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MONTGOMERY
U S. District Judge Sey bourn
# Lynne of Birmingham has
under advisement two combined
suits that seek the desegregation
of all schools in the state’s largest
city, together with the desegre
gation of teaching staffs and other
personnel.
The five-day hearing opened Oct. 3
and, after a recess, concluded Oct. 25.
Judge Lynne told attorneys, over the
objections of Negro plaintiffs, that he
would allow until Dec. 1 for filing ad
ditional briefs. He set Dec. 31 as a
deadline for filing answers to the
briefs.
When Negro attorneys protested the
delay, Judge Lynne said: “Nobody’s
in a hurry here. School doesn’t open
here until September.” The clear im
plication was that no order would be
effective, in the judge’s view, before
the 1963 fall term. Lynne said the
“legal issues loom large” in the case.
The first of the two suits (Armstrong
et al. v. Board of Education) was filed
in June, 1960, by three Negroes in be
half of their seven children. Plaintiffs
seek an injunction prohibiting the
Birmingham Board of Education from
‘continuing their policy, practice, cus
tom and usage of operating a biracial
system.” The injunction sought would
ban what the petitioners call a dual
set of school zone lines, prevent school
assignments on the basis of color, pre
vent Negro children seeking transfer
to other schools from being subjected
to requirements not asked of white
children, and prevent the approval
of budgets, allocation of funds and ap
proval of contracts and policies design-
ed to perpetuate a segregated system,
etc,
The second and similar suit (Nelson
o. Board of Education) was filed sev
eral months ago. Judge Lynne agreed
o combining them for the hearing.
‘A Dual System’
Mrs. J. p. Troxell, chairman of the
Board of Education, testified: “We
operate a dual system and I don’t have
o authority to change it.”
However, Thomas H. Benners Jr.,
t mem * :, er and former chairman,
s ined that he knew of no school
“stnets in the city.
Clay S. Sheffield, director of guid-
,• ce * or ci ty schools, said desegrega-
., Wou ld not be in the interest of
that ° r ^ e 2 roes - He told the court
firct teStS g * ven students entering the
fhe s how that 29.7 per cent of
of l Whlt f P u Pils have a mental age
Cen , ess . “an six years while 66.8 per
Jc i l ” G Negro pupils have a mental
of a®s than six years.
a k° presented charts pur-
in t0 , sbow Jmt white students
es four through eight showed
(See HEARINGS, Page 10)
I
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Meredith in Mathematics Class
Photo taken by fellow student.
SOUTH CAROLINA
University Desegregation
Sought for Next Semester
COLUMBIA
T he University of South Caro
lina conceivably could join its
sister institution, Clemson Col
lege, as the first South Carolina
schools to be desegregated.
The admitted target date is the be
ginning of the second semester of the
current school year.
Attorneys for Henri Dobbins Mon-
teith, a 17-year-old Columbia Negro,
attacked the university’s all-white
policy in a suit filed quietly in U.S.
District Court in Columbia on Oct. 31.
A desegregation case against Clem
son is well on its way through the
federal court mill.
Negro attorney Matthew Perry of
Henri Monteith
Waiting in Baltimore
Columbia, who filed the Monteith suit
along with Lincoln C. Jenkins of Co
lumbia and Ernest Finney of Sumter,
says he believes the suit will procede
expeditiously in the light of speedup
rulings by the Fourth Circuit Court of
Appeals in the Clemson case and will
be concluded in time for Miss Monteith
to enter U.S.C. for the spring semester
if she is successful in her plea.
Class Action
The suit against the university was
brought as a class action since the
complaint asked that the court’s order
apply to “all others similarly situated.”
The university, its trustees and its
registrar were- named as parties de
fendant in the action.
The school, whose rapidly expanding
main campus is located in downtown
Columbia, has more than 7,000 stu
dents. It is the largest educational in
stitution in the only state that has
never permitted Negro and white stu
dents to attend the same schools at
any level of its publicly financed edu
cational system.
In the past, Negroes have sought
admision blanks from U.S.C. but the
Monteith girl is the first to file a suit
to gain admittance.
Applied in May
The suit became a prospect in July
when Mrs. R. R. Monteith, the girl’s
mother and a Columbia school teacher,
said she was considering such action.
Mrs. Monteith said her daughter had
applied to U.S.C. in May but had re
ceived a letter from the school which
said simply that the university could
not “act favorably on the application.”
The complaint filed alleges that Miss
Monteith was refused admission be-
(See NEGROES, Page 14)
Meredith u^ccergoes
Hectic First Month
JACKSON
J ames H. Meredith’s first monti
as the first Negro of recorc
enrolled in the 114-year-old Uni
versity of Mississippi at Oxford
was anything but that of a routine
transfer student.
It was a hectic period, climaxing
two-years of federal court litigation
instituted by the 29-year-old native
of Attala County, Miss., to break Mis
sissippi’s public education segregation
barrier.
Meredith’s enrollment Oct. 1 was
accompanied by rioting in which two
people were killed. The month closed
with demonstrations serious enough to
warrant the use of details of the 500
federal soldiers still assigned to Ox
ford. The troops had totaled 30,000 at
one time.
A new spurt of demonstrations the
night of Oct. 30 resulted in the Army
ringing Lester Hall, adjacent to Mere
dith’s Baxter Hall, with fixed-bayonet
troops after a soldier was hit by a
“cherry bomb.”
Dormitory Searched
In its toughest stand since the Sept.
30 rioting, the Army searched rooms
in Lester Hall after sealing off the
building from its student occupants.
Students caught inside their rooms dur
ing the room-by-room search were kept
inside by soldiers standing in the hall
ways.
The search produced a dismantled
M-l infantry-type rifle, several pistols
and tear gas grenades, gasoline and
boxes of firecrackers.
The latest demonstrations were fol
lowed by the stillest warning to stu
dents from Dr. J. D. Williams, the chan
cellor, who said “swift and drastic dis
ciplinary action, including expulsion
from the university, can be expected.”
Chancellor Williams revealed that
evidence had been obtained against
eight or 10 students for serious infrac
tions within the previous few days.
“Further evidence is being collected
and others can expect the same treat
ment,” Chancellor Williams told student
meetings Nov. 1.
He said “The shooting of fireworks,
the possession of firearms and ammu
nition, the use of obscene and profane
language, the committing of any act
of violence or any act tending to dis
order will be regarded as serious viola
tions of university regulations.”
Dick Wilson of Jackson, president of
the student body, joined Chancellor
Williams in urging students to refrain
from any violence or demonstrations
“for our own safety.” He said that con
viction on rioting charges “could mean
a term in a federal penitentiary.”
Students’ anger was noticeable when
they saw several Negro soldiers were
aided in the room-by-room search by
Dean of Student Personnel L. L. Love
and campus policeman Bums Tatum.
Requested Search
School authorities said they requested
the soldiers to search the dormitory
after a fragment from a “cherry
bomb,” an oversized firecracker, struck
a soldier under the eye. The injury was
not serious.
During the demonstrations and search,
Meredith was in the university safe-
teria eating.
Following the search and warning
from Chancellor Williams, university
officials Nov. 3 announced that four
students had been expelled for partici
pating in the Sept. 30-Oct. 1 riots and
subsequent disturbances.
At the same time, the Army an
nounced that a soldier who was respon
sible for firing a shot into a dormitory
(See MONTH-END, Page 16)
TENNESSEE
Supreme Court To Review
Pupil Transfer Sections
NASHVILLE
T he U.S. Supreme Court agreed
on Oct. 8 to review pupil
transfer provisions in the David
son County and Knoxville deseg
regation plans.
While no date was set for a hearing,
the high tribunal said it wished to hear
arguments on whether the transfer
plan:
• Deprived Negro students of their
rights under the 14th Amendment by
expressly recognizing race as a grounds
for transfer “in circumstances where
such transfers operate to preserve the
pre-existing racially segregated sys
tem.”
• Restricted Negroes living in the
THE REGION
More College Desegregation Noted
M ore Negroes gained admis
sion to public and private
colleges with whites in nine states
in October. In Alabama, where all
the public colleges have segregat
ed student bodies, a Negro applied
to enter the University of Ala
bama.
The additional college desegregation
involved schools in Florida, Georgia,
Kentucky, Louisiana, North Carolina,
Tennessee, Texas, Virginia and West
Virginia.
In the Nov. 6 elections, voters in three
states considered constitutional amend
ments on the school segregation-deseg
regation issue. The amendments were
presented to the public by the legisla
tures of Arkansas, Georgia and Louis
iana.
Directors of Florida Presbyterian
College, at Petersburg, changed the
school’s policy and voted to admit stu
dents without regard to race.
Georgia State College in Atlanta has
its first Negro undergraduate student
this session. The school accepted a Ne
gro housewife as a regular day student
working toward a bachelor of music de
gree. This past summer, the school en
rolled its first Negro student, a high
school teacher who attended graduate
courses. The school had been under a
federal court order since 1959 to accept
students without regard to race.
Emory to Admit Two
A private school in Georgia, Emory
University in Atlanta, announced it had
formally accepted two Negro nurses to
begin as regular students in January.
Ten days earlier, the Georgia Supreme
Court denied a rehearing on its decision
that the school would retain its tax-
exempt status if it desegregated. Emory
already has two Negroes taking special
evening courses.
Mercer University, a Baptist institu
tion in Macon, Ga., has a committee
working under appointment of the
college president to consider a policy
of admitting students without regard to
The executive committee for a pri
vate school in Kentucky has recom
mended that all racial barriers to
admission be dropped. The board of
trustees of Asbury College at Wilmore,
Ky., will act in January on the recom
mendation. The college has a limited
desegregation plan in effect, admitting
some foreign Negroes and some married
American Negroes.
Louisiana has approximately 740 Ne
gro students enrolled in five of its state-
supported colleges and universities at
tended largely by whites. Last year,
(See COLLEGES, Page 8)
area of all-Negro schools to attend such
schools while allowing white children
to transfer to other schools solely on:
the basis of race.
Under the transfer provisions, any
pupil may transfer from schools where
his race is in the minority or if he is
assigned to a class predominantly of
the other race.
The Supreme Court granted a request
by Negro attorneys to review the trans
fer plan after they appealed rulings by
the U.S. Sixth Circuit Court of Appeals
at Cincinnati.
Previously Upheld
In decisions in April, the appeals
court upheld the transfer provisions in
the Davidson County plan (Maxwell et
al v. Davidson County Board of Educa
tion, SSN, April) and in the Knoxville
plan (Goss et al. v. Knoxville Board of
Education) as it ordered the Knoxville
board to accelerate its grade-a-year de
segregation program.
As a result of the speed-up order,
the Knoxville Board of Education de-
seg-egated both the third and fourth
grades this year instead of only the
third grade scheduled under the or'gi-
nal court-approved plan.
Having begun desegregation with the
first grade in I960, the system now has
87 Negroes in the first four grades.
The board filed a revised plan w'th
U.S. District Court, calling for biracial
classes in both the third and fourth
grades. Negro attorneys objected to the
amended plan and have asked the court
to set an early hearing.
Now in Sixth Grade
Davidson County schools desegreg t-
ed the first four grades under federal
court order in January, 1961, adding the
fifth grade in the fall of 1961 and the
sixth grade in September of this year.
About 130 Negroes are enrolled this
year in 15 biracial schools.
Under the plan approved by federal
(See PUPIL. Page 6)