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SOUTHERN SCHOOL NEWS—MARCH I960—PAGE 9 DELAWARE Maintaining Segregation Not Purpose Of Expansions, State Board Declares Post Schools (Continued From Page 8) The school population is estimated at 7,200 white and 4,800 Negro. Meadow Lane Elementary School, with an estimated but varying enroll ment of 600, has been specifically de signated by the Wayne County school board as the school to which only chil dren of men stationed at Seymour Johnson will go. The school was built about two years ago with federal help. A total of three Negro children at tended the school at various times last spring after the school board set it aside for children of Air Force men. This year, although school officials de cline to give specific figures, the Negro enrollment is estimated at three. In Craven County (county seat: New Bern), two schools—both elementary— are desegregated. The coastal county has 4,992 white students, and 2,466 Negro students. Both desegregated schools—to which nine Negro students go—are in the community of Havelock, near the Cherry Point Marine (air) Base. Each school has an enrollment of about 800 students. These two eastern North Carolina counties are the only places east of Durham with desegregation. There has been no violence in either county, and no effort to desegregate other schools in the same systems. North Carolina also has limited de segregation in Durham, Greensboro, High Point, Winston-Salem and Char lotte. Oklahoma /Xnly one military reservation in Ok- '-'lahoma has an on-base school ac credited by the State Department of Ed ucation. Post School at Ft. Sill, Army artil lery training center near Lawton, is ad ministered by the Lawton Board of Ed ucation as an elementary school for children of military personnel. Junior and senior high students attend school in Lawton. State department records indicate the base school has an enrollment of about 625 pupils but the breakdown of Ne groes and white is not available. Oklahoma also has four Air Force bases and a Navy ammunition depot, which has only a maintenance crew as signed to it. All are located near com munities with at least some degree of desegregation. Thus, children of Negro military personnel have their choice of attending integrated schools or all- Negro schools. The Air Force bases are Altus, Clin- ton-Sherman (near Bums Flat), Tinker (at Midwest City), and Vance (near Enid). The Navy ammunition depot is near McAlester. Altus and Enid operate Negro high schools but Negro students are also ad mitted to predominantly white schools. Schools in the area of the Clinton- Sherman base also are desegregated. Midwest City has no Negro residents. Neyro airmen living on the Tinker base send their children to schools in Okla homa City. Sou'h Carolina All but about 200 of an estimated 25,000 to 30,000 “federal” children in South Carolina attend segregated state schools. The sole exception is an integrated on- post school at Parris Island Marine Base. Attendance at that elementary school ranges between 170 and 200. Elsewhere in the state, children of service personnel, civilian workers, and other federal employes attend school under the prevailing pattern of segre gated public education. In some instances, such as at Shaw Air Force Base near Sumter, Ft. Jack- son near Columbia, and the Charleston Naval Base, public school facilities have been built or acquired in immediate proximity to defense installations. In other instances, “federal” children are scattered among existing schools in a pattern which reflects their residential distribution. Federal funds are provided to help defray costs of operating schools attend ed by children whose presence in the school districts is due to federal con nections, whether by civilian occupation or military assignment. In School Dis trict 2 of Richland County, adjacent to the sizeable Army training center at Ft. Jackson, federal aid for operations runs to approximately $150 per child per year for those whose parents live on and work on the post. The amount is about half that for those in the “live off. work on” group. Altogether, 30 of South Carolina’s 108 school districts provide schooling for children of federally connected parents. The principal installations are: • The Savannah River Plant of the Atomic Energy Commission, chiefly af fecting Aiken, Barnwell, and Allendale counties, although employes are widely distributed in other counties in the mid state and low-state. • Parris Island Marine Base, Marine Auxiliary Air Field, Naval Hospital, and National Cemetery, all in Beaufort County. • Myrtle Beach Air Force Base, in Horry County. • Ft. Jackson, in Richland County. • Shaw Air Force Base, in Sumter County. • Donaldson Air Force Base, in Greenville County. Tennessee Qne of Tennessee’s three major mili tary installations provides integrat ed on-post schools. The other two de pend entirely on public schools, all but one of which are segregated. Ft. Campbell, located astride the Tennessee-Kentucky line near Clarks ville in Middle Tennessee, operates three schools for 2,380 children in grades one through nine whose parents live on post. Under federal control, classes there are conducted without ref erence to race. Children in grades 10 through 12 who live within the fort area are transport ed by bus to two high schools in Clarks ville—about 150 of them to all-white Clarksville High School and the remain der to all-Negro Burt High School. Tu ition is paid by the government. Children of Campbell personnel who live off-post attend public schools in their residential zones and school boards are reimbursed by the government an nually according to a per-capita plan. An estimated 1,000 children from Ft. Campbell families are enrolled in seg regated Montgomery County schools. (Some are enrolled in adjacent Chris tian County, Ky., where a desegregation move is under way.) About 700 children of personnel sta tioned or employed at Sewart Air Force Base near Smyrna, also in Middle Ten nessee, are enrolled in Rutherford County schools and some in adjacent Davidson and other counties. In the ab sence of schools on the base, the govern ment pays the public schools about $137 a year for each pupil who lives on the base and some $75 annually for each child of Air Force personnel living off the reservation, an officer said. A group of Negro parents stationed at Sewart were responsible last fall for court-ordered desegregation of one Rutherford County school located adja cent to the air base—Coleman Elemen tary School. Virtually all of Coleman’s 568 enrollees this year have been chil dren of Air Force personnel, of whom 14 are Negroes. Although the plaintiffs included all Rutherford County schools in their federal court suit for desegregation, none except Coleman is attended by both races so far. The relatively few Sewart children not enrolled at Cole man are transported to nearby Mur freesboro or live in other districts. In Shelby County (Memphis), where all public schools are segregated, an es timated 3,000 children of personnel at Millington Naval Air Station and sev eral smaller military installations attend county public schools. A school official said most of them are white and are en rolled in three or four white schools, although there are “a few” Negroes from military families in the Negro schools. Memphis State University, attended by Negroes for the first time during the current term, has operated an exten sion branch at the naval station on a nonsegregated basis, but no school fa cilities are provided by the Navy itself. Federal funds are paid for schooling of Millington children on a per-pupil basis as they are at Sewart and Campbell. Texas r J'o A large extent, children of mili tary personnel in Texas can attend integrated schools. School patrons in the military have led in seeking to end segregation, and occasionally serve as plaintiffs. This now is the case in Fort Worth (Flax v. Potts) and Friendship School, near Lubbock (Simmons v. Edwards), where parents involved are Negro non-commissioned personnel of the Air Force. There is no doubt that integration of the Armed Forces has been a factor in ending segregation at some Texas school districts, with or without lawsuits. This likely was a strong influence at Killeen, near Ft. Hood, and Wichita Falls, where integration has largely been limited to children of Sheppard Air Force per sonnel. San Antonio, a long-time military center, integrated fully and early after the U.S. Supreme Court declared segre gation unconstitutional. So did Corpus Christi, site of a large Naval Air Station, and El Paso, another military center. Some military establishments are lo- DOVER, Del. xpansion of existing Negro schools doesn’t mean that the policy is designed to “per petuate segregation,” the State Board of Education said in deny ing a charge by a Negro group. (See “School Boards and School men.”) cated in Texas areas where segregation remains the rule. Contrary to one report from Wash ington, there is no school on Dyess Air Force Base. Abilene Independent School District operates an elementary school for white students near the base’s inte grated housing area, but this is not on the base itself. All other children from families living on Dyess attend other segregated schools in Abilene. V irginia J^ourteen OF Virginia’s 19 desegre gated schools are located in com munities that have large numbers of children who five on military installa tions or whose parents work for the federal government. There’s no indica tion, however, that the presence of so many federally connected children had anything to do with desegregation in the three localities involved. Arlington County and Alexandria in northern Virginia and Norfolk on the east coast are in the middle of two of the nation’s most vital defense areas. Scores of military posts are in those two sections. In addition, the parents of several thousand northern Virginia children work in federal facilities in Washington, just across the Potomac River. Almost half of Arlington County’s 23,500 school children come under the “federal impact” program in which the federal government allocates money to localities to help educate children of government employes. Stratford Junior High, one of Arlington’s three desegre gated schools, has a large number of these youngsters (possibly half the student body), but the proportion in the other two desegregated schools is smaller, according to Supt. Ray E. Reid. Some of the children in Arlington schools come from nearby Ft. Myer, where there is a federally operated, integrated elementary school. Alexandria has hundreds of chil dren whose parents work at the Penta gon or who are stationed at Ft. Bel- voir or other federal installations. Supt. T. C. Williams said he had no figures available as to which schools the children attend, so he did not know the number in the city’s four desegre gated schools. Of Norfolk’s approximately 50,000 school children, about 19,000 are fed erally connected. None of the 21 Ne gro children attending formerly all- white schools is from any of the fed eral installations, according to Supt. J. J. Brewbaker. Some of the federal children come from integrated federal housing facilities. Since all three of Norfolk’s formerly white senior high schools are inte grated, along with three junior highs and one elementary, thousands of the federally connected youths are in schools attended by both whites and Negroes. The Norfolk school with per haps the largest proportion of federal children is James Madison Elementary, which is not integrated. Children from perhaps 40 different federal installations attend schools in Norfolk County, according to Supt. Edwin E. Chittum. About 9,600 of the county’s 22,000 children are in this category. The county has no desegre gated schools. The percentage of fed eral pupils in the county’s various schools ranges from about 34 to 44 per cent. About 1.100 of the 9 600 are “ships’ children,” meaning that their fathers are assigned to ships that have Norfolk as their home port. The state, through local public school boards, formerly operated elementary schools at Quantico, Ft. Belvoir. Ft. Monroe and Langley Field Air Force Base. But the state withdrew when the schools were integrated—the Quan tico school in 1951 and the other three in 1954. West Virginia HThere are no major military installa- tions in West Virginia. # # # A former member of the Dela ware Supreme Court took issue with Gov. J. Lindsay Almond of Virginia, who said in a speech in Delaware that the U.S. Supreme Court decision on desegregation represented judicial legislation. (See “What They Say.”) An appeal to the U.S. Court of Ap peals in Philadelphia on Delaware’s grade-a-year desegregation plan was postponed when Louis L. Redding, at torney for the appellants, became ill. (See “Legal Action.”) The National Assn, for the Advance ment of White People, a Delaware corporation, lost its charter for failing to pay $67.50 in state taxes. (See “Le gal Action.”) Delaware’s State Board of Educa tion denied charges by the Delaware Congress of Parent-Teacher Assns. that expansion of existing Negro schools tends to perpetuate segregation. Mrs. Katherine Prettyman of Mil- ton, state president, made the charge on behalf of the executive body of the association, which is composed ex clusively of Negro school P-TA’s. Mrs. Prettyman said that . . we look with disfavor upon all school building pro grams that tend to perpetuate segrega tion.” The criticism obviously was directed against Senate Bill 305, introduced last September by eight Kent and Sussex County senators to provide construc tion funds for 35 schools, including 18 Negro schools. The total construction cost is esti mated at $10,581,387, with $4,617,152 for Negro schools. The state would pay the full cost, without tax assistance from the local districts. “We view with alarm pending legis lation supporting extensive building programs which tend to herd Negro children in a given locality,” the as sociation said. “We feel that Delaware cannot afford the luxury of expanding schools to accommodate children moved from their residential districts for the pur pose of maintaining a separate culture. We urge therefore that careful con sideration be given to the rights of all children as Delaware plans for the fu ture,” the statement concluded. The resolution, discussed at the Feb ruary meeting of the state board, aroused the ire of Ralph Grapperhaus, a board member from Sussex County. “Are we doing such a good job of improving the schools that the Ne groes don’t want to go to white schools?” he asked. “I was going to ask them (the asso ciation) that, but notice that they didn’t send a representative to this meeting,” he added. FITS PROGRAM Roy Wentz, a New Castle County board member, noted that the state board had not sponsored nor approved the Senate bill. “I don’t think we’re perpetuating segregation—one of our considerations in approving construction at Negro schools has been whether a school could fit into a desegregated program,” he said. “In a few years from now the build ings can be used as desegregated buildings,” he said. Dr. George R. Miller Jr., state sup erintendent of public instruction, agreed with Wentz. “And it should be remembered that the people in these communities have asked for these facilities,” he added. The state board took no action on another protest against further con struction of Negro schools from the Delaware State Conference of Branches of the National Assn, for the Advance ment of Colored People. A letter written to the board op posed SB305, saying that it “will solidify the segregated pattern in these districts, perpetuate the dual system of education and greatly confuse the ‘deliberate’ progress being made in the state.” SIMILAR LETTER A similar letter of protest was sent to the Education Committee of the 120th General Assembly, requesting a public hearing “as early as your cal endar can possibly permit.” The Assembly, with the state facing a financial crisis, has not yet approved a school construction bill, nor has the state board submitted other than emergency building requests. For construction of white schools, the state pays 60 per cent while the remaining 40 per cent is raised by lo cal district taxation. A charge by Virginia Gov. J. Lind say Almond that the U.S. Supreme Court school desegregation decision represented judicial legislation was la beled as “strident notes in a fading chorus” by James M. Tunnell Jr., for mer associate justice of the State Su preme Court. Tunnell, who represents most of the downstate districts in Delaware’s de segregation suits, addressed the annual Brotherhood Week dinner of the Dela ware Region of the National Confer ence of Christians and Jews. A week earlier Gov. Almond was a guest speaker of the State Chamber of Commerce. Almond noted that “Virginia’s un swerving loyalty to and never reced ing faith in the Constitution arrays her as an implacable foe of the course of judicial legislation and sociological peregrinations shackled upon the peo ple by the unwarranted flights of per sonal fancy and excursions of arrogated power on the part of the Supreme Court of the United States.” “We see,” he continued, “a rising tide of evidence, emanating from sources of highest constitutional erudi tion, and spreading across the nation, demanding a return to the sanity and safety of constitutional government. The states individually caught in the vise of inordinate judicial power are reduced to impotency of action. The responsibility rests heavily upon the shoulders of the Congress to restore to the people a government of ‘law and not of men,’ a union indissoluble com posed of states indestructible.” Almond stated that under the Vir ginia program “no child of whatever color is compelled to attend a racially mixed school.” “The overwhelming majority of the people of Virginia do not approve of the mixing of the races in their public school system. Certainly I do not.” TUNNELL’S REPLY Tunnell has been endorsed by one group as the Democratic candidate for governor but has stated he will not seek the nomination. He devoted much of his talk to Almond’s remarks. He said that the many people who disagree with the Supreme Court de cision-adding that he was not one of these—“would do well to say simply they disagree, rather than resort to diatribe.” “If people generally considered the court’s findings even erroneous, not to mention fanciful, there would be a move to repeal or revise the Four teenth Amendment, which nobody ser iously suggests for obvious reasons. “We must recognize that the great criterion by which laws ultimately stand or fall in this government is the approval of the people as a whole. “. . . especially in the cases where the court speaks unanimously, as it has repeatedly done in the desegregation cases, one should hesitate to dub its findings ‘unwarranted flights of fancy.’ ” Because of the illness of Louis L. Redding, counsel for the appellants, the desegregation case scheduled for argument in the U.S. Court of Appeals in Philadelphia on Feb. 15 was post poned. Redding, representing seven Negro litigants who sued for admission to white schools in 1956, filed an appeal against a district court decision that approved a grade-a-year desegregation plan for Delaware schools. A new date for argument has not been set, according to Atty. Gen. Januar D. Bove Jr., who represents the State Board of Education. This would make the second appear ance of the Delaware case in the Court of Appeals. In 1958 the question was (See DELAWARE, Page 15)