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SOUTHERN SCHOOL NEWS—APRIL 1961—PAGE 9
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§upt. Redmond Accepts Job
S\s Consultant on Schools
Yew Orleans school Supt.
I) James F. Redmond, under
IP^Qstant attack by state officials
lie the Legislature since last
summer, accepted a new position
^tand will leave the city after June
I IT
JU ' jj e announced to the Orleans Parish
^ool board that he would not renew
contract July 1 but made no men-
, on of the school desegregation crisis
(jje hub of his running battle with
jg Legislature.
Repeatedly ousted from his job by
J.-tate officials and restored to his post
1 w federal court actions, Dr. Redmond
.-aid he would accept a New York po
rtion with a management firm as con
sultant on schools.
He leaves a $23,500 post which the
i gleans Parish school board may have
-ouble filling. Four members of the
■ joard who were in the same boat with
S Redmond, standing firm against legis
lative attempts to seize control of New
Odeans schools, said they may use an
interim superintendent next year.
00 ■ Redmond’s statement that he would
not accept renewal of his contract made
, it appear that he was leaving for more
1CK ' money, but school board officials both
ittee
Dr- James F. Redmond
Will quit job
privately and publicly conceded har
assment by the Legislature keyed the
departure.
The superintendent announced his
decision after tensions eased between
the state and the school board which
he served as superintendent for eight
years. He said he thought New Orleans
public schools were over the hump and
there would be continued progress to
ward settlement of differences ignited
by the Nov. 14 desegregation of two
public schools.
The school board, Mayor Chep Mor
rison, and others expressed regret on
Redmond’s departure. The segregation
ists said he was a usurper in office
anyway since the Legislature had voted
to fire him.
Back Salary Paid
Three days after he announced his
intent to take a new job, Dr. Red
mond was paid four months’ back sal
ary totaling $8,000.
Samuel I. Rosenberg, school board
counsel, was paid $5,000 for four months
during which he had received no pay-
checks. He also had been fired by the
Legislature in actions upset by federal
court restraining orders.
Their pay was only one of the points
of financial crisis which stemmed from
the admission of four Negro first grad
ers to two previously all-white schools
and which, at several points, threat
ened the closure of public schools in
New Orleans.
Teachers and other school employes
received their March 17 paychecks on
time, marking the first time in four
months that salaries were paid on the
date due. The March money was paid
through a legislative school account,
since the Legislature does not recog
nize the existence of the school board
and refused to follow normal channels
and pass the state monies on to the
board directly.
New Job for Judge?
While Dr. Redmond prepared to
move on to another position, a new
job was also rumored for Dist. Judge
J. Skelly Wright, who ordered the de
segregation of New Orleans schools.
Washington reports circulated that
Judge Wright would move up to the
Fifth Circuit Court of Appeals bench
at New Orleans if the administration
of President Robert F. Kennedy is
successful in creating the wide new
range of judgeships proposed.
WEST VIRGINIA
Legislature Passes Bill
For Human Rights Agency
CHARLESTON, West Va.
T he 55th West Virginia legis
lature, overriding token sen
ate resistance, passed a State
Human Rights Commission bill
March 6 and sent it to Gov. W.
W. Barron for his signature.
The governor who had proposed such
a commission in his legislative mes
sage Jan. 16, promptly signed the act
into law. It calls for the establishment
of the commission July 1 and provides
for the spending on $15,000 a year for
its work.
Mainly, the body will strive only to
eliminate discrimination in employ
ment and places of public accommoda
tion.
Sponsors of the measure had hoped
to make it broader, and arm the
agency with subpoena powers. The
subpoena provision was stricken from
Miscellaneous
Legislators’ Plan
To Seize Orleans
Schools Revealed
A s New Orleans’s school crisis
tapered off, Rep. Wellborn
Jack of Caddo Parish made a
speech in the city at which he
disclosed legislators at one point
were considering the seizure of
public schools by force to pre
vent desegregation.
Jack spoke at a Citizens Council of
Greater New Orleans rally and said
his suggested plan for the seizure of
the schools and the firing of all em
ployes who refused to take a loyalty
oath was rejected after he had left a
strategy meeting.
Jack was a member of the special
legislative committee which made an
unsuccessful attempt to take over New
Orleans’ 118 public schools. This at
tempt was peaceful.
“I suggested that we appoint a new
school board and a new superintendent
and with 50 state troopers come down
here at four in the morning and knock
down the door to the school board of
fices,” Jack said, adding:
“Then the entire House and Senate
would have come down and sat in the
building. When the employes came to
work, the new superintendent would
have met them and said ‘I am the
boss. Sign this loyalty oath or you’re
fired.’
“When Mr. (James F.) Redmond,
school superintendent, showed up, we
would have taken him in custody and
put him in jail under a law we passed
for intrusion in office.
“If we had carried out this plan they
would have been amazed in federal
court.”
What They Say
Activity of Klan
Comes Under Fire
A n end to Ku Klux Klan activ
ity in Louisiana and a plea
for an end to turmoil over New
Orleans school desegregation
came from two different sources.
Newspapers jumped the Klan after
a Klavem in Choushatta published its
existence by taking blindfolded news
paper representatives to a secret ses
sion in the woods near the North
Louisiana community.
Strong editorial comment was capped
by an editorial in the Coushatta Citi
zen: “Public opinion,” said the Citizen,
“has already crystalized on this matter.
It says our friends who are Klan
members: Quit this madness that is
beneath your dignity as men. An active
Klan will most surely create an incident
where the reason for none exists. It
says to the Klan: Get the hell out of
Red River Parish. You have no job
to do here.”
Plea for Harmony
The plea for harmony in New Or
leans came from a new source, Louisi
ana’s AFL-CIO leader Victor Bussie,
who spoke at a meeting sponsored by
the Public Affairs Research Council
of Louisiana.
Bussie drew strong applause from
the business and industrial leaders
when he said:
“We are ready for this turmoil to
cease and for the state to stop and
consider what we are doing.”
The labor leader urged business and
industry, which have been grumbling
under their breath about the economic
factors involved in the school turmoil,
to speak out.
He said the turmoil would end if
enough people spoke their mind.
# # #
Rural Area May Test Private School Setup
By EMILE COMAR
GREENSBURG, La.
4 Hundred miles north-north-
1 West of New Orleans in red
Jr t hill country abutting the
of Mississippi, Louisiana
•legation leaders are attempt-
n S to establish a new beachhead
gainst public school desegre
gation.
. seek to convert the public
g °°ls of poor, sparsely populated St.
tena Parish to grant-in-aid private
°°ls in a full-fledged test of state
®°rity to abolish public education,
oters of the parish will go to the
0 j April 22 to answer the question
."■'nether they prefer to close public
rather than desegregate,
is little doubt as to the election
0 j ™ I *e. At the close of a new period
' p hit°* 6r re £r s trat,ion, there were 1,420
v. I and 14 Negroes registered out of
tijF*. Population of 9,092 recorded in
"i960 census.
;■ hen registration rolls were wiped
a last Dec. 31 at the beginning of
re S* s tration period, there were
"date and 1,243 Negro voters.
S t p re Negroes than whites live in
^Helena but the official count from
census is not yet compiled,
of j, y w as St. Helena chosen for one
it jg ® suits against segregation filed
iw by Negro plaintiffs in Louisiana
tioo ^ e nted by the National Associa-
^Ple? Advancement of Colored
bespeckled J. L. Meadows,
*Q»tendent of St. Helena public
K, p S> sa id he asked the question of
Tureaud, NAACP counsel in
lana > shortly after the suit was
,v ,
told me, among other
ko ^at he thought St. Helena was
’bjj.J’ 1 " to provide equal facilities.”
s Ucb au d said he may have expressed
411 opinion but that the real
reason was that there was interest
among St. Helena Negroes just as
there was in Orleans Parish where a
similar suit was filed in 1952 and
which resulted in the desegregation of
two of New Orleans’ 118 public schools
in November of 1960.
Negro attorneys did not push the St.
Helena case (Lawrence Hall et al v.
St. Helena Parish School Board, 1952)
until the Orleans order to desegregate
was given in the spring of 1960.
They then got a summary judgment
from U.S. District Judge J. Skelly
Wright on the St. Helena case and
won a U.S. Fifth Circuit Court of
Appeals decision upholding Judge
Wright.
Segregationists who lost their fight
in New Orleans—though only four Ne-
J. L. Meadows
Superintendent
gro children have entered previously
all-white schools—have shifted their
principal attention to St. Helena, not
waiting for a date to be set for com
pliance with desegregation orders.
The school board, prodded by Gov.
Jimmie H. Davis’s administration lead
ers and segregation spokesman Leander
H. Perez, called the election under a
new Louisiana law authorizing parishes
to conduct balloting on the question
of whether public schools shall be re
tained. The outcome of the election is
not binding on the parish school board,
but it cannot vote to close public schools
until the majority of voters have in
dicated this is their wish.
“I think,” said Meadows, “if the
schools are forced to integrate there
won’t be a single white child left in
any of them.”
This opinion is echoed throughout
the parish as the talking point for
private schools. There is no real leader
ship for retaining public schools in the
face of the inevitable federal desegre
gation order.
‘Separate But Equal’
In 1952 when the case was first filed,
St. Helena stepped up its program of
providing educational facilities for Ne
groes in an attempt to make them
“separate but equal.”
It has, since 1950, built three new
Negro elementary schools and made
improvements to existing Negro schools
at a total cost of $373,500.
The school board expended $326,000
for white schools in the same period
but is now completing a white com
bined high and elementary school for
$328,000.
Meadows, pointing with pride to all
the construction figures, said the St.
Helena board also has a $1,005,935
operating budget for this year—96 per
cent of it coming from the state (which
also provides $768,000 in state-federal
funds for the 1,290 St. Helena residents
on the welfare roles).
A total of $275,281 of the board’s
budget goes into the salaries of Negro
teachers and $270,470 into the salaries
of white teaching and supervisory per
sonnel.
Meadows says he wishes there were
more—for both Negroes and whites—
but adds: “We’re too poor to do much.”
Still, in the 25 years he has been
superintendent, there have been vast
changes.
“When I came here 24 years ago,” he
said, “there wasn’t any public school
system in St. Helena Parish.
“The white kids were going to school
in a little shack over there across the
way. They dipped their drinking water
out of a barrel.”
May Test Grant Law
There may not be public schools next
year, either, as Louisiana tests its
grant-in-aid school law designed to
provide money directly to pupils who
wish to attend private, nonsectarian
private schools.
School board president Carl Stone,
a cattle raiser and a butcher-shop
operator, is like
many of the
elected officials in
St. Helena.
He waits mostly
declining public
comment — while
segregation lead
ers manipulate the
legal machinery
with an eye and
ear on the federal
courts at New
Orleans.
Tureaud has already asked that Ne
gro plaintiffs be permitted to incorpor
ate in their original suit a challenge to
the so-called local option election law
on school desegregation.
He says it is nothing but a mechanism
by which the parish seeks to circum
vent the court’s order that St. Helena
desegregate “with all deliberate speed.”
# # #
STONE
West Va. Highlights
The West Virginia legislature
passed a bill March 6 creating a
State Human Rights Commission.
State School Supt. R. Virgil
Rohrbough, an outspoken advocate
of desegregation, died unexpectedly
of a heart attack March 5.
The legislature approved a pay
raise for the state’s 16,000 school
teachers.
the bill in committee. The commission
will have nine members and a full
time director.
Sen. Clarence Martin, Eastern Pan
handle Democrat, led an effort to kill
the bill, but succeeded only in having
it delayed a day. There was little op
position when it finally passed the Sen
ate, and none in the House.
★ ★ ★
The legislature created a second
state-owned university at Huntington.
It was formerly known as Marshall
College. Its field of operations won’t be
as extensive as West Virginia Uni
versity.
Marshall will operate mainly in the
fields of teaching and business ad
ministration, while graduate work at
West Virginia will be in more special
ized fields as well as those at Marshall.
The institution was established in
1837 as Marshall Academy and became
a college in 1858. It was made a state
college by act of the 1867 Legislature,
and today is desegregated, as is West
Virginia University.
Schoolmen
State Superintendent
Dies; Long Advocated
Desegregated Schools
Ctate School Supt. R. Virgil
^Rohrbough died in Richmond,
Va., March 6 following a heart
attack three nights earlier at the
Richmond Arena while attending
the Southern Conference Basket
ball Tournament.
Rohrbough, 59, started in school work
in a one-room Lewis County school,
went to Taylor County where he rose
from principal to
county superin
tendent and there
ran for state su
perintendent.
He was the last
elected and the
first appointed
state superinten
dent. Two years
ago the constitu
tion was changed
in a referendum
which made his
office appointive.
He was a longtime advocate of de
segregated schools. While superintend
ent in Taylor County, he was one of
the first county school heads in the
state to carry his system into deseg
regated status after 1954. The program
was successful from the start. There
was no difficulty.
No Politics
He was highly praised for keeping
politics out of the school system. Rohr
bough was a Republican; some of his
top assistants were Democrats.
The State Board of Education, which
has the job of choosing a successor,
has not yet taken action on a replace
ment for Rohrbough. His chief assist
ant, Rex Smith, has been put in charge
of the department temporarily.
In the Colleges
N. Y. Educator Says
Student Exchange
Will Be Proposed
D a. Edward Kennell of Albany,
N. Y., said Feb. 21 he would
ask West Virginia State College
students to initiate a student ex
change program so northern col
lege students can come to the
Institute campus to see how de
segregation works.
In opening a leadership conference
(See WEST VIRGINIA, Page 15)
ROHRBOUGH