton
said. “This program of democratic edu
cation will be continued, regardless of
where we operate or what is done to
us.”
He said the American Civil Liberties
Union had been invited to join the
Highlander defense, and an official ol
the union in New York said the matter
was being studied there.
The decision resulted from a trial
held at Altamont last November after
charges were placed by the district at
torney. A jury did not decide on the in
tegration issue, since that point was
stipulated by attorneys, but it did hold
that the school was operated for Hor
ton’s benefit. The main building of the
school was padlocked for more than a
month last year following arrests of
school people on charges of illegal beer
sales.
EXPECTS TO CONTINUE
The school president said shortly after
the decision was handed down that he
expected activities to continue normal
ly. Later, the school made public a
petition signed by more than 100 per
sons, many of them nationally prom
inent, declaring they were “profoundly
disturbed about the continuing harass
ment to which Highlander... has been
subjected.”
Among the signers, acting prior to
Judge Chattin’s action, were Mrs.
Eleanor Roosevelt, Dr. Reinhold Nie
buhr, Harry Golden, Dr. Douglas Hor
ton, Mrs. Mildred McAfee Horton, Dr.
Martin Luther King Jr., Dr. Max
Lerner, Dr. Alexander Meiklejohn,
Msgr. John O’Grady and Marion A.
Wright.
Other names included Dr. James
Luther Adams of Harvard University
divinity school; Gordon R. Clapp, for
mer head of the Tennessee Valley Au
thority; Mrs. John Dewey, wife of the
philosopher; James Glasse and Everett
Tilson of Vanderbilt University divinity
school; Dr. Frank Graham, former
president, University of North Carolina;
Jackie Robinson, former baseball play
er; and Harry S. Ashmore, former Little
Rock editor, now of the Center for the
Study of Democratic Institutions.
KNOXVILLE SUIT
In Knoxville, U.S. District Judge
Robert L. Taylor instructed the city
Board of Education to submit by April
8 a plan for desegregation of the city
school system. It was indicated that the
court will order whatever plan is ap
proved to become effective in Septem
ber.
The court’s instruction came at a
hearing Feb. 8 in which the school board
had been ordered to show cause why
city school should not be desegregat
ed immediately. In effect, Judge Taylor
withheld action on the issue until April
8. He said his setting the date did not
constitute an order.
S. Frank Fowler, attorney for the
board, asked the judge to make it an
order.
“The board has stated they don’t in
tend to present a plan unless ordered,”
he told the court.
Judge Taylor retorted sharply: “You
tell them they’re not writing this court’s
orders.” He said he did not appreciate
the board’s position. “Why does the
board want to make this court make
them comply with the law?”
‘SEE WHAT HAPPENS’
Fowler admitted a “tender spot” was
involved, but he said the board felt its
duty to desegregate was “less clear”
than the court’s duty to order desegre
gation. The judge declared: “They’d
better get a plan in here by April 8 or
we’ll see what happens.”
Taylor urged that the school board
study the opinion of the Sixth Circuit
Court of Appeals upholding grade-a-
year desegregation of city schools at
Nashville—a plan now in its third year.
The board had said it would propose, if
ordered, a plan with the “least disrup
tion.”
Obviously irritated, the judge told the
school board attorney at one point: “I’ve
been long-suffering with you this morn
ing.” Another time, he snapped at Avon
Williams, Negro attorney for plaintiffs
in the desegregation case: “Be calm!
Don’t be so loud!”
Later, the chairman of the board of
education, Dr. John Burkhart, said “the
plan we submit won’t be the Nashville
plan, the Memphis plan or any other
city’s plan. It will be the Knoxville plan
because it will be worked out specifi
cally for Knoxville. There are about as
many plans as there are cities, but no
one plan fits every situation.”
FILE ANSWER
Fayette County Democratic officials
filed an answer in federal court at
Memphis Feb. 15 to a Government civil
rights suit charging they did not allow
Negroes to vote in party primary elec
tions. Their contention: that a primary
is not an “election by the people” but is
“openly and avowedly a balloting of a
limited, designated group of citizens.”
The answer contended that the
denial of rights to specific groups to
hold such balloting for “making known
their views” would abridge the First
and Fifteenth amendments to the U.S.
Constitution as to the right of peaceful
assembly and as to deprivation of lib
erty without “due process.”
But the defendants said that if the
courts rule against them, they will
comply with the decision.”
Walter P. Armstrong Jr., president of
the Memphis Board of Education, told
a committee of Negroes seeking school
integration that the board “plans to
comply with the laws of the state,” us
ing Tennessee’s pupil placement law as
the guide.
Armstrong said Memphis school offi
cials will consider each application for
enrollment or pupil transfer on its in
dividual merits and without regard to
race, as specified in the placement stat
ute. The law, enacted in 1957, has not
yet been invoked by a school system.
The Negro group appearing before
the group included three lawyers, H. T.
Lockart, A. W. Willis and R. B. Sugar-
mon Jr.; a dentist, Dr. Vasco A. Smith
Jr.; and a bank official, Jesse H. Turner.
They said they were acting as legal
counselors, parents and taxpayers.
They asked whether the board con
sidered segregation to be in effect and,
if so, whether it would be ended. After
the meeting, Willis said he was uncer
tain as to the next move. He declared
he favors complete integration and does
not think the school placement law
would accomplish it.
In Fayette County, where Democratic
officials are defendants in a suit brought
by the Civil Rights Commission, four
Negroes charged that “evasive tactics”
were used to prevent a Negro group
from registering at the courthouse on
Feb. 5.
Members of the Civic and Welfare
League said the would-be registrants
were directed from one office to an
other and once were sent to a locked
door. The group declared no white peo
ple were seen registering at the time,
although Election Sommission Sect.
James W. Freeland said more than 100
whites registered that day but no Ne
groes presented themselves for regis
tration.
# # #
