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FEBRUARY, 1962
LAND
Court Refuses
Negro Transfer
[uto University
U.
JACKSON
S. District Judge S. C. Mize
on Feb. 3 refused to order a
;j e gro admitted to all-white Uni
versity of Mississippi. He held
that the university “is not a rac
ially segregated institution.”
Arguments in the case of James H.
jleredith had been closed Jan. 27 in
,3ckson, and Judge Mize promised that
his decision would come soon under a
mandate from the U. S. Fifth Circuit
Court of Appeals. His ruling came in
exactly a week.
The judge held that the 28-year-old
Segro, seeking to transfer to “Ole Miss”
horn Jackson State College for Ne
groes, had failed to prove that his ap
plication was turned down by univer
sity officials for racial reasons. Meredith
had sought to enter the university’s
senior class in the second semester,
starting Feb. 6.
Meredith is the first Negro to seek
sdmittance to a public school or col-
ege in Mississippi through court action.
Judge Mize said the evidence “fails
to show that the application of any
iegro or Chinaman or anyone of any
see has been rejected because of his
race or color.”
Not Segregated, Judge Says
He added: “The proof shows on this
trial, and I find it a fact, that there is
io custom or policy now, nor was
iere any at the time plaintiff’s appli-
ation was rejected, which excluded
iiialified Negroes from entering the
'adversity. The proof shows, and I find
s a fact, that the university is not a
| racially segregated institution.”
The judge said he followed the ap
pals court’s instruction to consider the
* without reference to Meredith’s
ack of recommendations from five uni-
•ersity alumni or to the fact that Mere-
*4 was seeking to transfer from a
•unaccredited school. The alumni re
tirement has been ruled unconstitu-
•onal by the court of appeals, and
ackson State has been accredited since
Meredith case started.
Even after failing to consider these
?J aspects, Mize declared, “the evi
nce shows rather conclusively that he
Meredith) was not denied admission
^eause of his race.”
Meredith had petitioned for a per
cent injunction against university
parities refusing to accept him as a
^Juent. A married military veteran
. lives in Attala County (Kos-
®Usko), he has been seeking admission
«tce February of 1961. He said he
i® 8 unable to get recommendations
U 1)1 “Ole Miss” alumni because “no
'^gr° had ever attended the univer
sity.”
Earlier, Judge Mize refused to issue
' temporary injunction, which action
j! 3 upheld by the U.S. Fifth Court of
^®Ms, with instructions to the South-
!let ® ss * ss *PPi district judge to com-
v 6 a hearing on the merits of the
j without further delay.
West Tennessee School Desegregates
Three Negro students, accompanied by their parents, arrive to enroll at previously
all-white Tigrett Junior High School in Jackson, Tenn., on Jan. 25 after the school
board had voluntarily approved their transfer request. (See Tennessee report).
THE REGION
5 Districts Desegregate
Schools for First Time
the recent hearing, counsel for the
contended that Meredith was not
(See UNIVERSITY, Page 6)
F our Tennessee school districts
and one in Virginia desegre
gated in January for the first time,
as two previously desegregated
districts in Florida announced ex
pansion of their programs.
The new desegregations make 910
districts in the 17 Southern and border
states having policies permitting Ne
groes to attend classes with whites. The
region has added 127 new desegregated
districts so far this school year.
The Maryland Board of Education
held two closed sessions in January and
then issued a call to local school boards
to comply fully with the Supreme
Court’s rulings on school desegregation.
Two Texas districts have decided to
establish their first biracial schools next
fall. Steps toward desegregation of
church-related schools occurred in
January in Arkansas, Maryland and
Oklahoma.
Political Picture
The school desegregation issue ap
peared in the political picture in six
states. Legislation on this subject is un
der consideration—but attracted little
attention—in the general assemblies of
Georgia and Virginia and in the na
tional Congress.
One of Tennessee’s new desegregated
school districts, the weststate city of
Jackson, voluntarily approved the trans
fer of three Negro eighth-grade stu
dents to the formerly all-white Tigrett
Junior High School. Approval of the
students’ requests under the state’s Pu
pil Placement Law came after quiet
negotiations between white and Negro
leaders.
The state’s other districts desegregat
ing in January acted under court order.
Eight Negroes entered three formerly
white schools in Humphreys County,
and 13 began attending two formerly
white schools in Wilson County. Water-
town Elementary School, operated by
the 16th Special School District in Wil
son County, was under court order to
desegregate but no Negroes applied.
Broward County, Fla. (Fort Lauder
dale), which began school desegrega
tion last fall by admitting 21 Negro
students into classes with whites, an
nounced that this number has increased
to 56. Hillsborough County (Tampa)
has raised the number of Negroes in
biracial schools this year from one to
three. The county has completed ar-
(See SUMMARY, Page 11)
State Board Issues Call
For End of Race Factors
BALTIMORE
T :ie Maryland Board of Educa
tion issued a call to local
school boards on Jan. 30 “to guar
antee that procedures respecting
transfer, bus transportation, and
assignment shall apply without
regard to race” and to “provide
that all future educational pro
grams be made in the expectation
of and in the furtherance of de
segregated schools.”
Its multipart statement was issued
after the board had met about four
hours on Jan. 3 and two hours on Jan.
30 in a closed-door review of desegre
gation on a county-by-county basis. Its
members said that the board “finds
much to be commended, some hesitation
to be regretted, but derives satisfaction
from the fact that such progress as has
been made has been accomplished with
noticeably little friction and with little
or no bitterness between the two races.”
The board’s statement was unani
mous, revealing no evidence of a
previously reported split between board
members who wanted to issue a force
ful statement and those who did not.
The agreed-upon statement, forceful in
intent if not in language, was the first
formal expression of desegregation
policy by the Maryland board since
1955. The gist of the statement was that
the board had made the complete eli
mination of racial considerations a oart
of the declared educational policy of
Maryland.
The board’s statement reviewed its
own statements of 1954 and 1955 in
“unqualified support” of implementing
“the decree of the Supreme Court” and
its advice to local school boards to be
gin their compliance. In respect to what
has happened since then the seven-
member board said:
“The State Board of Education is
mindful of the problems that have beset
the local school authorities. Although
desegregation has not moved as rapidly
in some parts of the state as in others
or not at all; nevertheless, the state
Only Border States Have
Biracial Special Schools
D esegregation of state-operated
trade schools and special
schools—ones for the blind, deaf,
dumb, orphan, exceptional, re
tarded or delinquent children—
has occurred only in the border
area around the South.
Maryland and the District of Colum
bia admitted Negroes to previously all-
white schools for handicapped children
as early as 1954. But most of the
desegregation of public special schools
and trade schools in Maryland as well
as in Delaware, Kentucky, Missouri,
Oklahoma, Texas and West Virginia
came in the more recent years.
The Maryland School for the Blind
desegregated voluntarily in 1954, as
did the Maryland School for the Deaf.
feciAL
REPORT
Should Public Records Specify Race?
^ttouLD public records be kept
. race? This has been one
• iroversial question acccmpany-
^school desegregation.
°se who oppose racial identifica-
4 'I 1 Public records believe that it
0^ Pwitation to discrimination.
^e other side, the principal
i(j e . ent is that racial statistics pro-
V, l ^ orm ation essential to the solu-
Problems involving race. Some
kw at the absence of racial statistics
bn - S opportunities for di crimina-
M^'th reduced risk of detection.
a * n taining that statistics by race
ece ssary, Dr. James B. Conant
-Utjf, * n his recent study, “Slums and
Wbi ,hi “
it is difficult if not
to get statistics about school
enrollment and employment in terms
of the categories white and Negro.”
“How can we improve a situation,”
the educator asked, “if we are deprived
by terminology from knowing what
the situation really is?”
Separate statistical information for
Negroes and whites continues to be the
general practice in the 17 Southern
and border states. Since the U.S.
Supreme Court’s school desegregation
ruling in 1954, three states—Missouri,
Oklahoma, and West Virginia—have
stopped keeping school records by race.
Delaware and Maryland record sepa
rate figures for white and Negro stu
dents but these are not announced to
the public and are made available only
for special research. School records
continue to be kept by race in Arkan
sas and Florida but with certain
exceptions.
The District of Columbia and-the 10
other Southern and border states main
tain complete school statistics by race
and make them public. These states
are Alabama, Georgia, Kentucky, Lou
isiana, Mississippi, North Carolina,
South Carolina, Tennessee, Texas and
Virginia.
Missouri and West Virginia last re
corded their Negro enrollments in 1954,
and since then no racial breakdown has
been available.
School statistics have not been kept
by race in Oklahoma since 1955, when
(See STATE, Page 15)
A court suit failed to stop the volun
tary admission of Negroes to the Rose
wood Training School for mentally re
tarded children in 1954.
The Esther Loring Richards Chil
dren’s Center for emotionally disturbed
children opened in Maryland in 1958
as a desegregated institution. The Jacob
E. Finesinger Unit, also for disturbed
children, opened in 1961 also as a
biracial facility.
Court Decision
Maryland’s four state training schools
for delinquent youths, two for boys and
two for girls, were desegregated in
March, 1961, following a state court
ruling that continued segregation would
be unconstitutional. Segregation in the
state training schools had been an issue
for several years before the court’s
decision.
The State Board of Public Welfare
had sought to merge the separate insti
tutions for white and Negro girls as
an economy move. The General Assem
bly declined to change the laws to
make the merger possible.
In February, 1961, the Maryland
Court of Appeals upheld a lower court
finding that the training schools were
an “integral part of its system of edu
cation” and subject to the U.S. Supreme
Court’s 1954 ruling on public school
segregation. In the lower Circuit Court,
Judge Charles E. Moylan had declared
that the term “public education” en
compasses “not only the conventional
schools, but hundreds of schools pro
vided ,by the state at public expense
for specialized groups with varying ap
titudes, abilities, handicaps and prob
lems.”
The Court of Appeals restricted its
decision to the white reform school
but the Maryland Attorney General’s
office held that it applied to all the
training institutions.
(See RULING, Page 12)
board believes that a climate of opinion
has developed over this period that will
make the ultimate transition possible
with the same kind of spirit prevailing
between the races where it has been
accomplished.”
Declaration of Policy
In the light of its findings, the state
board sets forth “as a declaration of the
educational policy of the State of Mary
land” that “every local school board”
is to:
“(a) Initiate and carry out a resurvey
of its progress or lack of progress in the
desegregation of the schools under its
jurisdiction.
“(b) Revise, if found advisable as a
result of such resurvey, its policies and
procedures respecting desegregation in
accordance with the declared educa
tional policy of the state.
“(c) Confer with its local committees
composed of white and Negro citizens
in resurveying the present status of de
segregation and in revising, if advisable,
its policies and procedures.
“(d) Guarantee by its procedures
that the rights of no child be impaired
by arbitrary or capricious methods.
“(e) Guarantee that procedures re
specting transfer, but transportation,
and assignment shall apply without re
gard to race.
“(f) Provide that educational pro
grams and facilities be the sole deter
mining factors in the enrollment of
pupils.
“(g) Take all reasonable steps to as
sure that no child shall be required to
resort to hearings and court action to
insure his constitutional rights.
“(h) Provide that all future educa
tional programs be made in expectation
of and in the furtherance of desegre
gated schools.”
‘All Deliberate Speed’
In setting forth its principles the
board recognized that the requirements
in subsections (e) and (f) “may be ap
proached ‘with all deliberate speed.’ ”
However, “any delay in the full im
plementation of this policy statement,”
the board states, “may take place only
where a policy is in effect for ultimate,
full compliance with the Supreme
Court’s decree at the earliest practic
able date. The state board recognizes
the fact that the members of the local
boards of education are representative
of the finest type of citizenry in the
state, and it believes that they can be
trusted to carry out the law of the
land.”
The state board has, in effect, con
verted the decisions of the federal
courts on school desegregation into
Maryland educational policies. In the
process it has indicated that its mem-
(See MARYLAND, Page 2)
In This Issue
State Reports
Alabama 12
Arkansas 4
Delaware 5
District of Columbia 7
Florida 3
Georgia 5
Kentucky 13
Louisiana 8
Maryland 1
Mississippi 1
Missouri 9
North Carolina 13
Oklahoma 19
South Carolina 3
Tennessee 16
Texas 11
Virginia 14
West Virginia 7
Special Articles
The Region 1
Special Schools 1
Public Records and Race 1
School and Community (Md.) 2
Expenditures by Race (Miss.) 6
Compulsory Attendance (La.) 8
Man on the Bench 9
Books and the Issue 12
State-by-State 16