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PAGE 6—JUNE I960—SOUTHERN SCHOOL NEWS ARKANSAS Dollarway’s Statement Is Approved by Federal Judge ODELL MONTS (LEFT) CONVICTED IN BOMBING Attorney Harold Flowers, Right, and NAACP’s L. C. Bates LITTLE ROCK, Ark. T\ OLLARWAY SCHOOL BOARD’S statement of policy on the admission of Negro pupils to its white school was approved in fed eral court. (See “Legal Action.”) The board registered three Ne gro first graders in the white school, although no assignments have been made yet. A Negro man who brought two of the youngsters to register at the white school was beaten by two white men. (See “Legal Action.”) A Little Rock Negro boy of 17 years was convicted of taking part in the Feb. 9 explosion at the home of one of the Negro girls attending Central High. (See “Le gal Action.”) Four candidates opposing Gov. Orval E. Faubus’s try for a fourth term kept the campaign hot with charges against him. Three came out against his proposed amend ment to let schools be abolished rather than integrated. (See “Po litical Activity.”) State Sen. Robert Hays Williams of Russellville opposes U.S. Rep. Dale Alford of Little Rock in the Fifth Con gressional District. Amis Guthridge, long-time leader of the Capital Citi zens Council, is running against J. Frank Holt for state attorney general. (See “Political Activity.”) The Little Rock School Board assign ed eight new Negro students in May to attend Central and Hall High Schools next fall. Three of the eight Negro stu dents now in Central and Hall are scheduled to be graduated this year, making 13 assigned to attend the two schools in September. (See “School Boards and Schoolmen.”) Federal Judge J. Smith Henley of Harrison approved the Dollarway School Board’s statement of affirmative policies, which he referred to as a plan. He added that the board would have to use it in good faith and would have to eliminate racial discrimination with it. The judge noted that the board re peatedly had acknowledged its obliga tions under the U.S. Supreme Court decisions and said the board should have a chance to show whether its plan would work. The plaintiffs, who objected to the plan in a hearing April 13, filed appeal to the U.S. Eighth Cir cuit Court. Judge Henley had ordered the Dol larway board to file a statement of the policies it would use to end racial dis crimination. The policies would admit first-grade pupils to the schools select ed by their parents, when possible, and oppose transfers from school to school at grades above the first grade. The board said it did not know whether these policies would bring about de segregation or not. BOARD’S PLAN “From a reading of the report,” Judge Henley said, “it is apparent that the board’s plan purports to eliminate compulsory segregation over a period of time without automatic integration at any grade level.” This is capable of being used unconstitutionally, he said, but he presumed the board would use it constitutionally. “The provisions for the initial as signment of first graders are fair on their face and are sufficient, if applied in good faith,” he said. Judge Henley said the plan did not rule out lateral transfers (above the first grade) if the student met certain conditions. He called the policy against lateral transfers “tenable” but men tioned that such transfers at the lower grades did not present the same prob lems as at the higher grades. The board should not apply the po licy as rigidly in the lower grades as in the higher grades, Henley said, or this could be considered evidence that the policy was adopted “as a device to perpetuate segregation.” Henley ruled that it was all right to give limited consideration to race in making pupil assignment. But he coupled this with a warning that if few or none of the Negroes applying for adrnission to the white school were ad mitted, “the court might find it hard to believe that unlawful and unreasonable racial discrimination is not being prac ticed.” In the last analysis, he said, the worth of the plan depends on the board’s good faith in using it. THREE APPEALS Three appeals in the Dollarway case (Dove v. Parham) have been consolid ated by the U.S. Eighth Circuit Court of Appeals at St. Louis for a single hearing June 27. The appeals ask: 1) That the court overrule Judge Henley’s ruling of Feb. 19 in which he declined to order the plaintiffs ad mitted to the white school. 2) That the court overrule the part of Henley’s ruling of Feb. 19 in which he said the plaintiffs had a right to take their case to federal court; the school board says the complaint should have been filed first in Circuit Court in Jef ferson County. 3) That the court overrule Judge Henley’s approval on April 30 of the statement of “affirmative policies” filed by the school board; the plaintiffs say it offers them no relief and that the board should be required to produce a definite desegregation plan. REGISTERS PUPILS The Dollarway district, at Pine Bluff, registered next fall’s first grade pupils on May 5. In accordance with the po licy statement filed with federal court, the board invited parents to bring their children to register at the school they wanted them to attend. Three Negro children registered at the white school. The board has not made any assign ments for next September. Two of the Negro children, Andrew Algusta Howard and Linda Diane Houston, both six, arrived with their mothers in a car driven by Ivey An derson, 75, a Negro grocer. Anderson waited across the street during the hour the children were in the school and two white men beat him up. Anderson drove away and went to a doctor’s office; he did not report the beating to the sheriff’s office. (The school is in the Pine Bluff suburbs, outside the city limits.) He notified George Howard Jr., Negro attorney and uncle of Andrew Algusta Howard, who asked both the sheriff’s office and school authorities for protection. Sheriff Norman Young and two deputies went to the school and the group of white men scattered. The of ficers stayed until a taxicab came to get the Negro children and their mothers. THIRD CHILD In the afternoon the third Negro child, Delores York, 6, daughter of John D. York, arrived in a taxicab with her father. When they left the school, a group of white men, recognized by witnesses as members of the Dollar way Citizens Council, encircled the Ne groes until a taxicab arrived but did not molest them. Ninety-three first graders, including the three Negroes, were registered at the all-white Dollarway School. Nine ty-three Negroes were registered at the all-Negro Townsend Park School. All received 45-minute written examina tions. The fathers of Linda Diane Houston and Delores York work for the Ar kansas Pallet Co. at Pine Bluff. Andrew Algusta Howard’s father, Andrew Howard, works for a Chicago bakery, although his mother fives at Pine Bluff. This circumstance caused Gov. Fau- bus to comment, “I see where they imported one from Chicago” and to say it seemed to bear out his charge that “outsiders” were taking part in the ra cial unrest in the state. MONTS CONVICTED A 17-year-old Negro boy, Herbert Odell Monts, was convicted in mid-May of dynamiting the home of Carlotta Walls, one of the Negro students in Little Rock Central High. He was sentenced to five years in prison. A jury of seven men and five women, all white, in Pulaski County Circuit Court fixed the prison term at the maximum allowed by law but did not recommend a fine. Another suspect in the Feb. 9 dyna miting, Maceo Antonio Binns Jr., 31, a Negro, will be tried in June. In the two-day trial, a motive for the dynamiting was given for the first time. Investigating officers said Monts told them that the explosion was to cause “commotion and a lot of publicity” so that the Walls family would get money donations from people up North. No one was injured in the explosion. Monts himself did not testify. His at torney, Harold Flowers, said he would appeal. Monts fives only half a block from the Walls house and has known Carlotta all his fife. Monts is the fifth person to be sen tenced in connection with explosions linked to the Little Rock school crisis. Four white men have been sentenced and a fifth is awaiting trial for ex plosions on Labor Day night in 1959. One of the white men pleaded guilty and was sentenced to five years, the others three years. COURT COSTS The cities of Little Rock and North Little Rock were ordered by the fed eral courts to pay a total of $646.31 in court costs, originally charged to the National Assn, for the Advancement of Colored People. The costs were in curred in complaints against “Bennett” ordinances of the two cities. The NAACP won the cases in the U.S. Supreme Court. District Judge Gordon E. Young of Pine Bluff said it was customary to require the losing side to pay the costs. In the ordinances, created by Atty. Gen. Bruce Bennett, the cities attempted to make public the names of NAACP members and con tributors, but the Supreme Court voided them. The Little Rock School Board assign ed eight more Negro students to its two desegregated high schools for the term starting next September—five to Cen tral and three to Hall high schools. Eight Negro students are at the two schools this year with three scheduled to graduate, leaving 13 assigned to at tend next fall. The eight are among 326 Negroes in the ninth grade this year. All ninth graders, white and Negro, were given psychological tests this spring. From these tests, it was learned, the board had judged 35 Negro students as ca pable of adjusting to predominantly white schools. All ninth graders were asked which high school they wanted to attend and it was learned that about 19 Negro stu dents had listed one of the white or bi- racial high schools. Central High has been integrated since 1957, Hall High since 1959. The board announced the assignments at its meeting May 25. Two NAACP of ficers—L. C. Bates, state field secretary, and Rev. J. C. Crenshaw, president of the Little Rock branch—expressed dis satisfaction at the number assigned for next fall. RECEIVE ASSIGNMENTS All ninth graders will receive assign ments for next fall with their final re port cards. Students not satisfied with their assignments may request a change within 10 days and the school board must give them a hearing within 30 days. If still not satisfied, the student may appeal to the courts. As it had announced earlier, the school board restricted its proposed in tegration for next year to the high school grades. According to the de segregation plan under which the board is operating, desegregation is to be extended to the junior high grades when senior high desegregation is suc cessfully completed. In the board’s judgment, the senior high phase is not yet successful. This decision already is the subject of dispute as part of the original Little Rock integration law suits. The three Negro students to graduate from the two integrated high schools this spring are Jefferson Thomas and Carlotta Walls, two of the nine who en tered Central High during the 1957 crisis, and Effie Jones at Hall High School. Though the first primary on July 26 was more than two months away, far too early for campaigning in normal political times, all five Arkansas candi dates were at it during May. As antic ipated, the underlying theme of the campaign was school desegregation—or, more specifically, the record of Gov. Faubus on that issue. This, with Faubus’ unprecedented attempt to win a fourth term, seemed certain to dominate the race. Four of the candidates are conducting anti- Faubus campaigns thus far. For the most part he has just ignored them so far. Opposing Faubus for the Democratic nomination, which is equivalent to election, are Atty. Gen. Bruce Bennett, 42, of El Dorado in south Arkansas; Joe C. Hardin, 62, of Grady, east Ar kansas planter and business executive; Hal Millsap Jr., 38, of Siloam Springs in northwest Arkansas, supermarket owner; and H. E. Williams, 50, of Wal nut Ridge in northeast Arkansas, founder and president of Southern Baptist College. CAMPAIGN ISSUE One of the campaign issues is pro posed Constitutional Amendment 52, the main part of the governor’s segre gation program approved by the 1959 General Assembly. It is now subject to voter action in the November general election. Along with many other pro visions affecting schools, it would allow a school district, when ordered by a court to desegregate, to disband its public school system and to distribute its money equally among its pupils for them to buy an education wherever they could. Three of the candidates have come out against the proposed amendment. Bennett is against it on technical grounds, saying that it is so poorly drawn that if one school district closes its schools, others would be forced to also. Williams is against it. The amend ment wouldn’t avoid integration; it would just destroy the schools, says Williams. Hardin is the most emphatic in his opposition. He says that the day the Little Rock high schools were closed was the worst day in the history of the state and that the public schools must be kept open, come what may. With census figures in from 72 of the 75 counties, Arkansas has lost a little over eight per cent of its 1950 popula tion. All the candidates are blaming this partly on the Faubus administra tion. There are two other races this sum mer in which the candidates’ records in the school racial situation will play prominent if not deciding roles. Amis Guthridge of Little Rock, counsel to the Capital Citizens Council, filed for attorney general against J. Frank Holt of Little Rock, now prosecuting at torney. The Citizens Council never has been happy with Holt, and it went after him openly last fall because of his vigorous prosecution of the white men who dynamited the school board office and two other places. Guthridge defended some of the suspects. He said then that if Holt ran for attorney general, he would oppose him. The other is in the Fifth Congres sional District (six counties in central Arkansas, including Little Rock), where Dr. Dale Alford is seeking renomina tion. Robert Hays Williams of Russell ville, now a state senator, opposes him. Williams said the sole issue was party loyalty. Alford was elected in 1958 after an eight-day write-in cam paign against the Democratic nominee, Brooks Hays. Since then the state Democratic Party has adopted a reso lution specifically excusing Alford for that rupture of the rules. COMMUNITY ACTION The Presbyterian Synod of Arkansas, at Pine Bluff in its 109th annual meet ing, adopted a recommendation sup porting the concept of public education. It adopted the recommendation in view of the proposed constitutional amend ment to allow school districts to aban don their school systems to avoid court-ordered desegregation. Carl M. Olson of Bossier City, La., a barber and an organizer for the Na tional Assn, for the Advancement of White People, spent several days at Little Rock, getting a chapter of NAAWP organized. The incorporators of the Little Rock chapter are Mrs. Margaret E. Morrison, Mrs. Montine C. Ray, Mrs. Emily McCray and Mrs. W. Pennington. Among many other objectives the NAAWP listed these in its charter: To oppose further centralization of federal power; to oppose the NAACP; to work for the preservation of states rights; to combat forced integration; to repeal the Sixteenth (federal income tax) Amend ment; and to do any and all things necessary to further the Caucasian peo ple of the United States. Olson said he would like for the NAAWP to absorb the other segrega tion groups, but that proposition got a cool reception. Two changes have been made in the Arkansas State Advisory Committee to the United States Civil Rights Commis sion. J. Gaston Williamson and Rich ard C. Butler, both Little Rock law yers, were appointed to replace Joshua K. Shepherd, Little Rock insurance executive, and Dr. Marshall T. Steele of Conway, president of Hendrix College. Circuit Judge William J. Kirby fined five Negro students from Philander Smith College of Little Rock $500 each and sentenced them to 60 days in jail for the first sit-in at Little Rock on Mar. 10. This doubled the penalties imposed on the students in Municipal Court, which they had appealed. Eight more students, arrested April 13 during sit-ins, are scheduled for trial before Judge Kirby. At an NAACP meeting at Pine Bluff, L. C. Bates of Little Rock, field rep resentative, chided students at Arkansas AM&N College for Negroes at Pine Bluff for not holding sit-in demonstra tions. He did not urge them to. E. E. Evans, acting president of the state-supported college, wrote Bates that he had advised the students not to undertake sit-ins because it was “against the best interest of the college and against the law.” Bates answered that Evans seemed to be placing the constitutional rights of his students second to the monetary prospects of the college. At Jacksonville, Fla., Dr. Marion A. Boggs, pastor of the Little Rock Sec ond Presbyterian Church, was elected moderator of the Southern Presby terians. His supporters called him “a focal point of reconciliation in a troubled community.” He backed the Little Rock School Board in its effort to obey court desegregation orders and opposed the closing of the high schools. # # #