Below is the OCR text representation for this newspapers page.

due tt :es th* m th. Factual iOO at. anawb hiriiij srgenc. SOUTHEF n A Objective shois i a ic VIOWOi0 3 JO V A?hn iy sup. qual i. V0L> 9, NO. 5 te Col. 900? o leavi •C9 NOf ALABAMA remaff Hearings End In Birmingham gontze ig, ant >licy o persua- t b C School Cases is com. tend t ice c We’r s thin; t ther ;aid bt to ap w pre. oymet oppor missitt reastt state ■ 87,00 ost Ne in tt lued: le acs i-cale . He restle: ing be or da >r first > race iment to tt if the ivy in orther [ample to tt e vast- ling i nbitk d son humE 11 ha' le at- whid ichoot e cu 1 ' irectoe of * :ed M nintk n V Lng th •n * abol' id re; ;reate' ace 1 , lof rertil 1 : iss<* Ne? 1 th. id [ cot' r ’ f epah th to 1 > >erah Sta- $ efl° It# teat* ■get" 6 & 0\ helb yjtfF 3^' 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 ^ This Issue ^ tate Reports ^bama t Delaware ... ^\\'^\\\\\\\\\\\ ^ fcda ° f Columbia - ia J JJfnyland ..ii]' , ESSissippi .... I^ouri ;;; 1 °kLh Carolina 3 Ten!) 1 Carolina 1 Yjhfinia 3 ae Region ...... , %tside the south ^ e xts r °P°logy: George and Boas ..11 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)