Newspaper Page Text
TENNESSEE
SOUTHERN SCHOOL NEWS—JUNE I960—PAGE 7
New Test Slated for Pupil Assignment Law
NASHVILLE, Tenn.
'T'he Memphis Board of Educa
tion cited its right to operate
under Tennessee’s pupil assign
ment law in asking that a school
desegregation suit against the
board be dismissed. (See “Legal
Action.”)
In Chattanooga, U.S. District
Judge Leslie R. Darr dismissed
from a school desegregation case
all issues relating to teacher as
signments. (See “Legal Action.”)
Judge Robert Taylor set June
30 to hear arguments in the Knox
ville school desegregation case.
(See “Legal Action.”)
Lunch counters at six Nashville drug,
dime and department stores were quiet
ly desegregated without incident under
terms of a secret agreement between
Negro leaders and the merchants. (See
“Community Action.”)
The Tennessee Advisory Committee
to the U.S. Civil Rights Commission
said it will investigate charges of bias
on the part of Knoxville firms and in
stitutions receiving federal money. (See
“Miscellaneous.”)
LEGAL ACTION
A new test of Tennessee’s pupil
assignment law is scheduled in the
Memphis school desegregation case
(Northcross et al v. Board of Educa-
cation of the City of Memphis et al).
Attorneys for the board cited the law
May 6 in asking federal court to dis
miss the suit.
“Plaintiffs have not exhausted the
administrative remedies provided by
the Tennessee pupil assignment law,”
said the board’s answer, filed by attor
neys Jack Petree and Larry Creasen.
Only one of the 18 students whose
parents brought the suit had applied
for a transfer from a Negro to a white
school, the board said, and no appeal
was attempted when the application
was turned down.
The pupil assignment law, passed by
the 1957 Legislature as part of the pro
gram of former Gov. Frank G. Clem
ent, gives local school boards exclusive
authority in assigning students to
schools. It lists 19 factors to be con
sidered in making assignments, but
does not mention race directly.
LAW CONCLUDES
The law concludes with the phrase:
“together with any and all other factors
which the board may consider pertin
ent, relevant or material in their effect
upon the welfare and best interest of
the applicant, other pupils of the coun-
ty, city or special school district as a
whole and the inhabitants of the coun
ty, city or special school district.”
No court yet has ruled directly on
the constitutionality of the act. It was
dealt a body blow, however, by U. S.
Judge William E. Miller in a February
1958 ruling on the Nashville school de
segregation case (Southern School
News, March 1958).
Miller avoided a decision on the law’s
constitutionality but said, in effect, that
it could not be used as a defense in a
school desegregation suit. Nothing in
the act, he pointed out, “would pre
clude the board of education from tak
ing into account racial distinctions in
making pupil assignments.”
The requirement that administrative
remedies be exhausted before appealing
to a federal court does not apply, Mil
ler said, unless the administrative rem
edy is “adequate.”
SETS HEARING
In Knoxville, U.S. District Judge
Robert Taylor set June 30 to hear ar
guments in the local school desegrega
tion case (Goss et al v. Board of Edu
cation of the City of Knoxville et al).
The board has submitted a 12-year
desegregation plan similar to Nash
ville’s but attorneys for the 17 Negro
children who brought the suit claim the
plan is too slow and would perpetuate
racial segregation (SSN, May 1960).
JUDGE RULES
In Chattanooga, U.S. District Judge
Leslie R. Darr ruled May 5 that teacher
assignment could not be an issue in the
school desegregation case there (Mapp
et al v. Board of Education of Chatta
nooga et al).
The Negro pupils, through their par
ents not cjly had asked complete de
segregation of the city schools on a
pupil level, but also had asked for an
injunction restraining the school board
from assigning teachers, principals and
other personnel solely upon the basis
of race or color.
In a memorandum opinion, Darr
ruled that no rights of the pupils are
affected by teacher assignments, add
ing:
“The equal protection of the laws
for the minority group would not re
quire a change in the white schools
for good or for bad, but would permit
the Negro children to attend school
with white children with equal condi
tions, present and future.”
SUIT RETRIAL
A retrial of the Memphis bus deseg
regation suit has been set for June 27
in federal court. The suit, originally
dismissed by Judges Marion S. Boyd
and John D. Martin on June 27, 1958,
was appealed Dec. 15, 1958, to the U.S.
Supreme Court, which ordered the re
trial.
Suits asking desegregation of the
Memphis municipal auditorium and city
recreational facilities were filed May 13
and 17. Negro attorneys asked that city
officials be enjoined from operating the
facilities on a racially segregated basis.
The facilities include museums, art gal
leries, golf courses, tennis courts, play
grounds, parks and boat docks.
NEW TRIAL
Circuit Judge Chester C. Chattin set
June 1 to hear arguments on a motion
for a new trial in the Highlander Folk
School case. The controversial Mont-
eagle, Tenn., adult education institution
was ordered closed and its charter re
voked following a hearing at Altamont,
Tenn., last November.
The trial resulted in findings that the
school violated the state’s compulsory
segregation laws, was operated for the
private gain of Myles Horton, its foun
der and director, and sold beer without
a legal permit.
COMMUNITY ACTION
Lunch counters at six Nashville drug,
dime and department stores were quiet
ly desegregated May 10 under the
terms of a secret agreement worked
out between Negro leaders and the
merchants.
The desegregation, first in any ma
jor southern city outside of Texas, fol
lowed several weeks of sit-in demon
strations, mass arrests, sporadic vio
lence and an economic boycott. The
bombing of a Negro attorney’s home
April 19 heightened tension (SSN,
March, April, May 1960).
After the settlement, no incidents of
any kind were reported as the Negroes,
OKLAHOMA CITY, Okla.
'T’he Oklahoma City Board of
-*■ Education decided to replace
white faculties with Negro teach
ers at two schools where student
bodies are almost entirely Negro
now.
It also approved a sweeping
change in eastside elementary at
tendance areas, which will give
Central High School, already in
tegrated, an additional 75 ninth-
graders, mostly Negro.
In the process, integration of
another grade school earlier this
year was revealed. (See “School
Boards and Schoolmen.”)
Langston, all-Negro community
and home of the state’s only Ne
gro university, was forced to vote
its high school out of existence.
(See “School Boards and School
men.”)
Merger of three rural school dis
tricts in Seminole County raised the
possibility a neighboring white school
may become integrated. (See “School
Boards and Schoolmen.”)
Oklahoma City school administrators
consider the racial change of faculties
at Webster Junior High and Culbert
son Grade School a minor by-product
mainly student leaders, entered the
stores in groups of two and three, sat
down at the counters and ordered
meals.
Under the plan, only small groups
were to ask for service the first few
days and only during slack business
hours. Beginning May 18, however, all
controls were off. Since then, Negroes
have been served at the counters on
the same basis as whites.
MANY JUVENILES
Ninety-eight Negroes, many of them
juveniles, were arrested in Chattanoo
ga lunch counter sit-ins May 12, 13 and
16.
By the end of the month the sit-ins
were continuing with the Negro groups
limited to six persons at any one time
in one store. This followed the sugges
tion of Juvenile Court Judge Burrell
Barker.
FIVE ARRESTED
In Memphis, five LeMoyne College
students were arrested May 17 during
sit-ins. At one point a minor scuffle
broke out between the Negroes and a
crowd of 200 white persons, but it was
quickly settled.
The following day, Police Commis
sioner Claude A. Armour announced
that police will move in promptly in
the future to break up sit-in demon
strations without waiting for restaurant
owners to make a complaint.
In Knoxville, Knoxville College stu
dents sat in at four Gay Street lunch
counters May 13. No arrests were made.
AIRTIGHT BOYCOTT
In Haywood County, where no Ne
groes have been allowed to vote since
Reconstruction days, 90 of them regis
tered May 17 and 18, but a practically
airtight economic boycott has forced
many families to leave.
A similar boycott is under way in
neighboring Fayette County, where 420
of 10,000 voting-age Negroes are regis
tered.
The prime target of the Haywood
boycott is Odell Sanders, a Negro gro
cer without any groceries. He said
white merchants have told wholesalers
not to make any deliveries to him or
they will stop buying from them. At
one time he had 25 white salesmen call
ing on him, he told reporters, and now
he has none.
In Fayette, John McFerren, who led
the voting drive there, said he cannot
get groceries for his store or gasoline
for his filling station.
In both counties, crop loans, 30-day
credit and insurance reportedly have
been cut off from Negro families at
tempting to register or vote.
A new election board was named in
Fayette to replace the board that re-
of a general revamping of attendance
areas on the east side. The key devel
opment was converting the all-Negro
Moon Junior High into an elementary
school to achieve a more even distribu
tion of enrollments in that area.
Most of Oklahoma City’s school de
segregation has occurred in areas bor
dering the Negro section. Webster and
Culbertson were white schools before
1955 but both became integrated when
segregation ended officially in that
year. As white families moved out of
the area in the next five years, the
proportion of Negro pupils in the
schools rose until they became the ma
jority.
William French, director of research
for the Board of Education, reported
Webster had only seven white pupils
in a student body of about 500 this
spring. Only three regular pupils out
of a similar total at Culbertson were
white. (An additional 35 white children
attended special education classes for
the hard of hearing and partially
sighted. They were transported from
other parts of the city. The classes will
be moved to a southside school next
year.)
EXPRESSED DOUBT
French expressed doubt any white
children will attend either Webster or
Culbertson this fall.
Supt. Melvin W. Barnes said admin
istrators and board members talked to
a number of groups before ordering
the change in faculties. He said the
change seemed logical in view of the
population shift, but he pointed to
other considerations. Two Negro
schools, Page and Dunbar, have been
signed in April in protest of FBI in
vestigations of alleged voting rights
violations. Appointed to the new com
mission were J. R. Morton, principal of
Fayette County High School, and Dr.
F. S. McKnight of Somerville, both
Democrats, and Mrs. Julius P. Davis,
Republican.
Representatives of 500 colleges and
universities from nearly every state at
tended the formal inauguration of Dr.
Andrew D. Holt as president of the
University of Tennessee on May 14.
In his inaugural address, Dr. Holt
pledged to maintain high academic
standards at the university in the face
of mushrooming enrollments in the
next few years.
Segregation is expected to be a ma
jor issue this summer in the campaign
of U.S. Sen. Estes Kefauver for a third
term. Kefauver was one of only three
southern senators who refused to sign
the “Southern Manifesto” or “Declara
tion of Constitutional Principles” in
May 1956, and generally is considered
a moderate on race questions.
On the other hand his opponent,
Judge Andrew T. (Tip) Taylor of Jack-
son, campaigned on a strong segrega
tionist platform when running for gov
ernor in 1958.
Harold Fleming, executive director of
the Southern Regional Council, told a
bi-racial Nashville group May 17 he
considers the Negro student protest
movement as important a development
as the 1954 school desegregation deci
sion of the U.S. Supreme Court.
Addressing the Nashville Community
Relations Conference on the sixth an
niversary of the high court’s decision,
Fleming urged the South “not to repeat
the mistakes of six years ago.”
Following the court decision, he said,
there was a period during which public
opinion in the South was “fluid enough
so that the right kind of leadership
among the most crowded elementary
buildings in the city. Neither site has
room for an addition.
Since Moon and Webster were close
together for junior high schools, a re
sult of the old segregated system, “it
seemed quite reasonable to take Moon
as an elementary school and to transfer
the Moon Junior High staff and student
body to Webster,” Dr. Barnes explained.
Webster will take all of the seventh -
and eighth-graders from the area south
of Northeast 23rd Street and east of
Santa Fe Street it now shares with
Moon. Any white students in the area
are expected to transfer to Central,
located several blocks to the west.
Ninth-graders living in the eastern
four-fifths of the area will attend
Douglass High School, while those in
the western end will go to Central.
This will mean a net increase for Cen
tral of about 75 ninth-graders, mostly
Negro. Central has also been integrated
since 1955. While the number of Ne
groes enrolled there is not known, it
is believed to be well in excess of 100.
NEW TEACHERS
Dr. Barnes conceded some new Ne
gro teachers will have to be hired but
he said the number needed has not
been determined. Many of the 360 Ne
gro teachers displaced by desegrega
tion in Oklahoma are expected among
the applicants.
Thus far, the Oklahoma City board’s
policy has been against assigning white
and Negro teachers to the same facul
ty. The exception has been at Culbert
son, where a special education teacher
and a physical education instructor
were Negroes.
could have created an atmosphere of
conciliation and accommodation.”
“But instead there was inaction and
inertia, creating a vacuum which was
quickly filled by the wrong kind of
leadership,” he said.
WILKINS PREDICTS
Roy Wilkins, executive secretary of
the National Assn, for the Advancement
of Colored People, predicted in Mem
phis May 17 there will be no bloc vot
ing by Negroes in the presidential elec
tion this year “unless there is an over
riding civil rights issue.”
Declaring the NAACP does not back
any candidates, he said:
“Nixon has a good civil rights record.
Kennedy’s is good but not as good as
Humphrey’s was. Symington has a good
voting record, a good Air Force record
and a good civil rights record in his
own business affairs. Johnson voted for
the 1957 civil rights bill and also for
the 1960 one, although all the teeth
were pulled out of it.”
Addressing a gathering of Negro high
school and college students at Mt. Olive
Cathedral, Wilkins advised them to
“address yourselves to better scholar
ship, better grades, better maimers and
better behavior.”
“These help make better citizens,” he
said. “The white man has added some
problems on to us, but there are some
we can correct ourselves.”
The Tennessee Advisory Committee
of the U.S. Civil Rights Commission
announced May 16 it will investigate
charges that several Knoxville firms
and institutions that receive federal
money are practicing race discrimina
tion.
The committee received a report from
the Knoxville Area Human Relations
Council, which said no Negroes are
employed in six federal agencies hav
ing offices in Knoxville.
The report also said no local hospi
tals offer nurses’ training to Negroes,
although they receive federal funds,
and Negro students are not allowed in
the dormitories at University of Ten
nessee, although federal money was
used for their construction.
FORM COUNCIL
Dr. Merl R. Eppse, professor of his
tory at Tennessee A&I State Univer
sity, Nashville, announced the forma
tion of a Council for Research and In
formation on People of Color.
He said the organization, chartered
as a welfare corporation under state
law, was formed to “collect, compile
and distribute data and information
about the history, skills, art, music, lit
erature and other cultural achieve
ments of people of color.” # # #
With Webster and Culbertson switch
ing to all-Negro student bodies and
faculties, the total of integrated schools
in Oklahoma City will be reduced to
seven.
INTEGRATED SCHOOLS
Among them is Harmony Grade
School, located in an area into which
Negro families have moved the past
year or two. Negro enrollments were
expected there for the first time last
fall but none occurred. However,
French said two Negro children en
tered Harmony at the second semester.
The other integrated schools are
Central High and five grade schools:
Lincoln, evenly divided between Ne
groes and whites; Edison, about 12 Ne
gro pupils; Walnut Grove, believed to
have a majority of Negroes; Riverside,
believed to have a majority of whites;
and Wilson, one Negro student.
Northeast High School and Mark
Twain, Willard, and Washington grade
schools also could become integrated
this fall since Negroes live within their
attendance areas. So far the Negroes
have chosen to transfer to Negro
schools.
CLOSE SCHOOL
The State Department of Education
reported all-Negro Langston High
School in Logan County will be dis
continued, beginning in 1960-61. The
elementary school, with grades one
through eight, will be continued.
Dr. Oliver Hodge, state superintend
ent of public instruction, said Langston
was one of a number of heavily state-
aided districts warned several months
(See OKLAHOMA, Page 8)
OKLAHOMA
Two Oklahoma City Schools To Get Negro Teachers