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AUGUST, 1962
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JACKSON
T he U.S. Fifth Circuit Court of
Appeals became embroiled in
an unusual judicial tangle when
one of its members issued three
successive decrees staying action
on the court’s order that the Uni
versity of Mississippi be desegre
gated next month.
A three-judge appellate panel for
mally mandated a Mississippi federal
district judge on July 17 to order the
university to admit its first Negro, and
in subsequent decrees the panel set
aside two unprecedented “stays” by one
of its judges who did not sit on the
case.
But on Aug. 6, Appeals Court Judge
Ben F. Cameron of Meridian issued a
third stay, allowing 30 days from July
28 for the state to file an appeal of the
decision with the U.S. Supreme Court.
It was indicated that this time all seven
members of the Court of Appeals in
cluding Cameron might be convened
en banc to act on the latest stay.
Barring an unlikely higher court de
cree upholding Cameron’s stay orders
or an order from Gov. Ross Barnett
closing “Ole Miss,” James Edward
Meredith, 29-year-old Negro, will be
enrolled Sept. 21 in the university at
Oxford. It would be the first school de
segregation in Mississippi since the 1954
Supreme Court decision.
The July 17 mandate was for exe
cution of the court’s June 25 decision
reversing Federal District Judge S. C.
Mize of Gulfport, who refused to issue
an injunction against the university’s
denial of Meredith’s transfer from
Jackson State College for Negroes.
30-Day Stay
The following day, July 18, Appeals
Judge Cameron issued an order staying
the mandate for 30 days to give the
state of Mississippi time to appeal to
^ the U.S. Supreme Court.
_ gi On July 20, the U.S. Fifth Court re-
f M assumed jurisdiction and requested at
torneys on both sides to file statements
on the question of stays.
5 state Then on July 27, the three-judge
tudent court composed of Appeals Judges John
n. The Minor Wisdom of New Orleans and John
d, was R- Brown of Houston, and District
preme Judge Dozier Devane of Tallahassee,
loweV Via., reprimanded Appeals Judge Cam
eron and set aside his stay. In the June
the ^ decision, District Judge Devane had
' n ’ , dissented from the majority position,
.urn Appeals Judge Cameron followed on
orig j u iy 28 with another stay, stating that
War the Fifth Circuit Court of Appeals had
i sup- exceeded its jurisdiction in overruling
active iu S p rev i ous s t a y
The Court of Appeals came back on
Aug. 4 with another reversal of Ap-
;nt o»
ithoui
i peals Judge Cameron, stating that both
__j °f his orders were “unauthorized, er-
(See JURIST, Page 12)
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In This Issue
State Reports
Alabama
2
Arkansas ....
1
Delaware
2
District of Columbia
9
Florida .
16
Georgia ...
7
Kentucky ..
11
Louisiana .
13
Maryland ....
14
Mississippi
1
Missouri
8
North Carolina ...
4
Oklahoma
11
South Carolina .
8
Tennessee .
10
Texas .
13
Virginia ...
1
West Virginia
5
Special Articles
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The Region
Three R’s in Prince Edward
HJrs. Cole Talks Schools ..
Texts
Prince Edward
1
3
14
3
No. With
Total
Negroes &
Desegregating
Total
State
Districts
Whites
This Fall
Desegregated
Alabama
114
114
0
0
Arkansas
418
218
0
10
Delaware
92
92
0
92
District of Columbia
1
1
0
1
Florida
67
67
2
7
Georgia
198
196
0
1
Kentucky
209
169
5
148
Louisiana
67
67
0
1
Maryland
24
23
0
23
Mississippi
150
150
0
0
Missouri
1,692
214*
0
203*
North Carolina
173
173
4
15
Oklahoma
1,232
240
0
195
South Carolina
108
108
0
0
Tennessee
154
143
6
23
Texas
1,483
890
8
158
Virginia
131
129
8
28
West Virginia
55
43
0
43
TOTAL
6,368
3,047
33
948
*Estimated Southern Education Reporting Service
THE REGION
33 School Districts Plan
To Desegregate This Fall
Prince Edward Told
To Plan Reopening
TPhirty-three public school dis-
tricts in the 17 Southern and
border states have announced new
policies of desegregation to begin
in September. At least 24 other
districts previously desegregated
have assigned additional Negroes
to schools with whites.
Prince Edward County, Va., where
public schools have been closed since
1959 to avoid court-ordered desegrega
tion, received a federal court order to
present a plan by Sept. 7 to re-open
the schools. Fort Worth, Tex., is under
a federal court order to desegregate the
public schools this fall, but officials indi
cated they would wait until after their
appeal could be heard by the U.S. Fifth
Circuit Court of Appeals, which re
convenes in October.
Two colleges, Arlington State College
in Texas and Johns Hopkins Medical
School in Maryland, have announced
they will admit their first Negro stu
dents this fall. St. Andrews College, a
Presbyterian school in North Carolina,
admitted its first Negro student in July.
The federal court order for the Univer
sity of Mississippi to admit a Negro
veteran, James Meredith, remained tied
up in a series of legal maneuvers.
Roman Catholic schools in New Or
leans and the Atlanta Archidocese will
desegregate in September.
Texas and Virginia will have eight
new desegregated school districts each
this fall. Tennessee will have six; Ken
tucky, five; North Carolina, four; and
Florida, two. Only four of these districts
are desegregating by court order; the
other 29 acted voluntarily.
Additional desegregation has been
announced by districts in these states:
Arkansas, one; Delaware, one; Florida,
three; Georgia, one; Kentucky, three;
Louisiana, one; Maryland, three; North
Carolina, four; Tennessee, two; Vir
ginia, four; and West Virginia, one. The
three Maryland districts and one in
Delaware formerly were desegregated
in policy only and will have their first
biracial classes this next school year.
Here is the state-by-state account of
desegregation activity already scheduled
for school opening in September, with
asterisks indicating new desegregation:
Arkansas
Little Rock’s school board has ap
proved the transfer of more Negroes to
the previously desegregated junior and
senior high schools, making 78 Negroes
assigned to biracial classes. This is 30
more than last year.
Delaware
All of Delaware’s 92 school districts
are desegregated in policy; but Laurel,
one of the few large districts still
maintaining separate schools, has ap
proved the admission of at least 22 Ne
groes in elementary and high school
grades with whites.
Florida
Broward County (Fort Lauderdale) —
The district began desegregation last
(See 33 DISTRICTS, Page 9)
RICHMOND
ederal District Judge Oren R.
Lewis declared in a memo
randum opinion July 26 that pub
lic schools of Prince Edward
county cannot be closed to avoid
desegregation while schools else
where in Virginia remain open.
(Allen v. School Board of Prince
Edward County.)
He directed the school board to pre
sent to all attorneys in the case by
Sept. 1, and to the court by Sept. 7,
plans for admitting pupils to the public
schools without regard to race or color.
(Text of opinion on page 3.)
If the schools are reopened on a de
segregated basis by Sept. 7, Judge Lew
is said, it will not be necessary for the
court to enter a more formal order.
But, he added, if they are not opened
by then, “this court will on that day
consider any and all proposed orders
tendered by counsel of record.”
By early August, it was still uncer
tain whether schools of Prince Edward
would or would not be opened this fall.
County officials were making no public
statements as to their intentions.
Question of Finance
The question was being raised as to
how the schools could be financed. The
county’s 1962-63 budget, adopted in
June, has no provision for operation of
schools.
There were suggestions that the state
step into the picture to provide funds
to Prince Edward beyond the normal
state school appropriation. But Gov.
Albertis S. Harrison made no public
comment on that phase of the situation.
The question also was raised as to
whether the schools could be staffed
at so late a date, since many teachers
already were under contract to other
school districts.
Dr. J. Rupert Picott, executive sec
retary of the Virginia Teachers Asso
ciation (Negro), told Southern School
News that if he were requested to do
so, he could supply a sufficient number
of Negro teachers “within a week.”
Speculation in Virginia was that if the
public schools are opened, they will be
attended almost entirely by Negroes,
and that white children will continue
attending the private schools of the
Prince Edward School Foundation.
If the speculation is correct and only
enough schools would need to be
opened to take care of Negro children,
the financial problem might also be
solved, according to the Richmond
Times-Dispatch. “The county apparent
ly has sufficient funds available to op
erate public schools for Negroes,” the
paper said in a news article on July 27.
While there was little official com
ment on Judge Lewis’ opinion, most of
the state’s newspapers urged reopen
ing of the schools. The general edito
rial view was that the Prince Edward
schools should be reopened now be
cause:
• Eventual reopening is inevitable,
and the county’s Negro children should
not be deprived of schooling any
longer.
• The tuition grants program
throughout Virginia might be ruled il
legal if Prince Edward schools re
mained closed. (Judge Lewis previous
ly had outlawed the grants in Prince
Edward as long as the schools there
are closed.)
Fear also was being expressed that
the Prince Edward situation was mak
ing it more difficult for Virginia to at
tract new industry to the state.
Sees Nothing Settled
But the semi-weekly Farmville Her
ald, published at the county seat, de
clared editorially:
“Even though we had hoped other
wise, we cannot see that the recent
decision settles anything in the long
standing case.”
The paper then went on to list sev
eral legal questions which it said re
main unanswered. These relate, among
other things, to how far the federal
government could go in forcing a lo
cality or a state to operate public
schools.
The questions ought to be answered,
the Herald continued, and Prince Ed
ward alone is in a position to find the
answers. The paper implied that the
county should continue its legal fight,
declaring:
“Unless and until these fundamental
questions have been answered by the
Supreme Court, we do not see any
action which can be taken by Prince
Edward County. If the courts will give
these answers promptly and forth
rightly, some solution may be forth
coming. Until then—stand steady.”
ARKANSAS
Orval Faubus Wins Fifth Term;
Gets Majority Over 5 Opponents
LITTLE ROCK
ov. Orval Eugene Faubus
won the Democratic nomina
tion for a fifth two-year term as
governor in the primary July 31,
winning without a runoff over
what had been considered a strong
field of five men against him.
In Arkansas primaries, a candidate
must get a majority of the votes of the
first primary or else there is a runoff
between the two top men.
With all but 71 boxes out of 2350
reported by the Associated Press at 2
p.m. Aug. 1, the results were:
Faubus 197,088
Dale Alford 77,007
Sid McMath 77,637
Vernon H. Whitten 20,329
Kenneth Coffelt 5,159
David A. Cox 2,075
Alford, a Little Rock eye doctor, is
the congressman for the Little Rock
district and an outspoken segregation
ist. McMath is a two-term former gov
ernor (1949-52), once the protege of
Faubus, who broke with the governor
over the 1957 Little Rock school crisis.
Whitten, a South Arkansas business
man, and Cox, an East Arkansas rice
farmer, were almost unknown politi
cally. Coffelt is a Little Rock lawyer.
It was thought that McMath especial
ly—well-known statewide for 15 years
though blemished by a special audit
which produced charges of laxity and
inefficiency in his Highway Department
as he was going out of office in 1952—
and Alford too had good chances of get
ting into a runoff with Faubus. That
Alford was nuzzling McMath for sec
ond place was a little surprise.
The governor’s opponents’ first goal
was to get him into a runoff; incum
bents usually lose runoffs in Arkansas.
But Faubus, by midway through the
campaign, was saying this was ‘the
poorest field” that had run against him
since his first race in 1954. He predicted
two days before the voting that he
would get 58 per cent of the votes. The
returns gave him 52 per cent.
Although Faubus led from the very
first returns, the race was close enough
(as to whether there would be a run
off) that the cautious Faubus waited
until the morning of Aug. 1 to deliver
his victory statement.
It began, “This vote indicates that
the people do not wish to wander in
the thickets of extremism to either the
right or the left . . .” This continued a
theme he adopted during the campaign:
that he is not now and never has been
the “captive” of the die-hard segrega
tionists, nor of any other group. In
contrast, he pointed to McMath as being
sponsored by “integrationist” groups in
Little Rock.
School desegregation failed to domi
nate the gubernatorial campaign, for
the first time since the Little Rock crisis
of 1957, although Faubus and Alford
included it in all of their campaign
speeches and, occasionally, made it the
main theme of a speech.
The other four candidates virtually
ignored it by saying it was an emotional
matter that did not belong in the cam
paign or that it was an issue which be
longed to the courts and the school
boards.
Still, the leaders of the Negro com
munity made it clear that they could
never accept Faubus, who called out
National Guardsmen five years ago
(See FAUBUS, Page 6)
Plans Proceed
Meanwhile, the Prince Edward School
Foundation was going ahead with plans
to operate its private segregated school
system during the 1962-63 year, just
as it has for the past three years.
Roy R. Pearson, administrator, an
nounced on July 31 that the school will
have 62 full-time and three part-time
teachers.
The foundation announced adoption
of an operations budget of $335,318.60
and a transportation budget of $25,740.-
96. The operations budget is slightly
higher than last year’s and the trans-
(See PRINCE EDWARD, Page 3)
End of the Road
Seibel, Richmond Times-Dispatch