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SOUTHERN SCHOOL NEWS—MARCH, 1963—PAGE 7
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fort to guard our effectiveness as edu
cational institutions, whether the threat
comes from the demagogues or from
idealists.”
Concern and Faith
Chancellor Williams said “because of
this problem of racial integration, I
look to the future of the university in
the South with deep concern, but also
with deep faith.”
“All around me in the Southern uni
versities, I see dedicated men of char
acter, men who know how much they
are needed in the South, men who see
the worth of what they are doing, men
who realize that nowhere else in Amer
ica can their weight count for so much.
“Some able men will leave us, I
know, shaking the dust off their feet as
they turn away; but others will stay
to see the struggle through.
“This struggle is not ours alone.
America is one nation. What hurts part,
hurts a whole. The South has a tradi
tion and a culture that America cannot
afford to lose. The South is the nation’s
frontier, a rich land, still unexploited.
“The South has a tremendous contri
bution to make to America which can
not be realized if her universities lose
their vigor and effectiveness through
dissension.”
‘Unenviable Notoriety’
Recalling the arrival Sept. 30 of Ne
gro James Meredith and the hundreds
of federal marshals, Chancellor Wil
liams said that “touched off a bloody
riot . . . provided a Roman holiday for
newspaper readers and television view
ers and gave our university its unen
viable notoriety.”
“When I consider the price that has
been paid for this determined attempt
to integrate the University of Missis
sippi and the equally determined at
tempt made by powerful forces to re
sist such integration—the cost in money,
in reputation, in good will, in human
suffering—I am appalled,” the chancel
lor said.
He said “there was more involved in
the Meredith case than the question
ot racial integration.”
J’he question of States Rights enters
ln , he said. “States Rights is an in
creasingly, important political issue in
*®ny Parts of the country. In the deep
uth substantial men, men of good
* h find it a matter of deep concern.
1 **7 citizens who would be consid
ered very liberal on the race question
sta concerned about the con-
uy decreasing role of the state in
the
government of its citizens.
Cites William Faulkner
Southerners have been shaped an
j ec ^ f° their history, and they ar
oesui 1 ^ ® eo P^ e - They believe they kno\
they ° W t0 se ^ e their own issues, an
c om Wan ^ no interference. Even s
low ^ ass * ona t e a man as my famous fel
° w nsman, William Faulkner, fel
..'cars^ W H1 come in the next fev
the c° Ut , ° f this struggle to integrat
to B °uthern universities is difficu]
stitys 1Ct ’ Many deep South state in
not d° nS - may nmintain a de facto bu
f'essm- ^ UTe segregation, using socia
icco te f. s t° accom plish what was one
able is Isaec * hy state laws. More prob
such a 3 H a ttem of token integratior
MissiJ'. now exists at the University c
tesired^k 1 anc ^ Clemson College. Mos
most Wu liberal Negro leaders am
South l r, r ^ y °PP°sed by most of thi
‘‘iuiitted f 11 integration, with Negroe
bitdiug t° all universities an,
'■o l ead “'ancient social acceptance ther
lout e nor mal life of a college stu
“This 1
T’nsider f** ^' s situation which i
how s u a Ic ^ ea ^ hy so many American
'Jent i n ° substantial signs of achieve
^°Uth.’’ ” e s tate universities of th
£ ★ ★ ★
to K V ° 8t Sa > s Effor t
^ ee P Order Thwarted
P rov °st of the Universit;
a . HP 1 , Dr. Charles F. Haywooc
Ns l e j> nS ? Plans by federal of
J er less + * ae university chancello
hj ° Prevent disorders whei
, for pn e *th was taken to the cam
.> ar, F^Ument last autumn.
Nth, ji ery iew in San Francisco las
Ne set V ' Wo °d said “there was
~ tv 0 i]i i , circumstances that prob
^Uege rv. 4 .happen again.”
“ lv 6 0tl ,, Cla ls expected Meredith t
ct - 1 or 2 instead of o
Sept. 30, Haywood told reporters, and
“we had relaxed our protective meas
ures.” He said Chancellor J. D. Wil
liams had planned to have campus po
lice stationed at strategic locations and
that other preparations had been made.
A group of students had been organ
ized to assist in keeping the peace, the
ex-educator said, and a plea for order
had been prepared for publication in
the campus newspaper and for radio
broadcast on Oct. 1.
On Sunday, Sept. 30, however, cam
pus police were given a day off. “Then
the Justice Department heard that a
large number of outsiders were head
ing for Oxford to make trouble,” Hay
wood recalled, “so they decided on a
speedup.
“Chancellor Williams had not much
more than an hour’s notice that Mere
dith was coming. He couldn’t get the
police back. He couldn’t do anything.”
Haywood at that time was provost,
vice president of academic affairs and
chairman of the dean’s council—second
highest position at the university. He
now is director of economic research for
the Bank of America.
★ ★ ★
‘Race Relations’ Termed
Euphemism for Integration
Addressing the Yale Political Union
at Yale University in New Haven,
Conn., Feb. 28, an official of the pro
segregation Citizens Council of Amer
ica, said “race relations and civil rights
are misleading terms for racial inte
gration.”
William J. Simmons of Jackson, Miss.,
editor of the council’s official publica
tion, The Citizen, said:
“Race relations is an euphemistic
phrase used to denote integration and
civil rights pertains only to the courts
and not social and political rights.
“The collectivist establishment has
built civil rights into a mirage which
embraces a whole spectrum of rights,
a magic cure-all for alleged wrongs
visited upon minorities.
“There is not, and never was intend
ed to be, any correlation whatsoever
between so-called civil rights and
school integration.”
North and South
Predicting that the North would ac
cept a segregation of the races as its
Negro population increases, Simmons
said “on the social integration of the
races there is not much basic difference
between the Northern and Southern
points of view.”
“Until now, the principal difference
has been that the South knows more
about the problem from first-hand ex
perience, and is less inhibited in facing
it,” the council official said. “The North
has known less about the problem and
has been quite inhibited in facing it.
“The situation is changing. The
northward migration of our colored
population is proceeding so rapidly
that we will have an opportunity to
share problems as well as solutions.”
Simmons said if the ratio of Negroes
to the population in Connecticut equals
that of Mississippi “I think it is safe
to say that the white people of Con
necticut would develop some kind of
segregated system not dissimilar from
ours.”
Pointing to a Thanksgiving Day riot
at a Washington, D. C. football game
and to racial conflicts in Chicago, Los
Angeles, New York, Philadelphia and
Detroit, the segregationist leader said:
“It is becoming more and more ap
parent that unless some sensible settle
ment of the race problem is worked out
in the North, which is satisfactory to
the whites, there will be great trouble
to come. Unless some sensible method
is devised, such as we have in the
South for protecting the interests of
the whites, the future of large cities in
the North appears very dark indeed.”
★ ★ ★
An Episcopal rector of Oxford told
the Mississippi Commission on Human
Relations that “desegregation riots at
the University of Mississippi showed
the need of leadership by Mississippi
churches against racial prejudice and
violence.”
Addressing the commission at Touga-
loo College near Jackson, the Rev.
Duncan M. Gray Jr. of St. Peter’s
Episcopal Church and son of Mississippi
Episcopal Bishop Duncan M. Gray Sr.
said:
“Some persons say the church
shouldn’t be involved in riots and poli
tics. But the church was and is in
volved in everything that happened that
night (Sept. 30 rioting which resulted
in two men being killed).
“We all bear the burden of guilt. The
integrationist is no iess a sinner than
the segregationist, though the segrega
tionist’s sin is more obvious.
“But, here the church must be more
positive, not just condemn, but love
and redeem.
“If it cannot speak truth and love, it
had better be silent.”
MISSOURI
NAACP Lawyer Announces Plans
For Suit Against 5 Districts
Experimental Prekindergarten Group
For better preschool preparation.
Schoolmen
Experimental Nursery Classes
Taught by Jewish Volunteers
ST. LOUIS
uit will be filed in U.S. Dis
trict Court “within two
weeks” to desegregate public
high schools in five school dis
tricts in southeast Missouri, it
was announced late in February
by Clyde S. Cahill Jr.
The St. Louis Negro lawyer heads
the legal redress committee of the Na
tional Association for the Advancement
of Colored People in Missouri. Cahill
said the action would be taken against
districts that now send their Negro
high school children to one all-Negro
high school at Hayti, in Pemiscot
County. He said the districts were in
Pemiscot and adjoining counties.
There has been no desegregation, he
said, in any of the five districts. Two
of the districts, Cahill said, have high
schools of their own for white ch ; l
dren but send Negroes to Hayti. The
other districts were said to have no
high schools, sending their white chil
dren to neighboring districts and their
Negroes to Hayti. In some cases, Cahil 1
said, white children can walk to hig'
school while Negroes living in the same
locality must travel 40 miles by bus.
Cahill said that the legal action
would be directed toward obtaining
relief in the high school situation, bu
school desegregation at other levels,
in accordance with the 1954 U. S.
Supreme Court ruling, also would be
sought.
Suit Pending
Hayti is a small Mississippi River
town about 50 miles southwest of
Charleston, the Mississippi County
town where an NAACP-sponsored suit
to desegregate Charleston Consolidated
School District No. 7 is pending. Testi
mony in that case was heard Jan. 14
by U. S. District Judge James H
Meredith at Cape Girardeau. (SSN.
February). At that time, Judge Mere
dith said the Charleston school board
had “been conducting themselves in a
manner which is not provided for by
the Constitution . .
The Charleston suit has already
brought about further desegregation at
the Charleston High School, which had
permitted some Negro students at
junior and senior level since 1955.
In general, the cotton-growing Mis
souri “Bootheel” area has lagged be
hind the rest of Missouri in school
desegregation. It is strongly Southern
in tradition, is aligned economically to
the Delta region and has a relatively
large proportion of Negroes, many of
them farmers. The Bootheel’s counties
have been slow to move toward deseg
regation, and local Negro citizens have
not appeared to press vigorously for
compliance with the 1954 ruling.
St. Louis and Kansas City public
schools moved promptly to desegre
gate, and their school systems serve
the great majority of the state’s
Negro children. The state’s public
schools are now considered to be sub
stantially desegregated, but local
autonomy prevails in the state school
system and there has been little or no
pressure from the state on lagging dis
tricts.
Missouri Highlights
An NAACP spokesman said in
late February that a suit would be
filed in U.S. District Court “within
two weeks” to desegregate high
schools in five school districts in
southeast Missouri’s “Bootheel”
area.
St. Louis civic leaders urged vot
ers’ approval of a 29-cents increase
in the school system’s operating tax
rate for the next two years. One
factor in the need for the increase, it
was said, was the increasing enroll
ment caused by in-migration of Ne
groes.
The St. Louis branch of the
NAACP adopted a resolution oppos
ing a plan for transfer of Harris
Teachers College to the present
Yashon High School building, and
to close Vashon High.
In February, volunteers of the St.
Louis section of the National Coun
cil of Jewish Women began an ex
perimental nursery school for chil
dren from low-income families at
Blewett School, part of the Banneker
Group of elementary schools, which
are more than 95 per cent Negro.
Sixty children from low-income
Negro families began attending nursery
school in February in an experimental
program at the Blewett School of the
St. Louis public schools system. The
school is staffed by about 25 unpaid
volunteers from the National Council
of Jewish Women.
The program, which, if successful,
may be expanded to other schools in
slum areas, was described as an effort
to reach disadvantaged children be
fore they get to kindergarten and try
to give them better pre-school prepa
ration than they otherwise would have.
Pupils are about five years old and
are eligible to attend kindergarten in
the St. Louis system next September.
They are divided into four groups of
15 each. They attend two-hour sessions
twice a week, using a vacant classroom
at the Blewett School.
The Blewett School serves nearby
public housing projects and is one of
some 23 schools in the Banneker
Group directed by Samuel Shepard Jr.,
Negro educator whose efforts at up
grading the scholastic achievements of
slum children have received national
attention.
Working Welt
Shepard said the program was work
ing well. He noted that it tended to
carry out recommendations made last
September by the St. Louis-St. Louis
County White House Conference on
Education. The conference favored “In
creased day nursery activities for
culturally disadvantaged children by
voluntary agencies.”
Mrs. Bernard Rice, former vice presi
dent of the St. Louis Section of the
National Council of Jewish Women,
said the project had been under dis
cussion for about a year. She said
members approached Shepard and
asked what they might do to help. He
suggested the pre-kindergarten nurs
ery school.
Almost all of the 25 women volun
teers, Mrs. Rice said, have had some
professional training in teaching. The
project chairman is Mrs. Jerome W.
Sandweiss, a graduate of Vassar Col
lege in the field of nursery education.
Mrs. Sandweiss worked out the de
tails with Mrs. Virginia S. Brown, a
Negro, supervisor with the Banneker
Group. Mrs. Brown said many of the
children’s homes had few if any books
or magazines. At home, she said, the
children get very little chance to hear
or learn to use correct English.
Verbal Skills Poor
“These children’s verbal skills tend
to be quite poor,” Mrs. Sandweiss said.
The women volunteers read aloud to
the children, serve them fruit juice and
cookies. The volunteers, mostly house
wives from the St. Louis suburbs,
bring books for the children to handle
and toys for play periods.
At a late Feruary session, Mrs. L.
Wilton Agatstein and Mrs. Ralph H.
Treiman showed the children an ex
hibit of real fruit. It developed that
some had never seen a strawberry.
Some of the children, it was reported,
had no toys of their own at home.
School officials said that fully 75
per cent of the children had no father
in the home. In one group of 15 chil
dren, it was said, only one was from
a home with a father present. Many of
the families receive aid to dependent
childern or other relief.
The Blewett School principal, John
W. Edie, said the pre-nursery program
offered great advantages. He said:
“These volunteers have a rich back
ground of experience. They know what
they are doing, and it is paying off.”
Negro Migration.
Whites’ Exodus
Affects Schools
Like other major cities of the Mid
west and East, St. Louis has had school
problems resulting from the in-migra
tion of Negroes, the exodus of more
prosperous white citizens to the
suburbs, and the need for providing
increased service while coping with
lowered tax base. Thus St. Louis voters
were to cast ballots March 5 on a
proposal for a 29-cents increase in the
tax rate for school operations.
Campaigning for approval, school of
ficials said the desired increase, which
would raise the rate for the next two
years from the present $1.77 to $2.06
on each $100 of assessed valuation, was
essential to keep the schools from
backsliding. In fact, warning was
sounded that if the increase were
denied the schools might have to close.
Although the population of the
city’s public schools is now more than
50 per cent Negro, the changing char
acter of city population is only part
of the problem. The clearing of large
tracts for urban renewal and express
way projects has cut into the tax rolls;
some businesses and industries have
moved outside the city limits, and the
Catholic schools, faced with teacher
and classroom shortages, are expect'
to divert 5,000 children to the public
schools next year.
About 244 qualified elementary and
high school teachers will have to be
recruited to meet an expected enroll
ment increase of about 7,000 children
next year. The increase would bring
the number of children in St. Louis
public schools from the present 109,000
to more than 116,000.
In the last 10 years, a period in which
the Negro population of the city has
greatly increased and the white popu
lation has decreased substantially, the
(See SUIT, Page 11)