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PAGE 14—AUGUST. 1962—SOUTHERN SCHOOL NEWS
MARYLAND
Two More
BALTIMORE
TV” egroes WILL enter white
’ schools for the first time in
two Maryland counties this fall,
marking a further break in the
ranks of school districts that hith
erto have been desegregated in
principle but not in actual prac
tice.
The transfer requests of three Negro
high school students have been granted
in Calvert County and one in Caroline
County. In the case of each district, the
requests were the first to be received
since desegregation policies were estab
lished in 1956.
Of the eight Maryland school districts
(of 23 biracial systems) that for the
past several years have had no Negroes
in schools with white pupils, three are
moving this September into the deseg
regated category. In addition to Calvert
and Caroline, Wicomico County has
announced the assignment of 75 Negro
elementary children to five formerly all-
white schools (SSN, June, 1952). Fifteen
districts previously have had some ac
tual desegregation, while one county—
Garrett—has no Negro pupils.
In the southern Maryland county of
Calvert, which has a 52 per cent Negro
school enrollment, the Negro transfer
requests came after the County Board
of Education in May had issued a new
statement of admission policy. The
board announced publicly through the
county press that it “unanimously re
affirms its legal and moral responsibili
ties to uphold the laws of the land and
to promote the general welfare of all
Calvert County citizens.”
The county school superintendent was
directed, the board’s statement said, to
pursue admission procedures which
would assure that “all legal residents
of Calvert County and their children
shall have equal rights in admission to
and transfer between schools.”
Transfers Announced
The county superintendent, Maurice
A. Dunkle, subsequently announced to
the county weeklies that the transfer
of three students from Brooks High
School (all-Negro) to Calvert Senior
High School had been approved, effec
tive in September. He named the three
students making the transfer, all to the
academic curriculum, and the grades
they would enter: two in the 10th and
one in the 11th grade. He added that
the transfer requests of 10 additional
students had been withdrawn by their
parents or legal guardians.
Information that school bus transpor
tation was desegregated along with af
fected schools was contained in the
following administrative procedures,
adopted to carry out the school board’s
policy:
“1. Pupils, whose parents desire that
they be enrolled in certain courses,
shall meet school standards.
“2. Seldom shall a pupil enrolled in
a school be permitted to retransfer dur
ing that school year for any reasons.
“3. Children will ride a school bus
with other children attending the same
school.
“4. All children shall be treated with
respect. Both discrimination against and
discrimination in favor of individuals
will not be tolerated. Acceptance or re
jection is on an individual basis. Dis
cipline will be maintained.
Negroes in Majority
Aside from Baltimore, Calvert County
is the only school district in Maryland
to have more Negro than white chil
dren in its public schools. An elongated
county bordering Chesapeake Bay, Cal
vert is separated from the heavily
populated and traveled portions of
Maryland by the Patuxent River and
has remained predominantly rural,
raising tobacco and timber and sporting
small bayside resorts where slot ma
chines are a mainstay of the local econ
omy.
Two high schools in Prince Frederick,
one white (up to now) and one Negro,
serve the entire county, which as of
the last school year had 4,577 pupils, of
whom 2,375 were Negroes.
Interviewed by telephone, the county
superintendent emphasized that the
school board’s new statement of policy
was not called a desegregation state
ment. “It is an admission policy that
applies to all schools and all pupils,”
Dunkle said.
Asked why transfer requests had
been received this year, when there
had been none for six previous years,
he said one likely explanation was that
Calvert Senior High is a new school
opening for the first time in Septem
ber and thus had a special attraction.
To the best of his knowledge, he said,
there had been no organized effort
among Negroes to spur desegregation
this year.
M
Counties To Have Biracial Schools in Fall q ]
Asked whether the county board’s
policy statement was in response to the
Maryland Board of Education’s Jan. 30
call upon local units to reassess their
desegregation policies, Dunkle replied
that he could not answer that with
either a yes or no. He explained that
the county board, in response to a rec
ommendation that he as superintendent
had made last year, had been working
on its admission policy before the state
board spoke.
The five-member Calvert board was
the first county school board in Mary
land to announce its readiness to com
ply with the Supreme Court’s 1955 de
crees. Meeting the day after the deci
sion was handed down, the Calvert
board agreed to appoint a biracial
citizens advisory group to recommend
a desegregation program.
In June, 1956, the advisory committee
proposed a voluntary transfer policy,
which was met with open indictions of
white opposition. A modest amount of
desegregation took place thereafter in
other southern Maryland counties, but
the situation in Calvert remained un
changed until this year. Reminded of
the earlier opposition, Dunkle re
sponded by saying, “Acceptance is
greater now.”
Caroline County
In the Eastern Shore county of Caro
line, one Negro girl is to enter the 10th
grade of a previously all-white high
school. She is the first Negro to request
a transfer to a white school in Caroline,
which is backed up against the south
ern end of Delaware in the general
vicinity of Milford, scene of Delaware’s
1954 desegregation disorders.
As the only ’Shore county that does
not front directly on the water, Caroline
is almost wholly agricultural and has a
thinly distributed school population
which in the last year numbered 3,393
white and 1,103 Negro pupils.
In a telephone interview, the Caroline
school superintendent, Wilbur S. Hoop-
engardner, said in mid-July that there
had been no public announcement of
the girl’s transfer, because it was a
“regular transfer,” the “same as any
transfer of a pupil from one school to
another,” and the county does not make
Maryland Highlights
Two more Maryland counties will
have Negroes in schools with white
pupils for the first time this fall,
making a total of three newly de
segregated districts and leaving in
an uncertain category five of the
state’s 23 biracial school systems.
The Maryland Commission on In
terracial Problems and Relations an
nounced an investigation following
charges that racial discrimination
was being practiced by county school
boards in employing teachers.
No evidence of racial discrimina
tion was found in the rejection of
a Nigerian applicant by the Johns
Hopkins Medical School, which this
fall will have its first negro student,
a native of Kenya. In other college
developments, predominantly Negrc
Coppin State Teachers College has
achieved full accreditation while de
bate arises as to the future disposi
tion of formerly all-Negro institu
tions of higher learning.
A seventh Maryland county is
reported to be preparing to assign
Negro teachers to white or desegre
gated white schools.
a practice of announcing the many
transfers that take place as a matter
of routine.
“Our schools have been open to
transfers under our desegregation pol
icy for six years now,” Hoopengardner
said. “This was our first request, and
we granted it.”
‘Same Policy’
Asked if any change of policy had
preceded the transfer request or if the
move had any relationship with the
State Board of Education’s call for
policy reappraisals, he replied “no” in
both instances, explaining that “we
have had the same policy since 1956.”
In response to a question as to
whether the white school was closer for
the girl, Hoopengardner replied that
distance was not a substantial factor
and that she had given as her reason
that she felt the school would be “bet
ter” for her.
Caroline is inland from Talbot
County, which has had some Negroes
in schools with white pupils since 1956.
The only other of the nine ’Shore coun
ties that previously has had Negroes in
formerly all-white schools is Cecil, at
the head of Chesapeake Bay.
This September, the ’Shore county of
Wicomico along with Caroline will join
the desegregated ranks. The five re
maining ’Shore counties are the only
remaining biracial Maryland school
districts that have not reported some
actual desegregation in being or in im
mediate prospect. All have policies un
der which Negroes may make transfer
applications.
Community Action
Commission Probes
Charges of Bias
In Hiring Teachers
The Maryland Commission on Inter
racial Problems and Relations an
nounced in July that it was investigat
ing alleged discrimination by county
school boards in the hiring of teachers.
The investigation was started after
speaker from several counties raised the
issue in June at a statewide conference
of biracial citizens groups. (SSN, July).
School officials in some counties, along
with state school officials, have denied
the charge.
The state agency reported on July 25
that it had requested all local school
systems to submit information on their
procedures for recruiting and assigning
teachers. Agency representatives are to
work with local interracial groups to
encourage Negro teachers to apply for
positions in school systems where dis
crimination is believed to exist. The
charge is that some county school boards
hire uncertified or substitute white
teachers when qualified Negro teachei
are available.
At the same time, the Marylaj
Chapter of the National Association ft
the Advancement of Colored People at
nounced that it had organized a teach
ers committee to work on the proble
of Negro teacher employment, ffi
NAACP action was part of an at
nounced drive to speed school desegj.
regation in Maryland counties throug
direct action techniques and increase
litigation.
A national NAACP representatb
told a Maryland NAACP conference j
July that “it should give the Governc
and heads of his state great concer
that the majority of counties sti
transport hundreds of Negro childrt
long distance to all-colored schools, by
passing white schools closer to the
homes.”
}
In the Colleges
l
Commission Clears i
Medical School;
Negro Accepted
The Johns Hopkins Medical Scho
was cleared in July of a charge of ra
cial discrimination brought by an ur
successful Nigerian applicant.
The Maryland Commission on Inter
racial Problems and Relations reports
that its investigation made clear tfc2
the applicant was turned down becau:
“he was unqualified for admission” an
“no act of discrimination was involved^
A spokesman for the medical scha
revealed that a Kenyan student ha
been accepted for admission in Sep
tember. He will become the first Negr
to be enrolled in the famed institutioi
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received full accreditation in elemei
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Secondary Schools. A formerly al!
Negro college, located in Baltimore
(See MARYLAND, Page 16)
Board Member Thinks Northern Decisions
May Resolve Some Desegregation Issues
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By EDGAR L. JONES
CHEVY CHASE, Md.
T he rise of “widespread agita
tion” for desegregation in the
North is hailed by Mrs. Kenneth
S. Cole, vice-president of the
Maryland Board of Education, as
an indication that “resolution of
some of the problems of desegre
gation may come out of the North
and not out of the South.”
A lawyer who for the past four years
has headed the public education sec
tion of the United States Civil Rights
Commission, Mrs. Cole finds “the de
velopments in the North very interest
ing.” She points to six or eight cases
“popping” in New Jersey, with more
expected; to the adoption of a deseg
regation plan after protests in Stam
ford, Conn.; to a settlement of a suit
in Coffeeville, Kans., and to other cases
in Michigan, California and Rochester,
N. Y.
“The North is producing some in
teresting plans,” Mrs. Cole says. “Its
cities are working on the reorganiza
tion of their systems, particularly in
regard to districting. The “Princeton
Plan,’ for example, has had considerable
attention. Princeton, N. J., several years
ago voluntarily broke up the segrega
tion pattern at two elementary schools
by assigning both white and Negro
children in grades one through three
to one school, and using the other
school for grades four to six, thus
integrating all elementary school chil
dren in the town.
“Morristown, N. J., took a school that
had become in effect a segregated
Negro school and turned it into a school
for seventh-graders throughout the
city. Highland Park, Mich., reached a
settlement much like the ‘Princeton
Plan.’
“As problems become more acute in
the North and as new ideas and pat
terns come along, school systems there
may solve educational problems and
constitutional requirements simultan
eously. The North has an easier time
of it. The schools are more free to
experiment, to see what works and
what doesn’t work. The North is in a
position to give some leadership.”
Asked to what educational problems
she refers, aside from compliance with
desegregation rulings, Mrs. Cole said in
an interview for Southern School News
that she has in mind “the complexity
of problems related to the education of
underprivileged children, or those chil
dren who, in the excellent phrase of Dr.
John Fischer, president of Columbia
Teachers College, are caught in a ‘cul
tural downdraft’ outside of school.
“One of the most exciting things go
ing on in the country is the program
started at Hunter College in New York
to prepare teachers for the special
problems encountered in poor urban
sections. Students volunteer to take
their teacher training in some of New
York’s most difficult junior high schools.
They are trying to develop special
curricula, new materials and special
techniques. Their training includes be
coming acquainted with neighborhood
leaders, the prevailing power structure
and neighborhood mores. The program
has been going for three semesters so
far, and 80 per cent of the student-
trainees have volunteered to teach in
the schools where they did their prac
tice work.
“A lot more has to go on before all
our desegregation problems are solved.
When national leaders talk, as they did
at our last civil rights conference, of
the need to have a ‘peace corps’ to in
spire young people to work on the
educational frontier in our own big
cities, you get some sense of the urg
ency of urban school needs. To quote
Dr. Fischer again, many Negro chil
dren need more than an ordinary edu
cation, they need a “compensatory op
portunity to overcome the social and
cultural handicaps of past segregation.”
The Ken Gar program in Montgomery
County, Md., is cited by Mrs. Cole as
“one of the imaginative programs started
in the country.” The program, which
she says has commanded attention
among educators concerned with de
segregation problems, is one started by
a voluntary citizens group, the Ken
Gar Education Committee, to provide
home tutoring for Negro children at
tending a desegregated school (SSN
May, 1961).
“The Ken Gar project follows chil
dren home from school,” Mrs. Cole
says, ‘and thus involves their families
in their education. Many who are work
ing in this field believe it is essential
to have such involvement and to raise
parental hopes of something better for
their children than they themselves
had. All the experts agree that we have
to raise the aspirations of families to
overcome the educational effects of the
cultural downdraft.”
Mrs. Cole herself lives in Montgomery
County, not far from the District of Co
lumbia line. Married to a Government
scientist, she has been a Marylander
for 12 years, having come from her
native city of Chicago. She was ap
pointed by former Gov. McKeldin to
the State Board of Education in July,
1956, under a term that expired this
past May. While her reappointment was
still pending, the board in June re
elected her as its vice president. Mrs.
Cole was renamed to the board by
Governor Tawes on July 13.
Questions and Answers
Asked for her views of desegregation
in Maryland, Mrs. Cole made clear that
she spoke only for herself and not for
the board. The interview proceeded as
follows:
Q.: Are you satisfied with the progress
of desegregation in Maryland?
A.: In some counties, yes. The opera
tion of others doesn’t meet the state
board’s policies or constitutional re
quirements.
Q.: What board policies do you mean?
A.: The board’s Jan. 30 policy statement
on desegregation. It was an explicit
statement, adopted unanimously by
the board. The county boards have
not had that statement before them
long enough for anyone to say they
are failing to meet it. I personally
hope the county boards are now
engaged in studying that policy and
comparing it with their own prac
tices. I think the next few months
will show some changes in direction.
Already we have had changes in
Wicomico and Carroll counties.
Mrs. Cole was interviewed prior to
the announcements of new policies i
Calvert and Caroline counties. .
Q.: What was so explicit about the Jff
30 statement? It didn’t set any dead
line for desegregation, did it?
A.: It was purely a policy statemer
one that allows for “deliberal
speed.” A supervisory board wo»
be rash to announce that all scho:
systems must comply by tomorro’
There are administrative problet
that have to be solved. 1962 rtf
have seemed tardy for a policy statf
ment, but the board had spoken i
support of Supreme Court compt
ance in 1954 and 1955. This yearQ-
was explicit. A
Q.: What did it say explicitly?
A.: That decisions affecting the assig
ment of pupils shall be made solo
on the basis of educational cons!
erations; that race shall not be
factor. It set forth what Mary Is-'
should be doing. It excludes initi
assignment by race which puts tt
burden to seek transfer on t
Negro. Of course I cannot speak f 1
the board and would not presuf
to speak for the other members, fr
my own view is that our bo#
policy does not go beyond the S'-
preme Court’s position in 1954 &
1955 and subsequent court decision
Our policy calls for compliance.
Q.: What are county school boaP
supposed to do?
A.: County boards are to reconsio
their previously adopted plans. IQ.
been a long time since 1954-55, svb
initial desegregation policies
established.
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Q.: Do you consider the voluntn-
transfer programs prevailing '
many Maryland counties to be 0
of step with state policy?
A.: Yes and no. It depends on the &
tent to which counties have stuck
initial desegregation programs, 110“
which Negroes are originally s
signed by race and the privik
given them to transfer to a ne^
school. My view is that the S**
board’s policy would not p eTtt
(See MRS. COLE, Page 15)
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