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NORTH CAROLINA SOUTHERN SCHOOL NEWS—APRIL I960—PAGE 13 Governor CHARLOTTE, N. C. i^ov. Luther H. Hodges called ^ on officials of state-supported colleges to help stop the Negro protests against segregated eating facilities. The protests, which began in Greensboro Feb. 1 and spread to other North Carolina cities and through many southern states, continued through much of March, though with less violence and less frequency than during February. (See “Community Ac tion.”) The Yancey County school board, which is being sued for its failure to admit the county’s 27 Negro students to white schools, borrowed $30,000 from the state and now proposes to build a school for the Negro students. (See “School Boards and Schoolmen.”) Segregation is rapidly becoming an issue in North Carolina’s gubernatorial campaign as four major candidates seek the Democratic Party’s nomina tion. The first primary will be held May 28. (See “Political Activity.”) C. B. Deane, president of the North Carolina Baptist Convention and for mer Eighth Congressional District representative, told a group of Baptist ministers that Baptists cannot “tiptoe around the racial issue.” He called on trustees of Baptist colleges to consider admitting Negro students. (See “What They Say.”) North Carolina’s Gov. Luther H. Hodges says he has no sympathy for lunch counter demonstrators “who de liberately engage in activities which any reasonable person can see will re sult in a breakdown of law and or- order.” Reading a prepared statement at a press conference, the governor said: “As I have previously stated, I do not think these demonstrations do any good, or in the final analysis will even serve to accomplish the objectives of the demonstrators.” In answer to a question from a re porter, the governor said he was not referring to Negroes who engage in peaceful protests or simply enter a store, but rather to those who “cause disorder or refuse to obey an order to leave either by the owner or a police officer.” Hodges also told reporters he had called the attention of heads of all state-operated colleges and universities to a statement by Dr. Gordon W. Blackwell, chancellor of Woman’s College in Greensboro. Dr. Blackwell made his comments in a talk to Woman’s College students Feb. 9, about a week after demonstra tions by students from A&T College, a state-supported Negro school. A few Woman’s College students had, by that time, participated in the demonstra tions along with the Negro students. DIRECTS ATTENTION The governor directed special atten tion to this portion of Dr. Blackwell’s remarks: “. . . Your responsibilty as students of Women’s College goes beyond per sonal considerations. Your class jacket is a symbol of the college. On and off the campus you represent this institu tion. Your actions bring credit or dis credit to the college. . . . The results of your actions may affect many others in a kind of chain reaction as has been painfully demonstrated last week. “There is no blinking the fact that participation in this demonstration by several of our students, no matter how high their motives, definitely resulted in increasing the inflammatory quality of the situation . . . More specifically, I advise each of you to refrain from any public demonstration in connection with the issue now before the com munity or any similar issue which may arise in the future.” SERVICE RESUMED Meanwhile, in Greensboro, lunch counter service was resumed at F. W. Woolworth Co. and S. H. Kress & Co. on Feb. 24. The counters had closed Feb. 6. Demonstrations in Greensboro have halted while a special committee appointed by the mayor seeks to find a solution. In Raleigh, on Feb. 25, so many Ne gro students from Shaw University— an estimated 700—sought to attend the trials of 43 Negro students arrested Tells Colleges To Curb Protests North Carolina Segregation-Desegregation Status Number of districts, 174: 174 biracial; 7 desegregated. Total state enrollment: 816,682 white; 302,060 Negro. Enrollment of desegregated districts: 76,608 white, 43,506 Negro. Enrollment of 12 desegregated schools: 12,054 white; 34 Negro. Enrollment by desegregated districts and schools: White Craven County 4,992 white; 2,466 Negro Negro Havelock Elem. 803 5 Graham Barden Elem. Wayne County 7,200 white; 4,800 Negro 846 4 Meadow Lane Elem. Charlotte 20,242 white; 12,080 Negro 597 3 Garringer High High Point 8,132 white; 2,636 Negro 1,549 1 Femdale Jr. High 1,324 1 Femdale Sr. High Greensboro 15,076 white; 5,886 Negro 1,425 1 Gillespie Elem. (Grades 1-9) Winston-Salem 12,766 white; 9,016 Negro 525 5 Easton Elem. 418 6 Reynolds High Durham 8,200 white; 6,622 Negro 1,634 1 Brogdan Jr. High 657 2 Carr Jr. High 912 2 Durham High 1,364 3 TOTALS 12,054 34 earlier on trespass charges that it was necessary to postpone the trials. Other actions involved lunch coun ter protests: A Negro student from Kittrell Col lege, near Henderson, was sentenced to 60 days on the roads in the beating of a white man who was delivering groceries to the college. Robert Roberson, 24, of New York City, entered a guilty plea to simple assault on Eddie Thompson. The sen tence was appealed. Roberson had ac cused Thompson of kicking him during a demonstration in which students marched seven miles from Kittrell to Henderson to protest. Thompson said he was in another city, at work, at the time, and his employers backed his statement. About 275 Shaw University students staged a prayer meeting on the capitol steps in Raleigh. Demonstrations continued, though with less frequency, in Winston-Salem, and most lunch counters remained closed. About 100 students marched quietly from Barber-Scotia College to down town Concord to protest segregated lunch counters. NEGROES SERVED On March 8, six Negro college stu dents were served without incident at drug store lunch counters in Salisbury, and another small group was served at a store in Winston-Salem. Demonstrations have also taken place in Chapel Hill. In Winston-Salem, 22 persons—10 white students from Wake Forest Col lege, nine Negro students from state- supported Winston-Salem State Teach ers College and three other Negroes— were convicted of trespassing. But Municipal Court Judge Leroy Sams withheld sentences because, he said, the students did not intend to violate the law. PROTESTS SPREAD Protests have also spread during the month to Wilmington and Shelby. Three white youths grabbed a pla card from a Negro picket in Shelby and broke the sign, then struck the picket several times with the staff. Sporadic demonstrations also were held during the month in Durham and Charlotte. In Charlotte, Mayor James S. Smith announced the formation of a special citizens committee to deal with racial and religious differences in the com munity. He said it would be a per manent organization, not a temporary group to deal only with lunch counter protests. Johnson C. Smith University stu dents, who had demonstrated regularly during February, delayed their protests for two weeks to await committee de velopments. Mayor Smith announced appointment of a four-member inter racial advisory group, which will help him pick from 50 to 100 members of what he calls the Mayor’s Friendly Relations Committee. At the end of the month, invitations had been sent to 20 persons to join the committee, Smith students were impa tient and demonstrations were being held by limited numbers—a dozen to perhaps 50—one or two days a week. Three Smith students, all Negro boys, were arrested in Charlotte. One was convicted of assault on a female in a pushing incident. A second was con victed of a violation of a fire ordi nance, failing to move when ordered by firemen to do so. The third was found not guilty of assault in an al leged pushing incident with a white man. TAKE STANDS Several groups in North Carolina have taken public stands on the dem onstrations by Negro students In Chapel Hill, an organization of Negro and white students has been formed at the University of North Carolina to back the protest move ment. But the student newspaper, The Daily Tar Heel, published an editorial commending Gov. Hodges for his stand against the demonstrations. Harry Golden, editor of the Carolina Israelite in Charlotte, spoke to a stu dent assembly in Raleigh. President Eisenhower’s suggestion for bi-racial conferences to settle differences came “just six years late,” he said. More than 200 delegates, represent ing about 30,000 members of about 100 local unions, attended the state con vention of the AFL-CIO. Their reso lution said: “That this third annual convention of the North Carolina State AFL-CIO express its approval of the efforts of these Negro student groups and ex press our disapproval of the unwar ranted police actions now being car ried out in many of these demonstra tions as violations of rights of Ameri can citizens to free speech and free assembly.” Thurgood Marshall, chief counsel for the NAACP, spoke to a mass member ship rally of the Charlotte NAACP, Asked why the protest movement had spread so rapidly through the South, Marshall said he thought that young people are impatient with the slowness of court action in furthering equality. “And if you mean, are the young people impatient with me, the answer is yes,” he said. He urged Negroes not to slacken their pace in their drive for equality. He also specifically called on Negro parents in North Carolina to apply for transfers from Negro to white schools for their children in an effort to speed desegregation in public schools. Roy Wilkins, NAACP executive sec retary, speaking in Durham, said Pres ident Eisenhower’s suggestion for bi racial conferences had come too late, though Wilkins praised the idea. The North Carolina State Board of Education voted to finance a three- room schoolhouse for 27 Negro stu dents in Yancey County. There has been no school for Negroes in Yancey County since the spring of 1958. It was closed then, after being condemned as unfit for use. It was a one-room, one- teacher school. The State Board of Education loaned $30,000 for the construction to the Yancey board, which has been oppos ing efforts of the Negro students to gain admission to the county’s all- white elementary and high schools. The Yancey County loan application passed the state board unanimously when it was presented to the full board. Earlier, in the board’s nine- member finance committee, three per sons had opposed it. Dr. Charles E. Jordan of Duke Uni versity said he voted against the loan in committee when it came up “be cause I think we have enough small school houses in North Carolina.” H. L. Trigg of Raleigh, the State Board of Education’s only Negro mem ber, said he also voted against the loan because he is opposed to more small schools. “There was no controversy about this at all,” he said. “It was discussed along the line of school standards.” The third opposing vote was cast by Charles W. McCrary of Asheboro who declined comment. Attempts by Yancey County Negroes to enter all-white schools resulted in national attention last year when the National Assn, for the Advancement of Colored People purchased full-page advertisements in some northern news papers, including The New York Times, to point out that the county offered no school for Negroes. The county’s Negro children applied for admission to white schools last summer, were rejected and were as signed to the Asheville city school sys tem in adjacent Buncombe County. They had attended Asheville schools last year, too. This year, however, parents of the students declined to permit them to make the daily bus trip—eighty miles round trip—to Ashe ville schools. Most of the elementary students are being taught by a single Negro teacher in a church basement. She is privately employed by an interracial group. The four high school students are attend ing a private school in Asheville. Most of them are boarding in Asheville also. A suit to force desegregation of Yancey County’s schools is now pend ing in Western Federal District Court and the students’ NAACP attorney is pressing for a hearing this spring. The proposed $30,000 structure, which would be built in Burnsville, the county seat, would serve grades one through 12 and would have two classrooms, a multi-purpose room and restrooms. t IEGAL ACTION Judge Edwin M. Stanley of the Mid dle District Federal Court has dis missed a lingering suit against the Greensboro Board of Education. The suit was brought by Readell McCoy on behalf of his children, Va- larie, Eric and Thetus McCoy, and by James Tonkins Jr. on behalf of his son, Michael A. Tonkins. In their original complaint, filed Feb. 10, 1959, the plaintiffs charged that in 1958 the four Negro children had been denied reassignment to the Caldwell School, at that time an all-white school. They asked the court to enter a per manent injunction “forever restraining and enjoining” the board from operat ing the Greensboro public schools on a segregated basis. Judge Stanley, in an opinion on Jan. 14, 1960, had indicated he would dis miss the suit. At that time, he said: “Since it is now uncontroverted that the minor plaintiffs eligible to attend the Cald well School have been assigned to and are now attending that school, the only legal question presented has be come moot, and there remains nothing for the court to adjudicate.” Attorneys for the Negroes had sought to charge in a proposed sup plemental complaint that while three of the four students had been assigned to Caldwell School for the 1959-60 term, their reassignment had been carried out in such a manner as to perpetuate segregation in the local schools. Caldwell School and Pearson Street School, which had been attended sole ly by Negroes, were consolidated last June. The two units are on the same campus. Subsequently, the board of educa tion approved the transfer of all white students and teachers from Caldwell School to other, all-white schools for this year, leaving Caldwell as an all- Negro school. The Negroes’ attorneys sought to charge in the supplemental complaint that the action taken in consolidating the Pearson Street and Caldwell Schools was part of a general pattern of maintaining segregation, except for token desegregation, which Greensboro has had for three years. Judge Stanley declined to permit the supplemental complaint, however. He said: “Plaintiffs are complaining of the action taken by the board in reassign ing white pupils, not the action taken on their own applications for reassign ment.” Later, Judge Stanley said: “The court could grant no relief under the proposed supplementary complaint and . . . the only legal action presented in this action has become moot.” All the children involved are at tending Caldwell, except Thetus Mc Coy who is attending Lincoln Junior High, a Negro school. Dr. I. Beverly Lake, former assistant attorney general, former professor of law at Wake Forest College and now a lawyer in Raleigh, has entered the Democratic primary for governor. He pledged that he will use “every power and influence of the (governor’s) office to preserve our public schools against the destruction of their effectiveness which will surely result from the com plete integration contemplated by the National Assn, for the Advancement of Colored People.” In an obvious reference to one of his opponents—former Atty. Gen. Mal colm B. Seawell, who resigned last month to enter the race—Lake said: “A candidate for governor who says the decision of the United States Su preme Court in the school segregation cases is the ‘law of the land’ is there by saying he agrees with the NAACP’s position that the Constitution of the United States means what the judges in that decision said it means.” STATED POSITION Seawell has stated his position this way: “We in North Carolina are confront ed with facts and not with theories at this time. We must begin with the premise that the law enunciated in the Brown decision is the law of the land.” Seawell has contended that when the General Assembly and the state’s vot ers approved the pupil assignment law and the local option plan for closing schools in emergencies, they recog nized that the Brown decision had in validated any North Carolina laws re quiring segregation in schools. Still another major candidate, Terry Sanford, Fayetteville attorney, has taken this stand: “I stand with 90 per cent of the people of our state who approve of the present North Carolina approach which is being copied by other south ern states. I haven’t seen any other workable plan.” John D. Larkins of Trenton, fourth major candidates in the primary, has yet to state his views on the issue. Lake, when he announced his can didacy, was asked what he thought of the pupil assignment and other school assignment laws. “It’s a good law,” he said, with a smile. “That may be due in part to the fact that I wrote it.” Lake did this as an assistant attorney general (not un der Seawall, incidentally, who took office some time after Lake resigned). Lake added: “The full powers of North Carolina must be used to pre vent a . . . destruction of the effec tiveness of the public schools in this state.” NEW ATTORNEY GENERAL T. Wade Bruton, 57, replaced Sea well as North Carolina’s attorney gen eral. Bruton, an assistant attorney gen eral for 26 years, was appointed by Gov. Hodges. Bruton said North Carolina has shown that the school segregation problem “can be met head-on with a minimum of difficulty.” Some registrars in Northampton and Halifax counties have required Negroes to take spelling tests to qualify as vot ers, a Negro minister at Weldon charged. Atty. Gen. Bruton ruled such (See NORTH CAROLINA, Page 14)