Newspaper Page Text
Court Rejects
Class Action
In Clarendon
(Continued From Page 1)
j biracial system. It was contended that
pany Negro students must attend
schools far removed from their homes
jnd that many parts of the curriculum
see open only to white students. The
complaint further stated that the plain
tiffs and members of their class are in-
iured by the school board’s policy of
assigning teachers, principals and other
school officials on the basis of race.
The suit was the outgrowth of almost
two years of efforts by Negro parents
to have their children transferred to
the white schools of Charleston. They
first petitioned the school board in
October of 1960 and were denied. .Am
appeal also was rejected, primarily on
the basis that it had not met the four-
month deadline before school opening
in September.
The request was renewed the follow
ing May and was again rejected, as was
a subsequent appeal to the county
school board.
Take Position
South Carolina’s Pupil Assignment
Law provides for further appeal to the
state courts. But Negro lawyers have
taken the position that they have ex
hausted the “administrative” remedy
after appealing to the school board and
that further efforts in state courts would
be “judicial remedies.”
Court decisions outside of South Car
olina have held that administrative
remedies must be exhausted before
courts will take jurisdiction. The com
plaint in Brown v. School District 20
alleged that the federal court had juris
diction because remedies available un
der the Pupil Assignment Law have
been exhausted and that the remedy
provided by South Carolina law was
not adequate.
“We claim that the state’s Pupil As
signment Law is an inadequate admin
istrative remedy because it has never
been used to desegregate a school sys
tem but rather is used to perpetuate
racial segregation in the schools,” attor
ney Matthew Perry of Columbia, who
is associated in both the Charleston and
Darlington cases, said.
Legal counsel for the Negro plain
tiffs also claimed that there was no real
remedy available in the state even if all
procedures were followed. The law,
they pointed out, requires the closure
of any school that a court orders de
segregated. The statute actually re
quires that state funds be cut off from
any school from which and to which a
student is ordered transferred.
Charleston School District 20 had 3,-
601 white students and 9,092 Negro
students in 1961.
Darlington Case
The Darlington County case (Stanley
a. Darlington County School District
Ho. 1) was brought by the fathers
°f five minors. The allegations of the
complaint were similar to those in the
Charleston case and it also offered an
alternate course to court-ordered de
segregation by asking the court to direct
the defendants, which also included the
county board of education and its mem
bers, to present a plan putting the
e ntire school system “on a non-racial
basis.”
Four attorneys represent the Negroes
® both cases. They are Jack Greenberg,
chief counsel for the NAACP, and Con
stance Baker Motley, both of New
^ or k; and Matthew Perry and Lincoln
Jenkins of Columbia.
Associated in the Charleston case are
benjamin Kooke and F. Henderson
Moore of Charleston. Ernest A. Finney
Jr. of Sumter, S.C., and James M. Na-
brit III of New York are on the legal
te am bringing the Darlington action.
Neither case has much of a chance of
being heard in the near future. Federal
court attaches report that there are 100-
°fid non-jury cases and 40-odd jury
cases on the docket ahead of the segre
gation actions.
political Activity
School Segregation
^ets Little Notice
^ Governor’s Race
, The issue of school desegregation had
ad a relatively minor role as the
emocratic candidates for governor of
S ° u th Carolina neared the end of the
C ampaign on June 12.
( ® ne of the five candidates, A. W.
ued) Bethea, a large-scale farmer and
u ispoken state legislator from rural
S. C. Highlights
A three-year lull in judicial at
tempts to desegregate South Caro
lina’s schools ended abruptly in late
May. Suits were filed on behalf of
Negro students in Charleston and
Darlington, and in the long-pending
action in Clarendon County, U.S.
District Judge C. C. Wyche declared
the suit could not be brought as a
“class action.”
The segregation issue played a
relatively minor role in the early
portions of the state’s big political
campaign that had more statewide
candidates running than in recent
history. Only A. W. (Red) Bethea,
in the five-man gubernatorial race,
made the preservation of segregation
a major plank in his platform. Other
candidates, however, strongly en
dorsed the separate-but-equal theo
ry-
SPECIAL REPORT
Dillon County, repeatedly has declared
that, if desegregation were ordered
while he was governor, “I will close the
doors of the University of South Caro
lina so tight you won’t be able to get
a crowbar in.”
The other candidates are Lt. Gov.
Burnet R. May bank of Greenville,
Donald S. Russell of Spartanburg, the
Rev. Milton J. Dukes of Charleston, and
Dero Cook of Conway.
Maybank is the son of a former South
Carolina governor and senator, Burnet
R. Maybank Sr., who died in office in
1954. The 38-year-old lieutenant gover
nor never has been defeated in four
political races.
Russell, a wealthy lawyer, was deputy
director of war mobilization and re
conversion and assistant secretary of
state for administration under his for
mer law partner, James F. Byrnes,
during and immediately after World
War II. For six years in the early 1950s,
he was president of the University of
South Carolina.
Dukes, a Baptist minister, is a pro
hibitionist. Cook has advocated open
bars and pari-mutual betting.
Issued Challenge
Bethea, who has run unsuccessfully
for State commissioner of agriculture
three times, early in the campaign chal
lenged Russell and
Maybank to come
out flatly on the
issue of segrega
tion. Russell, who
was defeated for
governor in 1958,
and Maybank ap
parently decided
early to play down
the segregation is
sue, although both
supported it in
their platforms.
Immediately after a school desegre
gation suit was filed against the Char
leston city schools on May 28, Russell,
speaking on the stump at Union, under
scored the need for a keen legal brain
in the governor’s chair and added that
many more such suits are probable.
At Greenwood, midway in the cam
paign, Maybank, taking note of the seg-
BETHEA
plaints
regation issue raised by Bethea, said
he always has stood for segregated
schools.
The Rev. Mr. Dukes, however, took
issue with Bethea over the closing of
the state university in the event of
desegregation. Calling himself a segre
gationist, Dukes said that he would not
close the university if the courts forced
it to open its doors to Negro students.
“There is no use to be foolish,” he
declared during an Anderson meeting.
Such an action, he added “would make
us a laughing stock.”
Heated Race
The segregation issue has not been
a factor in the other statewide races,
including the heated one between Gov.
| Ernest F. Holhngs and U.S. Sen. Olin D.
i Johnston for the Senate seat that John
ston has held for the past 18 years.
Economic issues have dominated this
race.
Nevertheless, the Negro vote is likely
to be a more potent factor than ever
before. Aggressive registration drives
have pushed the total number of Ne
groes eligible to vote over the 90,000
mark, according to the S.C. Progressive
C omplaints of discrimination in
public schools outside the
South have increased to include
at least 45 communities in 13
Northern and Western states.
Charging racial prejudice on either
the student or faculty level, Negro
groups have filed suits or made protests
in eight communities each in Illinois,
New Jersey and New York, seven in
California, three each in Arizona and
Pennsylvania, two in Washington state,
and one each in Connecticut, Indiana,
Kansas, Michigan, Ohio and Oregon.
The Negro complaints have resulted
in 16 court suits, the latest suits were
riled in New York against the Westbury
and Rochester school boards. Southern
■school News reported on the 14 other
school cases and on 14 protests in its
April issue.
In the Westbury suit, the NAACP
asked for an injunction to restrain
school authorities from maintaining
segregated schools, and requested that
the officials be required to submit a
desegregation plan. The suit was filed
as the Westbury Board of Education
announced a plan to expand its student
transfer program.
Open Enrollment
Under the open enrollment plan,
3,951 pupils will transfer next Septem
ber from their neighborhood schools
to schools with a greater racial dis
tribution. Under the program begun in
1960, students in kindergarten through
the sixth grade may transfer from
schools that are 90 per cent or more
Negro or Puerto Rican. The opportunity
for transfer next fall was offered 60,995
pupils.
The NAACP-sponsored suit, Bailey
et al v. the Board of Education of
School District No. 1, Westbury, et al*
was filed in protest of zoning changes
at the elementary level. The NAACP
charged that the number of white chil
dren would be decreased in the New;
Cassel School, leaving a virtually all-
Negro enrollment. It also was charged
that the assignment of certain pupils to
other schools bypassed the nearest
school because of objections from white
parents.
The new suit filed against the Roches
ter, N.Y., school board was filed by the
NAACP on behalf of 22 white and
Negro children. The complaint charges
the school board and superintendent
with “maintaining racially segregated
public schools. The NAACP said the
board maintains five predominantly]
Negro schools, including one 99 per
cent Negro. The suit asked that the
board submit a desegregation plan.
The Rochester suit, Aikens et al v.
the Board of Education et al, was filed
on May 25 in the U.S. District Court.
The day after the suit was filed, the
school board employed its first Negro
school principal.
‘De Facto’ Segregation
A major issue in most of the com
plaints in the non-Southern states is
called de facto segregation, which re
sults from natural circumstances but
not directly from official government
Democrats, a Negro political organiza
tion.
Total registration is up to more than
650,000, a substantial boost over the
606,886 eligibles in 1960. Negroes ob
viously accounted for a considerable
amount of the increase. In coastal
Georgetown County, for instance, Negro
registration jumped from 911 in 1958 to
3,621 now.
Community Action
Biracial Church
Group Reorganized
The South Carolina Council of
Churches could become a “force for
stabilization” in the state, new President
Ed Jones of Columbia told a reorgani
zation meeting of the group May 1.
The state council had been virtually
inactive for several years. Several
speakers agreed that the council could
become a communications link between
the races. Some voiced the opinion that
the group shouldn’t attempt to foster
desegregation directly.
The churchmen heard the Rev. J.
Edward Lantz, Southern director of the
National Council of Churches, say:
“Most of us are not interested in
helping a church council get started
unless it is interracial. . . . There is
an opportunity here to lead South Car
olina in the field of racial justice.”
# # #
SOUTHERN SCHOOL NEWS-^JUNE, 1962—PAGES
Outside South Rise
action. A federal court decision in the
Hempstead, Long island, school deseg
regation case recently provided the first
curing against this type of school seg
regation.
U.S. District Judge John F. Dooling
on April 9 refused to grant a summary
judgment dismissing the school suit,
Branche et at v. trie Board of Education
of the town of Hempscead (SSN, April).
Judge Dooling wrote:
“. . . Defendants show facts compat
ible with an absence of responsibility
on their part lor the racial segregation
that exists in the schools but these
lacts do not demonstrate that there has
not been segregation because of race,
segregated education is inadequate and
when that inadequacy is attributable to
state action it is a deprivation of con
stitutional right.
“The centred constitutional fact is the
inadequacy of segregated education,
mat it is not coerced by direct action
of an arm of the state cannot, alone,
be decisive of the issue of deprivation
of constitutional right . . . The educa
tional system that is thus compulsory
and publicly afforded must deal with
me inadequacy arising from adventi
tious segregation; it cannot accept an
indurate segregation on the ground that
it is not coerced or planned but ac
cepted . . .”
Another part of the suit had been
withdrawn earlier by the plaintiffs. The
Negroes had opposed a public vote on
school building bonds but the referen
dum was not held.
NAACP Hails Decision
The NAACP considered Judge Dool-
mg’s decision an “important victory”
in its attack on de facto segregation.
Jawn A. Sandifer, chairman of the
New York State NAACP legal redress
committee and one of the lawyers in
the case, commented:
“All our Northern cases would have
fallen with the Hempstead case if the
judge had ruled against us. It would
have set us back tremendously in our
right against de facto segregation . . .
i'here is no solid case law to rely on
for de facto segregation, but we hope
to set the precedent in the Hempstead
case.”
Most of the 14 new complaints are
against Western communities and re
sulted from a special tour of that area
by Robert L. Carter, general counsel
of the NAACP, and Miss June Shaga-
ioff, the organization’s special assistant
for education. The two NAACP officials
mvestigated educational policies, stu
dent counselling, work-study and dis
tributive education programs, and
teacher assignment and employment.
Carter and Miss Shagaloff reported
finding de facto segregation and other
discriminatory practices in Seattle,
Wash.; Portland, Ore.; San Francisco,
Oakland, Berkeley, Los Angeles, Comp
ton and San Diego, Calif.; and Eloy,
Phoenix and Tucson, Ariz. They said
that Phoenix and Tucson maintain vir
tually all-Negro and Mexican schools,
and that in the latter city, Negro stu
dents are excluded from the distributive
education courses in the secondary
schools.
Zone Lines Challenged
The Pasadena, Calif., NAACP already
had begun litigation charging discrim
inatory zone lines affecting junior high
schools. The chapter plans to investi
gate the zone lines for elementary and
senior high schools. A school desegre
gation suit reportedly is being prepared
against the Tacoma, Wash., school
board.
The Berkeley, Calif., group of CORE
also has investigated the public schools
there and presented the school board
with a seven-page report. CORE said
eight Berkeley schools “have a Cauca
sian enrollment of 94 per cent or over,
while two schools have an enrollment
of 94 per cent or more non-caucasian
pupils.” The board ordered a study by
the superintendent of schools to be
completed by mid-June.
In Eloy, Ariz., a small community
between Phoenix and Tucson, the
NAACP has petitioned for “desegrega
tion of the schools and nondiscrimina-
tory assignments of teachers by Sep
tember, 1962.” The upper grades of
school were desegregated after the Su
preme Court’s 1954 school decision, the
NAACP reported. But, the organization
said, the elementary grades below grade
six remain segregated.
While on their Western tour in April,
Miss Shagaloff and Carter urged the
California State Board of Education
“to recognize the undesirability of seg
regated public schools and to declare
a statewide educational policy that local
1 school officials have a definite responsi
bility to eliminate racially segregated
schools whatever the cause.”
At its May meeting, the California
board directed State School Superin
tendent Roy Simpson to draft new reg
ulations covering public schools from
the kindergarten through the junior
college level. The new regulations to
be considered at the next board meet
ing would require rezoning certain
school districts, govern selection of new
school sites, and require consideration
if ethnic factors in unification of some
districts.
The NAACP’s executive secretary,
Roy Wilkins, called the board action
a “major breakthrough, in the North
ern states, the impact of which will be
:elt not only in California, but through
out the North and West.”
The proposals that the NAACP had
presented to the board included: A ra
cial census to determine the extent of
segregated public schools; re-examina
tion of school zoning; adoption of the
“principle of integration” in zoning,
building programs, and site selections;
a review of practices affecting the em
ployment and assignment of Negro
teachers and administrators; and elim
ination of discriminatory practices in
cooperative work-study and appren
ticeship training programs supported by
local, state and federal funds.
Protests in Chicago
Negroes in Chicago have protested
vigorously the use of mobile units to
relieve overcrowding at all-Negro or
mostly Negro schools. Chicago’s su
perintendent of schools, Dr. Benjamin
C. Willis, was accused of using seg
regated units to avoid assigning Negroes
to under-utilized schools with all-white
or predominantly white enrollments.
The Board of Education purchased
150 of the classroom trailers and plans
to have them installed next month. The
Meg roes have called them “Willis Wag
ons” and “go-carts of ghettoism.” Ne
gro parents previously have instituted
a suit against the city’s neighborhood
school policy (SSN, April).
The NAACP has requested the Illi
nois State Commissioner of Education
to investigate teacher employment and
assignment policies in Peoria, Ill. The
NAACP said 17 Negro teachers, out of
more than 750 teachers, are assigned
to the four elementary schools with the
largest numbers of Negro children. No
Negroes are teaching in any of the
iunior and senior high schools, the
NAACP said.
Two Projects Cancelled
Protests from white and Negro
groups in Gary, Ind., resulted in the
school board’s cancellation of two
projects. The Board of Education on
April 24 dropped its plan to build a
new high school after Negroes objected
that it would create new segregation
in fact. White parents’ protests over a
plan to transfer Negro students to un-
ler-utilized all-white schools caused
the board to rescind that program also.
The NAACP said that 95 per cent of
the elementary schools are virtually
all-white or all-Negro and that all but
two high schools are segregated in fact.
The organization said that the schools
segregated in fact operate on double
shifts while a number of the all-white
schools are under-utilized.
The Coatesville, Pa., school board has
adopted the Princeton plan to deseg
regate two elementary schools next
September. Under the Princeton plan,
students attending two adjacent schools
are assigned to each school on the basis
of grade. In the case of Coatesville, the
formerly predominantly white Terry
School will house kindergarten through
third grade, and the all-Negro Adams
School, renamed the Harris School, will
contain the fourth through the sixth
grade. The faculties of both schools
will be reassigned to complete the de
segregation.
Connecticut Issues
Stamford, Conn., also adopted the
Princeton plan to overcome charges of
discrimination in its high schools. The
Board of Education decided on May 2
to send all freshmen and sophomores
to one of two high schools and all jun
iors and seniors to the other high
school.
Stamford High school has had a high
proportion of Negroes, Puerto Ricans
and low-income students, and the new
high school, Rippowan, had a predom
inantly white, higher-income student
body.
Connecticut’s State Board of Educa
tion has agreed tentatively to adopt a
policy banning discrimination in col
lege admissions, but formal action on
the proposal has been postponed until
(See NON-SOUTH, Page 9)