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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)