Below is the OCR text representation for this newspapers page.

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