About Southern school news. (Nashville, Tenn.) 1954-1965 | View Entire Issue (May 1, 1960)
NORTH CAROLINA SOUTHERN SCHOOL NEWS—MAY I960—PAGE II Negro Students Agree on Southwide Group CHARLOTTE, N. C. N egro student leaders from 11 southern states and the Dis trict of Columbia agreed at a mid-April meeting in Raleigh to form a southwide committee to coordinate their segregation pro tests. (See “Community Action.”) Wake Forest College students voted against the admission of Negroes to the all-white school. (See “In the Colleges.”) A Negro dentist filed suit against the North Carolina Den tal Society in what the National Assn, for the Advancement of Colored People suggested is a new area: professional discrimi nation. (See “Legal Action.”) A U.S. Supreme Court ruling that a sidewalk, even on private property, is open to the public has figured in the dismissal of tres passing charges against 43 Negro students arrested in Raleigh lunch counter protests. (See “Legal Action.”) Negro student leaders from 11 southern states and the District of Columbia have formed a southwide committee to coordinate protests against racial segregation at public lunch counters and elsewhere. The decision was made at a meeting in Raleigh April 15, 16 and 17 attended by nearly 150 representatives of most of the major Negro educational insti tutions and some of the white educa tional institutions in the South. The Southern Christian Leadership Conference called the meeting. Prin cipal speaker was Rev. Martin Luther King Jr. of Atlanta. The students agreed to resolutions and findings that called for the forma tion of a temporary, non-violent stu dent coordinating committee, with headquarters in Atlanta. King urged the Negro students to continue their sit-down demonstra tions. He called the demonstrations “an assault on the whole system of segrega tion.” STRATEGY SESSION The strategy session he addressed was held in Raleigh’s Memorial Audi torium, a municipal building. Other sessions were held at Shaw University, a Negro college. The steering committee recommended creation of a special committee that will meet in Atlanta in May. It will be composed of one representative from each of 14 southern states plus repre sentatives of the National Student Assn., the National Student Christian Federation and representatives of any regional student organizations that participate in the student demonstra tions. Miss Ella J. Baker, executive secre tary of the SCLC, took special pains to state that: “There is no fight between the National Assn, for the Advancement of Colored People and the Southern Christian Leadership Conference.” different emphasis She added: “There is naturally a dif ference in emphasis.” Her remarks apparently resulted from publication of remarks critical of the NAACP by the Rev. J. M. Law- son Jr. of Nashville, Term., who de livered the keynote address on opening night. The Rev. Mr. Lawson criticized the NAACP as being too conservative and described its magazine, Crisis, as, “the magazine of the black bourgeoisie.” Dr. King and the Rev. Mr. Lawson were named as advisers to the students’ coordinating committee. PROTESTS CONTINUE Lunch counter protests continued sporadically over the state from Eliza beth City to High Point to Concord to Charlotte during the month. In Raleigh, a white student, Andres Maguire of Glen Rock, N. J., who join ed protestors from Shaw University, was struck on Fayetteville Street. Police charged Billy Pleasants, 29, of Raleigh, with assault. The violence took place on the first day (April 16) of the effective date of a new ordinance enacted by the Raleigh City Council to control pickets. The ordinance limits pickets to 10 to a block and says they must walk single file, at least 15 feet apart. No student has been charged with violating the ordinance since it was enacted. RELATED ACTIVITY In other lunch counter-related ac tivity: Dr. C. H. Patrick, sociology professor at Wake Forest College in Winston- Salem, submitted the results of a special survey to the mayor’s Goodwill Committee, which is negotiating for a settlement to lunch counter problems in Winston-Salem. Most lunch counters were remaining closed while the com mittee sought a solution. Patrick’s report showed that of 790 persons interviewed in five Winston- Salem stores in March, 47 per cent said they would accept a plan to open lunch counters to all without regard to race, 48 per cent said they would not, and five per cent were undecided. Of the 790, 89 per cent said they would still trade at the stores if the counters were desegregated. Nine per cent said they would not, and two per cent were undecided. Patrick also conducted 52 depth in terviews in which subjects were given more time to consider detailed answers. Of these, 73 per cent said they would accept a plan to serve everyone without regard to race, and 94 per cent said they would still trade at stores with desegregated lunch counters. CHARLOTTE SURVEY In Charlotte, Belmont Abbey College students surveyed 1,300 white Char lotte store customers. The survey show ed that 58 per cent of the white cus tomers would not patronize an inte grated lunch counter, but that 65.5 per cent would patronize the store’s other departments, even if it had desegre gated lunch counters. The survey showed that 28 per cent of the white customers would sit at in tegrated lunch counters. Twenty-two per cent said they would not patronize any department of a store with deseg regated lunch counters. ADVISORY COMMITTEE In Greensboro, the Mayor’s Advisory Committee on Community Relations said it had been unable to persuade managers of F. W. Woolworth & Co. and S. H. Kress & Co. to serve cus tomers without regard to race. The committee chairman, E. R. Zane, re ported to the City Council that of 2,063 communications the committee had re ceived, 1,501 had favored equality of service on some basis, regardless of race. The committee had privately recom mended that stores operate a section “for service to all races on an inte grated basis” and reserve the remain der of the counter for service exclu sively to white customers. That recommendation, the committee said, was regarded by Negro students at North Carolina A&T College, where the first protests started on Feb. 1, as “a workable compromise.” But, said Zane, managers of the two stores declined to accept the proposal because they are “extremely sensitive to public reaction and merchants en gaged in general merchandising busi ness who also have food departments are fearful that if they serve all races on an integrated basis in their food de partments, they will lose a sufficient percentage of their present patronage to the non-integrated eating establish ments in our city to cause presently profitable food departments to operate at a loss.” In Concord, six students were ar rested for trespassing as students from Barber-Scotia College continued dem onstrations. IN THE COLLEGES Wake Forest College students have voted 742 to 604 against admission of Negroes to the all-white Baptist insti tution at Winston-Salem. Voting among 1,346 students showed: 742 against any integration, 282 in fa vor of immediate integration and 322 in favor of integration in the near fu ture. The student legislature on the cam pus has previously gone on record in favor of desegregation. Sixty members of the Wake Forest faculty just last month asked Winston-Salem stores to open lunch counters to Negroes. LEGAL ACTION Dr. R. A. Hawkins, Charlotte dentist and an active member of the NAACP, filed suit in Western Federal District Court in Charlotte against the North Carolina Dental Society and the Second District Dental Society. Hawkins seeks a permanent injunc tion which would restrain the societies from refusing him full membership. Hawkins said he had been trying for membership in the state and district societies since 1955. The suit noted that the district society does not exclude Negroes from membership specifically on the basis of race, but requires an applicant to have the endorsement of two members. Hawkins said that at one time he had several white dentists who were willing to sponsor his mem bership, “but when the word got around, the pressure was applied, and they told me they couldn’t afford to recommend me.” FREES 43 In Raleigh, a U.S. Supreme Court ruling figured in the freeing of 43 Ne gro students convicted earlier in Ra leigh Municipal Court of trespassing. The charges were dismissed after a trial in Wake County Superior Court. In the same court, two other students had lower court convictions upheld in jury trials. Judge Jack W. Hooks told the 43 stu dents: “If you had gotten in the store and carried on the same type of con duct as on the sidewalks, you would be just as guilty as these two.” The 43 were arrested in February on a sidewalk in the privately owned Cameron Village Shopping Center. Two of them testified they attempted to stage a lunch counter protest in a Woolworth Store, but were foiled when the man ager closed the store. Attorneys for the students cited a 1946 U.S. Supreme Court ruling, which had reversed a trespass conviction against Grace Marsh for distributing Jehovah’s Witnesses religious literature on the streets of a company-owned town, Chickasaw, Ala. # # # State’s Limited Desegregation Policy Becomes Issue In Election Campaign Rv T. IVT WDirilT in ^ By L. M. WRIGHT, JR. CHARLOTTE, N. C. N orth Carolina’s policy of lim ited school desegregation has become an issue in the state’s May 28 Democratic primary. The four candidates for the Democratic nomination for gov ernor are: John D. Larkins of Trenton, a law yer and veteran legislator. Terry Sanford of Fayetteville, a law yer and a former president of the Young Democrat Clubs, a man who has been quietly campaigning for more than two years. Malcolm B. Seawell, former district solicitor who was active in cases against the Ku Klux Klan in the early 1950s in his home county of Robeson (Lumberton), former superior court judge, and former attorney general who has defended the state’s school laws in court. Dr. I. Beverly Lake, a lawyer and former professor of law at Wake For rest College and former assistant at torney general. He left the attorney general’s office before Seawell came, but was there during the 1954-55 period and did help write many of the pupil placement and other school laws. VIGOROUS CAMPAIGN These four candidates—from among whom North Carolinians will, if they follow tradition, pick their next gov ernor—have been staging vigorous, active campaigns up and down the state for more than a month. And they have another month of it before the first primary on May 28. Seawell has been the most out spoken supporter of existing laws and the existing desegregation, though he still is critical of the 1954 Supreme Court decision. Sanford and Larkins, though saying little on the issue until recently, have taken much the same position as Sea well. They think the laws are all right as they are and believe North Carolina is setting an example for other south ern states to follow. Lake, on the other hand, is dissatis fied with things as they are. Though he has endorsed the state’s pupil placement laws (“They ought to be all right, I wrote them.”) he does not endorse any degree of racial de segregation in public schools. In a recent campaign speech, Lake said North Carolina should seek to “persuade” Negro children to leave voluntarily desegregated public schools and return to all-Negro schools. The state, he said, should adopt seg regation as an official policy in the operation of its schools and seek to terminate any desegregation “forced” upon it. SHOULD USE ALL MEANS If a school is integrated “by force, beyond the power of the state prac tically and peacefully to overcome,” said Lake, the state should recognize such action as contrary to its policy and use every lawful means to limit and terminate that condition. “I am not suggesting at this time any change in the pupil assignment law. I think that any intermixture of white and Negro children in our schools is undesirable and all lawful, practicable and peaceful means to ter minate that condition should be used. TERRY SANFORD DR. I. BEVERLY LAKE MALCOLM B. SEAWELL JOHN D. LARKINS That would include the use of per suasion to induce the Negro children now attending white schools to re turn to the schools which the state operates for the Negro children in their communities.” Lake continued: “If the North Caro lina of tomorrow is to be a land of promise instead of a land of paralysis, there must be today a clear statement of its policy” with regard to segrega tion. Lake said the people of the state have a right to the privilege of educa tion. The full power of the state should be used, he said, “to guard and main tain that right by educating her white and Negro children in equal, separate public schools.” CITES WASHINGTON Lake said the right of the people cannot be guarded and maintained effectively in schools “in which large numbers of white and Negro children are intermingled.” This, he said, has been “conclusively demonstrated in the public schools in Washington.” “To conserve and develop our schools and our industrial growth, we must move against the NAACP and its allies,” Dr. Lake said. The only difference between the NAACP’s goals and the “quicksands of moderation,” Dr. Lake said, is that the NAACP would get to its goal faster. He added: “The NAACP has made it clear that it will not be content with token inte gration.” Lake has also said he would not suggest that the state use force or vio lence to resist the decision and would not suggest that schools be closed to prevent token integration. FAVORS PRESENT POLICY Larkins would have the state con tinue its present policy of pupil as signment as practiced now by local school boards. (This leaves racial as signment decisions to local boards of education.) Larkins added: “Let us not allow ourselves to be provoked to anger or to indiscretion.” Larkins said he knows the pupil placement law “is despised by the NAACP, for it likes to either run the show or suffer persecution. It hopes to provoke us to anger.” Sanford endorsed the Larkins view, then endorsed what Lake had said about the Supreme Court decision it self. “Few of us think of it as sound law . . .,” said Sanford. “It was a most im proper decision, but we are faced with it.” Sanford said he had hoped the school desegregation question would not be built up for fear “we would lose sight of what we could do to make this a better state.” FACING NEW DAY’ Sanford said the more the racial problem is stirred up, the more trou ble there will be and the “more mem berships will be sold by the NAACP. The best thing is to handle the prob lem with our brains and not our mouths . . . North Carolina is facing a new day of opportunity ... if we do not inadvertently let our ambitions be consumed in the fires of racial bitter ness.” Seawell said: “The new day is to day, when the two other candidates for governor finally agree to support the stand which for so long I have fought.” Seawell said that as attorney gen eral, “I had a little to do in the fed eral courts with keeping our schools open—and that at a time when the others did not stand up and be count ed and did not speak out.” # # #
