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PAGE 10—SOUTHERN SCHOOL NEWS—MAY I960 Maryland (Continued From Page 9) about a change of policy in the four major stores and their branches. The Board of Estimates of Baltimore voted unanimously to include a non- discriminatory employment provision in all city contracts with private firms. The Southern Hotel lifted all racial restrictions, becoming the last of the major hotels in Baltimore to open its facilities fully to Negroes. The Committee on Racial Equality resumed picketing the city’s only pri vate amusement park, scene of a dis turbance and arrest of pickets last year. MISCELLANEOUS Findings that marked differences be tween white and Negro children devel op between infancy and three years of age have been reported by a husband- and-wife team of psychiatrists. The general developmental quotient rises for white children, while for the Ne groes it falls, according to Drs. Hilda Knobloch and Benjamin Pasamanick. Both are now at Ohio State University after several years of teaching and re search at the Johns Hopkins school of hygiene and public health. Using data compiled in the course of a study of prematurity in which about 1,000 Baltimore white and Negro in fants were tested, the Pasamanicks re port that when the children used as full-term controls were tested at 40 weeks of age, there were no significant differences in any field of behavior be tween the two racial groups: “The general developmental (adapt ive) quotient being 105.4 for the white infants and 104.5 for the Negro infants. The figures for gross motor behavior are 114.7 and 113.4, for fine motor be havior 97.6 and 99.2, for language be havior 102.5 and 102.9, and for personal- social behavior 108.6 and 106.5, respect ively.” 300 RE-EXAMINED Approximately 300 of the original 1,000 infants were re-examined at three years of age to see if the differ ence between full-term and premature babies continues beyond infancy. In a paper presented before the American Orthopsychiatric Assn., the Pasaman icks said, “More striking than the per sistence of differences between prema tures and controls, however, are the marked differences which have devel oped between white and non-white children. “A comparison of the full-term con trol infants shows that there is a marked racial divergence in adaptive and language behavior while motor and personal-social behavior are essential ly unchanged. The general develop mental quotient rises to 110.9 for the white children, while for the Negroes it falls to 97.4. Similarly language rises to 106 in the white children and falls to 90.1 in the non-whites.” When a curve of the distribution of developmental quotients is drawn for the population at three years of age, the researchers say, “this sharp dichoto my between white and Negro children is again evident.” And they describe one of the graphs in their report as showing “strikingly” that “the white and the Negro children are indeed two different populations.” ORGANIC FACTORS They also say: “In infancy, it seems, factors which produce differences in intellectual po tential appear to be largely organic in nature. In fact, only prenatal experi ence, birth weight and later physical status seem to produce group differ ences of behavior. The sociocultural factors in infancy, therefore, appear to be acting on the psychological level of integration (of the central nervous system) only indirectly through the biological level. “By three years of age, however, the more direct effect of sociocultural fac tors on the psychological level of inte gration is apparent. The dichotomy be tween the white and non-white chil dren occurs particularly in adaptive and language behavior, those areas of behavior most subject to sociocultural influences, while motor behavior, which is more a reflection of neurologic status, is essentially unchanged.” Dismissing the argument that the dif ferences may be due to defects in infant tests, since in previously published material “we have demonstrated high correlations in four large groups of in fants if a satisfactory infant examina tion is done by a physician who has been trained in its use and is skilled in differentiating neurologic damage from intellectual inadequacy,” the Pasaman icks conclude: UPWARD SPREAD “It would seem that the upward spreading in the curves can be ade quately explained only on the basis of VIRGINIA Court Tells Pulaski High To Ad II RICHMOND, Va. A federal district judge order ed 14 Negroes admitted to a Pulaski County white high school in September. (See “Legal Ac tion.”) A federal appeals court upheld the Alexandria School Board’s refusal to admit five Negro chil dren to white schools on the basis of residence and academic stand ings. But the court also condemn ed the maintenance of attendance areas based on race. (See “Legal Action.”) Negroes continued their efforts to achieve desegregation in eating facilities in various cities through out the state and in the Peters burg and Danville public libraries. Private segregated schools, set up in several communities to avoid public school integration, generally reported successful op erations and looked forward to en larged programs next year. (See “School Boards and Schoolmen.”) Fourteen Negroes have been ordered admitted to Pulaski High School in September (Crisp v. School Board of Pulaski County). U. S. District Judge Roby C. Thompson’s order, issued Ap ril 21, appeared to clear the way for more than 100 Negroes to enter Pulaski Oklahoma (Continued from Page 9) establishments generally considered as doing business with the public. The demonstration was cancelled. In stead, some 200 Negroes, along with some white persons, rallied on the steps of the state capitol to thank the gov ernor and to urge elimination of segre gation in business firms. The following week Edmondson named 26 persons to the committee. Most of his selections are from Okla homa City, but Tulsa, Muskogee, Nor man, Idabel, Watonga, McAlester and Okmulgee are also represented. The Langston University Alumni Assn, announced organization of an Independent Citizens’ Committee, with Lillard G. Ashley, superintendent of schools at Boley, as alumni sponsor. The committee would help the alumni association’s “present movement to have the entire state population in formed of its responsibilities to its state program of higher education.” Mrs. Ira D. Hall of Oklahoma City, publicity director for the alumni group, indicated the purpose of the movement is to inspire as much public support for and citizen participation in the af fairs of higher education as the lower schools receive. Actually the alumni movement was launched last year when there was talk in the state Legislature of abolishing Langston because of its high per capita cost of operation. Alumni officials pointed out Langston represented, for some Negro youths, their only chance to obtain a college education. # # # learning, and that one would expect on this basis a greater improvement in the white than in the Negro children and a greater increase as age increases. Furthermore, it seems logical to con clude that, since the downward trend occurs largely in the lower socio-eco nomic groups, these children have less exposure to the kinds of experience that later tests are designed to evalu ate. “A variety of organic factors on an environmental level, such as infection and malnutrition which are more com mon in the lower socio-economic groups, can exert a noxious influence on the integration of the central ner vous system as can adverse social and psychological factors. Since conceptua- ly intellectual potential is concerned with prognosis and implies that if nothing happens to damage the infant, organically, socially or psychologically, his future development will be at an essentially constant rate in terms of his overall level of adaptive funcion- ing, even learned behavior must be de pendent on the basic integration of the central nervous system.” # # # and the other county high school in September 1961. Pulaski County has no Negro high school. Negro students are transported by bus to Christiansburg Institute in neighboring Montgomery County. The reason only 14 must be admit ted to white schools during the coming year is that Judge Thompson specified that applications for transfers must be made by March 15 of each year. At the time of his order, that date al ready had passed this year and only 14 Negroes had applied for transfer prior to that deadline. GIVES TIME Judge Thompson explained that he set the March 15 date to give school officials adequate time each year to know how many children would be at tending each school the following ses sion. Pulaski County now has 116 Negroes attending Christiansburg Institute. About 16 of these will graduate in June, while about 30 elementary school children will advance into the high school group. This means that more than 100 Negro youths presumably will be eligible to apply for transfer to the county’s white high schools next year. There are about 2,200 children in the county’s two all-white high schools. COURT CONDEMNS Continuation of separate geographi cal attendance areas for white and Ne gro pupils was condemned by the U. S. Fourth Circuit Court of Appeals here on April 20 (Jones v. School Board of Alexandria). Declared the court: “Obviously the maintenance of a dual system of attendance areas based on race offends the constitutional rights of the plaintiffs and others simi larly situated and cannot be tolerated. “It is not mentioned in the plan of the Alexandria School Board, and we may assume, in the absence of more evidence . . . that the continuance of the dual system is not contemplated. “In order that there may be no doubt about the matter, the enforced main tenance of such a dual system is here specifically condemned. However, it does not follow that there must be an immediate and complete reassignment of all the pupils in the public schools of Alexandria.” The court’s opinion was given in a case appealed from the federal district court at Alexandria. In the lower court, Judge Albert V. Bryan had ad mitted nine Negro children to the city’s white schools in February 1959, but had upheld the school board in deny ing admittance to five others. Two of the five had been denied admittance because of lack of academic ability and three because they resided closer to a Negro school than to the white school to which they had applied. UPHELD BOARD The appeals court last month upheld the lower court and the school board. The higher tribunal said: “The two criteria of residence and academic preparedness applied to pu pils seeking enrollment and transfers could be properly used as a plan to bring about racial desegregation in ac cordance with the Supreme Court’s di rective. “The record in this case is insuffici ent in demonstrating that the criteria were not so applied. On the other hand, these criteria could be used in such a way as to be a vehicle for frus trating the constitutional requirement laid down by the Supreme Court . . . “If the criteria should be applied only to Negroes seeking transfer and enrollment in particular schools and not to white children, then the use of the criteria could not be sustained. Or, if the criteria are, in the future, ap plied only to applications for transfer and not to applications for initial en rollment by children not previously at tending the city’s school system, then such action would also be subject to attack on constitutional grounds. For by reason of the existing segregation pattern it will be Negro children, pri marily, who seek transfers.” LEGAL FRONT Other developments on the legal front in desegregation controversies in Virginia included: I) The Newport News school board on April 15 submitted in federal dis trict court a plan providing for assign ments and transfers of pupils without regard to race. The plan, similar to the one used in the neighboring city of Norfolk, provides that every applicant for assignment or transfer must take a test administered by the school super intendent. Factors that may be con sidered in the assignments include mental and moral health, intelligence, suitability of existing curricula to the applicant, and his adaptability to the emotional and social adjustment to be made. Negro attorneys attacked the plan but Judge Walter E. Hoffman ruled it constitutional on its face. 2) On April 25, U. S. District Judge Albert V. Bryan at Richmond ordered Prince Edward County to desegregate its schools. This has no practical ef fect since the county has abandoned its public schools. Attorneys for the National Assn, for the Advancement of Colored People submitted the pro posed order under the usual legal pro cedure, wherein the prevailing side in a case drafts the order outlined by the court and submits it for approval. This latest action came almost a full year after the Fourth Circuit Court of Ap peals had ruled that Prince Edward must desegregate its schools. 3) The new anti-trespass ordinance adopted in Petersburg (See Southern School News, April 1960) was upheld by the city’s Hustings Court, the low est state court of record. Judge Oliver A. Pollard overruled a motion to void the ordinance, submitted by lawyers for a Virginia State College student who had been fined $50 in Municipal Court when he refused to leave the white section of the public library. Judge Pollard will hear the case on its merits May 3 and will set hearing dates for the cases of 10 other Negroes who were arrested on similar charges. The daughter of the woman who gave Petersburg its public library has urged city officials to desegregate the facility. The request was made by Mrs. Robert W. Claiborne of Richmond in a letter to Petersburg Mayor Walter W. Edens. The library was given to the city in 1923 in memory of Mrs. Claiborne’s father, William R. McKenney. The deed specified that the basement of the building be used as a library for Ne groes. Mrs. Claiborne said in her letter that in the light of public sentiment in 1923, the donor’s requirement that the basement be used by Negroes repre sented an affirmative, rather than a negative, approach to racial relations. She added she believed that her mother, if alive today, would want the library desegregated. ENACT ORDINANCE On Feb. 27, 140 Negro students staged a sit-down demonstration in sections of the library reserved for white patrons. City Council soon there after enacted an ordinance against trespassing on public property, and on March 7, 11 Negroes were arrested on trespassing charges in the library. The 11 were convicted in the lower court and their cases are pending on appeal. In Danville, May 6 has been set as the date for a federal court hearing on the NAACP’s petition for an in junction to desegregate that city’s li brary. A white group of about 25 per sons has asked that the white library and its Negro branch be closed if the injunction is granted. Demonstrations against segregated eating facilities continued in several Virginia cities. Fifty Negro children are applying for admission next fall to white or predominantly white schools in north ern Virginia. Twenty-seven are seek ing entry in Fairfax County, 18 in Arlington County and five in the city of Alexandria. Arlington and Alexan dria already have some desegregated schools. School officials of the three com munities said the applications would be forwarded to the State Pupil Place ment Board in Richmond. The board has made hundreds of thousands of placements but has never made an in tegrated assignment, except in the cases of four Negro children in Nor folk, whom the board assigned to white schools in order to avoid a contempt of court citation. PRIVATE SCHOOLS Successful operations during 1959-60 and optimistic outlooks for the coming year are reported by private segre gated school systems in several Vir ginia communities where public schools have been desegregated. In general, administrators of the pri vate systems report that they are hav ing no serious financial problems, that the quality of instruction is high and that they expect larger enrollments in lit Negroes the fall. Some of the systems are launching school construction projects. Public schools in these communities also report that the year has been a good one—except, of course, in Prince Edward County, where public schools are closed. There has been no word of any significant racial trouble result ing from the desegregation that has oc curred. WARREN COUNTY In Warren County, where the com munity is split down the middle over the school issue, the private Warren County Educational Foundation an nounced that it will raise its teachers’ salaries to equal those of the county’s public school teachers. A 22-classroom, $250,000 high school is being planned to house the Mosby Academy, now lo cated in a restaurant-club near the outskirts of Front Royal. The academy has an enrollment of 425, compared to 406 in the integrated public Warren County High School. The 406 in the public school includes 19 Negroes. The school was integrated in February 1959. The academy’s 18 teachers will be supplemented by three new staff mem bers in the fall, according to Hugh D. McCormick, head of the Educational Foundation. Students at the academy pay tuition fees with grants received from state and local funds. McCormick says the academy is in good financial condition. With so many Warren County chil dren attending the private academy, the 406 remaining in the public high school are enjoying the benefits of an excellent teacher-pupil ratio. There are 28 teachers, plus the principal, as sistant principal, librarian and guid ance director. According to parents, the student bodies at both the private and the public high schools feel challenged to do good work under the present con ditions. A Richmond News Leader reporter who surveyed the situation reported that the bitter feeling of animosity, previously prevalent in Warren County between the opposing sides, has given way to acceptance of the dual-school situation. NORFOLK In Norfolk, the Tidewater Academy is winding up its second successful year of operation, according to James G. Martin IV, the lawyer who serves as executive secretary of the Tide water Educational Foundation, Inc. “We have a good school, morale is high and we plan to operate again next year much as we are this year,” Mar tin said. Enrollment at the segregated acad emy, which covers grades seven through 12, has grown from 168 in September of last year to the present figure of around 200. There are about 12,000 students, including 19 Negroes, in the city’s integrated public second ary schools. Operation of the Tidewater Academy is financed by a tuition fee of $329. CHA RLOTTES VILLE The Charlottesville Educational Foundation’s all-white private school system was the center of a contro versy in March, when two of its top administrators were fired and another resigned. (See Southern School News, April 1960.) The three who left criti cized the foundation’s operating prac tices. But William J. Story Jr., superin tendent of schools in South Norfolk and a member of the State Board of Education, issued a report praising the Charlottesville foundation’s schools. He had spent three days studying the sys tem at the request of the foundation. The outlook for next year is good, according to the foundation president, Henry B. Gordon, because: 1) More tuition grant money is ex pected to be available from public funds. 2) A drive will be held for con tributions to help pay for school facili ties already constructed. 3) The administrative set-up is be ing changed to prevent future squab bles like the one in March. Gordon said that both the Robert E. Lee School (190 elementary puriils) and the Rock Hill Academy (325 high school students) operated in the red this year but parents will underwrite the deficits. There are about 1,200 students, in cluding 11 Negroes, in Charlottesville’s two integrated schools. PRINCE EDWARD COUNTY The Prince Edward County private school operation is unique in that it has no competition from public schools. Public schools were abandoned by the (See VIRGINIA, Page 14)