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SOUTHERN SCHOOL NEWS—JULY, 1962—PAGE 13
DISTRICT OF COLUMBIA
Negro Seats on Board of Education
Increased to Four
WASHINGTON
M ordecai W. Johnson, presi
dent emeritus of Howard
University, was appointed to a
i* three-year term on the District
.4 Board of Education June 22.
The action by the judges of the
Federal District Court for the District
of Columbia who are charged by law
to select school board members, mark
ed the first departure in 56 years from
an unwritten formula which has dic
tated that the board should consist
of three Negro and six white members.
Johnson, 72, was appointed to suc
ceed Rowland F. Kirks, white, who
retired from the board effective June
30 after nine years’
service. The
judges reappoint
ed two incumbent
members, Euphe-
mias Haynes, Ne
gro, and Carl C.
Smuck, white, giv
ing the board a
composition of five
white members
and four Negroes.
In the days and
weeks preceding
the judges’ action, a number of com
munity organizations had urged a de
parture from the traditional 6-3 racial
composition of the board. More than
are half of the District’s population and
38 rate- a i >ou { four-fifths of the public school
’ n was enrollment is Negro.
fayefte
on did
ce. Al-
JOHNSON
tion of Civic Associations, the Central
Northwest Citizens Association, the Ur
ban League, the Republican Central
Committee and the Democratic Central
Committee.
In a letter addressed to the judges,
the Civic Federation asked that ap
pointments be made without regard to
race but taking “judicial notice” of the
District’s population and the law of
averages.
The statute covering composition of
the school board requires that three of
the nine members be women, but makes
no reference to race. Traditionally, two
Negro men and one Negro woman have
served on the board.
‘Formula’ Said Outdated
A letter to the judges from the Demo
cratic Central Committee noted that
in the past “a formula for Negro mem
bership on the board may possibly have
served some useful purpose in assuring
representation of the Negro community
on this body.”
But, the committee added, “any use
ful purpose served by such formula
ended with the desegregation of our
public schools. . . .”
“We are opposed,” the letter stated,
“to ratios of any kind in the selection
of members for this or any other board
in the District of Columbia.”
Justice Department
D. C. Highlights
Mordecai W. Johnson, president
emeritus of Howard University, was
appointed to the District Board of
Education, marking the first depart
ure in 56 years from an unwritten
rule which has limited Negroes to
three seats on the nine-member board.
A House education subcommittee
studying bills to speed compliance
with the Supreme Court’s 1954 school
desegregation decision heard NAACP
leader Clarence Mitchell testify that
such legislation could be enacted
whenever congressional and admin
istration leaders make a determined
effort.
The Justice Department went to
court to restore the job of a Missis
sippi Negro teacher who allegedly
was fired after she tried to register
to vote.
The Peace Corps said it will con
tinue to train candidates at Southern
universities where equal treatment
regardless of race is available.
President Kennedy named a com
mittee to study racial discrimination
within the armed forces and in com
munities serving military installa
tions.
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Hails Appointments
Board President Wesley S. Williams
hailed the judges’ appointments as “ex
cellent choices.” Johnson, he said, “will
bring a wealth of experience to the
board.” A spokesman for the judges
said, “We were looking for the best
man.”
Johnson, a Baptist minister, assumed
the presidency of Howard in 1926, when
the university was a small institution
with little stature. He left the post in
1960. During his 34-year tenure, the
university earned national and inter
national recognition, particularly for its
graduate and professional programs.
Johnson has been awarded honorary
degrees by nine universities and has
received awards from the governments
of Ethiopia, Liberia, Haiti and Panama.
In 1959, he was a member of the United
States delegation to the NATO Atlantic
Conference in London.
A native of Paris, Term., Johnson
attended Atlanta Baptist College, now
Morehouse College, and taught English
there before moving to the University
of Chicago, where he earned a second
bachelor’s degree. He also holds de
grees from Rochester University and
Harvard.
Major Interests
In an interview following his appoint
ment, Johnson said his major interests
on the school board would be School
Superintendent Carl F. Hansen’s efforts
to strengthen the teaching of basic sub
jects, the city’s school building and fi
nancing problems and “the great ex
periment here in school desegregation.”
Among community organizations
which urged reappraisal of the tradi
tional 6-3 racial composition of the
board before Johnson’s appointment
was announced were the Interdenomi
national Ministers Alliance, the Federa-
Goes Into Court
To Assist Teacher
The Justice Department took court
action June 16 to restore the job of a
Negro teacher in Greene County, Miss.,
who allegedly was fired after she tried
to register to vote.
Attorney General Robert F. Kennedy
announced that the department asked
for an injunction in federal court in
Jackson, Miss., to require the Greene
County school board to renew the con
tract of Ernestine Denham Talbert.
A Justice Department spokesman
said it was the first time the department
had gone to court to get a state or lo
cality to restore a job in a civil rights
case.
The attorney general said Mrs. Tal
bert’s contract at the all-Negro Greene
County Vocational High School had not
been renewed “in an effort to intimidate
her and other Negroes from registering
and voting and co-operating with the
Justice Department in its efforts to en
force the law.”
The complaint named the school
board, its members and School Superin
tendent Evans J. Martin.
Voting Suit
Mrs. Talbert was identified in a voting
suit filed by the Justice Department
April 16. A Federal judge issued a
temporary restraining order April 21
which, in effect, upheld Mrs. Talbert’s
claim that she had been denied the
right to register to vote.
Kennedy said the board of education
refused to renew Mrs. Talbert’s contract
at a special meeting held April 25, al
though her principal had recommended
renewal.
Peace Corps Using
Southern Colleges
That Meet Terms
The Peace Corps announced June 28
that it will continue to conduct training
programs at Southern universities so
long as all trainees are treated equally.
Peace Corps Director Sargent Shriver
issued the statement “to straighten out
some misconceptions that seem to have
developed.” It followed published re
ports that all Southern universities have
been barred from Peace Corps training
projects because of segregation prac
tices.
Shriver said the Peace Corps already
has conducted successful training pro
grams at the University of Oklahoma
and at Texas Western College in El
Paso, a branch of the University of
Texas. The programs prepared candi
dates for assignments in Bolivia and
Tanganyika.
Second Program
A second program at the University
of Oklahoma is scheduled to begin July
23 with 150 to 200 trainees for service in
Brazil, Shriver said. After the training
program concludes Sept. 15, the Peace
Corps candidates will go to the Tennes
see Valley Authority facilities at Muscle
Shoals, Ala., for further instruction.
Shriver said the Peace Corps was
negotiating with the University of North
Carolina, which has met the agency’s
requirement that all trainees receive
equal treatment regardless of race. If
arrangements are completed, a training
program will begin at Chapel Hill in
September.
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NAACP Leader Urg es Compliance Law
A leader of the National Association
for the Advancement of Colored Peo
ple told a House Education subcom
mittee June 15 that a bill to require
all segregated schools to take the first
step toward compliance with the Su
preme Court’s 1954 desegregation deci-
p° n can be enacted any time the
esident and Congressional leaders put
their minds to it.
Clarence Mitchell, Washington repre-
tentative of the NAACP, appeared be-
or e the special subcommittee studying
segregation in federally-assisted educa
tion. The subcommittee, headed by Rep.
t-feminick V. Daniels (D-N.J.), held
earings on bills which would author-
\ Ze the Justice Department to initiate
^segregation actions, provide federal
. for desegregating districts and re-
9Utre all segregated school systems to
e plans for first-step compliance.
Mitchell said a determined effort to
onact the legislation could succeed de-
apite delays in the Southern-dominated
ouse Rules Committee and “the haz
ards of a cave of winds known as the
■ uster through which blow noisy
gales of fantastic destruction” in the
Senate.
“The fact that Congress, eight years
after this historic decision, is still pon
dering whether it will pass implement
ing and supplementng legislation should
trouble the conscience of every single
candidate for public office who has told
the voters of our nation that he would
work for the passage of human rights
legislation,” Mitchell declared.
Noting the proposed federal assist
ance offered in the bills under study,
Mitchell referred to run-down, low-
grade arrangements which are set up
to educate children, whether they be
colored or white,” in states resisting
the Supreme Court ruling.
“If some of the areas of greatest re
sistance would open the doors of all
classrooms tomorrow,” Mitchell said, “it
would mean merely a mingling of
promising children in buildings that are
health hazards, in classrooms that are
undesirable, and under teachers who are
overburdened because of low pay and
inadequate working conditions.”
Rep. Herbert Zelenko (D-N.Y.), au
thor of one of the bills under consider
ation, noted that since the Supreme
Court handed down its desegregation
decision, a child had had opportunity to
complete an eighth-grade education.
“I do not propose to spend another
lifetime before we Americanize our
schools,” Zelenko said.
In other testimony on the pending
bills, the subcommittee heard William
L. Taylor, assistant staff director of the
U.S. Commission on Civil Rights, who
said the legislation was in accord with
previous recommendations of the com
mission and added:
At the time when the constitutional
rights of millions of children are being
denied, we respectfully submit that
(Congress has) a grave responsibility
and that enactment of the proposed leg
islation is not merely desirable but
imperative.”
Testimony in support of the legisla
tion also was submitted by Norman Hill
assistant to the program director of the
Congress of Racial Equality; Ethel J.
Williams of the National Council of Ne
gro Women; Clinton M. Fair, legislative
representative of the AFL-CIO; Selma
M. Borchardt, vice president and Wash
ington representative of the American
Federation of Teachers, and Walter Wil
liams, speaking in behalf of Americans
for Democratic Action.
versities may develop later, Shriver
said, but in each case guarantees of
equal treatment will be required.
Supreme Court
Agrees To Hear
Sit-In Appeals
The Supreme Court agreed June 25 to
hear next fall seven cases involving 42
sit-in demonstrators. The cases stem
from arrests made in Alabama, Geor
gia, Maryland, North Carolina, South
Carolina and Louisiana under trespass
ing and breach of peace statutes.
The cases accepted by the Supreme
Court were appealed by five Negro stu
dents from North Carolina College and
two white students from Duke Univer
sity, Durham, N.C., who demonstrated
at a Kress department store; by five Ne
groes involved in an incident at Glen
Echo Amusement Park, Montgomery
County, Md.; by four students, three
Negroes and one white, convicted of
“criminal mischief’ after a sit-in at Mc-
Crory’s five and ten cent store in New
Orleans.
Also appeals by 10 Negro demonstra
tors who sat in at store counters in Bir
mingham; two Negro ministers, F. L.
Shuttlesworth and Charles Billups, con
victed in Birmingham of assisting others
to violate the city trespass law; six Ne
gro men arrested in Savannah, Ga.,
while playing basketball in normally
white Daffin Park, and 10 Negro stu
dents who demonstrated at a Kress store
lunch counter in Greenville, S.C.
The Supreme Court refused on June
11 to hear two cases involving the scope
of its decision last spring striking down
as unconstitutional some acts passed by
the Louisiana legislature to block school
desegregation. The Louisiana Supreme
Court has ruled that only those parts
of the acts dealing with segregated
schools were struck down, and that
other sections still stand.
Armed Forces Probe
Committee Named
President Kennedy said June 23 that
racial discrimination still is a problem
in the armed forces, and named an ad
visory committee to study the matter.
The civilian group was instructed to
find ways of improving equality of op
portunity in the services themselves
and in the school, housing and recrea
tional facilities available in communi
ties adjoining military installations.
In a letter to Gerhard A. Gesell, a
Washington attorney who will head the
advisory group, Kennedy praised the
military services for “their outstanding
accomplishments in this area over the
past 10 years,” but added:
“There is considerable evidence that
in some civilian communities in which
military installations are located, dis
crimination on the basis of race, color,
creed or national origin is a serious
source of hardship and embarrassment
for armed forces personnel and their
dependents.”
Named to the committee in addition
to Gesell were Dean Joseph O’Meara of
the Notre Dame Law School; Nathaniel
Colley, a Sacramento, Calif., attorney;
Abe Fortas, a Washington attorney;
Benjamin Muse, Manassas, Va., director
of the Southern Leadership Project;
John Sengstacke, editor and publisher
of the Chicago Defender, and Whitney
Young, New York City, executive sec
retary of the National Urban League.
■ # # #
Louisiana
(Continued From Page 13)
number of Negroes entering white
schools to 12 in two years.
Judge Ellis granted a rehearing after
he took over the district court bench,
agreed the use of pupil placement in
its present form must be discontinued,
and directed the opening of all first
grades to Negroes and whites without
restriction in September. His order also
called for a progressively higher grade
to be desegregated each year in New
Orleans’ first move toward a full grade-
a-year plan.
Board’s Position
Samuel I. Rosenberg, attorney for the
school board, told the three-judge panel
that public interest should be balanced
with private interest as far as school
desegregation is concerned.
“If the entire school system is jeop
ardized they (Negroes seeking stepped-
up desegregation) will have won a hol
low victory,” Rosenberg said.
The court was composed of Judges
John R. Brown, Houston; Richard T.
Rives, Montgomery; and John Minor
Wisdom, New Orleans.
Greenberg, arguing for Negro plain
tiffs in the now 10-year-old Bush v.
Orleans Parish School Board case, said
that desegregation of the first six grades
Books And
The Issue
The Library of Southern Educa
tion Reporting Service has acquired
these books on the race issue:
NEGRO LEADERSHIP IN A
SOUTHERN CITY
by M. Elaine Burgess. The Universi
ty of North Carolina Press, 1960, 231
pp., $6.00.
The nature, function and effective
ness of the Negro leadership is studied
in an urban center of the Middle
South, named “Crescent City” by the
author. The study largely concerns
the desegregation of schools and other
public facilities, but other issues are
included.
FREEDOM RIDE
by James Peck. Simon and Schuster,
1962, 160 pp., $3.50.
As a member of the Congress of Ra
cial Equality, James Peck participated
in last year’s “Freedom Rides” and was
severely beaten in the Mother’s Day
riots in Birmingham. He tells the story
of those rides and the history of his
organization’s non-violent movement.
# # #
is necessary to wipe out injustices
shown by the record.
The NAACP attorney said Judge
Wright was correct in ordering six-
grade desegregation because Negroes
have had to contend with inferior facil
ities, overcrowding, and other conditions
not confronting white pupils—in addi
tion to facing segregation.
“The situation from the first to the
sixth grades is far worse than in higher
grades, and Judge Wright’s latest rul
ing took this into account,” said Green
berg.
Presiding Judge Rives asked Green
berg if he disagreed with Judge Ellis’
official statement that desegregating six
grades immediately would create chaotic
conditions.
Greenberg said there had been talk of
“tens of thousands” of Negroes entering
white schools but he believed the num
ber which recently applied for admis
sion to the first grade under Judge Ellis’
ruling (233 first-graders) was a fair
percentage indication of how many
would be involved in desegregatiig six
grades.
Rosenberg said in arguing the school
board’s case that Judge Wright’s earlier
order of May, 1960, was a “very wise
decision.” Under this order, the school
board had admitted Negroes only at the
first-grade level and then permitted
them to advance on to upper grades
in the school to which they had been
admitted.
Rosenberg said the attainment levels
of Negro children are so far below those
of white children that to admit them
to upper grades immediately would
create problems for both whites and
Negroes. # # #
Status...
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nual status report on school seg
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arranged for maximum useful
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regional and state-by-state, is a
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Price: 5(ty a copy.
Send your order today to
Southern Education Reporting
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tion, Nashville 12, Tenn.