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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. # # #