Below is the OCR text representation for this newspapers page.

COLUMBIA Harvey Gantt at Clemson Smiles at newsmen and students. MISSISSIPPI James Meredith Decides To Remain in University JACKSON have decided that I, James Meredith, will register for the second semester at the Uni versity of Mississippi.” That was the decision Jan. 30 of the Attala County Negro, a 29-year-old Married Air Force veteran, who broke Mississippi’s educational segregation arrier last October with a federal c °urt order after nearly two years liti gation. About 50 newspaper, radio and tele- "sion representatives attended a press conference in Jackson where Meredith’s ocision was announced. It was held in , conference room on the first floor hi hv ^ e § ro Masonic Temple in which th * a k' *h e National Association for ha Advancement for Colored People lts Mississippi headquarters. Meredith sat behind a small table tyit?" 1 ?. about 10 microphones. Seated fielri h m was Medgar Evers, Mississippi *, re P r esentative of the NAACP, M ‘ Ch „ spent about $40,000 in effecting Meredith’s enrollment. Earlier Statement ^Meredith had said before he complet- WoulH St ' Semester exam i na ti°ns that he u nl n ° t ret urn to the Oxford campus Uapro yie general “atmosphere” was stude V < and un l ess harassment by He S - and others was curbed, studij^ In deciding to resume his hop^ ,, taat see s^Sns that give me in th e * wU1 be able to go to school ‘deal ™t Ur e under adequate, if not ’ conditions.” re tUrn* S statem ent, he said he was not Wcaus g , to « a Miss as “the Negro” vious day had notified him that he was eligible for readmission “in good stand ing.” That was in answer to a ques tion as to whether he had failed some of his studies in view of his skipping the semester final examination in alge bra. The following day, Jan. 31, Meredith went to the Oxford campus and was registered without incident. He signed up for 18 hours of class work, three more than the normal load. He is taking three political science courses, a history course and a French course, in addition to repeating the algebra course he failed in the first semester. A faculty adviser said Meredith was taking the heavy load of courses in an effort to complete his undergraduate work by the end of the summer ses sion. Well-Guarded Normalcy An air of well-guarded normalcy prevailed during Meredith’s registra tion. Three armed military policemen stood guard on the roof of the library across the street from the gymnasium, where registration was under way. Others took up stations at the campus gates. Jeep-loads of military policemen patroled the campus. Campus policemen kept newsmen out of most parts of the campus, including the registration area which university (See MEREDITH’S, Page 16) H arvey B. Gantt was enrolled on Jan. 28 as the first Negro student in state-supported Clem son College. It was the first school desegregation in South Carolina on any level since Reconstruction. There was no violence, no demonstra tions occurred and regular educational processes were not interrupted. , Although the federal courts had moved swiftly to order Clemson to ad mit Gantt, all was in readiness when he arrived on the campus shortly after noon. In the days immediately preceding the enrollment, the state’s leaders, almost all staunch segregationists, had stepped up their pleas for peace and order. Most had spoken softly, some bitterly, some resignedly, all firmly. Security Lid A tight security lid was placed on the relatively isolated college. Many law enforcement officers were on the cam pus, operating under a carefully pre conceived plan. There was little exciting news for some 160 newsmen and photographers who had gathered on the campus from all over the nation. There were some minor incidents. When Gantt completed enrollment at 1:45 p.m. on Monday, Jan. 28, the last of the 50 states to have had uninter rupted school segregation since Recon struction had joined the rest. Only Alabama now has no Negro in its white seiioois -ju r me University ot Alabama admitted a Negro woman, Autherine Lucy, for a brief time in 1956. Riots ensued and she left, but the university remains under court order to admit qualified Negro appli cants. Even before disorders occurred with desegregation of the University of Mis sissippi last fall, then Gov. E. F. Hollings and others had made it known that South Carolina must prepare for desegregation. New Gov. Donald S. Russell, who had to face the Clemson desegregation issue almost from his first moment in office, had been well-briefed on ad vance plans for Gantt’s entry even though the final order had not yet come down. Attorney General Calls Governor It was reported on good authority that Russell received a phone call from U. S. Attorney General Robert F. Kennedy on Jan. 16—the new gover nor’s second day in office. Kennedy, who had a major role in sending fed eral marshals and troops to Mississippi in September, expressed his concern about the impending Clemson situation. Russell is reported to have told the attorney general emphatically that “we do not need any federal assistance.” He told Kennedy that South Carolina “is perfectly capable” of maintaining law and order “and we are not going to have any violence.” Kennedy later made a public state ment to the effect that the Justice Department had no plans to send federal officers to Clemson. Statements Issued On the day that the final court order was issued (See What They Say), Russell, Slate Sen. L. Marion Gressette, the state’s chief segregation guardian, and President Robert C. Edwards of Clemson all issued statements urging peaceful compliance after a series of meetings in Columbia. They said all legal avenues had been explored to prevent Gantt’s admission. The governor and Gressette decried the action of the federal courts. Both before and after these official statements, pleas for non-violent com pliance came from churchmen, profes sional and business associations, the State Republican Party and former U. S. Supreme Court Justice, U. S. Secre tary of State and S. C. Governor James F. Byrnes, who was extremely critical of the court action. (See What They Say). Prior to the day of enrollment, all Clemson students, faculty members and employes had been issued identification cards. They make up all but a few of the inhabitants of the tiny (1,586) town of Clemson that adjoins the school which has an enrollment of 4,000-plus. Roadblocks Set Up On Jan. 28, when Gantt arrived, roadblocks were set up on all high ways leading to the school. Officers patroled the campus. A person had to have an ID card or a good reason for being in the area or he was told to move along. This happened in one or two cases. It soon became apparent that one of the biggest problems would be posed by the large contingent from the news media present. Clemson Public Rela tions Director Joe Sherman insisted on a “pool” arrangement—selected report ers and photographers covering for all others—to accompany Gantt when he entered buildings on enrollment day. Otherwise, Sherman made every effort to provide for the press, radio (See CLEMSON, Page 8) In This Issue Slate Reports Alabama 10 Arkansas 5 Delaware 2 District of Columbia 18 Florida 12 Georgia 2 Kentucky 3 Louisiana 13 Maryland 14 Mississippi 1 Missouri 12 North Carolina 15 Oklahoma 6 South Carolina 1 Tennessee 7 Texas 3 Virginia 4 West Virginia 19 Special Articles The Region 1 SERS Grant 1 Books and the Issue 5 Religion-Race Conference 6 Microfilms of SERS Library 7 Violence in Washington 18 State Legislatures 20 THE REGION Brief Violence Occurs With Negro Admission V iolence flared briefly in two communities when Negroes were admitted to schools with whites at the opening of the sec ond half of the school year. The first desegregation at Yaneey- ville, N.C., and additional desegregation at Dollarway, Ark., both court-ordered, resulted in relatives of the Negro chil dren involved being arrested on charges of attacking whites who had harrassed them. Contrasting with these two incidents were the quiet return of James Mere dith for a second semester at the Uni versity of Mississippi and the unevent ful enrollment of a Negro, Harvey Gantt, at Clemson College in South Carolina. Tulane University in New Or leans and Lee College at Baytown, New SERS Grant Announced A^iU.sr. , ivnss as me iNegro • ■ 6 ^Prospects for him are too but as “a student be- ° <X2> d aiuuem ue- Ceive 15 ossential that everyone re- j. education and there should unction because of race.” ruiglu V^ ere dith said earlier that he “SHI caiuci uiiu lie *0d Ug return, President Kennedy ^-■nn edv Attorney General Robert F. c ^tig e , ■ ex Pressed hope he would *° 1S P la ns. They said his failure e ^°rts in r uld set l> ac k desegregation 11 the South. ^resident’s Influence jSj* 1 sa ‘d the president’s state- some influence on his de- ^ * thin]. ;+ I.^ry that i,_ Was important and nec- h Posit;- tae President would make Kleins u clear as to how racial v At his t T 10uld b e solved,” he said. aled that S conf erence, Meredith re ar university officials the pre- T he Ford Foundation announced on Jan. 21 a grant of $430,000 to George Peabody College for Teachers for support of Southern Education Reporting Service dur ing the biennium ending June 30, 1965. Southern School News, the monthly publication of SERS, is the principal medium for providing these facts. It has a staff of leading newspaper editors and writers. The first Ford grant for SERS was made in 1954. A board of directors composed of prominent Southern edi tors and educators established policies for the service, with headquarters in Nashville, Term. Southern School News is the basis for periodic news releases to all media. It is circulated in all 50 states and 44 foreign countries to people of many in terests and persuasions. Other Functions A great deal more information is com- The purpose of SERS was—and is— to collect and disseminate facts on the school segregation-desegregation situa tion in the area where laws prior to 1954 had required that the races be separated in the public schools. This was the case of 17 Southern and border states and the District of Columbia. piled by SERS than is published in SSN. This material is organized in a library that includes hundreds of thou sands of items collected from 50 daily newspapers and many other publica tions. The library also contains texts of laws, speeches and reports. Its contents are microfilmed and sold to libraries throughout the country. Periodically, SERS publishes a sum mary of statistics, presenting public school and college enrollment figures by race, a list of all laws enacted since 1954, a list of all court cases and de cisions since 1954, a chronology of de velopments, the effects of desegregation on teachers and other facts. SERS has prepared two books. The first was With All Deliberate Speed in 1957; the second was Southern Schools: Progress and Problems in 1959. In addition to these functions, SERS has since January, 1959, had manage ment, but not editorial, responsibilities for Race Relations Law Reporter, a legal quarterly prepared and edited by the Law School of Vanderbilt Univer sity. RRLR contains complete texts of court decisions, laws, and administrative orders and regulations in the broad areas of race relations and civil rights throughout the United States. Texas, voluntarily accepted their first Negro students, without trouble. Three public school districts reported they had peacefully enrolled Negroes with whites for the first time: Reidsville, N.C.; Putnam County, Tenn.; and Abi lene, Tex. New Desegregation New desegregation at the college level raised to 167 the number of tax-sup- ported institutions of higher learning in the 17 Southern and border states, plus the District of Columbia, that have poli cies admitting both races. The region has 125 segregated colleges and uni versities that remain all white or all Negro. The desegregation of four more public school districts made a total of 976 districts desegregated in practice or principle. The segregated districts having students of both races number 2,082, and another 3,171 school districts are either all white or all Negro. The end of segregation at Clemson left Alabama as the only state that does not have students of both rases attend ing public schools together. The Uni versity of Alabama desegregated briefly in 1956 with the attendance of Auther ine Lucy at the school for three days by federal court order. That court up held her expulsion for accusing school officials of conspiring with the mobs that rioted during her stay at the school. Although the university remains un der the same court order to admit Ne groes, several have applied without success. The new governor, George C. Wallace, repeated in his inaugural ad dress in January his intentions of all- out defiance of desegregation attempts. Alabama legislators supported Wallace in a resolution saying, “At no time will we in Alabama voluntarily submit to integration of our schools. Reporting to the President on civil (See BOTH, Page 20) T pc T} n Ci Factual VOL. 9, NO. 8 Southern School Nt no 'sm,„ uShUftgft a riosoil Jo*'?? 11 tlltJIllBU ii Vx - Objective FEBRUARY, 1963 lege Admits Negro In State’s First Desegregation