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oiithern Sf®#"'- News c .„ . . „ . . . „ VO * S N 3 H i V Objective mor* ?d at- wer< MISSISSIPPI snoisiaio r-Momsinoov S3iavb8 11 V108030 JO A!N H 8002-y-t9 nnr AUGUST, 1962 South ‘s Desegregated Sc. of s Meredith Case ments Brings Tangle '£ Among Jurists ion ii >m 4i attend Supt, N egro ■ high id an dered mded 'Is in e re- r Ne- pre. Park idents later cation .ee to four chil lis, ad no Ihair- ithers, 1 Jim o not y will t and # t 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) iC ;rounc austec undei at re action Fourtl vrit oi : court ordei > alio" mental e cast it Ac 1 led b! Judgf . War w. an ob- at dai Unroll" >ut * imcon' ques- uncoir befod 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 ution^ Care er it- . gsuej; thou# Hurt ^ : Couf 1 to>* # * 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