Southern school news. (Nashville, Tenn.) 1954-1965, May 01, 1963, Image 2

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Southern school news., May 01, 1963, Image 2

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Newspaper Page TextPAGE 2—MAY, 1963—SOUTHERN SCHOOL NEWS ALABAMA Kennedy’s Meeting With Wallace Fails As Each Sticks to Position Alabama Highlights MONTGOMERY . S. Attorney General Robert F. Kennedy and Gov. George C. Wallace met at the state capitol for 80 minutes April 24 in an ap parent bid by Kennedy to get Wallace to modify his position against any and all desegregation orders. Except for Kennedy’s admission that last December’s aerial reconnaissance of the University of Alabama campus (SSN, February) was a mistake, neither man gave an inch. After the conference, Wallace re affirmed all his pledges—which include “segregation forever,” the determina tion to “stand in the school house door” and go to jail if necessary to thwart federal court desegregation orders. Kennedy, for his part, said court or ders would be enforced, although he expressed the hope that this could be done without troops or other federal enforcement action. “My stand has not changed,” Wal lace said after the meeting. “In my opinion, he did not change in this re gard either.” Kennedy agreed that he had not changed the governor’s views, but ex- prossed the hope that “no outside forces of any kind, the federal government or any other, will interfere.” He said he would like to see political, business and school leaders assume the responsibility for complying with court decisions without violence. Failing this, “we will do whatever is necessary to enforce the orders of the court.” Visit Called Pleasant Both men described the visit as pleasant. Kennedy said Wallace had “made it quite clear that he is against violence.” Asked at a press conference the night before the confrontation whether he had asked for the conference with Wal lace as a “conciliatory gesture on racial matters,” Kennedy said he would not compromise his responsibility as at torney general to uphold the law. “I think,” he added, “that if Gov. Wal lace were the attorney general, he would do what Fm doing.” As for the use of troops in Alabama, he said: “I am hopeful that such mat ters are settled peacefully and in ac cordance with the law.” Political Aspects Asked whether the Democratic party could “politically afford” another Ox ford, he replied: “I don’t think that was an issue in the slightest. We would have done the same thing even if it meant losing 50 states.” He said he would not change what he had done at the University of Mississippi or “what I might do in the future.” Reminded that Gov. Wallace had re peatedly promised to go to jail if nec essary to preserve segregation through his promise of personal intervention, Kennedy said: “I hope Gov. Wallace will not go to jail.” He accepted responsibility for the use of supersonic Voodoo reconnais sance planes in photographing the University of Alabama campus last December, but said it was “the first and last time” such missions would be ordered by the Justice Department. “I don’t think it was such a good idea,” he added. Kennedy reportedly commented to other federal officials about his visit in Montgomery: “It’s like a foreign country. There’s no communication. What do you do?” After talking with both Kennedy and Wallace after the meeting between the two, Montgomery Advertiser Editor- In-Chief Grover C. Hall Jr. concluded, in two editorials: “No warmth or altered viewpoints Not Getting Through ceiEAHS... OXFDCD? Kennedy, Arkansas Democrat U.S. Attorney General Robert F. Kennedy met with Alabama Gov. George C. Wallace in an apparent effort to induce Wallace to modify his declared intention to resist de segregation orders in the state. The U.S. District Court in Mobile denied a request by Negro plaintiffs to force the school board to submit an immediate plan for ending segre gation. The plaintiffs were given 30 days to file additional briefs and the school board 15 days more to answer the briefs. A desegregation case filed by Huntsville parents is pending in Birmingham District Court; another, filed by Negro parents in Tuskegee, is pending in Montgomery District Court. Separate actions by the Jus tice Department against school boards in Mobile and Madison coun ties also await court action. A sign-carrying desegregationist from Baltimore was shot to death as he walked along a highway near Gadsden. were generated . . . They remain ad versaries. “Wallace . . . He means to resist the impending federal thrusts as he prom ised to. “Kennedy evidently expects the Tus caloosa drama (see Legal Action) to unfold in June, rather than next Sep tember. “Kennedy knows that his brother cannot carry Mississippi and Alabama next year. To that they are reconciled. “The deepest concern of Kennedy is that Wallace will force the President to march the United States Army onto the university campus and quarter it there as baby-sitters to the colored students . . . “His trip didn’t do any harm, it didn’t do any good . . . . . They met in suspicion and hos tility, they parted in suspicion and hostility—each profoundly convinced, and perhaps correctly, that the other is politically opportunistic. “Kennedy did, by his mere physical presence, lay a predicate favorable to himself. Whatever comes, and you can almost hear it rounding the bend, he Miscellaneous The day after former Lt. Gov. Albert Boutwell was elected Mayor of Bir mingham (SSN, April), the Rev. Mar tin Luther King Jr. declared the city the prime target for desegregation ac tivities of the Southern Christian Leadership Conference. A series of demonstrations followed his April 3 declaration—most of them directed at desegregating downtown variety store lunch counters. By the end of April, police had ar rested more than 400 Negroes, including King. He spent eight days in jail be fore making bond on charges of parad ing without a permit. On April 26, he and 10 other ministers were sentenced to five days in jail and fined $50 each for defying Circuit Judge W. A Jen kins’ injunction against racial demon strations. Jack Greenberg of New York, attorney for the defendants, said the case would be appealed all the way to the U.S. Supreme Court if necessary. Judge Jenkins ordered the ministers to begin serving their sentences May 16. Aside from the lunch counters, which were the focal point of the demonstra tions in April, Dr. King listed mini mum demands which included the establishment of a biracial commission with power to institute plans for peaceful desegregation in the schools. Two School Suits Two school suits are already pending in Birmingham U.S. District Court. The demonstrations were widely re garded as undercutting the “moderate” leadership expected of Boutwell, who beat veteran city official Eugene (Bull) Connor April 2 for the mayor’s job under a new mayor-council form of government. Boutwell and the new nine-member council took office April 15, but the incumbents—Connor, along with Corn- can say he went to Wallace and tried to talk reason.” On the whole, Kennedy’s visit to Montgomery was peaceful. At a Mont gomery television station where he spoke by prearrangement April 24, two pickets were present and a highway patrol officer pointedly refused to shake hands with him. There were a few jeers but they were drowned out by cheers, mostly from teenagers. At the capitol, shortly before his arrival at 9 a.m. April 25, 17 pickets carrying pro-segregation and anti- Semitic signs were arrested and hauled off to jail when they refused to dis perse. At least two resisted forcefully. All were charged with parading with out a permit. Their bonds were made by retired Adm. John G. Crommelin, reported leader of the demonstration, who has run repeatedly for many offices, from mayor of Montgomery to U.S. Senate, on a largely anti-Semitic platform. Crommelin was present at the demon stration and read from the Bill of Rights during the arrest of the demon strators. Also present was Bobby Shelton, Grand Dragon of the Alabama Ku Klu Klan. Aside from these incidents, Kennedy was received either with cold disdain or the warm curiosity and hospitality accorded any celebrity. His manner was friendly and cordial to all bystanders with whom he shook hands. Confers with Judges His conference with Wallace was ar ranged through Ed Reid, executive di rector of the Alabama League of Mu nicipalities, a friend of both the gover nor and the President. While in Mont gomery, Kennedy conferred with Judge Richard T. Rives of the Fifth Circuit Court of Appeals; U.S. District Judge Frank M. Johnson of Montgomery; district attorneys and assistants from Montgomery, Birmingham, Mobile and Jackson, Miss.; and other federal em ployes. , Following Kennedy’s swing through the Deep South, New York Times re porter Claude Sitton wrote: “. . . Sources close to Mr. Kennedy said he had come away from his conference with Gov. Wallace convinced that fed eral troops would be necessary to en force any court desegregation orders in Alabama.” missioners Arthur Hanes and J. T. Waggoner—refused to move out. Bout well and the councilmen instituted legal action to oust them. On April 23, Circuit Judge J. Edgar Bowron ruled that the newly elected mayor and council were entitled to take office April 15 under terms of a changeover approved by voters last fall. Commissioners Connor, Hanes and Waggoner contend that under state law they are entitled to remain in office until their current terms expire in 1965. Judge Bowron found that the three were illegally usurping the offices and were exercising functions of govern ment not invested in them. The com missioners appealed to the State Su preme Court. King’s Move Questioned King’s demonstrations, coming on the heels of the election of a man re garded as a racial “moderate,” were criticized by the Rev. Albert S. Foley, Jesuit priest and chairman of the Ala bama Advisory Committee of the U.S. Commission on Civil Rights. Speaking before a Negro civic club in Birming ham April 4, Father Foley blamed King for harmful effects on race rela tions in Birmingham. “They were about to secure volun tary desegregation of downtown facili ties,” Father Foley said. ‘Negro leaders have told me they are suspicous of the motives of (the Rev. Fred) Shuttles- worth and King coming into the city to stir people up, hold mass meetings, raise money, then move elsewhere. The budget of the Southern Christian Leadership Conference is about $200,- 000 .. . “King is no longer the gallant, suc cessful leader. He has had one failure after another: Montgomery, Albany, now Birmingham. Birmingham Becomes Seventeen were taken to jail. Legal Action Three Negroes Sue For Enrollment In State University Three Negroes filed suit in Birming ham April 15 to gain admission to the University of Alabama. The three—Vivian J. Malone, 20, Mo bile; Sandy English, 21, Birmingham, and Jimmy A. Hood, 20, East Gadsden —contended they applied for enrollment at the university in February and were denied admittance “solely because of race.” The university is under a permanent injunction to admit qualified Negroes, dating from a 1955 Birmingham federal court order. Under the order (Lucy v. Adams), Miss Autherine Lucy was ad mitted to the campus in February, 1956. After three days of classes, she was driven from the campus by a se ries of riots, and later was expelled for accusing university officials of con spiring with the mob. Her expulsion was upheld by the same court which had directed her admission. All three plaintiffs are presently en rolled in Negro colleges. The suit (Ma lone v. Mate) attempts to stop Dean of Admissions Hubert Mate “from refus ing to consider the applications of Ne gro residents of Alabama to the uni versity . . . upon the same terms and conditions applicable to white appli cants.” Alabama President Frank Rose an nounced late in 1962 (SSN, December that registration for the February tec was closed. Applications on whit: processing was not completed would :< held, he said, for a later semester des ignated. by the applicants. At that time according to Rose, no Negro among tb number who had applied for admissk had completed the required admissk procedure. Miss Malone attends Alabama A&J at Huntsville; Miss English, Speke College, Atlanta; and Hood, Clark Col lege, Atlanta. Admissions Director Mate said fit office had not received a complete: application from any Negro student Applicant Hood said in Atlanta tk he believed desegregation of the uni versity could be accomplished peace fully. “I don’t think Alabama is in & same predicament that Mississippi is.' Hood was reported as saying. “I thiol the people in Alabama are more intel lectually stable and more willing to accept it. I think it isn’t the people we should worry about, but the state ad ministration.” Hood has asked to ente the university in June, the two other; in September. A hearing is set for May 7 before District Judge H. E Grooms. Also Pending Also pending, presumably, are tie applications of two young Negro scien tists who have sought to enter tie University of Alabama Center * Huntsville. They are Dave M. Me- Glathery, 26, a mathematician with the National Aeronautics and Space Ad ministration at the Marshall Spa* Flight Center at Huntsville; and Mar- (See KENNEDY, Page 3) ¥ V ]> vir at Ho ! the be tha Jll Me 1 The to pre wit J (Si Mo On wa the sea reg Ap in in the to I is file 18 con I mi< Main SCLC Target *8 f S5 fire t Wc file “Nothing fails like failure. He hasn’t been able to deliver what he had prom ised he’d deliver. If he’s really bent on leadership, he has a lot to learn. I don’t see how he can improve Bir mingham any more than he improved Albany. “King intends to get himself arrested so he will have another series of invita tions to speak at churches in New York and Chicago and raise more money. All this is at the expense of Birmingham and Alabama and our image before the nation.” Father Foley is head of the Depart ment of Sociology at Spring Hill Col lege, near Mobile. A Catholic institu tion, it was desegregated several years ago. ★ ★ ★ Sign-Bearing Marcher Shot to Death on U.S. 11 William L. Moore, a Baltimore man carrying desegregation signs, was found shot to death on U.S. 11 near Gadsden, Ala., the night of April 23. Moore, 35, was walking from Chat tanooga, Tenn., through Birmingham to Jackson, Miss., where he intended to deliver a message to Gov. Ross Bar nett about his feelings. He had been shot through the head with what appeared to be a .22 rifle. Gov. George Wallace,, calling the shoot ing a “dastardly act,” offered a $1,000 reward for arrest and conviction of the killer. President Kennedy denounced the killing as outrageous. A rural storekeeper, Floyd L. Simp son, 40, was charged with first-degree murder in a warrant sworn out April 29 by Sheriff Dewey Colvard following an investigation which included a bal listic examination of two bullets taken from Moore’s body and a .22 calibre rifle. William L. Moore Killed on roadside.