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SOUTHERN SCHOOL NEWS—APRIL, 1963—PAGE 7
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MARYLAND
Baltimore School Commissioners Ask Progress Report
BALTIMORE
T he Baltimore board of school
commissioners called on its
professional school staff in March
to produce a progress report on
desegregation.
The report was sought after the
board’s vice president, Dr. Wil
liam D. McElroy, raised the ques
tion of whether school districting
and transportation policies were
promoting racial segregation.
Dr. George B. Brain, Baltimore’s
school superintendent, explained that
schools were districted only when they
were so overcrowded that attendance
had to be limited to those children
residing within a designated area and
that children were transported to more
distant schools as a last resort when
districting failed to provide sufficient
relief.
He denied that either policy was
used to promote segregation but added,
“We have not deliberately endeavored
to take children of one race and place
them in with another.”
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Discussions Cited
Queried by telephone, Dr. McElroy,
a professor of biology at Johns Hopkins
University, said his question was
prompted by discussions he had heard
at a Chicago conference of the Great
Cities Program, particularly in relation
to the suit recently filed in San
Francisco. “The question is being dis
cussed in a lot of cities,” Dr. McElroy
said, “and it is bound to be raised here
with our overcrowded and districted
Missouri
(Continued from Page 4)
borhood were 60 per cent white and
40 per cent Negro, school enrollments
were reported by parents to be as
much as 90 per cent Negro and 10 per
cent white. Educational authorities de
fine schools as segregated when the
colored population reaches 90 per cent
or more.” The report continued:
“At the time when the WECC was
striving to maintain an interracial
community, white parents were en
couraged to transfer their children out
° the district. Negro parents were re
used transfers and arrangements were
made for two busloads of Negro stu-
cnts from the Scudder school district
0 Kinloch (St. Louis County) to travel
Past five county school districts to at-
Lt ,®°^ an High School. At no time
1 there appear any attempt to assure
° r Parents a balanced racial enroll-
ent. All of which quickly led to the
ah? e ^ a ti°n of West End schools—far
munity°^ rese 2 re Sation of the com-
Many w * 1 ’ te families, both long time
‘ e yand prospective buyers, have
a preference for this com-
?’ they are denied the single,
mun jt™ pc>rtan t aspect of a good com-
i) ly a good desegregated school
Denies Charges
Piwi° f Instruc tion Philip J. Hickey
atteinr,*^!. d en ied there had been any
fesati” v school officials to “reseg-
West End schools. The
said i there are largely Negro, he
said, l Cle A 1-6 largely Negro,
Welv i\ C T ause the neighborhoods
tru e e Sro- Hickey said it was not
^ *<7 1
w *dte parents had been en-
frotn ,, to transfer their children
^ the district.
thetic COnferenc e report got sympa-
* . es P°nse, however, from the
of /• “' /VVCVC1 » tne
^mber r '? Uca “°ns two Negro board
tames p’ 3v e Rev - John J. Hicks and
special f fjff* Jr. Hicks called for a
S a , ® ct 'finding committee to probe
the tjuKr ran ® e °f Negro problems
’■award jj ^ schools, including policies
pl oy,
Negro teachers and other em-
t h e school board and the
Sinistra+• scnooi board and the
; r ‘ th e rp *° n "™ u st answer charges
- uie oiiswei- uoarges
***** With 60 per cent of our
’f the too f' e S ro an d practically half
6 Ne Srr , C , ln § staff, the interests of
V '° r e u. C1 tizen must be considered
n
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L
— decioi e J er '” Eate in March the
? filquin ^ to start immediately on
"on 6, ^ mt ° < ' rese ® rega d° n ”
Jr^^u 3 ?’ the Rev - Arthur Mar-
J^itte’o t airman of the education
^ed f °r the St. Louis NAACP,
•j.°’ 1,1 ds tfiaf ;, a i s hon-Harris switch on
tjT* tend to “ese changes will fur-
V,, Publir. p frpetuate segregation” in
f^P’s 84n SC ^,°j ls ' He said most of
m, ^ to w S j'fdents would be trans-
i Is ^hS dey , and .. Soldan high
ikS ^eg rn ^ described as segre-
C^hafi ° ° schools. The Rev. Mr.
V^itv r* eahoed th e West End
Coii^Posai . on ference viewpoint on
Ueo *. to move Harris Teachers
schools.”
Dr. McElroy said he had discussed
the question with Dr. Brain prior to
the board meeting and that both agreed
that it should be brought into the open.
He expressed the belief that there
would not be a problem in Baltimore
as long as the freedom to transfer
existed (nearly all city schools are
open in theory to all children, regard
less of place of residence) and then he
added, “but if we are busing children
to segregated schools, let’s hear about
it.”
Dr. McElroy said he had no personal
knowledge of a report on which a
group of Baltimore parents have
worked since last summer. The report,
not yet released, reportedly offers evi
dence that districting is used to pre
serve predominantly white enrollment
at some schools and that when Negro
children are transported out of over
crowded schools they are taken by bus
to predominantly Negro schools al
though white schools are closer.
Dr. McElroy said that while he was
unaware of the report, Dr. Brain had
mentioned to him that some parents
had been raising questions.
★ ★ ★
All-Negro Schools Subject
Of Second Discussion
The continued presence in Baltimore
of many all-Negro schools, particularly
in blighted inner-city residential areas,
was the subject of a second discussion
in March, this time at a two-day pro
fessional conference on teaching in ur
ban schools, sponsored by Johns Hop
kins University.
While most of the participants spoke
generally of the problems of teaching
the “culturally deprived,” Dr. Martin
D. Jenkins, president of Morgan State
College, was blunt.
“The problem is race,” he said: “Most
of the culturally deprived students are
Negroes” and most young teachers
“have learned that Negroes are not nice
people to associate with.”
Teacher Problem Charged
Miss Mary Adams, assistant superin
tendent of elementary education in
Baltimore, said middle-class teachers
have difficulties in communicating with
children of different backgrounds.
Her secondary-school counterpart,
Dr. Vernon S. Vavrina, said teachers
do not understand the mores of cul
turally different groups. Dr. Jenkins
was reported in the press as saying that
young teachers shun city schools be
cause they have been fed “the stereo
type of a monolithic population of dirty,
unintelligent, unmanageable children.”
Himself a Negro and the president
of a predominantly Negro college that
trains a portion of Baltimore’s teachers,
Dr. Jenkins said, “Only a small pro
portion of the people who are in charge
of the teacher education in this state
have ever been in the inner city, except
to drive through quickly.”
Challenged on his statement by con
ferees, Dr. Jenkins said he did not
mean to imply that education was
“monolithic, either.” But he urged
Maryland educators to face the facts
about inner-city schools. “Where the
teacher in training is white, we are
asking him to go in with a group of
people he has learned to think of as
inferior,” he said.
One of Dr. Jenkins’ suggestions was
to have some “financial incentive” for
inner-city teaching assignments in the
form of scholarships or supplemental
salaries for the longer hours required
in some schools.
Training Varied
Dr. Virgil A. Clift, who heads the
education department at Morgan, said
that his college had students training
to become city teachers and that not to
give attention to city problems would
be “unrealistic.” Dr. Lawrence D. Red
dick of Coppin State Teachers College
also said that his predominantly Negro
college sought specifically to provide
city teachers.
A spokesman for predominantly
white Towson State Teachers College
indicated that her college had students
practicing in “culturally deprived”
schools. Spokesmen for four other pre
dominantly white colleges indicated,
on the other hand, that they were do
ing little to train teachers for urban
situations.
Dr. John Walton, chairman of the
education department at Johns Hop
kins, opened the conference by saying
that “many things that are needed in
urban schools can’t be learned in
teacher education courses.” He closed
the conference by suggesting that col
leges in the Baltimore area join in a
co-operative effort to train teachers for
culturally deprived inner-city schools.
Maryland Highlights
The Baltimore school board called
for a progress report on desegrega
tion.
Stereotype of unmanageable Negro
children was termed a drawback to
urban teacher recruitment.
A Catholic archbishop called for
complete integration.
Eastern Shore Negroes appealed
for speedier school desegregation in
the city of Cambridge.
A New York psychologist whose
findings were cited by the Supreme
Court in its 1954 school decision
denounced the segregation of school
children by their IQs.
College presidents helped to de
feat a Maryland Senate bill that
would have withdrawn state aid from
colleges that did not expel students
in racial demonstrations.
Racial discrimination in appren
tice trades was cited as a handicap
to public vocational schools.
a
Community Action
Archbishop Shehan
Asks Discrimination
End in Baltimore Area
Archbishop Lawrence J. Shehan
called early in March for an end to all
aspects of racial discrimination in the
Baltimore archdiocese, which includes
some 430,000 Catholic parishioners.
“The duty of justice and charity ap
plies not only to our churches, our
schools, our charitable organizations
and institutions, and our hospitals, but
also to all of us as individuals,” the
archbishop said in a pastoral letter
published in The Catholic Review
March 1.
As the spiritual leader of the oldest
see in the United States, Archbishop
Shehan reminded Baltimore Catho
lics of the posi
tion of the Amer
ican Bishops in
1958 and wrote, in
part:
“There is, I
hope, no need to
say that in our
churches and in
our parochial life
generally there
must be not only
no racial segrega
tion, but also no
distinction of rank or place or treat
ment based upon racial difference . . .”
SHEHAN
“In our schools, both elementary and
secondary, the same general policy
holds. As Catholic schools, they are
meant primarily for Catholic students—
for all Catholic students insofar as
facilities can be made available—with
out racial or any other discrimination.
“This means that in the registration
of students a common policy, approved
by our Catholic School Board, must be
followed in the case of all Catholic
children living within the boundaries
of every parish fortunate enough to
have its own school. The same policy
must govern all transfers from one
school to another. Within the school,
identical academic standards must ap
ply to all students, and all must be
treated with equal justice and charity.”
The prelate said that the centenary of
the Proclamation of Emancipation made
it “particularly appropriate” that he
speak out, since “here in our own state,
recent experience has shown that
much—very much—remains to be
done; that grave wrongs still need to
be righted.”
In response to question on behalf of
Southern School News, the Rev. James
C. Donohue, superintendent of Catholic
education in the Baltimore area, said
there were an estimated 1,500 to 2,000
Negroes in the archdiocese schools and
that they represented 2 to 2(4 per cent
of the Catholic school population. He
said that the schools, although already
desegregated, were mentioned in the
pastoral letter “to put the cap on once
and for all.”
Father Donohue explained that many
parochial schools had been desegre
gated prior to the Supreme Court de
cision of 1954 but that there had been
some reluctance to change in some out
lying areas.
★ ★ ★
Cambridge Group Asks
Rights Program Speedup
An integrationist group appeared be
fore the mayor and city commissioners
of Cambridge, on Maryland’s eastern
shore, March 25 to urge speedier recog
nition of Negro rights, including “com
plete school desegregation.” The group
was led by Mrs. Gloria Richardson,
chairman of the Cambridge Non-
Violent Action Committee.
As reported in the Cambridge Dem
ocrat and News, a weekly newspaper,
the group sought “immediate action” in
desegregating schools, industry, amuse
ment places and housing. Under the
heading of schools, the statement called
for bus reassignment according to the
proximity of residence and “a begin
ning minimum of 50 (Negro) students”
to enter Cambridge High School.
Mrs. Richardson’s daughter was one
of three Negro girls to enter Cam
bridge High School last September and
then withdraw after about two weeks
because of what they termed “the silent
treatment.”
Cambridge is in Dorchester County
where schools have been desegregated
a grade a year from the 12th down
to the sixth grade. The only actual
desegregation is at the North Dorches
ter High School where two Negroes
entered last September and at last
reports still were there.
The Civic Interest Group, based in
Baltimore, announced in the last week
of March that about 100 student free
dom riders would go to Cambridge on
March 30 to picket City Hall, the
county school board offices, Chamber
of Commerce, state employment office
and a theater. Freedom rides to Cam
bridge a year ago led to near-riotous
reactions among some white inhabi
tants.
Miscellaneous
Baltimore Hearing
Told Trade Schools
Place For Negroes
An all-day hearing on racial dis
crimination in the apprenticeship
trades, held by the Maryland advisory
committee to the United States Civil
Rights Commission on March 15, de
veloped testimony that the public vo
cational schools in Baltimore suffered
from the lack of openings in the skilled
trades for Negroes.
William Hucksoll of the Maryland
Department of Education presented
data to the effect that 74 per cent of
the predominantly white graduates of
the Merganthaler Vocational-Technical
High School in Baltimore find jobs in
the fields for which they have trained,
whereas only 15 per cent of the grad
uates of the all-Negro Carver Voca
tional-Technical High School in Balti
more are able to get work in their
skills.
* ¥ ¥
Four college presidents joined in-
tegrationists in denouncing a bill in the
Maryland Senate that would have re
quired a state college or university to
expel a student convicted of trespass
and would have withdrawn state
funds from a private college which re
fused to expel a convicted trespasser.
Introduction of the bill followed mass
arrests of students for trespassing at
the Northwood Theater in Baltimore,
where repeated demonstrations finally
led to admission of Negro patrons.
After receiving a favorable commit
tee report, the bill was defeated on
the Senate floor in mid-March by a
vote of 5 for and 18 against.
What They Say
Ability-Based Desegregation Hit
The segregation of public school
pupils as slow learners or “culturally
deprived” has been roundly attacked
by Dr. Kenneth B. Clark, one of the
psychologists cited by the Supreme
Court in 1954 in support of the pre
mise that racial segregation in public
schools tends to retard the educational
and mental development of Negro chil
dren.
The assumption that children from
a working-class culture need a differ
ent type of education “contributes to
inferior education for children of lower
economic and racial status,” Dr. Clark
told an audience at Coppin State
Teachers College in Baltimore.
Such an assumption, Dr. Clark said,
“intensifies racial and class cleavages
and extends them into society.” A pro
fessor of psychology at the City College
of New York, Dr. Clark is author of
several books on prejudice and race
relations.
Speaking on “The Clash of Culture
in the Classroom and Attitudes of Chil
dren,” Dr. Clark
told a one-day
social science in
stitute:
“The whole de
segregation issue
seems to me a
basic issue in
volving cultural
and social vari
ables.”
He said “The
clash of cultures
in the classroom
is essentially a class war,” with the
school as a “socio-economic and racial
battleground” in which “middle class
and middle class-aspiring teachers” are
at war against “hopelessly outclassed,
working class children” who are “sys
tematically humiliated” and “cate
gorized.”
“Children treated as incapable of
education are not being fooled by
euphemisms of snobbery,” Dr. Clark
told his audience in March. Whether
they are relegated to groups of “slow
learners, trainables, pussy cats or bun
nies,” he said, the children know they
have been downgraded:
“They have a feeling of humility,
hostility and aggression”; they are “re
volting against an attack on their dig
nity and integrity.”
Referring to Dr. James B. Conant’s
“Slums and Suburbs” as a book in
fused with a “New England noblesse
oblige, snobbish attitude,” Dr. Clark
said he was “shocked” at the class dif
ferentiation that Dr. Conant advocates.
Dr. Conant even made distinctions
among suburban children, Dr. Clark
said, but “no such distinction was made
for underprivileged urban children,
particularly urban youngsters . . .
“Dr. Conant reserved most of his
praise for one of the most shockingly
discriminatory, segregated school set
ups in the entire United States, namely
the public school system of Chicago
where Negro youngsters are systemati-
ally being denied the right to meaning
ful and effective education under the
leadership of Ben Willis, the darling
of the Ford Foundation.”
Finding “no evidence” that children
of lower socio-economic status have
any greater difficulty learning to read,
Dr. Clark said: “I
CONANT
submit that the
type of education
espoused by Dr.
Conant is arrant
nonsense. This is
the ‘social dyna
mite’: The cure
he suggests.”
Once children
are put in tracks
or judgments are
made to teach or
not to teach them
as other children, Dr. Clark said, “the
insidious horror is that the results tend
to justify the assumptions. Children
treated as uneducable almost invari
ably become uneducable. Educational
atrophy sets in.” “They are not being
taught, so they fail.”
Dr. Clark termed various assump
tions about the special needs of chil
dren of lower status “class and racial
snobbery” and “alibis for educational
neglect.” Education by assumption of
learning levels “can only lead to social
stagnation,” he said.
“All groups have the capacity to
learn,” Dr. Clark told his largely
Negro audience. “If organically defec
tive children can learn certain basic
skills, so can the children of lower
status learn academic skills,” if they
are taught with the same standards and
quality of instruction (as other chil
dren).”