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SOUTHERN SCHOOL NEWS—AUGUST I960—PAGE 9
- MORTH CAROLINA
all
lYancey Case Heard;
ily.
f Ruling Expected Soon
‘C-
ia CHARLOTTE, N.C.
on
iat A decision may be made this
eir x*- month whether Negro stu-
nd dents in Yancey County will be
he assigned to white schools. The stu-
e- dents, without a public school for
or nearly two years, had their case
ne heard in Western District Federal
court in July. (See “Legal Ac-
n- tion. )
ed Chapel Hill, home of the Uni-
s " verity of North Carolina, will ad-
” mit Negro students to the first
grade this fall. The school board,
1- however, has specifically declined,
after an appeal, to admit other
I Negro students to higher grades.
(See “School Boards and School
men.”)
Requests for changes in assign
ments, from Negro to white
schools, are pending in several
n North Carolina communities and
d are scheduled for decisions in
August. (See “School Boards and
e Schoolmen.”)
ts The North Carolina advisory
“ committee to the Civil Rights
Commission has been asked to de-
,f clare publicly that it finds the
o state’s school policy to be one of
r continued racial segregation. A
~ decision has been delayed until
September. (See “Miscellane
ous.”)
j A hearing has been held in Western
District federal court on a long-stand
ing suit by parents of Negro children
> in Yancey County who seek an in-
> junction to prohibit the school board
’ from operating segregated public
schools.
Federal District Judge Wilson War-
lick heard testimony for two days in
Asheville, then directed attorneys for
the students and the school board to
submit written briefs by Aug. 10. He
expects to rule on the requested in
junction after that date.
The Yancey County case had its
beginning in the fall of 1958 when the
Parents of the 32 Negro students in
the mountainous county refused to
send their children to the one-room,
one-teacher Negro school. It had been
condemned by a Yancey grand jury
nnd the school board had employed
"hat the parents regarded as an un
qualified teacher.
high school students in Yancey (the
county seat is Burnsville, 40 miles
northeast of Asheville) had for some
>ears been transported to Asheville
public schools at the expense of the
ancey board. This is a common prac-
lc e in several western North Carolina
mountain counties where the Negro
Population is so small that organization
0 a separate Negro high school is
impractical.
° b TAI\ED permission
Parents of the Negro students sough
, d obtained school board permissioi
k nave their children transported daih
SO ^ JUS to Asheville, a round trip o
miles. They also contend they wer(
the'^ 36 ^ a new school by the end o
wh't” 100 ! year, a promise, they say
ea r been made several time;
u *" r but which had never been kep
ore school board.
* the end of the 1958-59 schoo:
p r ’ no new school was in sight, sc
act i^ nts °f 27 of the Negro students
the fj Under the transfer provisions oi
act Carolina pupil placemenl
tp ’ a ®hed that the children be assigned
^anc sc ^'°°^ s ni Yancey County
of ^ as a total school population
ele at>OUt 4 ,000, about 3,000 of them
ontary grade students.
s tud :? were 24 Negro elementary
student and ei^ht Negro high school
fu 7) in the county at last count,
assign ance Y school board declined tc
Sc hool ” e stu< i e nts to white Yancey
and assigned them, instead.
back to Negro schools in Asheville by
agreement with the Asheville school
board.
The suit to enjoin the Yancey board
from operating segregated schools was
then filed in the fall of 1959.
PARENTS REFUSED
Meanwhile, Negro parents refused
to send their children to Asheville
schools. They set up, instead, a private
instructional program in Griffith Me
morial AME Zion Church in Burnsville
with one teacher. The Burnsville Edu
cational Project, formed by white and
Negro citizens with most of the sup
port coming from Asheville, raised the
money to pay the teacher and to send
the high school students to Allen High
School in Asheville, a private Meth
odist school.
Also, in the meantime, the Yancey
Board of Education obtained a loan
of $30,000 from the state literary fund,
administered by the State Board of
Education, for the construction of a
two-room school for Negro students.
It is projected as a two-teacher school
(there had been one in the old school)
with elementary and high school in
struction.
Mrs. E. R. Ohle, white housewife at
the Celo community, a philosophical
organization consisting of about 50
persons who own property jointly on
Celo mountain about five miles from
Burnsville, brought suit against
the Yancey Board of Education in a
state court to restrain the board from
spending money for the Negro school.
DENIED PETITION
Superior Court Judge George B. Pat
ton denied the petition for the re
straining order against the board, how
ever, and ruled that the new school
building was necessary to the Yancey
school system and that the school
board had acted in good faith in mak
ing plans for a new Lincoln Park
school at Burnsville.
Thus, when the federal case came
to trial this month, the Negro students
had:
• Spent the school year 1958-59 be
ing transported to Asheville schools.
• Spent the school year 1959-60 at
tending privately supported classes,
either at Allen High in Asheville or at
the school in the church basement in
Burnsville.
Testimony during the hearing be
fore Judge Warlick came from seven
parents who outlined their efforts by
petition and request to obtain admis
sion of their children to East Yancey
High School, Cane River High School
and Burnsville Elementary School.
Attorneys have asked Judge Warlick
to rule in the case in time for the
opening of school in September.
■HBfeAa
SCHOOL BOARDS
AND SCHOOLMEN
The Chapel Hill School Board has
upheld a previous decision to deny
admission of Negro students to white
schools at levels beyond the first
grade.
The board voted, late in June, to
admit three Negro students to the first
grade of an elementary school. This
was in line with a policy announced
last year by the board when it turned
down all transfer requests from Ne
groes. At the time, the board said, ad
missions would be made this year at
the first grade level on the basis of
geography, provided a request from a
Negro parent was made.
After the board admitted three Ne
gro students for the fall of this year,
five of the nine Negro students who
had sought admission to higher grades
appealed to the board for further con
sideration.
The board then voted three to one
(with the board’s Negro member, the
Rev. R. J. Manley voting to admit
the Negro students) to deny the re
quests of the five appealing students.
One of the students denied admis
sion was Stanley Vickers, who was
also denied admission last year. That
denial was taken to federal district
court, where it is still pending. C. O.
Pearson, Durham NAACP attorney,
has called for a conference on the
case and has indicated other students
KENTUCKY
Carmichael Aide Named
Louisville Superintendent
SAM V. NOE
Named Louisville Superintendent
whose admission was denied may also
go to court soon.
OTHER REQUESTS
Other assignment requests over the
state include:
High Point, where two Negro stu
dents attended white schools for the
first time last year, has 13 students
who have asked for transfers this year.
No decision has been made.
In Charlotte, where desegregation
has been in effect for three years and
where one Negro student attended an
otherwise all-white school last year,
four applications are pending.
In Winston-Salem, where limited de
segregation has been in effect three
years, the school board has assigned
nine Negro students to desegregated
schools. Eight of the Negro students
are assigned to Easton Elementary
School, which has had some Negro
students for three years. The ninth
student was assigned to Reynolds High
School, which has had a Negro stu
dent before.
The Granville County Board of Edu
cation has rejected transfer requests
from 29 Negro pupils who sought ad
mission to an all-white school at
Creedmore. Granville has maintained
segregated schools.
The North Carolina advisory com
mittee on civil rights has been asked
to report that public school segrega
tion continues to be the policy of the
state.
The request was made in the form
of a proposed amendment to a report
by an education subcommittee that has
been studying North Carolina schools.
The committee, however, put off voing
on the question until it meets again in
September in Charlotte.
The amendment, offered by commit
tee member Marion Wright of Linville
Falls, would draw conclusions on the
state’s program of limited desegrega
tion. The original report stopped short
of the conclusion Wright wants in
cluded.
OBSERVED POLICY
Wright’s amendment says segregation
is the universally observed policy in
the state’s 174 school districts and there
is at least one instance, in Yancey
County, where that policy has official
state support.
He said the state had loaned Yancey
County $30,000 to build a school for
Negroes after the Negro school there
had been closed two years.
The report noted that consolidation
had reduced the number of schools
from 7,994 in 1920 to 2,132 in 1958. It
showed the percentage of Negro pupils
receiving school lunches at about half
that for white students.
In studying the investment per pupil
in school facilities, the subcommittee
found the average per white student
was $60.3o above the all-student av
erage while that for the Negro student
was $143.36 below the all-student av
erage.
COMMUNITY ACTION
Lunch counters in some stores have
desegregated in Greensboro and Char
lotte. Desegregation came in late May
to downtown Winston-Salem stores.
Negroes have been receiving service
as some stores in Salisbury for about
two years.
Demonstrations by Negro college stu
dents first began in Greensboro Feb.
1, then spread throughout much of
the South.
On July 26, lunch counters at two
LOUISVILLE, Ky.
S amuel V. Noe, right-hand
aide to Louisville School Supt.
Omer Carmichael before and dur
ing integration of the city’s
schools, was chosen to succeed his
late chief on July 25.
The Board of Education, which
has one Negro member, gave him
a two-year contract after consid
ering the merits of eight other
applicants, none of them from
Louisville. (See “School Boards
and Schoolmen.”)
The Kentucky State College
Board of Regents upheld Presi
dent R. B. Atwood’s expulsion of
12 Negro students last spring, but
said some of them might be rein
stated when their cases are re
viewed. The cases of two Negro
faculty members fired at the same
time will be heard at an un
specified date concurrently with
the student reviews. (See “In
The Colleges.”)
A suit testing the validity of a
90-year-old will with a “whites
only” clause was filed in Bowling
Green. It involves Western Ken
tucky State, an integrated college,
which recently took a 99-year
rent-free lease on land acquired
by a defunct college under terms
of the will. (See “Legal Action.”)
At its promised hearing on July 14
(See Southern School News, July
1960), the Kentucky State College
Board of Regents upheld President R.
B. Atwood’s expulsion of 12 Negro stu
dents last spring, but said some of them
might be reinstated when their cases
are reviewed.
State Supt. of Public Instruction
Wendell P. Butler, ex-officio chairman
of the board, said the final determina
tion will be made at a hearing, yet to
be set, for two teachers fired in con
nection with the same campus demon
strations in which the students were
involved.
Most of the expelled students were
members of the campus steering com
mittee of the Congress of Racial
Equality. They said the expulsions
were aimed at CORE. Atwood said his
sole purpose was to break up disor
derly demonstrations on the campus.
The regents agreed that emergency
conditions last spring made it “no time
for normal procedure,” and held the
subsequent burning of the college gym
nasium evidence of “the explosive na
ture of the situation and the need for
prompt and drastic action.”
CORE CHARGE
Earlier, from St. Louis, national
CORE officials had listed Atwood as
one of five educators “abdicating their
responsibility.” Atwood had replied that
“no question of racial equality was in
volved whatsoever.” The Louisville
Courier-Journal said the CORE con
demnation “shows only that it can be
as reckless with fact as some of its
demonstrators are with their tactics,”
and held that “Dr. Atwood, president
of Kentucky State for 31 achievement-
filled years, could give lessons both in
practical restraint and in practical
achievement” to his critics.
The Louisville Defender, a Negro
weekly, found the board’s action “no
surprise,” since the president “was re
sponsible for the actions of all con
nected with the campus and the situa-
Greensboro variety stores desegregated
quietly
CHARLOTTE COMMITTEE
In Charlotte, a Mayor’s Advisory
Committee, working quietly since
April, succeeded in getting merchants
to agree to desegregate lunch counters.
It came only after Johnson C. Smith
University students, who had demon
strated off and on during February,
March and April and then stopped to
permit negotiations, resumed demon
strations for two weeks. # # #
tion had gotten out of hand.” And it
called for action to determine and
punish those who burned the gym.
But it held the hearings “somewhat
one-sided,” and concluded that “it
must be recognized by the school ad
ministration that the activity on Ken
tucky State’s campus is a part of a na
tional (and international) crusade for
individual rights of the black man.”
The Louisville school board on July
25 named Samuel V. Noe, 59, to suc
ceed the late Supt. Omer Carmichael,
who won fame as chief architect of the
city’s school integration program.
A veteran of 32 years in the city
school system, Noe was the only Louis
ville applicant (among nine) for the
post. He had served as principal of
various schools, administrative assist
ant to the superintendent, and, after
serving as Carmichael’s right-hand
man in preparing and initiating the
1956 integration program, as one of
three assistant superintendents.
He is a native of Springfield, Ky., a
graduate of Centre College at Danville,
Ky., and holds a Columbia University
master’s degree. His salary will be
$12,000 a year, plus an additional $7,000
or so from the University of Louisville
for supervision of practice teaching by
U.L. students in city schools—unless
pending court action reduces all Ken
tucky “local” (as opposed to “state”)
salaries up to the $7,200 level set by
the Constitution of 1891, which is up
for a limited-revision vote this fall.
ELECTION UNANIMOUS
With his major interest in the field
of instruction, Noe was a pioneer or
pre-Sputnik advocate of grouping pu
pils according to ability. Unanimously
elected by a board that includes the
first Negro member in the city’s his
tory, he commented:
“To be named successor to so dis
tinguished an educator as Omer Car
michael is the greatest professional
honor I can ever hope to achieve. I
will strive with all the energy and ed
ucational talents I possess to give an
outstanding educational program to the
boys and girls of the city ... I am most
grateful ... I approach the job with
a great deal of humility.”
The appointment was delayed for
several months while Jefferson County
and Louisville officials explored, and
finally postponed indefinitely, the long-
talked-of merger of their two school
systems.
An unusual racial angle is involved
in a suit filed at Bowling Green July
15. The suit tests the legality of West
ern Kentucky State College’s 99-year
rent-free lease of the old Ogden Col
lege campus as the site of a new
$1,200,000 science building.
Signed in June, the lease would
supersede 20-year and 10-year leases of
the Ogden campus to Western, an inte
grated school.
Attorneys for the Ogden Fund, estab
lished under terms of the 90-year-old
will of the late Robert C. Ogden, said
they were confident that the lease
would be upheld, but wanted Warren
Circuit Court by declaratory judgment
to determine the issue of “adequate
compensation” and whether the lease
would invalidate the will’s stipulation
“that the benefits of this (Ogden) fund
shall be confined to the children of
native-born white American citizens.”
Ogden College closed in 1927.
Frank L. Stanley Sr. wrote in his
Louisville Defender column:
“It may well be that . . . America
will witness a change in positive White
House support of civil rights regard
less of who becomes the next occupant.
I am sure that neither Senator Ken
nedy nor Vice President Nixon can af
ford to let either ‘out civil-rights the
other.’” # # #