Newspaper Page Text
PAGE 16—SEPTEMBER, 1962—SOUTHERN SCHOOL NEWS
ARKANSAS
Mansfield, Gosnell Desegregate Schools Voluntarily
LITTLE ROCK
T wo new school districts joined
the ten others previously de
segregated in Arkansas as the
1962-63 school year began. And
Hot Springs, which has desegre
gation only in two high school
vocational classes, received re
quests Aug. 30 from Negro par
ents to admit four Negro children
to a white elementary school.
The newly desegregated districts are
at Mansfield, in Northwest Arkansas,
and at Gosnell, in the northeast comer
of the state, which serves the Blythe -
ville Air Force Base.
Mansfield, a small town (pop. 881)
26 miles south of Fort Smith and 13
miles from the Oklahoma border, began
classes Monday, Aug. 27, a week earlier
than most of the other schools in Ar
kansas, and without any public notice
opened its schools to the 14 Negro
children living in the district.
Mansfield is a consolidated district
and Supt. Jack J. Efurd estimated the
first week enrollment at 360 in the
elementary school and 365 in the com
bination junior-senior high school.
Efurd reported that there had been no
incidents or complaints in the first
week.
Publicity Avoided
Mansfield had avoided publicity for
the same reason that all the desegre
gated Arkansas districts do—the be
lief that publicity aggravates the situ
ation and invites trouble. Mansfield’s
desegregation was discovered accident
ally during a routine pre-school year
survey of the Arkansas desegregation
situation.
Until this year, Mansfield had sent
its Negro students by bus back and
forth each day to schools in Fort
Smith. This is a common practice in
the communities in the parts of the
state where the Negro population is
sparse. Efurd said that this cost the
district about $6,000 a year.
This saving would be almost enough
to hire two more teachers (average
salary at Mansfield in 1961-62 was $3,-
432), and the saving was a factor in the
board’s decision. But the initiative came
from the Negro families. Efurd said the
board had received some requests from
the Negro parents for the desegrega
tion.
Mansfield has five Negro students in
the elementary school and nine in the
high school.
Football Desegregated
In the high school, three of the Negro
boys are on the football team, which
Mansfield desegregated at the same
time it desegregated its classes. Only
two of the other 10 desegregated school
districts have also desegregated their
athletic teams—Charleston and Fayette
ville, both in Northwest Arkansas and
both near Mansfield.
The schools treat the desegregation
of athletic teams gingerly, and so far
have used three solutions. Some segre
gated schools refuse to play the deseg
regated teams; Fayetteville attempts to
avoid scheduling games with such
teams. Some segregated teams are will
ing to play the desegregated teams on
the home grounds of the desegregated
teams but ask that the Negro players
not be used on the home field of the
desegregated teams. And some teams
agree to play desegregated teams any
where.
Efurd said Mansfield would use its
Negro players in all of its home games
and on games away from home would
abide by the wishes of the other team.
After the first week of desegregation,
Efurd said the situation looked pretty
good, and “I think it was a peaceful
solution worked out to the satisfaction
of both groups.”
From Air Base
At Gosnell, 12 Negro students from
the Blytheville Air Force Base attended
the white Gosnell School on the first
full day of classes Sept. 6. No advance
notice had been given and school offi
cials declined to comment.
In previous years the Negro children
from the air base had been sent by bus
to the Calumet School, for Negroes,
two miles away, operated by the Gos
nell District, or to the public schools
in Blytheville, four miles away. The
Gosnell school, all 12 grades, is only
across the street from the Strategic Air
Command Base.
That situation provoked a protest
last January from the NAACP (SSN,
February, March, April, 1962). The
protest was made to the Justice De
partment and Defense Department and,
when that seemed to get no results, to
U.S. Rep. Adam Clayton Powell (D-
' r ), Negro chairman of the House Ed
ucation Committee. Powell later said
it would take a court or executive or
der to change the situation.
On March 30, Abraham RibicofI, then
secretary of health, education and
welfare, announced that the govern
ment, beginning in September 1963,
would no longer consider segregated
schools suitable for children who live
on federal installations with their par
ents and that federal grants would not
be made to them.
At Blytheville, it was reported that
the Gosnell district apparently chose
to admit the Negro students from the
air base rather than risk losing its
federal impact aid, which is about
$100,000 a year. The district’s expendi
tures last year were about $252,000.
About 1,400 white students attend
the Gosnell school with the 12 Negro
students. Most of the students are from
the air base.
Hot Springs
At Hot Springs, Harry Howard, pres
ident of the school board, said Aug. 30
that the board had received a letter
from the parents of four Negro children
asking that the children be admitted to
the Jones Elementary School. All four
of the children live near the Jones
school, which had 537 white children
enrolled last year.
Dr. Hugh L. Mills, superintendent,
said this was a legal matter and that
any action the board might take would
be in accordance with the advice of the
board’s legal counsel.
On Monday Sept. 3, the board an
nounced that it had denied the re
quests in registered letters mailed to
the parents, whose names were not re
leased. The board spent two hours in
special session Friday, Aug. 31, draft
ing the letters which were mailed Sept.
3. Howell said the board informed the
parents that since their requests had
been received right at the opening of
the school year, the board considered it
not in the public interest “at this
time” to grant the requests. The board
had received three letters Aug. 30, ap-
Arkansas Highlights
Two school districts, Mansfield
and Gosnell, became the 11th and
12th in the state to desegregate.
Of the other 10, Little Rock, Fort
Smith, Van Buren and Dollarway
will extend their desegregation
plans by one more grade this year.
When the Dollarway school board
again rejected the transfer request
of Sarah Howard, 14, in the 10th
grade, her father intervened in fed
eral court, asking that she be ad
mitted to the white school, that the
teachers be desegregated and that
the board be made to speed up its
desegregation plan. The court re
fused to accept the teacher desegre
gation plea—a new point in the case
—but allowed the rest of the inter
vention.
parently meaning that three families
with a total of four children were in
volved.
Since 1956, Hot Springs has had de
segregation only in two high school
classes, in auto mechanics and practical
nursing. Each class usually has about
four Negro students among about 20
whites.
Of the other 10 districts, Little Rock,
Fort Smith, Van Buren and Dollarway
all have added one more grade to their
grade-a-year desegregation plans, and
the Pulaski County (rural) District
opened two more schools to Negro chil
dren from the Little Rock Air Force
Base.
Little if any change was expected in
the other districts — Bentonville,
Charleston, Fayetteville and Hoxie.
Little Rock is adding the eighth grade
this year and will have 77 Negro stu
dents in the seventh, eighth, 10th, 11th
and 12th grades. Seventy-eight were
assigned but one high school boy
changed his mind. All eight of the
junior and senior high schools will have
Negro students this year. Last year,
when 45 Negro students were in de
segregated classes, one of the junior
high schools had none.
Fort Smith is adding the sixth grade
this year. Last year it had 20 Negro
pupils in the first five grades of two
elementary schools. With 20 white and
three Negro elementary schools, Fort
Smith allows any pupil to transfer from
a school where his race is in the mi
nority.
Van Buren, which started its plan
in the high school, is adding the fourth
grade this year. It had 20 Negro stu
dents in the desegregated schools last
year and expects to have about 25 this
year. This will leave only 15 or 20 Negro
students in the one Negro elementary
school, which will have only the first
three grades.
Adding Third Grade
Dollarway is adding the third grade.
It had no Negro applicants for the first
grade this year so, barring changes
made by litigation still in progress, the
Negro enrollment in the white school
this year was expected to be two in the
second grade and two in the third, all
of them promoted one grade from last
year.
But when Dollarway’s pre-school
registration had been completed, Aug.
31, two of the four Negro children had
not appeared. They were Delores Jean
York, 8, to be in the third grade this
year, and her brother, Bennie Ree
York, 7, to be in the second grade.
Neighbors said their parents, Mr. and
Mrs. John D. York, had moved to
Denver soon after school was out last
spring.
Bentonville started classes Aug. 30
with three Negro boys in the second,
sixth and tenth grades. They are the
only Negro students in the district.
The white enrollment is about 1,700.
Charleston schools opened Aug. 27
with 15 or 20 Negro students scattered
through the 12 grades. They are the
only Negro students in the district.
Legal Action
Negro Intervenes in Dollarway Suit
The Dollarway school board on Aug.
4 rejected the exceptions taken by
Sarah Howard, 14, who wanted to be
transferred from the Townsend Park
(Negro) High School to the tenth grade
of the Dollarway (white) High School.
Then her father, George Howard, Jr.,
as he had promised, intervened in her
behalf in the Dollarway case (Dove v.
Parham) in federal district court.
He asked that his daughter be trans
ferred, that the teaching and adminis
trative staff of the district be assigned
without regard to race and that the
Dollarway district’s desegregation plan
be speeded up. Judge J. Smith Henley
accepted the intervention but not as it
applied to the desegregation of the
teaching and administrative staff.
Howard, who is the attorney for the
plaintiffs in the Dollarway case and is
state president of the NAACP, filed his
request for intervention Aug. 18. For
the transfer of his daughter, he gave
the same reasons he had given the
Dollarway board—that he wanted his
daughter to have an “integrated educa
tion” and that he wanted her educated
in an accredited high school (the white
high school is accredited with the North
Central Association of Secondary
Schools and Colleges, but Townsend
Park High School is not).
Personnel Assignment
He also asked that the court order
the board not to assign teachers and
other school personnel on the basis of
their own race or on the basis of the
race or color of the pupils. This was the
first time that the subject of teacher
desegregation had been raised in any
of the Arkansas cases.
He also asked that the Dollarway
board “be required to take affirmative
and independent steps themselves to rid
the Dollarway School District of un
constitutional segregation.” He said that
the Dollarway board was still operat
ing a dual system of segregated schools
simply by assigning all Negroes to the
Townsend Park School and all whites
to the Dollarway School regardless of
where they live in the district. Under
the Dollarway desegregation plan, the
only exception to this is that Negroes
entering the first grade may apply at
the Dollarway School and, if they pass
the board’s tests, may be accepted at
that school, which this year has four
Negro pupils, two in the second grade
and two in the third. The plan alio
for no transfers at higher grades.
The Dollarway board has been under
court order, for nearly three years, to
eliminate segregation. The principal step
it has taken is to devise the plan of
allowing Negro students to apply only
at the first grade. In the first year of
the plan, three Negro children applied,
and one was accepted. In the second
year, a year ago, two applied in the
first grade and three asked for trans
fers in the second, third and fourth
grades, and of those five the school
board wanted to admit only the second
grader. This year none applied for the
first grade, and only Sarah Howard
asked for a transfer at the 10th grade
level. Judge Henley was concerned
about the few applications made last
year and ordered two additional Negro
children admitted, to make three ad
mitted that year and a total of four
in the Dollarway School. He said that
the admission of just the one wouldn’t
be enough progress to satisfy the higher
courts, but commented, “Certainly the
board cannot be blamed for the ap
parent lack of demand for desegrega
tion in the district.”
Point Attacked
Howard appears to be attacking that
point in his intervention. He stated that
the board members have not taken any
“affirmative and independent steps on
their own” to get rid of desegregation,
“but have simply placed the burden on
the shoulders of the Negro pupils and
their parents in the district to invoke
the machinery under the Arkansas
pupil assignment law.”
This effectively preserves segregation,
he said, because “those Negroes in the
district who muster enough courage to
request an integrated education for
their children are singled out and sub
jected to economic reprisals and other
forms of intimidation.” And that is
enough to discourage other Negroes, he
said.
Howard asked that the case be ad
vanced for an early hearing.
In an answer filed Aug. 24, the school
board made no objection to the inter
vention in behalf of Sarah Howard, but
it objected strongly to the intervention
as it pertained to the desegregation of
the school staff. This is “foreign to any
question” previously raised in the law
suit, said the motion filed by Robert V.
> Light Jr., Little Rock attorney, and
federal court rules do not permit the
introduction of new questions by way of
interventions.
The board also opposed Howard’s
request that the intervention be moved
forward for an early hearing. The board
said it could see no reason for giving
this type of preferred treatment to
Sarah Howard over the litigants of
other cases pending in the court.
Howard responded the next day that
he had used up the summer months
going through the assignment law pro
cedure in behalf of his daughter, that
the Dollarway classes would begin on
Sept. 4 and that a delay in hearing his
plea would cause his daughter to lose
her constitutional right to attend the
Dollarway School this year.
Argument Accepted
Judge Henley on Aug. 30 accepted
Howard’s argument and ordered the
School Board to file its answer within
three days. He scheduled a hearing for
Sept. 6.
Henley opened the hearing with a
statement of his own. He noted that
there was little demand for desegre
gation in the district, or that something
was keeping the Negro parents from
applying. If the plan is keeping them
from applying, then maybe there is
something wrong with the desegrega
tion plan, he said. But if there really
is no great demand for desegregation,
he continued, then no plan is needed.
That is the dilemma facing the court,
Henley said, and he invited both sides
to study it and give him their* views.
After taking two hours of testimony,
he ordered both sides to submit briefs
by Sept. 13.
★ ★ ★
A damage suit against three of the
Labor Day 1959 dynamiters at Little
Rock was withdrawn by the plaintiff
without explanation in the Circuit
Court of Pulaski County on Aug. 22.
The Builders Investment Company had
filed suit in December, 1959, against
John Taylor Coggins, Samuel Gray don
Beavers and E. A. Lauderdale Sr., three
of the five men who were convicted,
for $14,904.72. This was for damage to
the office of Little Rock Mayor Werner
C. Knoop located in a construction firm
in a building owned by the Investment
Company. On the same night the Little
Rock school office and the fire chief’s {
car were dynamited.
Supt. Fred K. Bellott said he did not
know the exact number.
Fayetteville will continue desegrega.
tion in the junior and senior high
schools. Supt. Wayne H. White ex-
pects to have about 10 Negro students
each in the Woodland and Hillcrest
junior high schools and about 15 in the
high school. There is a separate ele.
mentary school for about 75 Negro chib
dren in grades one through six.
Hoxie has only four Negro students
and they are in grades three, four, five
and ten this year. This district, in East
Arkansas, started classes the last week
in July but recessed Sept. 1 for eight
weeks for the cotton-picking season.
Pulaski County has had desegrega
tion only in the Little Rock Air Force
Base Elementary School, which it op
erates under lease for the children of
men living on the base.
Last spring, two Negro children fin
ished the six grades in the elementary
school and would have been eligible this
fall, if they were still living on the base,
to attend the county district schools in
Jacksonville, the nearest junior and
senior high schools to the air base.
School district officials never said what
they were going to do, but on Sept. 6,
three Negro children from the air base
enrolled in the formerly white schools
of Jacksonville—two in junior high and
one in senior high. There are about 950
white children in the junior high and
about 700 in the high school.
Board Decides
Afterward Supt. E. F. Dunn said that
the county board had decided to open
the schools at Jacksonville to all chil
dren who live with their parents on
the air base, which is inside the Jack
sonville city limits. He said it was either
do this or risk losing about $500,000 a
year in federal aid. Until this year, the
Negro children from the air base in jun
ior or senior high were sent by bus to
the county district’s Negro schools at
McAlmont, five miles away.
One of the two pupils who finished
the sixth grade last spring is gone, his
father having been transferred to an
other air base. The other entered the
seventh grade of Jacksonville Junior
High School and two girls, his sisters,
entered the eighth and 10th grades.
Miscellaneous
Little Rock School
Segregation Figures
In Sheriff’s Contest
B. Frank Mackey, a member of the
Little Rock school board whose term
expires in December, won the Demo
cratic nomination for sheriff of Pulaski
County in the runoff primary Aug. 14,
defeating the incumbent sheriff, L. C.
Young Sr. Mackey is a retired detec
tive from the Little Rock Police De
partment.
In the preferential primary July 31,
Mackey and Young had more votes
than the third and fourth candidates,
but neither had a majority this put
them in the runoff two weeks later
Midway during the runoff campaign,
some literature was distributed in Little
Rock about Mackey’s service on the
school board while the Little Rock
schools were being desegregated.
When desegregation of the junior
high schools was about to start a yea * 1 * * * T
ago, the Capital Citizens Council put
out a circular with the pictures, names
and telephone numbers of all the school
board members, uring parents to call
them and resist desegregation. That
circular was reproduced, with Mackey*
picture circled and an arrow pointing to
it. Mackey made no public comment or
this. Young said only that he had see»
them and wondered where they were
coming from. Mackey defeated Yourt?
by 12,770 to 11,444.
★ ★ ★
At Chicago during the annual con
vention of the National (Negro) Med
ical Association, the editor of the
association Journal was interviewer
Aug. 14 and went out of his way ®
pay a compliment to the University
Arkansas School of Medicine, located &
Little Rock. J
The editor, Dr. W. Montague Cob®
of Washington, said, “It isn’t general^
known, but Arkansas has regularly a c "
cepted Negro medical students sinc e
1948, kept on doing so all through the
furor over integration of Little R° c *
high school and now has about sever
Negro students. By this time, ArkanS 35
has graduated a couple dozen Neg r °
physicians and I’d like to applaud therj
for it.” # # ?
h
(
)
(
te
UJ
st
M
te
di
dt
de
Cc
sy
si!
fo:
gr
st;
It
ch
60
dr
en
40!
to
in
N<
as
“V
n
ve
co
ce
B<
si)
qi
Ni
w
ra
fr,
of
lo
n<
is
bl
a
V.
T£
n<
th
fe
cl
Sc
tt
ai
di
Ji
F
Ji
Ji
F
c<
h
d
b
P
rr
d
R
si
I
]
]
;
o
a
r
i<
v
b
V
s
t:
c
r
s
F
fi
I
t