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PAGE 16—JANUARY, 1963—SOUTHERN SCHOOL NEWS
MISSOURI
NAACP Group Calls for More Compliance with Decision
ST. LOUIS
he State Conference of the
National Association for the
Advancement of Colored People
was directed by its membership
late in November to take all ap
propriate action to bring imple
mentation in Missouri of the U.S.
Supreme Court decision on de
segregation of schools.
At the conference, meeting in Kan
sas City, specific mention was made
of the southeast Missouri “Bootheel,”
where some counties have taken no
action or lagged behind the rest of
the state in complying with the 1954
decision. However, the resolution
passed by the conference applied to
the entire state. The NAACP is in
volved in a suit filed last August
against the Charleston public schools,
in Mississippi County, (SSN, Septem
ber, 1962).
In other NAACP resolutions con
cerning schools, the conference:
• Called for appointment of an
NAACP state committee on education
to work with branch committees in
examining text books and other edu
cational materials for matter that gives
a distorted picture of Negroes, and in
encouraging the use of materials that
are objective, comprehensive and
without bias.
• Urged the undertaking by NAACP
branches of vigorous parent-school-
community programs to end de facto
racial segregation and all forms of dis
crimination affecting Negro students
and teachers; to urge fair policies in
work-study, distributive education and
apprentice training programs; and to
work for equity in employment and
assignment of Negro teachers within
school systems.
• Recommended that federal and
state governments withdraw participa
tion and support from apprenticeship
and vocational programs that refuse to
admit or service qualified Negroes.
• Supported the right of students to
protest peacefully against injustice and
discrimination, thus protesting the
punitive action taken at Lincoln Uni
versity in Jefferson City last spring
against students who demonstrated
against discrimination at bowling al
leys. (SSN, May, 1962)
Lincoln University is a formerly all-
Negro state institution in the state’s
capital city. Nine students were sus
pended last March for insubordination
to President Earl E. Dawson, a Negro,
and the incident caused a controversy
in the state’s Negro press.
Mrs. Margaret Bush Wilson, a St.
Louis lawyer, was elected president of
the Missouri State Conference of
NAACP branches at the organization’s
annual session at Kansas City. She
succeeds Mrs. Kelsey B. Beshears of
St. Joseph, who had headed the Mis
souri NAACP for six years.
Missouri Highlights
The Missouri NAACP approved a
resolution directing that the state
conference take all apropriate action
—including litigation, if necessary—
to bring compliance in Missouri with
the U. S. Supreme Court decision on
school desegregation.
Gov. John M. Dalton recommend
ed expansion of the state’s public
higher education system, including
branches of Missouri University at
both St. Louis and Kansas City. The
expansion of public higher educa
tion has been urged as a means of
making low-cost college training
available in the urban centers, where
most of the state’s Negroes live.
The U. S. Commission on Civil
Rights said that de facto segregation
in the St. Louis public schools had
worsened in the last seven years.
The St. Louis Board of Education
adopted a new transfer and suspen
sion policy aimed at keeping “in
corrigible” students from interfering
with work in the public high schools.
Political Activity
Governor Proposes
Expansion of State
University System
Outlining Missouri’s problems and
needs to the new General Assembly
convening at Jefferson City Jan. 2,
Gov. John M. Dalton recommended in
his State of Government message the
expansion of the Missouri public
higher education system to include
university branches at the state’s two
major urban areas, St. Louis and Kan
sas City. The step has been recom
mended as a means of bringing tax-
supported higher education to the two
large population centers, where most
of Missouri Negroes are concentrated.
All of Missouri’s public colleges and
universities are desegregated, and
more than 100 Negroes attend the Uni
versity of Missouri at Columbia, in
the central part of the state. In the
last several years a number of studies
have urged the setting up of university
branches at St. Louis and Kansas City.
This has been seen as a means of en
couraging young people from middle
and low income families to continue
their education beyond high schools.
Most Missouri Negroes are in the lower
income bracket.
On Dec. 17, the Governor’s Council
on Higher Education met at the Uni
versity of Missouri and received a re
port from three out-of-state consul
tants. The report recommended that a
four-year campus of the university be
developed at the site of the Normandy
Residence Center in suburban St.
Louis County. It also recommended a
branch of the university at Kansas
City.
Critical of the extent to which the
state had supported public higher edu
cation in the past, the consultants said
few states were now in a better posi
tion to make improvements. They said
only five or six other states had given
less support, in proportion to wealth,
than Missouri.
The argument for establishment of a
four-year university branch at St.
Louis, which has been supported by
Negro groups and politicians as well
as by others, the report to the gov
ernor’s council said the St. Louis area
had more than 32 per cent of all col
lege students in the state in 1960. By
1975, the report added, the figure is
expected to be more than 43 per cent.
Late in December the Kansas City
Metropolitan Area Committee on
Higher Education released its own
study, strongly urging that the 1963
General Assembly provide sufficient
funds to establish a university division
at Kansas City. Among other things,
the Kansas City committee cited the
advantages of providing low-cost col
lege opportunities for students from
families in the middle and low income
brackets.
“Under current circumstances, the
great majority of students leave the
metropolitan area to attend college,”
the Kansas City report said. Among
Negro groups in Missouri, there has
been strong support for the enlarge
ment of low-cost college opportunities
in the urban centers. This is viewed
not only from the standpoint of edu
cation generally but as a means of
making high-level technical training
available to Negro workers.
The new St. Louis-St. Louis County
Junior College District, supported by
state and local taxes, will start eve
ning classes in rented space at two
high schools next semester. The junior
college board, which has a Negro
member, is seeking sites for at least
two permanent campuses.
Miscellaneous
Shinert Resigns
From Commission
The resignation of Gregory E. Shi
nert as executive director of the Mis
souri Commission on Human Rights
was announced Dec. 7 at Jefferson
City. Gov. John M. Dalton expressed
“extreme regret” at Shinert’s decision
to leave the state agency.
Shinert will depart Jan. 15 to become
special assistant to the chief of engi
neers, Corps of Engineers, in Washing
ton. He will be concerned with imple
mentation of President Kennedy’s ex
ecutive order on equal employment
opportunities.
In his $7,000-a-year post with the
Missouri Commission on Human
Rights, Shinert has been involved in
enforcement of Missouri’s 1961 Fair
Employment Practices Law. He became
the commission’s first executive direc
tor in July 1958.
Gov. Dalton “Said the commission
would choose a successor to Shinert.
Applicants for the post were advised
to write Winston Cook, chairman of
the Missouri Commission on Human
Rights, 411 North Seventh street, St.
Louis 1, Mo. The salary is expected to
be increased to $8,000 a year in mid-
1963.
Schoolmen
St. Louis Board
Approves New
Suspension Policy
The St. Louis school board on Dec.
27 approved a new transfer and sus
pension policy intended to keep incor
rigible students from interfering with
work in the public high schools. Under
the new policy, a suspended student
will be banned permanently from the
suspending school. The policy will ap
ply to students suspended for academic
as well as for disciplinary reasons.
There was no dissent to the new
policy, but the board’s two Negro
members, James E. Hurt Jr. and the
Rev. John J. Hicks, voiced concern
and said they “wanted to feel that
everything possible had been done f 0 ,
a student before he is permanently
suspended from high school.”
In adopting the transfer and sus-
pension policy, the board also ap.
proved related programs setting up ex-
perimental counseling services for
problem students at two high schools,
and expanding tutorial service centers
for use by suspended students. The
Rev. Mr. Hicks recommended assign,
ing counselors to elementary schools,
so that problem children—possible can-
didates for later suspension—could be
identified and given help as early as
possible.
Under the new policy, a student
would be banned permanently from
the suspending school. Those consid
ered incorrigible would be banned
from all city public high schools, re
gardless of the students’ ages. In less
severe cases, the student could be
transferred to another high school. If
he were suspended there, however, the
ban would be permanent.
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The 1962-63 edition is ready. It contains enrollment figures,
desegregated districts, faculty desegregation, legislation, litiga
tion, yearly comparisons and a chronology of major develop
ments. $1 a copy.
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velopments in education growing out of the Supreme Court’s
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segregation decision. $3.50 a copy.
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Under Survey
More De Facto Segregation Reported
“On balance, de facto segregation in
St. Louis public schools has patently
worsened during the last seven years,”
said Wylie H. Davis, professor of law
at the University of Illinois, in a re
port to the U. S. Commission on Civil
Rights.
Davis’s study was included in “Civil
Rights, U.SA./Public Schools: Cities
of the North and West 1962,” released
by the Commission on Civil Rights
Dec. 2. He credits St. Louis with “re
markable achievements in human rela
tions” but finds the city is facing prob
lems of resegregation due to residential
segregation. The three-step program
for carrying out the Supreme Court
ruling was finished in September, 1955.
“If widespread racial heterogeneity
in the schools is a cardinal desidera
tum, St. Louis did not move far be
tween 1955 and 1962. In some ways the
pattern has been retrogressive. Not a
little “resegregation’ has developed;
that is, some schools which were pre
dominantly white or substantially in
terracial schools, just after desegrega
tion, have since become all-Negro
schools or virtually so. This is notably
true in the city’s West End and an ex
tended Negro residential section to
ward the northwest.
“Such resegregation is traceable in
the main to a conjunction of popula
tion flux and the school administra
tion’s fundamental commitment to a
neighborhood school concept. Soldan
High School, serving the West End and
contiguous neighborhoods, is a prime
example. Its enrollment in February,
1955, was 74 per cent white. It is now
about 90 per cent Negro. A number of
elementary schools . . . have under
gone comparable changes . . .”
Less Overbalanced
Davis noted that racial proportions
were less overbalanced at Beaumont
and McKinley High Schools, where the
proportion of white students is about
70 per cent. He reported that in the
first semester of 1961-62 the St. Louis
system had 3,565 classroom teachers of
whom 1,550 were Negroes. Three of
the 11 high school principals were Ne
groes. In the regular elementary
schools were 45 Negro and 84 white
principals.
“Classroom teachers,” said the re
port, “although not extensively reas
signed in transition stages, have sub
sequently moved, or have failed to
move, in such a fashion as generally
to aggravate Negro-white contrasts
among the schools. From the begin
ning of desegregation, Negro teachers
in predominantly white schools have
been few. One white high school last
year had two Negro teachers. There
are still some white teachers in pre
dominantly Negro schools which were
formerly all-white. But the number of
these teachers is waning, particularly
in resegregated districts, as they either
leave the system or transfer into less
congested areas of the city. There has
never been an appreciable contingent
of white teachers in schools that used
to be all-Negro and remain so in
fact . . .”
Davis noted there were no Negro
principals in any of the seven ele
mentary schools whose enrollments
approximate a 50-50 Negro-white ra
tio. On balance, he said the St. Louis
school administration deserved “praise
for the conscientious and intelligent
progress it has accomplished with dif
ficulty during the past eight years. In
deed, the entire community deserves
praise for its remarkable achievements
in human relations since Dred Scott
lost his case in the old St. Louis court
house a century ago.”
With both Statistical Summary and Southern School M
News, get this fact-filled book for only 50 cents addi
tional.
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