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VOL. 8, NO. 12, PART I
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NASHVILLE, TENNESSEE
JUNE, 1962
SOUTH CAROLINA
Lull in Legal Action
Ends; 2 Suits Filed
COLUMBIA
Hi three-year lull in judicial
. V desegregation activity in
• South Carolina ended abruptly
e. during May.
Jyj A long-delayed petition to desegre
gate the schools of Summerton in Clar-
m endon County was argued on May 14
before Federal District Judge C. C.
Wyche in Charleston. Judge Wyche
ruled on May 31 that the Clarendon
County suit could not be brought as
a class action, designed to open all
schools in the county to all Negro chil
dren.
A wide-ranging suit to end segrega
tion in Charleston’s city schools was
filed on May 28 in District Court.
A similar action against the schools
in Darlington County also was initiated
in the District Court at Charleston on
May 29.
The Summerton proceeding was be
gun in 1959 against the same school
board involved in the 1954 desegrega
tion decision by the U.S. Supreme
Court. A special three-judge tribunal
had ordered the Summerton district to
proceed with desegregation with “all
deliberate speed” in 1955. The 1959 case
was a follow-up to that decision. South
Carolina remains one of three states
having no Negro students attending
school with whites.
‘The Individual’
“It is the individual who is entitled to
the equal protection of the laws,” Judge
Wyche held in his May 31 ruling, “. . .
He alone may complain that his consti
tutional privilege has been invaded.”
The veteran Spartanburg jurist, who
has served on the federal bench for al
most 30 years, ordered that the names
of all but one of the 42 Negro children
in whose behalf the suit was brought
be removed from the complaint.
Twenty days were given to attorneys
for Bobby Brunson, whose name ap
pears first on the complaint, to file an
amended complaint. The Clarendon
school board would then have 20 days
to answer it.
The South Carolina School Placement
Law, Judge Wyche noted, “provides
that the case of each child be considered
individually.” He added that school
boards assigning pupils must consider
many factors unrelated to race. Among
the factors listed were place of resi
dence, availability of transportation,
dassroom space and scholastic attain
ment.
Affect Other Cases
It was felt that the Wyche ruling may
affect the Charleston and Darlington
cases, which are similar in nature. The
Charleston and Darlington cases are
considered to be the most serious at
tacks on the state’s separate-but-equal
Policy to date.
The Charleston action (Brown v.
School District 20) was brought by the
parents of 13 Negro children. Among
the plaintiffs was J. Arthur Brow
president of the National Ass>
for the Advancement of Colored
It was filed “on behalf of othei
children of Charleston County.’
Defendants in the case are
District 20 of Charleston; its ch
Charles A. Brown; its superinl
Thomas A. Carrere; and six othe
bers of the Board of Trustees.
Asks To Enjoin
The complaint asked the court to en
join School District 20 on five grounds:
• The operation of a “compulsory bi-
racial school system” in Charleston
County;
• The maintenance of a dual pattern
of school zone lines or attendance area
lines on the basis of race and color;
• The assignment of pupils on the
basis of race and color;
• The assignment of teachers, princi
pals and other personnel on the basis
of race and color;
• The approval of budgets, construc
tion funds, employment, curricula and
construction contracts, “which are de
signed to perpetuate or maintain or
support compulsory racially segregated
schools.”
In addition, the complaint asked that
school officials present “a complete plan
. . . for the reorganization of the entire
school system of Charleston County in
to a nonracial system.”
Alternate Request
This request was an alternate in the
event the court does not want im
mediate injunctive relief on the other
counts.
The minor Negro plaintiffs have been
injured, the complaint alleged, by the
refusal of the school board to operate
(See COURT, Page 5)
‘I’m Eight. I Was Born On
The Day of The Supreme
Court Decision.’
THE REGION
Public Schools Mark
First Peaceful Year
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In This Issue
State Reports
Alabama 1
Arkansas 6
Delaware 8
District of Columbia 16
Florida 4
Georgia 12
Kentucky 15
Louisiana 1
Maryland 14
Mississippi 1
Missouri 12
North Carolina 7
Oklahoma 2
South Carolina 1
Tennessee 11
Texas 2
Virginia 10
West Virginia 10
Special Articles
The Region: Violence 1
Man on the Bench 3
Outside the South 5
Texf s
Roanoke, Va., Decision 10
T he south’s public schools have
completed their first year with-
it violence since 1954, when the
.S. Supreme Court ruled com-
llsory segregation unconstitu-
onal.
Mob action, boycotts or bombings ac-
■mpanied new school desegregation
iring each of the first seven years
after the court’s decision. As the 1954-
55 school term opened and Negroes be
gan entering schools with whites,
protests flared up in Baltimore, Md.;
Washington, D. C.; Milford, Del., and
several West Virginia communities.
The major incident of violence in the
1955-56 school year occurred at the
University of Alabama, where whites
rioted when a Negro woman, Autherine
Lucy, attended school for three days.
Desegregation attempts in the school
year of 1956-57 resulted in the use of
the National Guard to quell violence in
Clay and Sturgis, Ky., and Clinton,
Tenn. The governor of Texas sent
Texas rangers to control public protests
against desegregation at Mansfield.
Peak of Violence
Violence over school desegregation
reached its peak during the 1957-58
session, with the use of armed troops at
Little Rock, Ark., and the dynamiting of
a Nashville, Tenn., elementary school.
Clinton, Tenn., returned to the news
headlines the next year, 1958-59, when
a dynamite blast destroyed a wing of
the desegregated high school. An at
tempted assassination of Virginia Gov.
Lindsay Almond in the spring of 1959
was believed to have been based on his
abandonment of “massive resistance”
tj school desegregation.
On Labor Day, 1959, two years after
IOUKIANA
Ellis Modifies Wright’s Order
u
NEW ORLEANS
S. Judge Frank B. Ellis of
the Eastern District of Lou
isiana reversed his predecessor
and set aside an April 9 order that
Orleans Parish public schools de
segregate the first six grades in
September.
The newly appointed jurist said the
Orleans Parish school board must, in
stead, begin in September a full grade-
a-year desegregation program he said
was intended by the initial May 16,
ALABAMA
Voters Nominate Wallace
On Total Defiance Stand
MONTGOMERY
A labama voters had their
choice of two approaches to
Se gregation in the second Demo-
Cr atic primary May 29.
Former Circuit Judge George C. Wal-
ace of Barbour County faced State
Ryan deGraffenried of Tuscaloosa
,° r the gubernatorial nomination, which
I? equivalent to election in Alabama.
Wallace, 42, pledged total defiance and
Stacked the federal courts. DeGraffen-
37, warned against such “dema-
®°guery,” saying it would hurt the
^te and accelerate desegregation at-
te mpts.
Wallace won a sweeping victory, car
ing 57 0 f the state’s 67 counties with
”8,961 votes to deGraffenried’s 267,612
^official returns from 3,457 of the
date’s 3,486 boxes). _
Uie central issue of the runoff cam
paign was school segregation. Both can
didates declared themselves inflexibly
committed to segregation; the dispute
was over how best to preserve it.
DeGraffenried attacked Wallace for
taunting the federal courts, inviting de
segregation suits and offering to make
himself a single target of all such legal
action, whereas all the state’s laws are
intended to decentralize authority.
Wallace’s “rabble-rousing” would ac
celerate desegregation, deGraffenried
said, hurt the state’s “image” and de
ter industrial development. If elected,
he said, he would keep his mouth shut
and try to keep litigation out of the
courts.
Wallace, on the other hand, continued
his attacks on the federal courts, said
there was no middle ground in the de-
(See WALLACE, Page 8)
1960, order of Judge J. Skelly Wright.
Judge Wright left New Orleans in
April for a position on the U.S. Court
of Appeals at Washington. Before he
left he said the school board, by using
in an improper manner the Louisiana
Pupil Placement Law, had limited de
segregation. He then ordered the de
segregation of all elementary grades
beginning in September.
Judge Ellis, saying he must act on
what is wise and proper no matter
what had transpired before, ruled on
May 23.
A week before, the elected school
board had adopted a resolution elimi
nating racial barriers for all public
school children entering the first grade
in September. Under the resolution
there would be no pupil placement
screening program. Firstgraders will be
able to attend the white or Negro
school within their residential district.
Compliance Noted
Judge Ellis said the board action was
the first affirmative action it had ever
taken to comply fully with Judge
Wright’s earlier 1960 order, which had
directed that firstgraders be given a
choice to attend the all-white or all-
Negro school nearest their homes.
In the hub of his decision. Judge
Ellis said:
It remains to consider the expanded
plan of April 9, 1962. As noted before,
the discretion to formulate plans for
desegregation has been vested in local
officials even if such officials come to
the United States district court.
All such officials are answerable to
the Constitution, the public needs, and
physical possibility. A new court in a
case such as this must respond to these
demands as it deems wise and proper,
whatever may have gone before. It is
in the exercise of that considered
judgment that this court views the
present state of the record.
“This court is impressed with the
magnitude of the administrative prob
lems of suddenly turning tens of
thousands of children free to choose
their own schools, leaving the school
board to shepherd them into some
workable order.
“However, the board now finds itself
able to accommodate the administra
tion of the schools with the order of
May 16, 1960. With this resolution, the
Orleans Parish school board starts ac
tive compliance with the order of May
16, 1960.
“While it does not divest this court
of the duty to formulate plans of de
segregation, it is a drastic departure
from programs of the past. By this the
(See RULINGS, Page 3)
the troops had been sent to Little Rock,
three dynamite blasts there damaged a
city-owned automobile, the mayor’s
private office and a school administra
tion building. The seventh school year
after the Supreme Court decision, 1960-
61, began peacefully but the quiet ended
in November when whites marched and
picketed in New Orleans to protest the
desegregation of two elementary
schools.
The last violence over school desegre
gation in the region occurred at the
University of Georgia in January, 1961,
when two Negroes entered the school
under court order. Public officials in At
lanta, Ga., Memphis, Tenn., and Dallas,
Texas, made extensive preparations to
avoid violence last fall when their pub
lic schools desegregated for the first
time.
In several Southern communities,
violence caused the public authorities to
postpone the scheduled admission of
Negroes to schools with whites. How
ever, the federal courts have ruled con
sistently that violence, or the threat of
violence, is not a valid reason for the
delay of desegregation. The main inci
dents of violence associated with school
desegregation in the Southern and bor
der area are listed below by school
years:
1954-55
Greenbrier County, W.Va.—A few
Negroes attended the White Sulphur
Springs and Rupert high schools peace
fully until the second week. On Mon
day, Sept. 13, 1954. the white students
began a boycott. The county board of
education decided after a 12-hour ses
sion, with threatening parents standing
outside the meeting room, to reverse its
desegregation policy. A federal court
order returned the Negroes to the
schools more than one year later.
Boone County, W.Va.—Students pro
tested and adults picketed against the
desegregation but the Negroes remained
in the school with whites.
Marion County, W.Va.—Disturbances
in Marion County ended when a circuit
judge threatened to jail the pickets.
Milford, Del.—The first 10 days of
peaceful desegregation in Delaware
ended on Sept. 17, 1954, when Milford
citizens held an “anti-integration”
meeting. Anonymous telephone threats
and another protest meeting led to the
closure of the schools and the resigna
tion of the school board, which had kept
its desegregation plans secret until the
day before they began. Bryant Bowles
held rallies of his National Association
for the Advancement of White People
(NAAWP). The state Board of Educa
tion operated the schools briefly but the
student boycotts spread to other dis
tricts. A new Milford school board
(See DESEGREGATION, Page 7)
MISSISSIPPI
Race Co-operation Urged
To Preserve Segregation
JACKSON
A n official of the Mississippi
Sovereignty Commission, the
state’s segregation “watchdog”
agency headed by Gov. Ross Bar
nett, told a high school gradu
ating class May 25 that “the only
way we can retain our separate
school system is through the co
operation of the colored race.”
The speaker was Erie Johnston Jr.,
public relations director of the com
mission in charge of its speaker’s bu
reau which sends representatives to
cities in the North and East to “tell
Mississippi’s side of the segregation is
sue.” Johnston also is editor of the
Scott County Times, a weekly news
paper at Forest, and handled Gov. Bar
nett’s publicity in his 1959 campaign.
He delivered the commencement ad
dress to the Grenada High School, from
which he was graduated in 1935.
The 1962 biennial session of the leg
islature, which on June 2 adjourned
the longest session since 1870 (it con
vened Jan. 2), again appropriated
$250,000 to the Sovereignty Commis
sion, which was created in 1956. The
commission still is “donating” $4,500
monthly to the Radio and TV Forum
of the Citizens Council of Mississippi,
an organization seeking preservation of
segregation, for its nationwide program.
The contributions were inaugurated
more than a year ago and until several
months ago they were $5,000 annually.
A federal court suit was filed by
William Higgs, young attorney of
Jackson, challenging the “donation,”
but no action has been taken on it.
Two labor union officials had joined in
the suit but later withdrew under as-
(See SOVEREIGNTY, Page 13)