Newspaper Page Text
PAGE 14—MAY I960—SOUTHERN SCHOOL NEWS
LOUISIANA
Orleans Board Asks Court To Vacate
Order for School Desegregation Plan
NEW ORLEANS, La.
T he Orleans Parish (county)
school board asked U.S. Dis
trict Judge J. Skelly Wright to
set aside his order for a desegre
gation plan for New Orleans pub
lic schools by May 16.
Simultaneously, the board
asked parents of public school
pupils to vote informally on
whether they would rather have
integrated public schools or no
public schools at all. (See “Le
gal Action.”)
The board took under study a
plan for a special school for gifted
Negro students after Negroes pe
titioned to get into the similar
school established for whites. (See
“School Boards and Schoolmen.”)
Mass student resignations from
all-Negro Southern University
near Baton Rouge followed the
suspension of 18 students who led
equal-rights demonstrations. Stu
dent and university figures on
resignations varied widely. (See
“In the Colleges.”)
Former Gov. Jimmie H. Davis won a
new four-year term as expected, de
feating Republican Francis C. Grevem-
berg and States Righter Kent Courtney.
(See “Political Activity.”)
Orleans Parish property owners
voted two-to-one for a 20 million dol-
Virginia
(Continued From Page 10)
county last year in the wake of a court
order for desegregation.
Fifteen hundred white children are
in the Prince Edward School Founda
tion’s classes, meeting in churches,
club houses and other private build
ings.
Bulldozers have begun clearing the
land for a foundation high school in
Farmville, the county seat. The foun
dation expects to raise $200,000 to
spend on the building but hopes to get
a $300,000 structure by capitalizing on
volunteer labor and materials at
wholesale.
Total cost of operating the private
Prince Edward system this year will
be about $310,000, according to B.
Blanton Hanbury, who heads the foun
dation.
200 IN SCHOOL
A recent survey revealed that about
200 of the Negro high school children
of Prince Edward are enrolled in
schools outside the county. There were
463 students in the county’s Negro
public high school when it shut down
last year.
About 400 other Negro children,
mostly of elementary school age, are
attending the dozen or so training cen
ters set up by Negro leaders through
out the county. The sponsors say these
are not schools but simply provide
certain basic instruction and recreation
for the school-less Negro youths.
The 200 or so Negroes actually in
high schools outside the county, plus
the 400 in the training centers, consti
tute a little more than a third of the
county’s 1,700 Negro school-age chil
dren. It is possible that a good many
others in the elementary group are in
schools outside the county, but it is
difficult to get a picture of this situa
tion. Transcripts are not required
when elementary children change
schools but are required in transfers
of high school students.
BOARD RESIGNS
Five of the six members of the
Prince Edward public school board
suddenly resigned April 27. In their
joint statement, they complained of
being unable to get officials to release
funds for standby maintenance of the
closed buildings, stated their doubts
about the legality of a proposal to sell
the high school building and expressed
their concern about the future of edu
cation in the county.
The members who resigned were
Chairman L. E. Andrews, B. C. Bass,
Dr. C. L. Baird, George D. Shorter and
T. C. Hix. The only remaining board
member is George W. A. Palmer.
The school board is appointed by the
School Electoral Board, which in turn
is named by the circuit court judge.
# # #
lar bond issue designed to build suffi
cient buildings to eliminate all platoon-
ing, or double shifts, as well as keep
pace with increasing enrollment. Pla-
tooning has decreased each year and
has been eliminated entirely in white
public schools. (See “Community Ac
tion.”)
Enrollment at Louisiana State Uni
versity in New Orleans, a branch of the
Baton Rouge school, dropped from
2,130 in September to 1,532 in February
due to scholastic failures. The dropoff
percentage among Negroes was vastly
higher than among whites. (See “In the
Colleges.”)
Special Counsel Gerard A. Rault,
acting for the Orleans Parish school
board, filed a motion asking Judge
Wright to vacate his order for a plan
by May 16 for desegregating New Or
leans public schools.
Rault based his request on Act 319
of 1956, which created a commit
tee to designate which schools shall be
white and which shall be Negro. The
act also says children must be taught
by members of their race.
The school board said:
1. The U.S. Fifth Circuit Court of
Appeals issued an opinion July 15,
1959, which shows there is no need for
the district court to interpret or pass
on the constitutionality of Act 319.
Judge Wright had declared the action
unconstitutional.
2) The Orleans Parish Court of
Appeals and the Louisiana Supreme
Court have both held the act to be
constitutional and there has been no
official test beyond that point.
Judge Wright, who had suggested
earlier a grade-a-year plan, set a
hearing on the new action May 4. The
Orleans school case has been up and
down the court ladder since 1954.
The fifing of Rault’s motion came
within a few hours of the board’s dis
closure that it had mailed to some
60,000 parents and guardians of all
public school students a post card
questionnaire stating:
1) I would like to see the schools
kept open even though a small amount
of integration is necessary.
2) I would like to see the schools
closed rather than be integrated even
in small amounts.
School Board President Lloyd Ritti-
ner said parents receiving the cards
were asked to check off one of the
answers. But, he said, the poll was
strictly for guidance of the board and
results may never be made public.
A delegation of Negro parents peti
tioned the Orleans Parish school board
to admit qualified Negro high school
children to Benjamin Franklin High, a
school established for superior white
students.
Lloyd J. Rittiner, board president,
told the Negroes the school board was
complying with state laws in maintain
ing segregated facilities. He said the
board was considering opening a similar
“bright student” high school for Ne
groes.
The Negro petition said 108 Negro
high school children had been tested
last spring and 35 were found to have
an IQ of 120 or higher, the require
ment for admission to Franklin.
Mrs. J oseph Buggage, a Parent-
Teacher Assn, representative for the
Negroes, said Negro students were be
ing denied important benefits in devel
opment of their potentials since “none
of the public high schools designated
for Negroes offered adequate prepara
tion for college.”
IN THE COLLEGES
Student demonstrations at Southern
University at Scotlandville, largest all-
Negro university in the nation, resulted
in the dismissal of 18 students and the
arrest of 16 of them who participated
in downtown Baton Rouge lunch
counter protests.
Registrar J. J. Hedgemon said in be
half of the university that less than
300 students quit the institution in pro
test of the dismissals.
But Marvin E. Robinson, 25, Gary,
Ind., student council president who led
the demonstrations, claimed 1,500 of the
4,850 students had left Southern.
The incidents began in late March
when seven Southern students sat at
the lunch counter of an S. H. Kress
variety store, were jailed and released
later on $10,500 bond.
Dr. Felton C. Clark, president of
Southern and a Negro, expelled 16 stu
dents who participated in the lunch
counter sit-ins, the first in Louisiana.
Two other students, who also were
among the leaders of the anti-segrega
tion demonstrations, were suspended
for indefinite periods.
The institution is state-supported,
under the direct control of the State
Board of Education. The board h d rec
ommended strong disciplinary action for
“unruly behavior.”
BOYCOTT CLASSES
During the height of the demonstra
tion, most of the students went along
with a boycott of classes but most ap
peared unwilling to go as far as to re
sign from the university.
A massing of students on the state
capitol steps was carefully guarded by
state police officers, some armed with
tear gas bombs. Gov. Earl K. Long, in
side the capitol, suggested the Negroes
were being used as “guinea pigs.”
Southern students who were dis
ciplined included 43 high school seniors
at the university’s laboratory high
school. They were suspended for two
days after they left classes early to at
tend one of the mass meetings.
Dr. Clark said the university had ad
vised parents and guardians of all stu
dents on the university campus of
disciplinary action for students who fail
to attend classes or who violate “uni
versity regulations, ordinances of the
city and parish or the laws of the state
of Louisiana.”
“As an agent of the Louisiana State
Board of Education, whose orders and
regulations I am legally bound to carry
out, and as representative of an arm of
the state government itself, I must take
positive action,” Clark said.
ENROLLMENT DROPS
At New Orleans, where 418 Negro
students were among the 2,130 total en
rollment at LSU’s branch university,
there was a sharp decline in the num
ber of students, both white and Ne
gro, in the second semester.
Dr. Homer Hitt, vice president in
charge of the branch, said normal at
trition and failure to make the grade
led to the decline to 1,532 students.
The white students dropped from
1,712 in September to 1,411 in February.
Negro enrollment dropped from 418
in September to 118 in February.
LSU began as an all-freshmen insti
|:;s| . ■§
1
SOL iHfcikN U.MVEn.SH Y STUDENTS DEMONSTRATE
18 Dismissed for Baton Rouge Segregation Protests
tution in September of 1958 and was
ordered integrated before the first
classes began. Only 37 of 105 Negroes
who entered the university during its
first year now remain.
The National Assn, for the Advance
ment of White People was incorporated
through Shreveport attorney Harvey
Carey with Carl W. Olson of Bossier
City, in extreme north Louisiana, as
chairman.
Olson said the National Assn, for the
Advancement of Colored People is
playing both sides for political power
and the new white group will attempt
to make the NAACP choose between
the Democrats and Republicans.
A state membership drive for the
NAAWP is under way and the NAACP
also resumed its membership solicita
tion.
The NAACP had suspended recruit
ment activity pending action on the
prolonged suit under which Negroes
successfully had the NAACP exempted
from a state law requiring organiza
tions to file membership fists.
Judge John Minor Wisdom of the U.S.
Fifth Circuit Court of Appeals this
month denied a petition for a rehearing
of the case. The NAACP had contested
the law on grounds that its member
ship list filed with the state would be
public and its members subjected to
harassment.
DAVIS ELECTED
In state politics, Jimmie H. Davis
won the governorship as the nominee
of the Democratic Party.
Davis did not campaign in advance
of the general election and his win was
a surprise to no one.
However, Republicans, with former
State Police Supt. Francis C. Grevem-
berg as their candidate, made the best
GOP showing since Reconstruction.
With only 8,300 Republicans registered,
Grevemberg received almost one-fifth
of the half-million votes cast.
Kent Courtney, seeking to establish
a States Rights party in the state from
the disjointed State Rights organiza
tion that now exists, got only 13,000
votes as he campaigned on the segrega
tion-state sovereignty issue.
Davis championed the segregation
cause between the first and second
Democratic primaries and won the
party nomination on Jan. 9.
New Orleans property owners, who
in recent years have rejected proposed
school bond issues, voted a 20 million
dollar issue for both white and Negro
schools in April. New taxes will not be
required to finance the issue.
The school segregation issue was not
mentioned during the board’s campaign
for the bonds though members private
ly feared that it might be. Federal
courts await a desegregation plan from
the board and are expected to demand
the public schools begin integration on
a grade-a-year plan in September.
# # #
New Louisiana Governor Promises
Equal But Separate Schools
By EMILE COMAR
BATON ROUGE, La.
J immie H. Davis, a strangely silent man who
gathered in the votes of the strongly vocal segre
gationists, will become governor of Louisiana again
May 10.
He won the nomination of the Democratic party
on Jan. 9 and then coasted to a general election win
April 19 without again taking the stump.
After gathering the segregation leaders into his
camp in time to win the Democratic nomination
(tantamount to election) Davis said:
“The only way I can iustify my position (on segregation)
is to provide equal but separate facilities. I think that’s the
right thing to do.”
Through lunch counter protests, student marches, and court
actions between January and April, Davis was silent as States
Rights candidate Kent Courtney sought in vain to point the
finger at Davis as a johnny-come-lately to the segregation
camp.
Republican candidate Francis C. Grevemberg pitched his
campaign on other issues—economy in government, clean-up
of Louisiana gambling, the need for a two-party system.
But Davis was the Democratic nominee and that was
enough.
At 58, a wealthy composer and singer of hillbilly and gospel
songs, Davis had gained the support of the segregationists
in the Democratic runoff in January without being specific
as to how he would handle the segregation issue.
After Election
And after the Democratic primary and general election he
was no more specific.
“Everybody knows Tm 100 per cent for segregation. I’ve
been all over the nation and Tm convinced the Southland
is the happiest place in the nation,” he said, adding:
“I’ve never appreciated outside interference on this sort of
thing. The states should handle their own business.”
This much is known of what Davis is committed to do:
1. Name State Sen. William M. Rainach, principal segrega
tion leader in the state, to form a sovereignty commission for
the preservation of states rights. Rainach said Davis pledged
to make him chairman.
2. Let Attorney General Jack P. F. Gremillion, a leader of
the state’s court battles on segregation, step into the Orleans
Parish school board school segregation case. Emile Wagner,
member of the board, said Davis pledged to file an injunction
preventing the school board from obeying a federal court or
der to file an integration plan by May 16, 1960.
Davis has said little of the sovereignty
commission, nothing of the Wagner
statement.
But there is no doubt that the segre
gation vote won him the run-off election
against Mayor deLesseps Morrison of
New Orleans.
Rainach had been the principal segre
gation candidate for governor in the first
Democratic primary, but he ran third
and then shifted his support to Davis.
Davis was governor before—from 1944
to 1948. He has won both times by sing
ing to his campaign audiences.
He has made his living principally as a singer of hillbilly
songs but he is also a well-educated man who once taught
in grade schools and colleges.
He was bom on a hill farm in Beech Springs, La., in 1901,
the son of sharecroppers and one of 11 sons and daughters.
He received a bachelors degree from Louisiana College in
1924 and obtained a masters degree from Louisiana State
University three years later.
In public office, he has served as criminal court clerk in
Shreveport, as the elected public safety commissioner of
Shreveport and as a member of the Louisiana Public Service
Commission.
Since leaving office in 1948, Davis has had no part in poli"
tics nor Louisiana public fife. He has plugged his records,
appeared on television, and sung around the country at night
clubs and singing conventions.
Davis is married and has a 15-year-old son. # # #
DAVIS
