Newspaper Page Text
PAGE 10—SEPTEMBER I960—SOUTHERN SCHOOL NEWS
ARKANSAS
Dollarway Board Announces Desegregation of First Grad<
LITTLE ROCK, Ark.
T he Dollarway school board
at Pine Bluff assigned one Ne
gro to the first grade of the white
school for 1960-61, becoming the
tenth Arkansas school district to
have desegregation this year.
The district has been fending
off a desegregation suit on the
high school level since February
1959. The first grade assignment
is an outgrowth of the suit. (See
“School Boards and Schoolmen.”)
Leaders of the Arkansas Edu
cation Assn., composed of the
state’s white teachers, came out
against proposed constitutional
Amendment 52, which would
change the laws on school taxa
tion procedure and would provide
for closing schools under court
order to desegregate.
Clarence E. Bell, Parkin school
superintendent and a state senator
who was one of the sponsors of
Amendment 52 in the 1959 Gen
eral Assembly, announced his op
position also. He explained that
Gov. Orval E. Faubus sponsored
Amendment 52 in the Legislature
to avoid even more drastic legis
lation. (See “Political Activity.”)
The Arkansas Farmers Union and the
Arkansas Division of the American
Assn, of University Women adopted
stands against proposed Amendment 52.
(See “Community Action.”)
The Dollarway school board at Pine
Bluff announced Aug. 18 that it had
assigned one of the three Negro appli
cants to the first grade of the white
school with 90 white children for the
term starting in September. She is
Delores Jean York, age 6, daughter of
John D. York.
The assignment, if carried out, would
make Dollarway the tenth school dis
trict in Arkansas with desegregation in
one degree or another. The other nine
districts previously desegregated expect
to continue their plans this fall.
With the announcement of the assign
ment, the board president, Lee Par
ham, issued the following statement:
“In making the assignment of stu
dents, the board has proceeded under
the injunction in effect against the
board and under the Arkansas pupil
assignment law. This law has been sus
tained as constitutional on its face but
is being challenged in the federal court
as being unconstiutionally applied. In
this regard, the board has acted in the
best of its ability to uphold the consti
tutionality of the law, which is of vital
importance to all school districts in this
state and, we believe, to the South.
“The board has proceeded in good
faith and in accordance with the legal
advice of its attorneys. Assignments
have been individually made on the
basis of the standard criteria of the
Arkansas act.
“We sincerely believe that the pa
trons of the district will understand
and support the action taken by the
board. It is our firm conviction that
the board has acted in the best interest
of all our citizens and of our public
schools in the district.”
INJUNCTION MENTIONED
The injunction mentioned in the
statement is a development in the Dol
larway desegregation case, Dove v.
Parham, which was filed by high school
students, not first graders. When Fed
eral District Judge J. Smith Henley
refused Feb. 19 to order the three Ne
gro plaintiffs admitted to the white high
school, he went on to order the Dollar
way board to submit an “affirmative
policy or plan” to eliminate compulsory
segregation. (Southern School News
March 1960).
The board filed such a policy state
ment and Judge Henley approved it
over the objections of the Negro plain
tiffs (SSN, April and June 1960). The
policy is that beginning this year, the
board will assign first graders accord
ing to the preference of their parents,
when possible, but will oppose transfers
from one school to another at grades
above the first grade. It did not say that
this policy would bring about any de
segregation but said that it could.
Judge Henley approved the policy on
its face but noted that it could be used
unconstitutionally and warned that if
none or few of the Negro applicants
were admitted to the white school, he
“might find it hard to believe that un
lawful and unreasonable racial dis
crimination is not being practiced.”
POLICY ON APPEAL
Henley’s approval of this policy, plus
other matters of contention in Dove v.
Parham, have been on appeal to the
U.S. Eighth Circuit Court of Appeals
at St. Louis since spring. All summer
the unofficial word had been that the
appeals court would rule early in Au
gust and that the Dollarway board
would wait until after that ruling be
fore it did anything about the three
Negroes who had registered at the
white elementary school.
However, the appeals court had not
ruled when the board announced its
assignment. The other main point on
appeal is Judge Henley’s refusal to or
der the three plaintiffs admitted to the
white Dollarway High School.
Dollarway District lies adjacent to
and takes in a small part of the north
west comer of Pine Bluff, 45 miles
southeast of Little Rock. It has about
1,200 white students, all of whom at
tend the Dollarway School, and about
1,200 Negro students, who attend the
Townsend Park schools. Both the
schools have all 12 grades.
PETITION FAUBUS
The three Negro high school students
filed their desegregation suit Feb. 6,
1959. On Aug. 20, 1959, L. D. Poynter
of Pine Bluff (though not a resident of
the Dollarway District), president of
the Arkansas Assn, of Citizens Coun
cils, presented Gov. Orval Faubus a pe
tition asking that he use all forces at
his command to prevent integration at
Dollarway. Poynter said the petitions
were signed by 1,202 white patrons of
the Dollarway schools. Faubus never
has said what he would do about that
request.
About an hour before the Dollarway
board made its announcement the
morning of Aug. 18, Faubus was hold
ing a press conference at the capitol.
One of the comments he made was, “I
think that everyone in the state recog
nizes that if the appeals court orders
Dollarway to integrate there is a strong
possibility of trouble.”
Later in the day the reporters went
rushing back to ask if Faubus had
known in advance about the Negro as
signment. (The same lawyers represent
the Dollarway board and Faubus.) And
they asked what he was going to do
about it. All they got was “no com
ment.”
EXPLANATION GIVEN
An explanation of why Delores Jean
York was chosen, instead of the other
applicants, Linda Diane Houston and
Andrew Augusta Howard, appeared in
the Memphis Commercial Appeal.
Quoting an unidentified spokesman for
the school board, the story said that
she was in the upper 10 per cent of
her grade level and that there was no
way to prevent her admission and still
comply with the court ruling.
The Arkansas Democrat of Little
Rock quoted board President Parham
as saying, “We have not given in. We
have conceded a battle to win a war.”
Reaction at Pine Bluff was mild.
Leaders of the Dollarway Citizens
Council said they thought the school
board had done all that it could. The
Pine Bluff Commercial, writing of it as
“a difficult but unavoidable decision,”
said:
“The board has in effect recognized
the inescapable fact that the alterna
tive is not between integration and
segregation. For a district confronted
with federal court order, the alternative
is between wholesale, immediate inte
gration on the one hand and limited,
token integration on the other.”
ASK FOR MONEY
Both Little Rock and Dollarway have
asked the State Board of Education for
money out of a special fund to help
meet the expenses of their desegrega
tion lawsuits. This is the first request
by Little Rock but Dollarway pre
viously received $5,069.92 from the state
(SSN, April 1960). Act 358 of 1959 ap
propriated $100,000 to be dispensed by
the state board to “needy” districts.
The state board considered the re
quests Aug. 8 at Pine Bluff but took no
action. It asked representatives of the
two districts to come to its next meet
ing Sept. 12.
Dollarway has asked for another $7,-
297.12. The agenda of the state board
meeting said that Little Rock had
asked for $25,469, but Supt. Terrell E.
Powell said the district actually had
simply listed its extra expenses and
asked for all the help it could get. The
expenses listed by Little Rock were
these:
Extra guards at Central High ..$44,000
Extra clerical help 6,000
Legal fees before July 1, 1959 .. 38,000
Legal fees since July 1, 1959 ... 25,000
Total $113,000
ASSIGN ONE
After holding school reassignment
hearings for 40 Negro students (and for
61 white students), the Little Rock
school board announced Aug. 7 that it
was assigning one more Negro to Cen
tral High. It refused assignments to
white schools made by 15 Negro high
school students and 19 Negro junior
high school students. (The other five
Negro reassignments were from one
Negro elementary school to another).
Thus the board restricted its deseg
regation plan to the high school grades
for another year, as it had announced
that it would.
Everette Dixon Morehead, an 11th
grader, is the new Negro assigned to
Central. He will make the eighth Ne
gro attending Central this year com
pared to five last year. Hall High will
have five Negroes compared to three
last year.
With the Democratic primaries out of
the way, leaders of the Arkansas Edu
cation Assn, spoke out against proposed
Constitutional Amendment 52. It was
pointed out later that the AEA had
not yet taken a stand officially and that
the leaders were speaking individually.
At a meeting of AEA leaders at Con
way, Dr. Hugh L. Mills, Hot Springs
school superintendent and AEA presi
dent, said, “The question is not whether
we’ll oppose the amendment, but how
we can go about getting it defeated.”
The AEA is composed of about 14,000
white school teachers, administrators
and supervisors.
A surprise at the meeting was the
position taken by State Sen. Clarence
E. Bell, superintendent of schools at
Parkin in east Arkansas, manager of
Gov. Faubus’ just-completed campaign
for a fourth term and one of the Senate
sponsors of Amendment 52 in the 1959
General Assembly. He declared against
it too and said he would lead the fight
no matter what stand Faubus took.
The proposed amendment was the
keystone of the pro-segregation pack
age that Faubus put through the 1959
Legislature. But Bell told the AEA
meeting that the amendment was intro
duced, with its school-closing provi
sion, to avoid more drastic legislation
coming from the floor.
“If that drastic legislation had been
introduced, it would have been passed
and the governor would have been
forced to sign it or leave Arkansas,”
Bell said. “Now, there’s been time for
a cooling off of emotions, and the gov
ernor’s decision in 1959 to make any
proposed legislation appear on a gen
eral election two years away seems, in
retrospect, the wisest thing.”
He said the amendment was open to
many interpretations but that the pro-
No Harm Trying
Arkansas Democrat
visions dealing with school taxes was
enough to swing his vote against it.
Bell also persuaded the AEA to give
Faubus the courtesy of asking him to
say publicly whether he is going to
oppose or support the amendment.
That may sound peculiar, since Faubus
sponsored the amendment, but this
year he has steadfastly declined thus
far to say how he feels about the
amendment, even during the primary
campaign when all four of his oppon
ents denounced it and him for spon
soring it.
The amendment would make it pos
sible for a school district, when or
dered by a federal court to desegre
gate, to allow its patrons to vote on
whether to abolish the public schools
of the district.
“But the worst thing about the
amendment has nothing to do with in
tegration,” Forrest Rozzell, executive
secretary of the AEA, said at the Con
way meeting. “It’s the threat to put a
ceiling on taxation for school purposes.
This makes the public schools a po
litical football.”
In Arkansas the patrons of every
school district vote every year on the
rate of taxation for the public schools
and there is no limit on how high or
how low the tax rate may be. Under
present law, if the voters reject the tax
rate recommended by the school board,
then the tax rate in that school district
continues at its existing level. Under
Amendment 52, if the voters rejected
a school board’s recommended tax rate,
then the tax rate would revert to either
the existing rate or to 30 mills, which
ever is lower, Of the 422 districts in
the state 97 have tax rates of 30 mills
or lower.
ALL VOTES IN
When all the votes from the July 26
primary were finally in, a record 406,-
817—more than in any previous elec
tion or primary—had been cast and
Gov. Faubus got 58.7 per cent of them
for his unprecedented fourth consecu
tive two-year term.
Orval E. Faubus 238,997
Joe C. Hardin 66,499
Bruce Bennett 58,400
H. E. Williams 33,374
Hal Millsaps Jr 9,547
The Arkansas wing of the National
States Rights Party is circulating peti
tions to get 29,525 signatures to get its
presidential ticket—Faubus and Adm.
John Crommelin of Alabama—on the
November ballot in Arkansas. Faubus
says they are doing that without per
mission but he hasn’t ordered them to
stop it.
COMMUNITY ACTION
Opposition to proposed constitutional
Amendment 52, under which the public
schools could be closed to avoid de
segregation, was announced by the Ar
kansas Farmers Union and the Arkan
sas Division of the American Assn, of
University Women.
The Farmers Union in convention at
Little Rock took a stand against the
proposed amendment because, it said,
it would abolish the constitutional
guarantee of free public education, vio
late the tradition of church-state sep
aration, jeopardize the employment of
teachers, deny children their rightful
heritage and abolish the guarantee that
taxes levied for education must be used
for that purpose.
The AAUW resolution was adopted
unanimously at a meeting for the
southern branches at Arkadelphia and
for the northern branches at Harrison.
Its reasons for opposing the amend
ment, which will be voted on in No
vember, were:
“It would imperil democratic free
dom in our state. It would endanger the
public education system in Arkansas.
It would injure the teaching profession,
driving teachers from the state. It
would repel industry, increase unem
ployment, promote population loss and
retard the progress, welfare and hap
piness of our citizens, thus damaging
the entire economy.”
CAMPAIGN MATERIAL
One of the defendants in the attempt
ed dynamiting of Philander Smith Col
lege at Little Rock on July 13 also is
suspected of furnishing illegal cam
paign material for distribution in Ten
nessee in the Kefauver-Taylor sena
torial campaign. The FBI disclosed this
Aug. 4 when as required by law it filed
in Federal District Court at Little Rock
copies of the search warrants it had
used and the results of the search
made at the homes of two of the dyn
miting suspects.
One of the suspects is Emmett i
Miller, age 44, a West Memphis at
countant. The FBI document said th;
found at his home copies of unsign
political circulars unfavorable to Ki
fauver (who won the election) at
other papers, including Ku Klux Kl;
application blanks and literature of t
Shelby County (Memphis) Citizei
Council. U.S. Attorney Warner Hodg
of Memphis confirmed that Miller at
others were being investigated in cot
nection with the unsigned political li
erature.
R. A. Sharpe of Camden, Neg
school teacher, ran for state repress
tative from Ouachita County, in sou
Arkansas, in the Democratic primari
this year. He finished third in a fie
of three.
Sharpe received 1,470 votes to 2,5-
for Bill Andrews, the incumbent, at
4,865 for David Pryor, Camden new;
paper editor. Sharpe was the first Ni
gro candidate in modem times in ti
county.
Two Negro students at Philandf
Smith College who received the heav
est punishment for last spring’s sit-:
demonstrations at Little Rock—$1,9
fines and seven months in jail each-
have appealed to the state Supret
Court. The defendants are James Fra:
Lupper and Thomas B. Robinson.
J. R. (Bob) Booker, 66, Little Roc
Negro attorney who had been prom
nent in civil rights lawsuits for 40 yea
in Arkansas, died July 31. At his ft
neral, attended by 1,500 persons it
eluding many white leaders of the leg
profession, he was eulogized by Thm
good Marshall of New York, genet
counsel for the National Assn, for ti
Advancement of Colored People.
Federal District Judge Gordon i
Young expressed doubt that the esta
of the late Little Rock Police Ohic
Eugene G. Smith could be substitute
as the defendant in 10 civil rights lav
suits for a total of $500,000. He sac
this maneuver was permissible uni
state law but that there were sever
federal court decisions against it. I
invited the attorneys to submit brie
Smith was sued by nine segregate
ists whose demonstration was broke
up by the police near Central High t
Aug. 12, 1959, and by E. A. Laude
dale Sr., who has been convicted 1
the dynamiting of the Little R 0 '
school board office on Labor Day 1$
After Smith shot himself to death h
March, the counsel for the plaintif-
Amis Guthridge of Little Rock, *
nounced that he would ask to ha'
Smith’s estate made the defendant.
All the defendants claim that the
civil rights were violated by the p°h
under the direction of Chief Smith.
COURTROOM TACTICS
A year has passed since the segref
tionists crowd marching on Cent*
High at Little Rock was broken up ’
the police and firemen on Aug. f
1959, and not one of the 19 pers&'
arrested that day has been in a colt
room yet. All the courtroom tact*
have dealt with the request of the *
fendants for a change of venue, out
Little Rock Municipal Court to mun> 1
pal court at North Little Rock or
sonville, the two other municipal cod
in Pulaski County.
Both Municipal Judge Quinn Glo'
and Circuit Judge William J.
refused to grant the change of verl '
and the defendants have appealed
the state Supreme Court, which **
not ruled yet.
The U.S. commissioner of educaft
Dr. Lawrence G. Derthick, said at P
tie Rock that if the states or local a .
thorities close their public schd
there is nothing the federal g° ve Ii
ment could do to fill the void. ,
government will see to it that th*
are schools for the children of f®®^,
employes, such as members of
military forces, but otherwise P u
schooling is up to the local and sf
authorities, he said. # *