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SOUTHERN SCHOOL NEWS—JUNE 1961—PAGE !5
JJTH CAROLINA
egislature Adjourns;
{acial Laws Unchanged
0», COLUMBIA, S.C.
0jCarolina legislators
'estf j en ded their 1961 session on
^2 [jy 18 without having altered
' state’s segregation laws or
! ^tices in any respect,
y tlj ^subject rarely was discussed dur-
the four-month session, except for
■ _ional reference or the adoption
tt< H '^lutions critical of persons ad-
h|!; >g integration.
311 J55 such resolution censured Dr.
p. Graham, United Nations med-
and former University of North
aolina president, for remarks made
b ling an apP earance at Winthrop Col-
^ ^ the South Carolina College for
® ^ [pen at Rock Hill. Dr. Graham last
W ^ fetch was quoted as having endorsed
1111111 if anti-segregation sit-in demonstra-
^ although such remarks were
a _je in passing during the course of
e s *-scissions on other subjects.
i ap. 3 April, the State House of Repre-
i h{, etatives adopted a concurrent resolu-
si|. j» condemning both Dr. Graham and
con. if “person or persons responsible” for
;choii netting him to appear at Winthrop.
nitti. 'e State Senate debated the resolu-
rd j at length, with many members
jfisng their own displeasure at Dr.
iaham’s remarks, before shunting the
solution into committee. When it
■etinj merged in May, reference to Win-
CK -;jop officials had been deleted and
e tin k resolution read as follows:
St.
choc Text of Resolution
. . The General Assembly does
'JN aeby condemn the known agitator,
Frank P. Graham,
for remarks made
in an address to
Winthrop
College’s annual
sociology forum
for high school
students.
“Be it further
resolved that the
General Assembly
condemns Frank
P. Graham for his
statements that
■'^passings by sit-in demonstrations
* integration are lawful, when he
ae ", or should know, that such is con-
to the laws of this State and
municipal ordinances; and
no it further resolved that it is
^ sense of the General Assembly that
,ff State institutions should avoid a
1cu| Tence of similar situations and
more thought on their part be
~ f ® to anyone who may be invited
•address the institutions of this State.”
® e House concurred in the Senate
®'®dments on motion of the two
•%>rs of the original resolution, Reps.
Beasley and Sidney S. Tison Jr.
"•Arlington county.
graham
No Recommendations
^ the final week of the legislative
:M° n state ’ s Special Segregation
Committee reported that it had
^^commendations for further legis-
during this session. The com-
c hairman, Calhoun County’s
■ L. Marion Gressette, said after the
'^meeting:
3^ e committee today conferred on
overall school situation prior to ad-
^^ent of the General Assembly. It
with the delegations from
•in | 0rt an< ^ Charleston counties cer-
t 7*1 problems which it finds are
^dled satisfactorily at the local
committee reiterated its stand-
■B 5r( r er to these and other school
L. °f its assistance and that of its
*?al
staff in working out any prob-
111 connection with schools.”
Vetoed Bill Left
*Sslat.° n House calendar when the
5tA 0t , tUre adjourned was the gov-
veto of a bill to repeal an ap-
;^ a tions bill proviso which ear-
hps Sc hool and state park appropria
ble ‘racially segregated” purposes
^ ® Bill was passed in the closing
•ainecl ^^60 legislative session, re-
' f96l ? n Governor's desk until
e felature convened, was then
an d bas remained on the House
If ^ throughout the 1961 session.
« Ve t° is sustained, then the
V a racially segregated basis
N s , 1 f remain in effect for school
® Park appropriations for the
Hie,) year. If the veto is over
ly hen the words go out.
l9gj ^ e Peral appropriations bill for
V to 62 . fisc al year makes no refer-
r ®cial segregation in the allo-
S. C. Highlights
The South Carolina legislature
ended its 1961 session without alter
ing its segregation laws, but censured
Dr. Frank P. Graham for making
anti-segregation statements at a state
college.
The lawsuit brought by Sumter
county “Turks” for admission of
their children to white elementary
schools was on its way back to the
Fourth Circuit Court of Appeals de
spite agreement of Sumter county
school authorities to admit the chil
dren to white schools. The Governors
of South Carolina and of Missis
sippi separately spoke out against
federally-forced desegregation.
A group of Negro parents in
Charleston continued their efforts to
have their children transferred to
white schools.
At least two Negro girls have ap
plied for admission to the state’s
white college for women, Winthrop
College at Rock Hill. Clemson Col
lege, a white men’s college, is re
ported to have received applications
from two Charleston Negroes already
in college out of the state.
cation of funds. The new budget be
comes effective July 1.
Also left on the House calendar was
a bill by Rep. George Sam Harrell of
Florence County to require the racial
labeling of all human blood destined
for use in blood transfusions. The bill
received two readings in the House but
never came up for a third and final
House vote before adjournment.
Still in the Ways and Means Com
mittee was a bill by Rep. A. W. (Red)
Bethea of Dillon to appropriate $100,-
000 with which to establish a perman
ent committee on state’s rights.
Schoolmen
Group To Arrange
Hearings On School
Transfer Requests
ITY SCHOOL AUTHORITIES at
^ Charleston have named a
special committee to arrange pro
cedures for hearing requests for
the transfer of a number of Ne
gro students to white schools.
District Supt. Thomas A. Carrere said
the committee will make its report to
the full school board at its next regular
meeting, June 14.
The Negro petitioners have written
to the school board and asked for
specific transfers, saying:
“The reason for this request for
transfer is that the said school is pub
licly owned and operated and we be
lieve that under the Constitution and
laws of the United States our child is
entitled to attend said school.”
Legal Action
Case Of ‘Turks’ Goes
Before U. S. Appeals
Court Third Time
A lawsuit alleging racial dis
crimination against “Turk”
children in Sumter County is be
fore the Fourth Circuit Court of
Appeals for the third time since
1953.
The case was thought finished last
month when District Judge George
Bell Timmerman declared the action
moot. He did so after Sumter County
school authorities had said they would
admit the Turk children to white ele
mentary schools beginning in Septem
ber. Such admission, Judge Timmer
man said, would effect the administra
tive relief long sought by the plain
tiffs.
As members of a physically identifi
able group claiming descent from Med
iterranean peoples, the Turks long
have been assigned to their own schools.
In recent years, high school students
have been admitted to the regular
white schools of the county, but
graded school students have been sent
to a Turk school.
Ira Kaye, Sumter attorney for the
plaintiffs, has appealed to the Fourth
Circuit for a permanent injunction
against further discrimination. Judge
Timmerman denied such an injunction,
saying that to do so would place the
Sumter school board “under the police
jurisdiction of this court for all time
to come.”
Argument On Sit-In
Meanwhile, the State Supreme Court
was told on May 8 that sit-in demon
strations at lunch counters are legal
and should not be interfered with by
law enforcement officers so long as
they are peaceably conducted.
The argument was made during the
hearing on appeal of a case involving
26 Morris College students who were
arrested during such a demonstration
at Sumter last March.
Countering that argument of the ap
pellants, attorneys for the state said
that the Negroes were guilty of con
spiring to breach the peace at a time
of high tensions and feelings.
The Supreme Court has the case un
der advisement.
What They Say
Two Governors Score
Federal Government
On School Questions
( n ov. Ernest F. Hollings, at a
J May 8 press conference,
termed “most deplorable” the ac
tion of the Department of Justice
in intervening to compel the
opening of racially desegregated
schools in Prince Edward County,
Va.
“As I understand it, the Attorney
General’s office has stated that he has
done this to preserve the integrity of
the judiciary. It comes too late. The
integrity of the judiciary was be
smirched on May 17, 1954, when they
completely threw out the window the
doctrine of stare decisis (the legal prin
ciple of established precedent).
“The court turned around and found
what had been constitutional then un
constitutional. And that’s the frustra
tion we have in Prince Edward Coun
ty. When you make bad decisions, you
make for bad conditions . . . This would
be one of the darkest chapters in the
history of the Constitution if this right
of self-determination did not still per
tain in this country.”
Barnett Urges Compact
Mississippi’s Gov. Ross R. Barnett
spoke in South Carolina May 12 at the
annual celebration of the Rivers Bridge
Confederate Memorial Association. He
urged the states of the nation to band
together in a compact to protect their
constitutional rights.
“It is a fraud upon the American
people,” he said, “to pretend that hu
man rights can long endure without
constitutional restrictions on the power
of government . .
Pointing to the shift of Negro popu
lation to the North, he said:
“I would say to the people of the
North, before they allow theories to be
created which will satisfy a warped
sense of injustice by creating miserable
race relations in the South, that they
think about their own future and real
ize that they will be in dire need of
the very constitutional protections
which they are now trying to destroy.
Bishop Says Parochial
School Plan Supported
The Most Rev. Paul J. Hallinan,
Bishop of the Roman Catholic Diocese
of Charleston, told Catholic women at
Greenville of the support he had re
ceived by mail from persons support
ing his recent pastoral letter paving
the way for desegregation of Catholic
schools in the state.
“The courageous stand of the Catho
lic Church in our state,” he said, “has
never been more admired by Catholics,
Protestants and Jews.”
★ ★ ★
Members of South Carolina’s Con
gressional delegation spoke out bit
terly against a package of civil rights
legislation sponsored by Sen. Joseph
Clark and Rep. Emanuel Celler. In
cluded in the package was a require
ment that plans for desegregating all
school districts be submitted within
six months:
Sen. Strom Thurmond said: “It’s
completely absurd for anyone to think
that all of the Southern school boards
could be forced to desegregate or in
tegrate their schools by 1963 or at any
time in the foreseeable future.”
Sen. Olin D. Johnston said: “I regret
very much that this legislation has
been introduced as it will stir up more
trouble in the schools.”
WEST VIRGINIA
Raleigh, Other School
Cases to be Reopened
CHARLESTON, W.Va.
Eff EFFORTS WILL BE STARTED
soon to expand school deseg
regation in Raleigh County, a dis
trict which the National Associa
tion for the Advancement of
Colored People charges has been
laggard in bringing about biracial
education.
Williard Brown of Charleston, gen
eral counsel for the NAACP in West
Virginia, announced May 3 that he
would ask Southern District Federal
Court Judge John F. Field Jr. to re
open the Raleigh case.
Brown contends that the Raleigh
Board of Education has not complied
with the spirit of a court agreement
reached in 1956 with Federal Judge
Ben Moore, now deceased. Judge
Moore directed that desegregation be
carried out on a voluntary basis.
Brown further said that a similar
case will be revived in McDowell
County, and the NAACP is consider
ing asking a review of the racial ques
tion in the Greenbrier school system.
Not Smooth Everywhere
The announcement from Brown is
the first indication in several years
that school desegregation has not pro
gressed smoothly in some sections of
West Virginia.
This state was the first in the south
ern border region to comply with a
1954 U.S. Supreme Court decision which
said compulsory racial segregation in
the public schools was contrary to the
Constitution.
Brown discussed the legal steps con
templated in Raleigh, McDowell and
Greenbrier counties with national
NAACP officials in New York late in
April. They urged him to press the
suits, he said.
He declined to say when he will
ask for a reopening of the McDowell
case, and further action in Greenbrier
County will depend on investigations
still to be made. He said desegregation
in Logan County also is under observa
tion.
Previous Cases
The NAACP brought a series of
cases in federal court six years ago,
but the only one that went to trial
was Dunn v. the Greenbrier County
Board of Education.
After two days of hearings before
Judge Moore in Lewisburg, the board
agreed to voluntary desegregation with
the beginning of the next semester.
Greenbrier had been the scene of racial
demonstrations a year earlier.
Similar actions against the boards of
Raleigh, Mercer, McDowell, Cabell and
Logan counties were resolved within
the next few weeks in conferences be
tween the judge and lawyers for the
NAACP and school systems.
A voluntary desegregation plan,
where Negro and white students would
go to the schools of their choice, was
put into effect.
Rep. W. J. Bryan Dorn of the Third
District, termed the legislation “the
worst civil rights bill that has ever
been proposed yet.”
In The Colleges
Two Negroes Apply
To Enter Winthrop
T wo applications for the ad
mission of Negro girls to
Winthrop College, the state col
lege for white women, were re
ceived by the Rock Hill college
during May. President Charles
S. Davis described the applica
tions as “incomplete” and said:
“Since the newspapers were informed
immediately (by Negroes) we do not
know whether these are serious appli
cants or publicity seekers.”
Clemson College, the South Carolina
Agricultural and Mechanical College,
would neither confirm nor deny re
ports that it, too, had received appli
cants from two Negroes seeking admis
sion. The Charlotte (N.C.) Observer
reported May 18 that two Charleston
Negroes, one now at Iowa State and
the other at Morehouse College, are
seeking admission to the Clemson
schools of architecture and engineering.
# # #
West Va. Highlights
School desegregation cases will be
reopened in two and possibly three
West Virginia counties to increase
the scope of a program started in
1956.
Pineville High School, segregated
as late as 1955, will have a Negro
as commencement speaker this year.
Rex M. Smith was appointed by
the State Board of Education as
state school superintendent to re
place the late R. Virgil Rohrbough.
Brown contends that there has been
very little desegregation in Raleigh
and McDowell counties. He said he will
ask that the Raleigh case be expanded
to include Negro school teachers. There
has been no teacher desegregation, he
said.
In discussing Greenbrier County, he
said there has been “substantial com
pliance” with the court order in White
Sulphur Springs and several other
areas of the county. But in Lewisburg
there has been no compliance what
soever, he added.
He charged the Negro principal at
Bolling High School for the failure of
desegregation at Lewisburg. Brown
said the principal seems to have in
sisted upon maintaining an all-Negro
school.
West Virginia has 43 counties with
Negro school children, and all are of
ficially desegregated. Hampshire and
Jefferson along the Virginia border in
the Eastern Panhandle were the last
to desegregate, this happening in the
fall of 1958.
★ ★ ★
African Negro Addresses
Pineville Graduates
Seven years ago Negro students were
forbidden from attending Pineville
High School. On May 22 a Negro from
one of Africa’s newest nations was the
school’s commencement speaker.
He was William Tsitsiwu, education
al attache of the Ghana embassy in
Washington. His subject was “The New
Africa.”
Tsitsiwu’s appearance in Pineville
was arranged by school Principal Jesse
W. Houck through U.S. Sen. Jennings
Randolph (D-WVa) in hopes it would
be a goodwill gesture.
Although Pineville High School, lo
cated in one of West Virginia’s most
southern counties, was segregated until
1954, Houck says interest has “never
been higher in a commencement pro
gram.”
Schoolmen
Rex M. Smith Named
State School Head;
Former Assistant
TJ ex M. Smith was named state
-*-*• school superintendent May 18
by the State Board of Education.
He has been acting as temporary su
perintendent under a board directive
since the death of R. Virgil Rohrbough
in early March. Rohrbough was elected
to the post in 1956, and died of a heart
attack while attending the Southern
Conference Basketball Tournament in
Richmond, Va.
Rohrbough was the last elected and
first appointed state superintendent in
history. The state constitution was
changed two years ago making the of
fice appointive.
Smith’s appointment was for one
year. The board will review its action
and Smith’s work next spring.
From Monongalia
He was superintendent of schools in
Monongalia County until he came to
the state department four years ago
with Rohrbough. He has been chief as
sistant superintendent in charge of ad
ministration.
While he was superintendent in Mon
ongalia, his system became the first in
West Virginia to desegregate its public
schools in compliance with the U.S.
Supreme Court ruling of 1954.
He is a native of Fairmont and a
graduate of West Virginia University.
His wife is a school teacher in the
Charleston schools.
Smith has not announced a suc
cessor to himself in the department’s
No. 2 spot. It has been vacant since
Rohrbough’s death. # # #