Newspaper Page Text
page 14—OCTOBER, 1962—SOUTHERN SCHOOL NEWS
Governors Conference Names
Faubus; Silent on Mississippi
HOLLYWOOD, FLA
rkansas Gov. Orval E. Fau
bus, once regarded as a sym
bol of defiance to federal court
desegregation orders, was elected
chairman of the Southern Gov
emors Conference on Oct. 4.
The conference carefully avoided
any reference to the University of Mis
sissippi desegregation crisis in resolu
tions and formal discussions. But as
the 15 chief executives arrived at the
Diplomat Hotel for their 28th annual
session on Sept. 30 and Oct. 1, the issue
came with them and cast gloom
throughout the usually gay proceed
ings.
One resolution adopted by the gov
ernors urged joint action by the states
to strengthen constitutional guarantees
of states’ rights. It commended a move
by the National Legislative Conference
in Phoenix, Ariz., last month which
called on 1963 legislatures to initiate a
constitutional amendment to strengthen
the 10th Amendment.
Faubus, whose election to an un
precedented fifth term as Arkansas
governor in November is assured
pledged to continue a policy of not al
lowing the conference to be used as a
political forum and said he would work
in unity for common purposes.
Passed Over Previously
The senior member of the confer
ence, Faubus has been passed over for
the chairmanship in recent years be
cause some of the governors had ex
pressed fear his election would be mis
interpreted as an endorsement of his
racial stand.
One of his fellow governors said pri
vately, however: “We are not electing
a spokesman for the South; we are
electing a chairman.”
Faubus has become less outspoken
on the desegregation issue in recent
years and, in the last Democratic pri
mary election, assumed a moderate
view on the subject.
The Arkansas governor became
known throughout the nation in 1957
for his role in the Little Rock desegre
gation crisis which brought federal
troops to his state.
Gov. Ross Barnett of Mississippi, who
was kept at home because of the de
segregation developments at Oxford,
sent word through Gov. John Patter
son of Alabama that he favored elec
tion of Faubus.
ELLINGTON
Earlier in the week, both Faubus
and Patterson announced they were
supporting Barnett’s position in the
Mississippi case and said the Federal
Government must assume the respon
sibility for the bloodshed which oc
curred at the university over the en
rollment of Negro James Meredith.
Faubus also made this obvious ref
erence to the federal troops in a state
ment to newsmen:
“It seems tragic we cannot react
properly to a bearded tyrant like Cas
tro but we can muster our power to
crush our own people.”
The new conference chairman, who
succeeds Gov. Buford Ellington of Ten
nessee, also predicted that President
Kennedy’s use of troops in Mississippi
will hurt Democratic candidates in the
South in the November election.
No Alternative
Other governors attending the con
ference, although deploring the use of
federal troops, agreed that Mississippi
had no alternative but to comply with
a court order directing Meredith’s ad
mission.
One of the strongest declarations
came from Gov. Ernest Vandiver of
Georgia who said, in a prepared state
ment:
“I do not favor the use of armed
troops to enforce the orders of the
federal courts ... As long as Missis
sippi is a state of the United States,
and does not secede from the union,
they, like every other state, must abide
by the laws and the decisions of the
courts which directly affect them . . .”
As Ellington opened the conference,
he asked the governors not to use the
session “as a spotlighted platform from
which to sound off on issues of an
emotional or political nature . . . and
in the game of demogaguery.”
The Tennessee governor told news
men that the conference “is not in
position to offer any advice ... on the
Mississippi problem.”
Gov. Patterson asserted that he was
“convinced that every act of the pres
ent administration in Washington is
motivated by what is best for them
politically and not what is best for the
nation.”
During a press conference, Ellington,
Vandiver, Gov. Terry Sanford of North
Carolina and Gov. Farris Bryant of
Florida agreed that court orders must
be obeyed.
Gov. Bert Combs of Kentucky, who
was elected vice chairman, gave re
porters this statement:
“Ross should
quit playing Cus
ter’s Last Stand
and join us. We
need to talk about
freight rates and
other space age
problems.”
Combs had been
mentioned earlier
as a candidate of
the moderates for
the chairmanship
but left word, as
he departed for Kentucky before the
election, that he was not seeking the
office. Faubus served as vice chairman
during the past year.
Censure Refused
The executive committee of the Na
tional Governors Conference, mean
while, refused to consider a proposal
by Gov. John Swainson of Michigan
that Barnett be censured.
Gov. Albert D. Rossellini of Wash
ington, chairman of the national gov
ernors, said the three committee mem
bers who met at the windup of the
regional governors conference felt that
censure was not a proper matter for
the committee or the national group.
“We feel that each governor is the
sovereign head of his state, and the
best judge of knowing what is best to
do about his own particular problem.”
While only one-third of the nine-
member committee was present, Rosel-
lini said he did not believe the subject
would be revived when the full group
meets in January.
Swainson, who did not attend the
meeting, said Barnett should be cen
sured for defying federal court orders.
# # #
FAUBUS
COMBS
Other Colleges Have Had Violence
(Continued From Page 1)
ing classes with whites at any level in
their public education systems.
School desegregation suits are in the
federal courts in both states. The Rev.
Martin Luther King Jr. has announced
that the University of Alabama and
Auburn University would be his next
targets for desegregation attempts.
The region, including the District of
Columbia, has 285 tax-supported col
leges and universities. Of the 234 pre
dominantly white or all-white institu
tions, 146 are desegregated. Fifteen of
the 51 all-Negro or predominantly Ne
gro schools will accept whites.
Most Desegregation Voluntary
Over half of the institutions of higher
learning in the region have accepted
Negroes voluntarily, and most of the
states made a start before the Supreme
Court’s school desegregation ruling in
1954. The region has 161 colleges and
universities desegregated in practice or
principle, and only 24 of these acted
by court order.
Nine public colleges have desegre
gated since May, and all changed their
policies voluntarily. They were: Florida
—Florida State University, Daytona
Beach Junior College, and Manatee
Junior College; Georgia—Georgia State
College; North Carolina—East Carolina
College and Wilmington Junior College;
Texas—Arlington State College and the
University of Houston; and Virginia—
Mary Washington College.
Enrollment figures for the current
school year Eire unavailable, but for the
1961-62 term, the region had 650,237
students in its white colleges and 62,574
in the Negro ones. The exact number of
Negroes attending desegregated colleges
in the region is unknown, because sev
eral border states do not keep records
by race, but the figure is over 5,000.
Ten states and the District of Colum
bia have started desegregation of col
lege faculties. The states are Delaware,
Florida, Kentucky, Maryland, Missouri,
North Carolina, Oklahoma, Tennessee,
Texas and West Virginia.
College desegregation began in the
region in the 30’s and the court deci
sions in these cases pointed toward the
U.S. Supreme Court’s rulings in 1954
and 1955, that compulsory segregation
in the public schools was unconstitu
tional. In 1936, the Maryland Court of
Appeals held that the state must af
ford equal educational opportunities in
its own institutions. The University of
Maryland then enrolled a Negro, Don
ald Murray, under the court’s order.
Two Maryland schools with predomi
nantly Negro enrollments, Maryland
State and Morgan State, had policies
permitting the entry of white students
as early as 1886 and 1867, respectively.
But the court-ordered entry of Mur
ray to the university was the first
known desegregation of any formerly
all-white public school in the region.
Supreme Court Decisions
The next state-supported college in
the Southern and border region to de
segregate was the University of West
Virginia, which voluntarily admitted
Negroes to its graduate schools in 1938.
This same year, the U.S. Supreme Court
held that a state was bound to furnish
equal educationEd facilities within its
borders, and ordered Leroy Gaines ad
mitted to the University of Missouri
Law School. However, for unknown
reasons, Gaines never enrolled.
The next college desegregation did
not occur until 1948, when G. W. Mc-
Laurin entered the University of Okla
homa by court order. Earlier in 1948,
the U.S. Supreme Court had ordered
Mrs. Ada Lois Sipuel admitted to the
University of Oklahoma on the grounds
that one race must receive equal fa
cilities as soon as another race. Mrs.
Sipuel was not accepted by the school
until 1949.
In ordering Heman Sweatt admitted
to the University of Texas law school
in 1950, the court ruled that the law
school at Texas State University for
Negroes was inferior in such intangible
criteria as community standing, tradi
tion, and prestige. The court held in
McLaurin v. Oklahoma State Regents
in 1950 that G. W. McLaurin was handi
capped in being taught in segregated
conditions at the University of Okla
homa law school. The court said Mc
Laurin must receive the same treatment
as students of other races.
Three states voluntarily desegregated
their first colleges and universities be
fore 1954: West Virginia, 1938; and Ar
kansas and Delaware, 1948. The District
of Columbia voluntarily combined its
white and Negro colleges in 1954. Be
tween 1936 and 1954, nine states ac
cepted their first Negroes in formerly
all-white institutions by court order:
Maryland, 1936; Oklahoma, 1948; Ken
tucky, 1949; Louisiana, Missouri, Texas
and Virginia, 1950; North Carolina, 1951;
and Tennessee, 1952.
Stronger Resistance
Since 1954, the four states initiating
their first college desegregation have
complied only after much stronger re
sistance. They are Alabama, 1956; Flor
ida, 1958; Georgia, 1961; and Mississippi,
1962.
Florida complied with the court-order
to desegregate its university without
violence but only after nine years of
litigation. Even then, none of the origi
nal plaintiffs in the suit gained admis
sion.
Seven Negroes tried to enter the Uni
versity of Florida’s graduate and pro
fessional schools in April, 1949, but the
board of control rejected their applica
tions. Five of the students then filed
suit in a state court to gain admission.
Only one of the original plaintiffs, Vir
gil Hawkins, continued the legal fight
as the case exchanged several times be
tween the state and federal courts.
When the case finally was determined
in his favor, the 48-year-old Hawkins
had become ineligible for admission be
cause of new regulations raising the
minimum score on a law school test. In
August, 1958, the university admitted
Alabama
(Continued From Page 13)
relationships and damage the very
fiber of our democratic system.”
Gov.-nominate George C. Wallace,
unopposed in the November general
election, said he wholeheartedly en
dorsed Barnett’s stand against “the
action of a tyrannical federal court sys
tem.” The federal government “dare
not” put Barnett in jail, he said.
During the Democratic gubernatorial
primary campaign last spring, Wallace
hit hard at the “lousy, irresponsible
federal judiciary” and pledged that he
would “stand in the school house door”
if necessary to prevent desegregation of
any Alabama schools. He said he would
request the legislature, after he takes
office in January, to delegate to him
personal powers to intervene in any
such school case so that if anyone had
to go to jail, it would be the governor.
Repeats Attacks
Wallace repeated his attacks on the
federal judiciary during September and
promised there would never be deseg
regation during his four-year term:
“I am going to stand up against those
lousy, no-account judges that are try
ing to take over our school system.
“I’m not going to tell you I’m going
to win, but Fm going to wake the coun
try up. . .”
On smother occasion Wallace said,
“Those hypocrites in Washington ought
to spend a little more time concerning
themselves with Castro and Cuba and
Khruschev and Russia and leave the
internal affairs of the states alone.”
Speaking in Florence Sept. 25, Wal
lace said the state’s two largest univer
sities—the University of Alabama and
Auburn University—“will never be in
tegrated” during his term.
The university is under a permanent
injunction, dating from the Autherine
Lucy case of 1956 (Lucy v. Adams) not
to deny any student applicant because
of race. The Rev. Martin Luther King
Jr. of Atlanta told a Southern Christian
Leadership Conference convention in
Birmingham that a stepped-up cam
paign is contemplated to enroll Negroes
at both institutions. (See “Community
Action.”)
Wallace said legislators backed him in
his position. Most of them signed a
message of support to Gov. Barnett. “If
you stand up to them,” Wallace said,
“they’ll back down every time.”
The Birmingham News was sharply
critical of Wallace’s support for Bam-
its first Negro, George Starke, to its law
school. The first Negroes were accepted
by the undergraduate division at the
beginning of the current school year.
In three states where resistance to
desegregation at the elementary and
high schools has been so strong as to
result in school closings and mob vio
lence, the public colleges had begun
desegregation several years before.
Troops in Little Rock
At Little Rock, the only other school
desegregation besides Ole Miss that has
resulted in the use of federal troops,
the trouble occurred in 1957 and 1958,
nine years after the University of Ar
kansas voluntEirily began admitting Ne
gro students. The remainder of the
public colleges and universities in Ar
kansas desegregated voluntarily in
1955, and 46 Negroes attended these in
stitutions with whites in 1961-62.
Virginia offered “massive resistance”
to the court-ordered desegregation of
schools in Norfolk, Front Royal and
Charlottesville and closed them tem
porarily in 1958. The University of Vir
ginia had admitted its first Negro in
1950 by court order, and three other
state colleges followed voluntarily in
1951. A fifth state school desegregated
in 1953, and the five institutions had 56
Negroes attending these schools last
year.
When violence broke out in New Or
leans in 1960 because Negro children
were entering the first grades, the state
had more Negroes in biracial public
colleges than any other Southern state.
Louisiana State University in Baton
Rouge desegregated by court order in
1950. LSU and the four other Louisiana
colleges that have desegregated, only
by court order, had 724 Negroes at
tending college classes with whites last
term.
The region’s 161 public colleges and
universities that have desegregated are
located in: Alabama, one; Arkansas,
eight; Delaware, two; District of Co
lumbia, one; Florida, eight; Georgia,
three; Kentucky, eight; Louisiana, five;
Maryland, twenty; Mississippi, one;
Missouri, fourteen; North Carolina,
nine; Oklahoma, twenty-four; Tennes
see, seven; Texas, thirty-three; Vir
ginia, six; and West Virginia, eleven.
South Carolina has none.
Although statistics are not kept by
SERS on private schools, at least 130
in the Southern and border states are
known to have admitted Negro students
or have adopted a desegregation policy.
# # #
ett. The Mississippi governor has com-
mitted himself to a policy of potential
tragedy, the News said, and “Alabama
cannot afford this enormous error.”
The campaign is over, the News sai<(
and it’s time for Wallace to “cease this
fiery utterance and do the thinking of
which all who know him well believe
him capable. This is no time fot
bravado.”
The News also criticized James Mar.
tin of Gadsden, Republican candidate
for the U.S. Senate against Sen. Lister
Hill, for his similsir support of Barnett
Alabama Republicans, making their
strongest bid in years with a candidate
for the Senate, three for congressional
seats and others for state and local of.
fices, hit hard on the silence of the
state’s Democratic congressional delega-
tion on the Mississippi situation.
Silence Broken
That silence was broken in late Sep.
tember as the entire delegation, includ
ing Senators Hill and John Sparkman,
sent Barnett a telegram saying:
“Mississippi’s fight is Alabama’s fight
We support you in the principle that
you are so forcefully defending, and we
commend you for the courageous battle
you are waging for constitutional gov-
ernment.”
Attorney General MacDonald Galliot
pledged the “full resources” of his office
to assist Mississippi. He said he had
dispatched a special assistant attorney
general, Nick S. Hare, to aid Mississippi
counselors.
The National States Rights Party
wired Barnett pledging “armed volun.
teers” to help Mississippi. The message
said “our lives and our fortunes” are at
the disposal of Barnett.
The Montgomery County Republicat
Executive committee also wired its sup
port to Barnett, commenting: “The
existence of our nation is at stake.”
Community Action
King Says Negroes
To Seek Entrance
To Two Colleges
The Rev. Martin Luther King Jr. of
Atlanta, president of the Southern
Christian Leadership Conference, said
in Birmingham in September that the
group was going “all-out” to get Ne
groes to apply for admittance to the
University of Alabama within a year.
The university is still under a
permanent injunction not to bsir any
applicant because of race. The injunc
tion dates from the 1956 Autherine Lucy
case.
“We hope to include Auburn Univer
sity in the movement,” Dr. King added.
King characterized Alabama as one
of the “hard core” segregation states,
along with Mississippi and South Caro
lina. At news conferences during the
four-day SCLC conference in Birming
ham, King said he had no doubt that
James Meredith would gain admittance
to the University of Mississippi.
Inspire Something’
The Rev. Ralph D. Abernathy, an
other conference official, said that while
Alabama is lagging behind other state*
in meeting the racial problem, he hoped
the group would “inspire something to
ward school segregation.”
He did not elaborate, but presumably
referred to the Birmingham school de
segregation case, which was to be heard
in the state’s largest city beginning Oct
3 in U.S. District Court there (SSN>
September). Most observers expected
that this action (Armstrong et ah
Birmingham Board of Education) would
bring the state’s first order to desegre
gate public schools, probably by ne**
fall.
Prior to the SCLC meeting, severs!
members met with Attorney Genera!
Robert Kennedy in Washington to dis
cuss what was termed “the Birminghafl*
problem in general.”
At one of the conference meetingSi 1
white man, Roy James of Arlington
Va., jumped to the platform and bea*
King as he was speaking. The man, wh°
said he was a member of George Lin
coln Rockwell’s American Nazi party
told police he was infuriated by King s
reference to entertainer Sammy Da''* 5
Jr. because Davis is married to a wh‘ t£
woman, actress May Britt.
King did not fight back and ' vaS
reluctant to prosecute. But police P re '
vailed on him to testify in BirminghaJ
Recorder’s Court, where Judge Chari
H. Brown sentenced James to 30 day-
in jail for the assault and fined hi®
$25. .
King received bruises on the jaw
back. An examining physician reco***
mended X-rays, but the Negro l ea .
insisted he would finish the convent*®
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