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PAGE 8—MARCH I960—SOUTHERN SCHOOL NEWS
School Pattern Varies for Military Dependents, Survey Shows
(Continued From Page 1)
schools. In most instances the local sys
tems receive government funds, “impact
aid,” because of this additional enroll
ment.
Montgomery, for instance, received
almost a half-million dollars in federal
assistance (out of a total school budget
of 5.9 million dollars) last year because
of Maxwell and Gunter Air Force bases
in the city. The Air University, doctrinal
center of the Air Force, is located at
Maxwell.
Huntsville received a similar amount,
but with a school budget only about half
as large as Montgomery’s. Similar aid is
provided five school systems in the Tri-
Cities area of north Alabama (Florence-
Sheffield-Tuscumbia) because of some
2,000 school children of TVA personnel.
Several years ago the Montgomery
city-county school system operated a
school serving Maxwell AFB ex
clusively. This was abandoned after the
Defense Department proclaimed a po
licy of non-segregation. Now military
dependents attend schools in the Mont
gomery city-county system, which is
segregated.
A survey by the Alabama Council on
Human Relations maintains that school
segregation is “purposefully maintained”
in some areas of the state by a “gentle
man’s agreement” between military au
thorities and local school officials. The
council report mentioned specifically
Montgomery and Selma.
Federal aid looms as an important is
sue in the government’s announced
plans to seek integration of Madison
Pike School at Huntsville. The school
was built on Redstone Arsenal land
deeded to the city. The Justice Depart
ment has said that this fact, plus the
government’s contribution to the con
struction of the school, the heavy Red
stone enrollment in it and the annual
aid received by the city, are compelling
arguments for integrating the school.
Huntsville school officials replied,
when the controversy exploded late last
year (Southern School News, Decem
ber 1959), that the land had been deeded
the city with “no strings attached,” that
the city school board had paid more
than half the construction costs of Madi
son Pike and pays most of the operating
costs.
Huntsville School Supt. Raymond L.
Christian pointed out not more than
half of the school’s enrollment is made
up of Redstone dependents. (The Ala
bama Council puts the ratio higher—
865 of Madison Pike’s 1,064 students are
children of “federally related parents,”
the survey said.)
Children of Negro servicemen at Red
stone attend all-Negro schools in Hunts
ville or in the Madison County system.
The Justice Department has an
nounced it will press integration plans
for Madison Pike this year.
Arkansas
{~\nly at Little Rock Air Force Base
has the factor of children of military
personnel entered the desegregation sit
uation in Arkansas. The Strategic Air
Command facility is completely inte
grated and is located at Jacksonville, 15
miles north of Little Rock and within
the Pulaski County (Rural) School Dis
trict.
A Capehart housing development of
1,565 units on the base is integrated. To
serve the children of those families, the
county school district built two new
schools with money furnished by the
federal government.
One is the County Training School
(for Negroes) at McAlmont, seven miles
from the air base. The other is the Little
Rock Air Force Base Elementary
School, on land contiguous to the base.
When the air base school opened for
the first time in September 1958, three
Negro children of elementary school
age lived in base housing. One Negro
parent, Sgt. James R. Dallas, applied to
have his six-year-old daughter admit
ted to the base school. But the county
school district follows a policy of seg
regation and refused.
The sergeant sent his complaint all
the way to the White House. Stephen S.
Jackson, deputy assistant secretary of
defense for manpower, came to Little
Rock and spent three days talking with
district officials, to no avail.
A year later, in September 1959, Jack-
son and other Defense Department peo
ple returned with plans to lease or buy
the school from the county district or,
if the district refused, to have the school
and land condemned and annexed to the
base so the Air Force could operate the
school.
The county district did not want to
give up the school because the pupils
attending it count toward the'money
the district receives from the govern
ment under the impact law. So the
county district leased the school to the
Air Force, then the Air Force hired the
county district to operate it.
Only children from the air base at
tend the school and it has 828 white stu
dents and 10 Negroes. The faculty and
staff are the same as they were last year.
Delaware
^he School at Dover Air Force Base,
the one large military installation
in Delaware, is completely integrated,
in contrast to limited desegregation in
adjacent school districts.
The enrollment at the base school is
770 in grades one through eight, in
cluding 41 Negroes.
Ground was broken in February for
a new school, which will house 12
grades and approximately 1,200 pupils.
The base school falls geographically
within the Caesar Rodney Special
School District, which opened its first
grade to Negro pupils in September
under a U.S. District Court order.
When the base school was proposed,
the Caesar Rodney board of education
was offered two proposals by federal
authorities. The first plan would have
provided for the school facilities to be
constructed off the air base, with fed
eral funds providing 95 per cent of the
construction cost. Under this plan, ac
cording to federal policy, the school
would have conformed to local civilian
regulations—in this case, segregation.
The alternate plan, adopted by Cae
sar Rodney, provided for the school
buildings to be erected on the base
proper and owned by the federal gov
ernment. While Caesar Rodney pro
vides administration and secures teach
ers, the full cost is borne by the U.S.
Office of Health, Education and Wel
fare.
Only students who live in about
1,000 unsegregated Capehart housing
units on the base are eligible to attend
the base school.
Caesar Rodney has but three Negro
pupils in the first grade. An additional
207 Negro pupils in the Caesar Rodney
district attend Star Hill, a Negro unit
within the district.
Dover is the other large school dis
trict near the base and has two Negro
pupils in the first grade. It desegregated
its high school to academic pupils in
1954 and has seven Negroes at this level.
An additional 408 Negro pupils in the
Dover district attend Booker T. Wash
ington school in Dover, which has an
all-Negro enrollment.
When the base school opened in
September 1958, there were six Negro
pupils enrolled with 135 whites. En
rollment has since climbed to 729
whites and 41 Negroes.
Florida
'J'he federal government operates inte
grated schools for children of mili
tary personnel on three bases in Florida.
The on-base schools at Eglin Field
near Panama City, MacDill Field at
Tampa and Patrick Air Force Base on
Cape Canaveral have been open three
years.
Military children from Homestead Air
Force Base attend one of two integrated
public schools in the state, operated by
Dade County. The county desegregated
the schools during the current school
year.
The Air Force and Navy operate about
a dozen other major installations in the
state. The children of personnel at these
bases attend the segregated public
schools nearby.
Georgia
‘E't. Benning—a sprawling Army in
fantry installation on the southern
city limits of Columbus—has Georgia’s
Schools for Military
Will Get CRC Study
GATLINBURG, Term.
ntegrated schools for children of
military personnel in the South will
be one of the topics studied at the
Civil Rights Commission’s second con
ference on school desegregation at Gat-
linburg this month.
A commission spokesman said in
Washington that the commission also
will seek information on “grade-by-
grade” desegregation, developments in
areas that integrated within the past
year, and how pupil placement plans
are executed.
School officials of southern and bor
der states will be invited to participate
in the conference March 21 and 22. The
meeting will be a follow-up of a simi
lar one the commission held in Nash
ville, Tenn., last March.
# # #
only integrated school system. The
school desegregated six and a half years
ago, after more than 30 years of separate
schools for whites and Negroes.
Some 3,000 students attend kindergar
ten through the eighth grade at the
military post. All the teachers are white.
After completing the eighth grade,
pupils are transported to segregated
schools in nearby Columbus.
Although there is no official record of
the proportion of Negroes and whites in
the Ft. Benning schools, sound esti
mates put the percentage of Negroes
quite low.
This can be attributed to two factors:
(1) Less than 20 per cent of Army per
sonnel are Negro, and (2) few Negro
parents live on-post at Ft. Benning.
Scarce housing at Ft. Benning is
allocated on a basis of rank and time-
in-grade, putting Negroes at a disadvan
tage.
Students who five off the military re
servation attend segregated schools in
the Muscogee County School District,
which includes Columbus. The school
district receives federal funds to cover
both operational and building costs of
these students.
Last April, Ft. Benning started a
movement to allow construction of a
high school at the installation. It was
stopped by officials of the Muscogee
School District.
The Ft. Benning commander, Maj.
Gen. Paul L. Freeman Jr., requested the
Muscogee School District to recommend
construction of a high school on the post
to the U. S. Dept, of Health, Education,
and Welfare.
Muscogee school officials advised the
federal agency that it could still handle
federally connected students in this area
—cutting out any chance at this time for
construction of the Ft. Benning high
school.
U. S. education authorities must be
notified that local schools cannot handle
federally connected pupils before they
will begin planning toward such a
school.
There has been talk of a college—or
a college branch—for Ft. Benning be
cause of the segregation situation in
Georgia. Although there has been no
official confirmation of the proposal, it
is generally known.
Ft. McPherson in Atlanta, Ft. Gordon
near Augusta and Camp Stewart near
Hinesville, all Army installations, have
no schools on the posts and the children
of military personnel attend segregated
public schools in the towns.
Robins Air Force Base near Macon
also has no on-post schools. The 1,500
children of military personnel are en
rolled in public schools at Warner
Robins. A small number of the children,
whose parents live in Macon and com
mute to the base, attend segregated
classes in Macon.
Kentucky
J^ort Knox, the largest Army installa
tion in Kentucky, has a military
strength of approximately 35,000 and
sprawls over the three counties of
Bullitt, Hardin, and Meade, with its
center about 40 miles from Louisville.
Some 9,100 soldiers and dependents live
“off-base” in these counties and Louis
ville (Jefferson County).
The public school systems in all four
counties and in the independent dis
tricts of Louisville and Elizabethtown
(nearest town to Fort Knox) began de
segregation programs in 1956. The
“permissive” aspects of these programs
still account for several small all-white
or all-Negro elementary schools. De
segregation is general in the high schools
and most of the elementary schools.
At Fort Knox, as officials there put it,
“everything is integrated.” The seven
integrated schools on the base now have
an enrollment of 4,391.
The Army no longer keeps records by
race, so no one knows how many Ne
gro dependents and soldiers may be liv
ing off-base. But some are among the
relatively small number of Negroes
fisted in recent public school records—
14 Negroes and 471 whites at Meade
County High School, for instance, 46
Negroes and 2,851 whites in the elem
entary and high schools of Bullitt
County, 68 Negroes and 2,208 whites in
the elementary and high schools of
Hardin County, 46 Negroes and 426
whites in Elizabethtown High School,
and others among the thousands of Ne
groes and whites in the desegregated
schools of Louisville and Jefferson
County.
Fort Knox officials admitted “early
difficulties” in integration, but said
those days were “long gone.”
Louisiana
^hildren of military men assigned to
Louisiana bases attend schools out
side of the base boundaries and, as
other children in the state, are all in
segregated schools.
Officials of the school systems most
affected by the location of military sta
tions within their parishes (counties)
said there has never been a question
raised as to the separate facilities.
In 1957-58, according to the latest
statewide compilation of figures from
the 67 segregated school systems of
Louisiana, the federal government con
tributed $1,178,000 for capital outlay and
$830,000 for operation costs in nine
parishes where military bases have an
impact on school population.
Vernon Parish, location of the now
deactivated Ft. Polk, received $748,025
of the capital outlay funds and with it
contributed to the building of one Ne
gro elementary school and one white
elementary school.
Bossier Parish, location of Barksdale
Air Force Base, has received 1.5 million
dollars since federal aid under the mili
tary impact program began. Its schools
are segregated and military personnel
children are bussed to schools around
the parish. Of the total of 12,700 chil
dren in the Bossier system, some 3,000
are children of military men or civilian
employes of the base.
Rapides Parish, site of England Air
Force Base, has completed a white
elementary school built largely with
federal funds. Located near the base, it
has no Negro students.
Another major military installation in
Louisiana is located in Calcasieu Parish
(Lake Charles). Among 26,429 students
in the school system, 2,172 are service-
connected at Chennault Air Force Base.
Federal funds were used to build a
white high school.
New Orleans is the headquarters of
the Eighth Naval District but the chil
dren of service personnel are scattered
thinly throughout the segregated school
system.
Maryland
JYJaryland has eight military bases
and nearly all have been factors
in school desegregation.
The first court petition against school
segregation in any Maryland county
originated in Cecil County, after seven
children of Negro personnel at Bain-
bridge Naval Training Center were de
nied admission in 1954 to a county-
operated school on the base. This case
became moot when county officials
completed a new county-owned Bain-
bridge Elementary School outside the
base and opened it in 1955 to both
white and Negro children.
Nearby Harford County has both the
Army Chemical Center at Edgewood
and Aberdeen Proving Grounds. Ne
gro personnel at these bases have par
ticipated in several suits against the
county. Following the first petition, the
county began desegregation by open
ing the lower grades of two schools
near the Edgewood installation to Ne
groes.
Asked at a subsequent court hear
ing why the county had begun this
way. County School Supt. Charles W.
Willis replied: “The people were used
to living together and working together
in the Army. The feeling was that we
could start in these areas easier than
any place else.”
The Defense Department’s order in
1955 to end segregated schooling on
military bases had an immediate effect
on three counties. One of them, Prince
George’s (near Washington, D.C.), re
sponded by admitting Negroes to the
federally owned, county-operated base
school at Andrews Field. The other
two counties—Anne Arundel and St.
Mary’s—gave up school quarters on
military property rather than integrate
because their desegregation programs
had not yet been established.
The cutback in classrooms serving
Ft. Meade in Anne Arundel County
brought a protest from white parents
at the base, who urged integration to
regain classroom space in military
buildings. Maj. Mario E. Smith, then
president of the Meade Heights P-TA,
wrote to county officials on behalf of
his organization. Shortly after the ma
jor’s letter, written in November 1955,
the county school system resumed op
erations at the base on an integrated
basis in advance of desegregation else
where in the county.
St. Mary’s County, on the other hand,
permanently closed out the two class
rooms it had operated at Patuxent
Naval Air Station to house the over
flow from a nearby Negro school. This
caused severe overcrowding at the Ne
gro school, which stimulated Negro
parents and the NAACP to seek court
action on county-wide desegregation.
The one instance of integration in St.
Mary’s occurred in 1958-59 at Great
Mills High School, which serves the
Patuxent base.
The other two military bases in
Maryland are the Army’s biological
warfare center near Frederick and a
naval powder factory and research
center at Indianhead in Charles County.
The only integration in the latter
county is found at the Indianhead Ele
mentary School.
The presence of a large body of
scientific personnel at Ft. Detrick is
believed to have provided impetus for
the desegregation of schools in Fred
erick.
All Maryland schools serving chil
dren of military personnel are now in
tegrated in principle and all but those
outside the Patuxent air installation in
St. Mary’s County are integrated in
fact. Only two schools are actually
federal property—those at Andrews
Field and Ft. Meade.
Mississippi
^hildren of military personnel sta
tioned in Mississippi attend segre
gated public schools near the armed
forces stations.
White children attend white schools
and Negro children attend Negro
schools in their respective sections.
State Supt. of Education J. M. Tubb
said he feels that the matter is being
handled agreeably to all concerned.
In certain impacted areas of Missis
sippi that have training bases—Biloxi,
Columbus and Greenville—federal funds
are granted the state as tuition for chil
dren of military personnel.
Missouri
J^arge military bases in Missouri in
clude Ft. Leonard Wood, an Army
installation in the south central part of
the state; Richards-Gebaur Air Force
Base south of Kansas City; and White-
man Air Force Base near Sedalia, in
west central Missouri. In St. Louis,
Kansas City and elsewhere in the state
the Armed Services have installations
and detachments of varying size.
A spokesman for Ft. Leonard Wood,
which has some 30,000 military person
nel and 1,800 civilians, said children of
personnel attached to the base were
mostly enrolled in the schools of nearby
Waynesville. The Waynesville system
operates two elementary schools on the
military reservation, and a high school
is being built. The two schools have
both white and Negro children. The
Waynesville schools have been integ
rated for several years, the spokesman
said.
Richards-Gebaur Air Force Base also
has no government-operated schools for
children of military personnel but relies
on off-base civilian school systems at
Kansas City, Independence, Grandview.
Belton and other communities. There
are about 5,000 children, white and Ne
gro.
Schools of the Kansas City area were
among the first to desegregate after the
U.S. Supreme Court decision of 1954.
At Whiteman Air Force Base near
Sedalia, in west central Missouri, there
are 488 families living on the base, and
a number living off base at Sedalia,
Knob Noster and Warrensburg. Elem
entary schools of Knob Noster and
Warrensburg were desegregated in 1955.
Sedalia integrated its high school in
1954 but has been slower to integrate
elementary schools.
The Knob Noster school district op
erates an elementary school on the base,
kindergarten through sixth grade, and
accommodates other children of the base
in town. Children of both races attend
the same school. Some children of Air
Force personnel attend an integrated
parochial school in Sedalia.
St. Louis has a sizable military pop
ulation working at various command
headquarters, record centers, map cen
ters and the like. This is true to a lesser
degree for Kansas City.
Personnel live in various communities
and their children attend school in in
tegrated school districts. In many cases,
however, Negro children of Armed
Forces personnel on duty in the major
cities may attend all-Negro or predom
inantly Negro schools because of resi
dential segregation.
North Carolina
j^ORTH Carolina has desegregation in
two school systems primarily be
cause of their nearness to military
bases.
They are in Craven County, site of
Cherry Point Marine Base, and Wayne
County, site of Seymour Johnson Air
Force Base.
Desegregation began last March in
Wayne County (county seat: Golds
boro), an eastern North Carolina coun
ty where the population is about 40 per
cent Negro.
(See POST SCHOOLS, Page 9)