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SOUTHERN SCHOOL NEWS—OCTOBER, 1962—PAGE 15
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White House Busy During 4 01e Miss’ Crisis
(Continued From Page 11)
pared to respond to whatever emergen
cies may develop” in Mississippi. By
that date, several hundred U. S. mar
shals had been assembled at Memphis,
some 75 miles from Oxford. A 110-man
Army Engineer unit from Fort Camp
bell, Ky., had been assigned to provide
logistical services for the marshals.
McNamara said at a press conference
that no request had been made for
troops to go into Mississippi and that
no units had been put on special alert
or selected for possible use. He men
tioned that the 82nd Airborne Division
at Fort Bragg, N. C., always has units
on alert, but added that he was not sug
gesting they would be used.
The attorney general spent the day
at his desk, in close contact with of
ficials in Mississippi and with the White
House.
On Sept. 29, as the critical showdown
approached, President Kennedy called
off a trip to Newport, R. I., and the at
torney general cancelled a speaking
engagement in San Francisco. The
President and the attorney general
were understood to be conferring on
the timing and extent of federal force
which might be required to bring about
the registration of Meredith in accord
with court orders. The White House
checked with radio-TV networks on
the possibility of a presidential address
to the nation the following night.
Brief Reference
Attorney General Kennedy, in a re
layed address to the group he was to
have addressed in San Francisco, made
only a brief reference to the Mississippi
situation. He said:
“One of my great disappointments in
our present efforts to deal with the
situation in Mississippi, as lawyers, has
been the absence of any expression of
support from the many distinguished
lawyers of that state.”
Kennedy said that for Mississippi
lawyers to express support of the court
edicts would be “unpopular and require
great courage.” He said he knew that
many of the state’s prominent lawyers
disagree with the 1954 school desegre
gation ruling of the U. S. Supreme
Court, but added:
“Whether they agree or not, they still
have their obligations as lawyers and
they have remained silent.”
He observed too that the American
Bar Association had not spoken out on
the Mississippi crisis.
Midnight Order
On the afternoon of Sept. 29, the at
torney general, accompanied by Assis
tant Attorney General Burke Marshall,
in charge of civil rights, went to the
White House to confer with the Presi
dent. During and after their call on
the President, he conferred with Bar
nett on the telephone three times, and
put into effect a series of actions lead-
m g to a midnight order federalizing
units of the Mississippi National Guard,
Army and Air.
After his first telephone conversation
with Barnett that day, the President
ispatched a telegram which, according
°, Wlffie House aides, contained the
substance of his telephoned comments,
eclaring that the federal government
as an overriding responsibility to en-
,P rce or ders of the federal courts,”
e President asked the governor to
.j? j *kat evening to three questions.
He did not reply.
^femiedy’s telegram asked the gov-
or whether he would take action to
din? 1 ^ 6 court order to enroll Mere-
' ” no fi the President asked, “Will
u continue to actively interfere with
(h r ° rc< ? men t °f the orders of the court
e use state law enforce-
unt officials or in any other way?”
] a ^ally, Kennedy asked whether state
oper * ,? rCement: officers would co-
an ^ a e * n maintaining law and order
with P , reve nting violence in connection
orders?” 3 * erdorcement °f the court
said ..^1? connection,” the
ProVk- Wl1 * yoU at once tak(
Oxfr! m °bs from collectii
and wili area during this diffic
ficial 1 y .° U cal1 on the univ
student^ f iSSUe regulat i°ns t
strati fr ° m Participating 1
?* 10ns or mob activity?”
your- 6 Pres ‘ den t concluded:
an CP . com P let e cooperation
m meeting our
Telephoned President
dent^j’ ^afaott telephoned the Pre;
‘alked ? e evenin g the Preside
tornev Barne tt a third time. The ;
several als ° taUced to Bam
wfe® 011 the evening of Sept. 29, t
dent ‘C Se announc ed that the Pre;
er nor p S Una hle to receive from Go
that law, 301 ?* satisfactory assuram
Maintain !, nd order could or would
After ? m ° xfor d.”
is first conversations w
D. C. Highlights
Washington officials did not an
ticipate the violent reaction over the
enrollment of James Meredith at the
University of Mississippi.
Before the riots at Ole Miss, At
torney General Robert F. Kennedy
had hailed the peaceful school de
segregation in the South.
On the 100th anniversary of the
Emancipation Proclamation, Presi
dent John F. Kennedy praised
American Negroes for rejecting “ex
treme or violent policies” in work
ing for equal rights.
The U.S. Senate confirmed Thur-
good Marshall as a federal judge
after his appointment had been held
in committee for nearly a year.
School Supt. Carl F. Hansen said
in a television interview that it
would be “shortsighted and unreas
onable’’ to downgrade the Washing-
ington public schools on racial
grounds.
Barnett, the President conferred by
telephone with Secretary of Defense
McNamara and met in his office with
Gen. Maxwell D. Taylor, chairman of
the Joint Chiefs of Staff; Gen. Earle D.
Wheeler, the Army chief of staff; and
Secretary of the Army Cyrus R. Vance.
Shortly before midnight, Maj. Gen.
Chester V. Clifton, military aide to the
President, and Assistant Attorney Gen
eral Norbert A. Schlei arrived at the
mansion with a proclamation and exec
utive order authorizing the use of reg
ular troops as well as National Guard
units “to remove all obstructions of
justice in the State of Mississippi.” The
President signed the documents at 12:01
a.m., Sept. 30.
At 10:45 on the morning of Sunday,
Sept. 30, according to government of
ficials, Barnett made his first call of
the day to the White House and prom
ised that if there were a display of
federal force he would see that Mere
dith was enrolled in the university. He
promised to maintain order and gave
assurances that state police would co
operate with federal officials, White
House sources said.
Similar assurances reportedly came
from T. B. Birdsong, commander of the
State Highway Patrol. Late in the aft
ernoon, Birdsong talked in Oxford with
Joseph F. Dolan, assistant deputy at
torney general, and assured him that
there would be no need for federal as
sistance in maintaining order on the
campus.
Rioting Occurred
As President Spoke
At 6 p.m., as federal marshals—and
Meredith—were arriving in Oxford, the
White House announced that a nation
wide radio-TV address by the Presi
dent, scheduled for 7:30 p.m., would be
postponed until 10 p.m. There were in
dications that the White House expected
a quick resolution to the crisis, and
that the President was waiting to speak
under more favorable circumstances. In
the intervening period, however, state
police were first withdrawn and then
returned to the campus, and the Presi
dent’s speech began after rioting had
broken out.
In his nine-minute address, Kennedy
called on university students to observe
law and order. He told his Southern
listeners that any man is free to dis
agree with the law but that no man is
free to defy it.
If the nation reaches the point where
men long ignore the courts and the
constitution, Kennedy said, “then no
law would stand free from doubt” and
“no citizen would be safe from his
neighbors.”
The President praised Southerners
who have worked to bring about com
pliance with federal rulings on deseg
regation and said that full blame for
the “accumulated wrongs” of segrega
tion could not be placed on the South
alone but must be borne by the whole
nation.
He recalled that the federal govern
ment was not originally involved in the
case of Meredith, who had brought a
private suit to gain admission to the
university.
‘Inescapable Responsibility’
Only after Meredith was denied ad
mission, Kennedy said, did the federal
government intervene. But when the
U. S. Circuit Court of Appeals, com
posed entirely of Southern judges, made
clear that its orders were being vio
lated, the President said his responsi
bility to support it was “inescapable.”
“My obligation, under the Constitu
tion and the statutes of the United
States, was and is to implement the
orders of the court with whatever
means were necessary, and with as lit
tle force and civil disorder as the cir
cumstances permit,” Kennedy said.
He said he recognized that the South
was going through a difficult period of
adjustment. Praising the courage of
Mississippians and other Southerners,
the President told the students of Ole
Miss that they had a “great tradtion to
uphold, and said he was confident they
would do so with patriotism and in
tegrity.”
“The nation is proud of the many
instances in which governors, educa
tors and everyday citizens from the
South have shown to the world the
gains that can be made by persuasion
and good will in a society ruled by
law,” Kennedy said.
“Specifically I would like to take this
occasion to express the thanks of the
nation to those Southerners who con
tributed to the progress of our demo
cratic development in the entrance of
students regardless of race to such great
institutions as the state-supported uni
versities of Virginia, North Carolina,
Georgia, Florida, Texas, Louisiana, Ten
nessee, Arkansas and Kentucky.”
Close the Books
Kennedy said he saw no reason why
the books could not be closed on the
Mississippi case “quickly and quietly
... in the manner directed by the
court.” He added:
“Let us preserve both the law and
the peace and then, healing these
wounds that are within, we can turn
to the greater crises that are without
and stand united as one people in our
pledge to man’s freedom.”
After the President’s speech, as riot
ing continued in Oxford, the President
spoke to Barnett several times on the
telephone. It was understood that some
of the exchanges were heated.
At 2 a.m. on Oct. 1, the first National
Guard unit was ordered into action. At
4:15, the first federal troops, specialists
in riot control, marched onto the
campus. Four hours later, Brig. Gen.
Charles Billingslea, in charge of the
military operations, said: “I now de
clare this area secure.”
Took to Airwaves
On the evening of Oct. 1, after Bar
nett had charged on a television pro
gram that the federal government was
the “aggressor” in the rioting and had
deliberately stirred up violence at the
university, Attorney General Kennedy
took to the airwaves to deny Barnett’s
charges.
Kennedy praised the efforts of U. S.
marshals at Oxford, said they had
acted only defensively, and accused the
governor of deliberately withdrawing
state police and reneging on a promise
to maintain law and order.
The troop buildup, which continued
for several days in Oxford, at one point
reached a total of close to 20,000 men,
according to Washington estimates.
A spokesman for Secretary of Health,
Education and Welfare Anthony J.
Celebrezze said Oct. 2 that the money
the department normally would be
making available to the university was
being held up pending clarification of
the situation. The money included fed
eral funds for student loans and grants
under the National Defense Education
Act; funds normally available through
the Office of Vocational Rehabilitation;
and some Public Health Service grants.
Attorney General
Praises Peaceful
Desegregation
On Sept. 7, three weeks before vio
lence flared on the University of Mis
sissippi campus, Attorney General Rob
ert F. Kennedy hailed the peaceful
school desegregation that took place in
many Southern cities this fall.
Kennedy spoke optimistically about
the desegregation outlook for the South,
though he noted that no Negroes had
yet been admitted to formerly white
schools in three states—Alabama, Mis
sissippi and South Carolina.
“This is the second consecutive
school year in which every public
school system being desegregated for
the first time has made this important
transition without public disorder,”
Kennedy said. He added:
“This is a mark of the growing ac
ceptance everywhere of the need for
significant progress toward the realiza
tion of the constitutional rights of all
American children.
“Obviously, there is a great deal
more to be done. In three states there
has been no school desegregation of any
kind. But the success of many com
munities in meeting this difficult prob
lem during the past 13 months should
provide an example to the people of the
communities and states which are going
to have to meet the same problem dur
ing the next year.”
The Attorney General singled out
Chattanooga, Tenn., the largest city to
begin desegregation this year, for
special praise. He said that its success
was “a product of the same kind of
responsible community action taken last
year in Atlanta, Dallas and Memphis.”
★ ★ ★
President Kennedy praised American
Negroes on Sept. 22 for their “quiet and
proud determination” and rejection of
“extreme or violent policies” in work
ing for equal rights and opportunities.
The President called it remarkable
that “despite humiliation and depriva
tion” Negroes have retained their
loyalty to the United States and to
democratic institutions.
In a statement prepared for cere
monies marking the 100th anniversary
of the Emancipation Proclamation, the
President declared:
“There is no more impressive chap
ter in our history than the one in which
our Negro fellow citizens sought better
education for themselves and their chil
dren, built better schools and better
bousing, carved out their own eco
nomic opportunity, enlarged their press,
fostered their arts and clarified and
strengthened their purpose as a peo
ple.”
However, Kennedy added, “much re
mains to be done to eradicate the
vestiges of discrimination and segrega-
Hansen Scores Racial Downgrading
Washington School Superintendent
Carl F. Hansen declared Sept. 9 that it
is “shortsighted and unreasonable” to
downgrade the public schools of the
Capital on racial grounds.
Interviewed on Westinghouse Broad
casting Co.’s “Washington Viewpoint”
program, Hansen was told by a reporter
that real estate salesmen advise pros
pective District home buyers that the
public schools have predominantly
Negro enrollments.
“And they say, in effect, these are
bad schools,” the network reporter
added.
The superintendent replied that any
one advising persons against moving to
Washington unless children can attend
private schools is “responsible for what
I consider to be an almost un-Ameri
can act.”
“It borders close to the subversive
because the strength of America has
been in its public school system,” Han
sen declared.
He did not accuse real estate agents
of offering the stay-away advice. In
fact, Hansen said, many “take exactly
the opposite point of view—that it is
not necessary to send your children to
private schools if you come into Wash
ington.”
The superintendent said the District’s
Amidon Elementary School, which
stresses a program of rigorous instruc
tion in fundamental subjects, demon
strates that racial composition is not
relevant to good schooling. He said the
Amidon program has attracted many
pupils from all parts of the city despite
the fact that about half of the school’s
teachers and 70 per cent of the students
are Negroes.
“As a matter of fact,” Hansen added,
“we have people moving into Washing
ton to come to some of our schools.
And many real estate people, particu
larly in Southwest where the Amidon
School is located, are making use of the
fact that we have a strong school pro
gram there as a means of interesting
people in properties in this area.”
Hansen said on the broadcast that he
favors racially balanced schools but
opposes transferring children to schools
outside their neighborhoods to achieve
artificial integration.”
Moving children “from neighborhood
to neighborhood simply for the purpose
of artificial integration is sociologically
unsound and educationally very bad
practice,” Hansen said. It is better to
obtain racial balance “through the
practice of residential placement,
through the movement of people as
adults, as families,” he added. “You do
not use the school mechanism to estab
lish this ratio.”
Hansen said Washington schools with
under-capacity enrollments are opened
to students who attend overcrowded
schools in other areas, but are not a
factor in these transfers.
‘First Things First’
—Brooks, Birmingham News
tion, to make equal rights a reality for
all our people, to fulfill finally the
promises of the Declaration of Inde
pendence.”
★ ★ ★
Senate Confirms
Marshall As Judge
President Kennedy’s appointment of
a Negro lawyer, Thurgood Marshall, as
a federal judge was confirmed by the
Senate Sept. 11. The 54-to-16 rolleall
vote came after nearly five hours of
Southern opposition speeches.
Marshall, 54, was for years chief
counsel of the National Association for
the Advancement of Colored People
and argued the 1954 school desegrega
tion cases before the Supreme Court.
Since Oct. 5, 1961, he has been serving
under a recess appointment on the
Second U. S. Circuit Court of Appeals
in New York.
Although Senate action on the ap
pointment had been held up in com
mittee for nearly a year, only four
Senators from two Deep South states
took the floor formally to speak against
Marshall’s nomination. They were Sens.
James O. Eastland (D-Miss.), chairman
of the Judiciary Committee, which had
long delayed action on the nomination;
Olin D. Johnston (D-S.C.), whose sub
committee conducted hearings on Mar
shall; Strom Thurmond (D-S.C.), and
John C. Stennis (D-Miss.).
The Southern critics of Marshall
avoided reference to the school deseg
regation case and denied they were in
fluenced by his race. They argued that
his experience was restricted chiefly to
one filed of law, civil rights, and that
he lacked broad legal qualifications for
the office.
On the rolleall, 24 Republicans joined
30 Democrats in voting for confirma
tion. All of the “no” votes were cast by
Southern Democrats.
★ ★ ★
Negro Boy Enters
White House School
The exclusive nursery school oper
ated at the White House for the Presi
dent’s daughter, Caroline, and a group
of her playmates, was desegregated
when it opened for the fall on Sept. 25.
The White House has a policy of not
divulging the names of students in the
nursery school, which is operated at the
parents’ expense. However, it became
known that Avery Hatcher, five-year-
old son of Assistant White House Press
Secretary Andrew T. Hatcher would be
among the 20 youngsters enrolled this
year. The boy is the first Negro to at
tend the school.
President Kennedy was criticized
some months ago by Dr. Emmett L. Ir
win, Chairman of the Citizens Council
of Greater New Orleans, for creating a
special nursery class “to avoid your
offspring being exposed to the same
type of desegregation you have ordered
for the rest of the children of the na
tion.”
★ ★ ★
The Prince Edward Educational
Committee for D. C. announced Sept.
15 that it hoped to raise funds to bring
20 to 25 Negro children from Prince
Edward County, Va., to Washington for
schooling this year.
Prince Edward County public schools
have been closed since 1959 in a de
segregation controversy. Last year the
D. C. Committee, headed by Hans
Furth, an associate professor at Cath
olic University, brought 19 Prince Ed
ward pupils between the ages of 7 and
15 to Washington, raised about $6,000
for their transportation and non-resi
dent tuition in D. C. public schools
and found families willing to give them
a home for the school year. # # #