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PAGE 4—APRIL, 1963—SOUTHERN SCHOOL NEWS
SERS Book To Cover Decade
Since Supreme Court Ruling
SERS Board Members Confer
Reed Sarratt, executive director; Dr. Alexander Heard, new member; Vice-Chair
man Thomas R. Waring; Chairman Bert Struby.
NASHVILLE
outhern Education Reporting
Service will prepare a book
for publication next year on the
first 10 years after the U.S. Su
preme Court’s school desegrega
tion decision.
The SERS Board of Directors, in
annual session at Nashville March 16,
unanimously adopted a recommenda
tion of a special book committee. Reed
Sarratt, executive director of SERS,
was designated as the author.
Among other actions, the board voted
to continue monthly publication of
Southern School News through June,
1965. The decision was based on a con
tinued heavy volume of events in school
segregation and desegregation during
the past year.
‘Tempo Quickened’
A year ago, the directors had decided
to convert SSN into a publication of
less frequency after June, 1963, because
of an evident slackening of activity.
But at last month’s meeting, Sarratt
told the board: “The tempo quickened,
instead of slowing.”
He noted that 20 pages had been re
quired for six of the 12 issues published
since the 1962 meeting and that other
issues had been held to the previously
normal 16 pages only by close editing.
Dr. Alexander Heard, who became
chancellor of Vanderbilt University in
January, was elected to the board to
succeed Dr. Harvie Branscomb, who
submitted his resignation upon his re
tirement as chancellor. Board members
re-elected for three-year terms were
Charles Moss, executive editor of the
Nashville Banner, Thomas R. Waring,
editor of the News and Courier,
Charleston, S.C., and Henry I. Willett,
superintendent of schools, Richmond,
Va.
Bert Struby, general manager of the
Macon, Ga. Telegraph and News, was
re-elected chairman, Waring was re
elected vice-chairman and Sarratt was
re-elected executive director, all for
one-year terms.
Members of the committee which rec
ommended preparation of the book
were Dr. Felix Robb, president of
George Peabody College for Teachers,
chairman; Moss; John Seigenthaler,
editor of the Nashville Tennessean, and
Dr. Stephen H. Wright, president of
Fisk University.
MISSOURI
Neighborhood Exclusions Held
Continuing Segregation Cause
N eighborhood exclusion pat
terns are the cause of con
tinued segregation in Kansas City
schools, even though the city’s
public and private schools re
moved racial barriers at about the
time of the 1954 Supreme Court
decision, according to Robert T.
Adams, executive secretary of the
Kansas City Commission on Hu
man Relations.
Adams, appearing as a private citi
zen, spoke on civil rights in Kansas
City at a one-day meeting of the Mis
souri Advisory Committee to the
United States Civil Rights Commission
in St. Louis at the end of February.
He said he feared residential segrega
tion would have the effect of produc
ing new generations of young Ameri
cans who, through no fault of their
own, had no contact with or under
standing of other racial, ethnic or class
groups.
“Like our children of the future,”
he said, “Kansas Citians have not had
adequate exposure to persons of other
groups to enable them to have the
perspective that there are socially
creative persons in each group. The
tension in our communities takes its
first toll in tension within our public
schools. Although the public school is
designed to help cement the bonds of
society, in changing neighborhoods—
where parents and children alike have
had little exposure to different groups
which abide in our pluralistic society
—gang fights, knifings, etc., become the
first festering evidence of our social
estrangement.”
High School Tension
He continued:
“Since September, 1961, we have had
tensions in four or five of our high
schools, where teen-agers have set
about to fight in very serious ways over
their racial ethnic differences. Ameri
cans of Italian-American ancestry have
fought non-Italians. Negroes and
whites have had some serious fights in
which youths were injured. Persons of
Mexican-American ancestry have
fought with others of Anglo-Saxon an
cestry. The root causes of these serious
fights are not in these children, but in
families, neighborhoods and our socie
ty, which have not recognized the
merit and advantages of a pluralistic
society. Our children, in effect, are
paying the price of our inability to
come to grips with the fact that we
have been created with a common hu
manity, but a wonderful uniqueness.”
Adams said all colleges and univer-
Missouri Highlights
Robert T. Adams, executive secre
tary of the Kansas City Commission
on Human Relations, said desegrega
tion in Kansas City public schools
has lagged because of neighborhood
exclusion patterns.
St. Louis proposals to close Vash-
on High School and move Harris
Teachers College to the present
Vashon building were under study
by the Board of Education, along
with protests from the West End
Community Conference and the St.
Louis branch of the NAACP.
sities in the Kansas City area were
open to qualified applicants, but busi
ness schools were solidly segregated
and the same could be said—with no
table exceptions—for apprenticeship
training, vocational and technical edu
cation programs. He said the blame in
the latter case seemed to rest on segre
gation in labor unions and disparity in
: ob opportunities, rather than on school
authorities.
Schools ‘Truly Desegregated’
Meanwhile, the Kansas City Call, a
weekly newspaper with a large circu
lation among Negroes, said in an edi
torial March 1 that schools in the area
were giving evidence of becoming truly
desegregated, with students rated on
merit rather than on race, creed or
color as formerly. The Call cited two
cases in point.
The newspaper said that the Uni
versity of Kansas City, which did not
admit Negroes as students until a little
more than 10 years ago, had just sent
a team of four students to New York
to compete in the nationwide television
orogram, “College Bowl.” The team
captain, it was noted, was Elbert Hayes
•Jr., a Negro. The Kansas City team
won in competition on such subjects
as literature, philosophy, science and
history.
The second case cited by the news
paper was the fact that a Negro girl
had been crowned “Valentine Queen”
at William Chrisman High School in
Independence, Mo. The girl was
crowned at a dance attended by mem
bers of the basketball team, their dates
and other students. The newspaper said
that not many years ago William
Chrisman High School had an all-
white student body, while Negro stu
dents went to a separate school.
“Now all that is changed, thanks to
the U.S. Supreme Court,” the editorial
said. “At long last, our students are
being measured according to their in
dividual ability and worth, with the
color of their skin being merely inci
dental.”
Schoolmen
Proposal To Close
St. Louis School
Meets Opposition
The St. Louis Board of Education
has received vigorous protests against
proposals for closing Vashon High
School in central St. Louis and moving
Harris Teachers College from the west
end area to the Vashon building.
Two groups, the West End Com
munity conference and the St. Louis
branch of the National Association for
the Advancement of Colored People,
urged the establishment of a commis
sion to eliminate segregation in the St.
Louis public schools.
Before desegregation, Vashon High
School was one of the city’s all-Negro
institutions. The area has lost popula
tion because of the Mill Creek Valley
redevelopment project. The Board of
Education was to meet early in April
to consider plans for shutting down
Vashon, transferring Harris Teachers
College to the building, and using the
present Harris structure as a seventh-
and eighth-grade elementary center to
relieve overcrowding in the heavily
Negro West End area.
Report Published
On March 16 the West End Com
munity Conference, a neighborhood
organization with membership in both
races, published a 16-page report called
“A Case for Harris Teachers College
and Integrated Schools in the West
End.” The community in question was
formerly all-white, but in the last
decade has been a principal area of
Negro expansion.
“While the efforts of the West End
Community Conference to maintain an
integrated neighborhood have met with
some success,” the report said, “the
rapid resegregation of schools in the
west end poses the major barrier to
this goal.”
The West End Community Confer
ence charged the Board of Education
with instituting policies that brought
about “resegregation.” The conference
recommended that Harris Teachers
College be kept in the area, that the
Southern School News
Southern School News is the official publication of the Southern Education
Reporting Service, an objective, fact-finding agency established by Southern
newspaper editors and educators with the aim of providing accurate, unbiased
information to school administrators, public officials and interested lay citizens
on developments in education arising from the U. S. Supreme Court opinion of
May 17, 1954, declaring compulsory segregation in the public schools unconstitu
tional. SERS is not an advocate, is neither pro-segregation nor anti-segregation,
but simply reports the facts as it finds them, state-by-state.
Published monthly by Southern Education Reporting Service at 1109 19th Ave.,
S., Nashville, Tennessee.
Second class postage paid at Nashville, Tennessee.
OFFICERS
Bert Struby . . .
Thomas R. Waring
Reed Sarratt . . .
Chairman
. . . Vice Chairman
. Executive Director
Tom Flake, Director of Publications
Jim Leeson, Director of Information and Research
BOARD OF DIRECTORS
Frank R. Ahlgren, Editor, The Commer
cial Appeal, Memphis, Tenn.
Luther H. Foster, President, Tuskegee
Institute, Tuskegee Institute, Ala.
Alexander Heard, Chancellor, Vander
bilt University, Nashville, Tenn.
C. A. McKnight, Editor, Charlotte Ob
server, Charlotte, N.C.
Charles Moss, Executive Editor, Nash
ville Banner, Nashville, Tenn.
Felix C. Robb, President, George Pea
body College, Nashville, Tenn.
Reed Sarratt, Executive Director, South
ern Education Reporting Service
John Seigenthaler, Editor, Nashville
Tennessean, Nashville, Tenn.
Don Shoemaker, Editor, Miami Herald,
Miami, Fla.
Bert Struby, General Manager, Macon
Telegraph and News, Macon, Ga.
Thomas R. Waring, Editor, The News
and Courier, Charleston, S.C.
Henry I. Willett, Superintendent of
Schools, Richmond, Va.
Stephen J. Wright, President, Fisk Uni
versity, Nashville, Tenn.
CORRESPONDENTS
Editor,
ALABAMA
William H. McDonald, Assistant Edi
tor, Montgomery Advertiser
ARKANSAS
William T. Shelton, City Editor, Ar
kansas Gazette
DELAWARE
James E. Miller, Managing
Delaware State News. Dover
DISTRICT OF COLUMBIA
Erwin Knoll, Washington Bureau,
Newhouse Newspapers
FLORIDA
Bert Collier, Editorial Writer, Miami
Herald
GEORGIA
Joseph B. Parham, Editor, The Macon
News
KENTUCKY
James S. Pope Jr., Sunday Staff,
Louisville Courier-Journal
LOUISIANA
Patrick E. McCauley, Editorial
Writer, New Orleans Times-Picayune
MARYLAND
Edgar L. Jones, Editorial Writer,
Baltimore Sun
MISSISSIPPI
Kenneth Toler, Mississippi Bureau,
Memphis Commercial Appeal
MISSOURI
William K. Wyant Jr., Staff Writer,
St. Louis Post-Dispatch
NORTH CAROLINA
Luix Overbea, Staff Writer, The
Journal-Sentinel, Winston-Salem
OKLAHOMA
Leonard Jackson, Staff Writer, Okla
homa City Oklahoman-Times
SOUTH CAROLINA
Wililam E. Rone Jr., City Editor, The
State, Columbia
TENNESSEE
Ken Morrell, Staff Writer, Nashville
Banner
TEXAS
Richard M. Morehead, Austin Bu
reau, Dallas News
VIRGINIA
Overton Jones, Associate Editor,
Richmond Times-Dispatch
WEST VIRGINIA
Thomas F. Stafford, Assistant to the
Editor, Charleston Gazette
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MAIL ADDRESS
P.O. Box 6156, Acklen Station, Nashville 12, Tennessee.
University Honors SSN
For Objective Service
JEFFERSON CITY, Mo.
S outhern School News re
ceived an award from Lincoln
University March 27 “for signifi
cant contributions to better hu
man relations.”
A scroll presented to Tom Flake,
director of publications of Southern
Education Reporting Service by Dr.
Earl E. Dawson, president of the uni
versity, bore this inscription:
“The curators of Lincoln University
and the faculty of the department of
journalism salute Southern School
News in recognition of its detached
and factual chronicling of the record
of both resistance and compliance con
sequent upon the 1954 U. S. Supreme
Court Decision in the school cases, and
its uninterrupted and distinctly unique
career as a storehouse of detailed and
carefully-primed information concen-
board make an effort to maintain a
racially balanced enrollment in the
area’s schools, and that the board set
up an “Independent Commission on
Integration” to recommend steps
toward elimination of racial segrega
tion from the city’s public schools.
One such step, it suggested, might be
“redistricting to achieve integration.”
“The administration of schools in an
interracial area is a primary determ
ining factor in how long an integrated
community can last,” said the report
in a key passage. “With desegregation
of the elementary schools of the West
End, enrollments mushroomed until
they were triple the number which
these facilities were built to accom
modate. While the 1960 census showed
the racial characteristics of the neigh-
(See MISSOURI, Page 7)
trating on desegregation in the Unite*
States.”
The award was one of seven P 1 *
sented at the university’s 12th ann*
Headliner Banquet.
In a letter informing ^° cTB 5 f
School News of its selection for
honor this year, Armistead S. “
chairman of the university’s dep 811
ment of journalism, wrote:
“Immeasureable Value
It is a service of immeasurea
,ble
value that Southern School Ne" s
ittff
rendering. Its uninterrupted mon ^
appearance for the past nine
borne a wealth of detailed and■ &.
fully-sorted information to the
tor, journalist, researcher, st !L( 0 r.
social worker, government investig
and inquiring citizen alike. In 1 , ^
tached and factual chronicling 0 o,
record of both resistance an< I c0 ^
ance consequent upon the 1954 Sup ^
Court decision in the schools cas f ( j’ e( j»
Southern School News has
comprehensive, unimpassioned
without peer in factual publicatio ^
centrating on desegregation 10
United States. 1
, , w Bn' 1
The scroll was signed by n ,
Masterson, president of the
board of curators, and by Drs.
and Pride ‘ „ utst0O j>*
A citation of merit for ° ut5 aS pu"
performance in joumalisni " e £
sented at the banquet to The°° poO-
Poston, reporter for the New °
Other awards were presented ^
sentatives of Harper’s Mag _ /gj
Washington Post, the Providen
Journal-Bulletin, United
tional and the American Br
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