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PAGE 12—JUNE I960—SOUTHERN SCHOOL NEWS VIRGINIA County Supervisors Take Steps To Aid Private Schools RICHMOND, Va. T he Prince Edward County Board of Supervisors has taken steps under new Virginia laws to make public funds availa ble to private schools. (See “Community Action.”) Headquarters of the Textile Workers Union of America re lieved the officers of the 2,000- member local in Front Royal and took over direct control to pre vent the local from carrying out its plan to purchase bonds to aid construction of a private, segre gated high school. ( See “Com munity Action.”) Eight Negro high school stu dents filed suit for admission to white schools in Grayson County or the city of Galax. (See “Legal Action.”) The Prince Edward County super visors, who last year sharply reduced taxes when public schools were aban doned, adopted a tentative budget rais ing taxes in order to make funds available to the county’s privately op erated segregated schools. Acting tinder laws passed by the General Assembly this year, the super visors propose aiding the private sys tem in two ways: 1) By direct appropriation of $270,- 000 for “educational purposes” for schooling in private, nonsectarian classes (under authority of Senate Bill 284). 2) By allowing taxpayers credit, up to 25 per cent of the total tax due, for contributions to private nonsectarian schools (under authority of House Bill 505). When the supervisors decided to abandon public schools last year, they lowered the county property tax rate from $3.40 per $100 assessment to $1.60. Under the tentative budget now adopted, the rate would go up to $4. However, for practical purposes, the rate would be $3 for taxpayers who took advantage of the credit for con tributions to private schools. CHANGES UNLIKELY The tentative budget, set for formal hearing on June 7, must be finally ap proved by June 30. It was considered unlikely that the tentative budget would be materially changed before final adoption. In addition to the county funds, un der Senate Bill 238 each elementary child in Prince Edward (or anywhere else in Virginia) is eligible for $125 in state money per year for educational purposes, and each secondary school child is eligible for $150. These “schol arships” are available to any child, white or Negro, to help pay tuition at any public school outside his own lo cality or to any private nonsectarian school. Similar tuition grants have been used during the past school year not only by children seeking to avoid at tending integrated public schools, but also by children who have chosen, for a wide variety of reasons, not to at tend the schools to which they nor mally would have been assigned. (In the Norfolk area, some white children who normally would be attending seg regated county public schools are us ing the tuition money to attend Nor folk city’s integrated public schools.) During the current year, the Prince Edward School Foundation has fi nanced the operation of its private schools for white children through contributions. The foundation was afraid that its legal right to operate segregated schools might be jeopardized if it accepted tuition grant money which came originally from public treasuries. However, certain changes were made in the law by the 1960 General Assembly, and the Foundation appears to feel now that acceptance of grants under the revised statute would not endanger the program. $100 PER CHILD Roughly, the $270,000 in county funds proposed to be allocated for “educational purposes” would amount to about $100 for each of the county’s school-age children. As of the pres ent, however, it is doubtful that Ne gro children will be eligible, as they have no schools now and no prospects for any next year. The grants go only to children attending schools which meet certain standards established by the State Board of Education. In another action, the Prince Edward supervisors rejected the $803,700 public school budget offered by the county school board. The school board had gone through the legal formality of preparing a budget, even though there are no public schools to be operated. On the day prior to the supervisors’ action on the school budget, five of the six school board members resigned. The five issued a statement saying, in effect, that they had been the target of much unjustified criticism from other county citizens. They defended their actions as board members, and specifically dwelt at length on their reasons for declining to sell the coun ty’s white high school to the private school foundation. They also implied that the closing of schools last year to prevent integra tion was unnecessary since the schools could have continued operating, at least for a time, on a segregated basis. WAS ON APPEAL They said that at the time the super visors abandoned schools last summer, the Prince Edward segregation case was on appeal in the courts and that thus no final integration order had been entered. Furthermore, said the resigning board members, the supervisors knew that “there was not a single applica tion before the school board for the assignment of a Negro pupil to a white school.” Also, they added, “there was already in the hands of the school board a 100 per cent return of Negro registration application for assignment to R. R. Moton (Negro) High School in 1959-60.” Defending their refusal to sell the Farmville High School to the private school foundation, the five board mem bers said they felt that the people of the county as a whole should bear the responsibility for such far-reaching action, and that the law provides pro cedure by which the people can bring about a referendum on the sale of school property. While the resigning members de clared they had tried in every legal way to maintain segregation in the schools, they also raised the question whether the citizens of the county had fully considered the implications of abandoning public schools and the dif ficulties of operating a private system over a long period of time. NO PUBLIC SCHOOLS On the legal front, there are no in dications of further moves in the county’s desegregation suit (Allen v. Prince Edward County School Board). A federal district court has ordered the public schools desegregated but there are no public schools to desegre gate. Meanwhile, on the political front, white residents of the county have been registering to vote in large num bers. During one recent period, of 119 citizens who registered, 108 were white. The drive to get white persons reg istered follows a similar campaign con ducted among Negroes by the NAACP last fall. WARREN CONTROVERSY Like Prince Edward’s, Warren Coun ty’s private segregated school system was a major focus of attention in Vir ginia last month, though for different reasons. Warren County was in the spotlight due to a controversy within the Tex tile Workers Union of America over a TWUA local’s effort to aid in the con struction of a new building for the private high school. National headquarters of the union removed the local’s officers, appointed an administrator and froze the local unit’s assets. Here is the background: When Warren County High School was closed in the fall of 1958 under Virginia’s now-illegal massive resist ance laws, the private Warren County Educational Foundation set up a school to take care of the approximately 800 students. Later, the public high school re-opened, but about half of the 800 students continued attending the pri vate facility. From the beginning, the private sys tem has been supported by the TWUA local at the American Viscose Corp. plant in Front Royal, the county seat. $1 PEE WEEK Members originally donated $1 a week toward support of the school, and recently they voted to spend $8,- 000 of the union’s money to buy bonds to help finance construction of a per manent building for the John S. Mosby Academy, the private high school. The union’s national headquarters, taking the view that this would be un authorized non-union use of the funds, relieved the local officers of their posi tions. Later, the credit union serving em ployes at the plant announced that it would begin collecting voluntary con tributions from workers desiring to support construction of the private school. LEGAL ACTION Eight Negro high school students of Grayson County in southwestern Vir ginia filed suits for admission to white schools either in the county or in the city of Galax (Goins v. School Board of Grayson County; Goins v. School Board of City of Galax). The eight now travel 90 to 100 miles a day from their homes near Galax to and from a Negro school in an ad joining county. Grayson has no Negro high school. White students who live in the same general area as the Negro petitioners attend the high school in Galax. Six of the eight had filed suit against Grayson County last fall for admission to the Galax school, but District Judge Roby C. Thompson held that he would not order them admitted to the Galax school since that city was not a party to the suit. So the new filing brings Galax into the picture as a defendant, and also increases by two the number of Ne groes seeking admission to white schools now attended by Grayson’s white youths. ISSUES ORDER Judge Thompson issued an order, ef fective May 21, prohibiting Danville from operating its public library on a segregated basis. City Council closed the library May 20. The council voted 6 to 3 to hold an advisory referendum June 14 on whether the library should be kept closed, opened on a desegregated ba sis, operated through the use of book mobiles only, or turned over to a pri vate foundation. The suit had been brought by sev eral Negro teen-agers who were de nied admittance to the city’s Confed erate Memorial Library. Hustings Court Judge Moscoe Hunt- ley upheld lower court convictions of (See VIRGINIA, Page 13) qfyudc^ment ~^£ff^irrned Text of Court of Appeals Decision in Alexandria Case The U.S. Fourth Circuit Court of Appeals upheld the Alexandria, Va., school hoard’s refusal to ad mit five Negro children to white schools on the basis of residence and academic decision. The April 20 decision follows in part: “The application of fourteen Negro children, through their parents, to the School Board of the City of Alexandria, Virginia, to be transferred from colored to white schools in the city gave rise to this litigation. The School Board rejected all of the applications and the plaintiffs brought this suit, alleging that the actions of the Board had been taken pursuant to the policy of segregating the races in the public schools in the city and praying that the Board be enjoined from pursuing this policy and also for further relief. After a hearing the District Judge ordered that nine of the students should be admitted to the schools of their choice at the opening of the schools on Feb ruary 10, 1959, and refused the suggestion of the defendants that the admissions be deferred until the commencement of the next session of the schools in September, 1960. The judge, however, denied the motion of five of the applicants for further relief on the ground that they were dis qualified to enter the desired school because of residence or academic deficiency. The Board did not appeal from the order admitting the nine children and the case comes to this court only on the appeal of the remaining five children. “Common to all the cases is the contention that the action of the School Board in rejecting the applications was based solely on racial grounds. They complain of the formulation and enforce ment of a resolution adopted by the School Board on October 28, 1958, governing the assignment of pupils applying for transfer or initial enrollment in the public schools of the city, under which the School Board purported to act in passing upon the application for transfers in the suit. The gist of the complaint is that the action of the School Board was designed and applied in such a way so as to continue the existing segregated school system, thus depriving the Negro children of their constitutional rights. “The District Judge also found, as to the chil dren who were refused admission to white schools on the basis of overcrowding, that the ratio of enrollment to capacity in the schools applied to was not so great as to justify any exclusion for the proposed slight increase. Of the five appel lants, whom the judge found disqualified . . . two were denied transfer on the basis of their mental capacity and attainment and three because they resided closer to the Negro high school they had been attending than to the white school to which they sought enrollment. Therefore, it is only the scholarship and residence criteria with which we are concerned in this appeal. Not Contended “It is not contended by the appellants that resi dence and intelligence or scholarship attainment tests may never be properly applied in determin ing the particular schools that children shall at tend ... In the absence of a showing that these factors are used in such a way as to deprive indi viduals of their constitutional rights, they are, of course, not objectionable on constitutional grounds . . . The objection in the instant case is that the criteria were applied in such a way as to circum vent the constitutional requirement that a state shall not maintain its school system on a racially segregated basis. If this were true, it would be dispositive of the case and completely justify the appeal. However, the peculiar facts shown by this record do not sustain the charge. When the reso lution was adopted the administrative officials of the public schools of Virginia were confronted with an extremely difficult situation and the School Board of Alexandria did not immediately place the resolution or the criterion into effect. To have done so would have occasioned the seizure and closure of each school to which biracial as signments were made. Virginia’s ‘Massive Resist ance Laws’ had not then been declared unconsti tutional. They required Virginia’s Governor to seize and close any school to which biracial as signments were made, and this he had done in Norfolk. It was only after those laws were de clared unconstitutional by Virginia’s Supreme Court of Appeals and by a federal three-judge district court that the school board had the power to operate schools administered on a racially non- discriminatory basis . . . “The testimony shows that these fourteen were the only applications for transfer or enrollment to come up during the week which elapsed be tween January 23, 1959, and the final hearing in this case on January 30, 1959. While it appears that there were some transfers and enrollments after October 28, to which the criteria of the plan were not applied, all of those were processed prior to the activation of the plan on January 23, 1959. Since its activation, a selective exemption from the criteria of some applications for transfer, or of some initial enrollments in the public schools, is not shown on this record. If this were shown, then we would be faced with a different case than is now before us. “Schools officials testified that when the plan was activated it applied prospectively to all pupils. The resolution provides for its prospective use in connection with all applications for ‘transfer, en rollment or placement.’ School principals were informed by a directive that henceforth the plan applied to all ‘transfers,’ and we do not under stand that the omission of the words ‘enrollment or placement’ was intended to restrict the appli cation of the criteria to narrower limits than specified in the resolution. We cannot say on this record it will not be applied to enrollments as well as transfers, and to white as well as transfers, and to white as well as Negro. The fact that the plan was first applied, within three days after the clarifying decisions, to the applications of these fourteen Negro pupils creates no constitutional objection. Every plan and every change in plans must have an initial application. The first pupil or group of pupils to which it is applied has not been thought exempt from its operation. Dual Attendance Areas “Obviously the maintenance of a dual system of attendance areas based on race offends the constitutional rights of the plaintiffs and others similarly 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 than the activation of the plan in the present record affords us, that the continu ance of the dual system is not contemplated. In order that there may be no doubt about the mat ter, the enforced maintenance of such a dual sys tem 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 . . . Two Criteria “The two criteria of residence and academic prep-redness, applied to pupils seeking enroll ment and transfers, could be properly used as a plan to bring about racial desegregation in ac cordance with the Supreme Court’s directive. The record in this case is insufficient 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 frustrating the constitution al requirement laid down by the Supreme Court. If this is later shown to be the case, then the ac tion of the School Board would not escape the condemnation of the courts. If the criteria should be applied only to Negroes seeking transfers or 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, applied only to applications for transfer and not to application for initial enrollment by children not previously attending the city’s school system, then such actions would also be subject to attack on constitutional grounds, for by reason of the existing segregation pattern it will be Negro chil dren, primarily, who seek transfers. “The appellants’ contentions are based, not so much upon what is shown to have happened, as upon what they fear will happen. We are mindful that in judging the action taken by the Board in these cases, so soon after the restoration of its control over the school system, we are afforded no context in which to test the Board’s purposes. In these circumstances we are permitted to accept at full face value its disavowal of any discrimina tory motivations. Should the record in a future case supply evidence that the Board has in fact employed the criteria for racial discriminations, its actions would be open to attack upon constitu tional grounds. In the present instance the judg ment is affirmed.”