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TENNESSEE
SOUTHERN SCHOOL NEWS—MAY I960—PAGE 5
Two Boards Adopt Grade-A-Year Desegregation Plans
NASHVILLE, Tenn.
wo school boards in Tennes
see adopted grade-a-year de
segregation plans like that in
Nashville, while lawsuits seeking
court orders to desegregate school
systems were filed in Memphis
and Chattanooga.
The Knoxville Board of Educa
tion voted to seek federal court
approval of a plan to begin deseg
regation in the first grade this
fall. Plaintiffs in the Knoxville
lawsuit asked the court to reject
the “stairstep” plan as too slow.
(See “School Boards and School
men” and “Legal Action.”)
At Kingsport, in upper east
Tennessee, the board of educa
tion decided to follow the Nash
ville desegregation plan without a
lawsuit having been filed, but no
date was set for it to begin. (See
(“School Boards and School
men.”)
Lawsuits filed for desegregation
of Memphis and Chattanooga
schools were similar, both asking
the courts to prevent assignment
of teachers or principals on the
basis of either their or the pupils’
race or color. (See “Legal Ac
tion.”)
An explosion wrecked the home of a
Negro city councilman and attorney in
Nashville, and a protest demonstration
by 2,000 to 3,000 Negroes was met by
Mayor Ben West with a statement that
store lunch counters should be deseg
regated. (See “Miscellaneous.”)
Meantime, other demonstrations of
several kinds occurred over the state
with some disorders and resulting
court trials. A boycott by Negroes
against downtown stores was evident
in Nashville, following failure of Ne
gro leaders and merchants to agree on
a trial plan of lunch counter desegre
gation proposed by a bi-racial com
mittee. (See “Legal Action” and “Mis
cellaneous.”)
State Education Commissioner Joe
Morgan announced that students of
state universities and colleges who
hereafter are convicted of law viola
tions may be subject to expulsion. He
said the policy will apply regardless
of race or the nature of the offense.
(See “In the Colleges.”)
The Knoxville Board of Education,
in a 15-minute session on the night of
April 4, voted four to one to adopt the
grade-a-year school desegregation plan
now completing its third year in Nash
ville.
Subject to federal court approval,
the plan would begin with the first
grade this September.
Recommended by School Supt.
Thomas N. Johnston, the motion for
the plan was carried after having
failed to get a second a few nights
earlier, although a board member said
a majority had favored the plan then
but was not yet ready to act.
Dr. Charles Moffett, who made the
motion, said the board had agreed
previously that a majority would con
stitute a decision and that the major
ity would accept and support it. He
said he made the motion “not wishing
to obstruct the most peaceful and
orderly plan possible.”
SECONDED MOTION
Roy Linville, who seconded Dr.
Moffett’s motion, said he “took an oath
that I would faithfully discharge the
duties of this office. This includes the
support of our laws, both local and
federal, whether I think they are good
laws or not . . .”
Linville added: “If we . . . can defy
the court in this order (to present a
plan for desegregation), our system
of law and order has completely
broken down and we are no longer
protected by the courts in any manner.
We as a board are pledged and obli
gated to operate the schools, under the
law, so that every pupil in the school
system will have equal opportunity to
reach their maximum in learning, so
far as it is in our power to do so un
der the law.”
Linville also said he thought it bet
ter if the court could approve a de
segregation plan devised by, and to be
implemented by, the school board.
‘GOOD LOSER’
Robert Ray, the board member who
voted against adoption of the plan, said
“it’s not the first time I’ve been out
numbered. I’m a good loser.”
However, he contended that a “gen
tlemen’s agreement” had been violated
when the board refused at the previ
ous meeting to defer action for 30 days,
and Ray rejected what he called a
demand from the press that he resign.
In a resolution, the Knoxville board
asked “all people of good will” to join
“in an attempt to comply with court
orders.” The matter “is a community
wide problem and requires complete
community co-operation in arriving at
a solution,” the resolution said, prom
ising that the board “will stand firm
ly back of its agents in an attempt to
comply with all good faith with the
mandate of the law and the rulings of
the courts.”
KINGSPORT ACTION
The Kingsport school board adopted
the Nashville “stairstep” desegregation
plan on April 7.
It will become effective “at such date
in the future as may appear to the
board to be consistent with the best
interests of the city as a whole.”
Board Chairman M. C. Stone said
the plan previously had been approved
by members of Kingsport’s City Coun
cil.
LEGAL ACTION
Negro attorneys in Memphis and
Chattanooga, along with the chief
counsel for the National Assn, for the
Advancement of Colored People, filed
long-expected suits seeking school
desegregation.
The suits are similar, both brought
as “class” actions so as to apply not
only to the complainants but to others
similarly situated.
Both suits contain a request that was
termed “something new” by Z. Alex
ander Looby, Nashville Negro lawyer
who has been active in all such cases
in Tennessee. The Memphis and Chat
tanooga petitions ask that officials be
enjoined from assigning teachers and
principals “on the basis of the race
and color of the person to be assigned,
and on the basis of the race and color
of the children attending the school to
which the personnel is to be assigned.”
Looby said this would mean that
Negro teachers could not be prevent
ed from teaching classes including both
races. Up to now, all desegregated
classes in Tennessee are taught by
white teachers in schools which for
merly were attended only by whites.
MEMPHIS CASE
Eight attorneys filed the Memphis
suit (Northcross et al v. Board of
Education et al) for 18 minors and
parents, stating they were acting on
behalf of themselves and all other Ne
gro children and parents. The suit
asks for immediate desegregation of
the public schools at all levels. As an
alternative, the court is asked to di
rect the board of education to present
a plan for “reorganization of the en
tire school system.”
Memphis Mayor Henry Loeb made
this statement shortly after the suit
was filed:
“As mayor, I’m certainly going to
back the school board and it is my
hope that we will exhaust all legal
possibilities in maintaining our posi
tion. We have bent over backwards in
providing equal facilities, and I further
hope that all responsible people will
stop, think and consider.”
The Chattanooga suit (Mapp et al
v. Board of Education et al) likewise
calls first for complete desegregation
and then for the alternative of “com
plete reorganization.”
Five lawyers represent the Chatta
nooga complainants. They include, as
does the Memphis case, chief NAACP
counsel Thurgood Marshall and two
Z. ALEXANDER LOOBY
Lawyer Escapes Injury
Nashville Negro lawyers, Looby and
his associate, Avon Williams.
Attorneys for the Chattanooga school
board filed a motion asking the court
to eliminate from the suit all issues
relative to assignment of teachers. Not
ing that the case raised a brand-new
question in such litigation ,the board
contended that failure to assign Negro
teacher to white schools “could not
affect the rights of the Negro plain
tiffs.”
The board’s motion added: “This
court should not be called upon to
substitute its judgment and discretion
imposed by law in said superintendent
of schools and board of education in
the absence of substantial express
statements of fact indicating arbitrary,
capricious, fraudulent or illegal action
on the part of the superintendent or
the board of education.”
ATTACK STAIRSTEP PLAN
In Knoxville, plaintiffs in the school
desegregation suit there (Goss et al
v. Board of Education et al) asked
Federal Judge Robert L. Taylor to re
ject the school board’s grade-a-year
plan as too slow and as a means to
“perpetuate racial segregation.”
They renewed their request for a
temporary restraining order and for a
preliminary injunction against the
board to prevent any further segre
gation beginning this fall.
In general, the objections to the
Knoxville “stairstep” plan are similar
to those made against the Nashville
plan, now upheld in effect by the U.S.
Supreme Court. The complainants
asked that the plan be turned down
on these grounds:
• That it would not eliminate seg
regation with “all deliberate speed.”
• That the plan does not take into
account the period of almost five years
during which the Knoxville board
(now reconstituted) “completely failed
and refused to comply” with provisions
of the Fourteenth Amendment.
ft That a 12-year desegregation
period is “not necessary in the public
interest” and does not constitute “good
faith compliance at the earliest prac
ticable date.”
ft That the school board has failed
to show that any problems of admin
istration would grow out of full, im
mediate operation on a non-racial
basis.
• That the grade-a-year plan be
ginning in the first grade “forever de
prives” the plaintiffs and other Negroes
now enrolled “of their rights to a
racially unsegregated public educa
tion,” thus violating the Fourteenth
Amendment, and that no one now in
school ever could attend technical and
vocational schools, summer courses and
specialized training.
ft That the portion of the plan pro
viding for pupil transfers violates the
Fourteenth Amendment by providing
“racial factors as valid conditions to
support request for transfer.” These
factors, it was contended, are “mani
festly designed and necessarily oper
ate to perpetuate racial segregation.”
The last objection refers to the pro
vision—an issue in the Nashville liti
gation—by which parents may obtain
transfer of pupils from one school to
another when (1) a student of one
race would otherwise be required to
attend a school previously serving
pupils of the other race; and when (2)
a student would otherwise be required
to attend a school where the majority
of students were of the opposite race.
Another suit involving racial segre
gation in Memphis was filed by Negro
attorneys against Dobbs Houses, Inc.,
operators of a restaurant at the Mu
nicipal Airport. Plaintiff is Jesse H.
Turner, a Negro, executive vice presi
dent and cashier of Tri-State Bank,
who said the restaurant refused to
serve him last year. Turner also is
plaintiff in a suit seeking desegrega
tion of Memphis public libraries.
VISITOR FINED
One of 12 University of Minnesota
students who came to Nashville over
the Easter weekend to show their sup
port for lunch counter “sit-in” dem
onstrators was fined $25 in City Court
on a charge of reckless driving.
Tom Olson, 26, of Minneapolis was
arrested by an officer who said he ran
a red light. He was defended by the
Negro attorneys who have been de
fense counsel in arrests involving the
demonstrations, and Negro leaders
raised his cash bond .
Police said the Minnesota visitors
“had been running stop signs and red
lights all day.” Another of the stu
dents, Phil Schrader Jr., 25, said the
arrest “carries the onus of a Gestapo
tactic.”
STUDENTS FINED
Thirty-one Negro college students
were fined in Memphis in connection
with their refusal to leave Cossitt Li
brary and Brooks Memorial Art Gal
lery. Trial for 23 of the group, the first
arrested, had been postponed when
their four Negro attorneys promised
to work for an end to the students’
anti-segregation demonstrations. But
the “truce” ended when the other eight
were arrested after they occupied two
reading rooms reserved for whites.
Racist John Kasper unsuccessfully
sought release from the Davidson
County Workhouse at Nashville after
serving about half his term on a sen
tence for inciting to riot in connection
with school desegregation. He con
tended he had been sufficiently pun
ished because of what he called “de
plorable” conditions at the workhouse.
Opposing Kasper’s petition, District
Atty. Gen. Harry G. Nichol said the
prisoner had received Nazi literature
and a cash contribution from the lead
er of a Nazi organization.
An early morning explosion April 19
badly damaged the Nashville home of
Z. Alexander Looby, Negro city coun
cilman and attorney who is a main
figure in desegregation movements
throughout the state and is defense
counsel for persons arrested in sit-in
demonstrations.
No one was injured.
Later that day, an assemblage of Ne
groes and a few white people estimated
from 2,000 to 3,000 marched silently
from the Negro college area in west
Nashville to Public Square. Their
leaders had telegraphed Mayor Ben
West, requesting that he meet them on
the courthouse plaza. He did so.
The Rev. C. T. Vivian, a leader in
the protest demonstrations against
segregated food service in variety, de
partment and drug stores, read a pre
pared statement to the mayor and the
crowd. He charged that Mayor West
“has not used the moral weight of his
office to speak out against violence and
hate mongers.”
“By his (West’s) lack of decision,
he has encouraged violence by per
mitting the police to use their author
ity with partiality,” Vivian declared.
MAYOR REPLIES
West, obviously irate at the accusa
tion, replied in a loud voice:
“I deny and resent to the bottom of
my soul the implications you made in
that statement.”
The mayor noted that he had been
responsible for the end of segregation
in the restaurant at Nashville’s mu
nicipal airport. But as to privately op
erated facilities, he said, “I cannot tell
a businessman how to run his busi
ness.”
West told Vivian he could “ask
Alexander Looby what I’ve done”
toward maintaining racial harmony.
West said:
“I appeal to all citizens to end dis
crimination, to have no bigotry, no
bias, no discrimination.”
When asked by one of the student
demonstration leaders, Diane Nash,
whether he recommended that mer
chants open their lunch counters “to
all citizens,” the mayor replied, “Yes.”
The crowd broke its silence to ap
plaud the mayor’s statements on dis
crimination. The Rev. Kelly Miller
Smith, a factor in local Negro activi
ties, commended his remarks. The
demonstrators then dispersed quietly.
Smith said the protest grew directly
out of the bombing of Looby’s home
some eight hours earlier, but “we’ve
been concerned at other incidents of
violence.”
PLEDGES NO LET-UP
Looby, who with his wife was asleep
when a dynamite charge exploded out-
(See TENNESSEE, Page 6)
EXPLOSION WRECKS NASHVILLE NEGRO’S HOME
Broken Windows of Meharry College Framed in Background