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PAGE 10—JUNE, 1963—SOUTHERN SCHOOL NEWS
Tennessee MARYLAND
(Continued from Page 9)
the court to order desegregation of fac
ulties and other personnel, but Judge
Boyd rejected that plea on March 29.
He said this question should be decided
after pupil desegregation is “accom
plished or well under way.”
Community Action
Nashville Mayor
Names Commission
On Human Relations
Mayor Beverly Briley of Nashville’s
new metropolitan government named a
26-member Commission on Human Re
lations during May, a month marked by
a series of demonstrations by Negro
students seeking complete desegrega
tion of downtown facilities and better
job opportunities.
Some of the demonstrations resulted
in street fighting between Negro
marchers and young white persons.
There were several arrests by police j
who stepped in to stop the demonstra
tions as they neared the riot stage.
Several persons involved in the dem
onstrations were reported to have suf
fered minor injuries.
During one of the marches early in
the month, an estimated 700 Negro
school children stayed away from
classes to join in the demonstration,
which also was described as support
f@r Negroes in Birmingham.
Halt Called
Negro demonstrators called a halt to
the marches on May 14 after a student
leader said Mayor Briley “is doing as
much as any mayor in the South can
do.”
John Lewis, Fisk University student
and chairman of the Student Non-Vio
lent Co-ordinating Committee, said a
decision on future marches would de
pend on negotiations with the mayor’s
interim biracial committee.
At a press conference on May 13,
Gov. Frank G. Clement said he did not
intend to allow the demonstrations to
“get to the point where the federal gov
ernment sends in troops.”
“Without reference to any other lo
cality or state,” Clement declared, “as
long as I am governor I do not intend
to let the situation get to the point
where the federal government sends in
troops. I think you know that I believe
law and order should be upheld in
Tennessee regardless of what issue
arises. I further believe that law and
o _ der should be enforced by Tennes
seans.”
Clement ordered National Guard
tanks to Clinton in 1956 to quell riot
ing during the desegregation of Clinton
High School.
Mayor Disappointed
Mayor Briley expressed disappoint
ment that the demonstrations had con
tinued despite his efforts to form a
permanent commission on human rela
tions. But he declared:
“Black or white, the law will be en
forced by whatever means I have at
my disposal. This violence must stop.”
Chairman Edward Shea of Briley’s
interim committee called for an end of
the “flagrant and unwarranted riots”
and said he would disband the com
mittee if the demonstrations continued.
The Nashville Christian Leadership
Council board of directors also ap
pealed to Lewis to postpone further
marches, it was reported.
After a 90-minute session with Briley
on May 14, Lewis announced the dem
onstration scheduled that day had been
suspended. ‘There are definite signs we
are moving into the beloved community
and will get there,” Lewis said. “In or
der to show our faith, to purge our
selves of our own sins, we have called
off the demonstrations for the night,”
he added.
A few days later, Briley began an
nouncing the names of those who
would serve on the permanent human
relations commission. Nine of the 26
members are Negroes.
Briley said he expected the commit
tee to start work immediately “as in
dividuals, quietly and without fanfare.”
He said he did
not want to arouse
“extremists on
either side.”
The committee
held its first ses
sion on May 24
and was reported
to be in agree
ment with the
mayor on the se
lection of a 27th
member who
would serve as
chairman. On May 27, Briley appointed
James O. Bass, an attorney, to the
chairmanship.
Those named to the committee in-
Former White School Graduates First Negro
BALTIMORE
T he first Negro was scheduled
to be graduated in June from
a formerly all-white high school
on Maryland’s Eastern Shore, as
several Maryland school districts
reported further desegregation
moves.
Patricia Bryant, who last fall trans
ferred to Chestertown High School in
Kent County as a senior, was the first
in Kent County to take advantage of
the voluntary desegregation transfer
policy which had been in effect six
years.
Except for Cecil County at the head
of Chesapeake Bay, the Eastern Shore
has had only four Negroes at the senior
high level in predominantly white
schools.
Cecil County announced its intention
to close its only Negro high school at
the end of the coming school year. The
Negro movement to white schools be
gan in Cecil in 1955.
Its enrollment of Negro pupils is less
than 7 per cent of its total, while on
the Eastern Shore proper (eight coun
ties) the percentages run from 24 to
45.
Other Developments
Other developments in a partial sur
vey of district plans for the coming
school year are these:
The Howard County Board of Edu
cation took the last step in its deseg
regation program in May with the an
nouncement that next September all
school age Negro children may attend
grades one through 12 in the schools
closest to their residences.
Grades one through 11 previously had
been desegregated.
Located west of Baltimore and hav
ing a 15 per cent Negro enrollment,
Howard desegregated the first five
grades in 1956 and has extended the
program since that time at a grade-a-
year pace. Under the plan 113 of the
county’s some 1,300 Negro pupils have
been enrolled at 10 formerly white
schools.
County School Supt. John E. Ying-
ling said, “This plan has worked very
well and has been accepted by the
staff, the pupils and the people of
Howard County.”
The Howard school board also de
cided in May that beginning with the
1964-65 school year, children who wish
elude some of Nashville’s most promi
nent business leaders as well as min
isters, educators and civic leaders.
★ ★ ★
About 35 white business and civic
leaders on May 16 organized a com
mittee which they said would seek
“prompt and orderly desegregation of
all public facilities” in Knoxville.
Meeting at the invitation of Mayor
John Duncan, the group named an ex
ecutive committee including Duncan,
former Mayor
George Dempster,
Robert E. Chap
man, Dr. Charles
Trentham, E. B.
Copeland, John
P. Hart. Hugh W.
Sanford Jr. and
W. B. Neill.
All of the ex
ecutive commit
tee members are
businessmen ex
cept the mayor
and Dr. Trentham, who is pastor of
First Baptist Church.
The group adopted this statement of
action:
“Believing in the equal rights of all
people and what is morally right is
economically sound—and in observing
the law of the land—we pledge our
selves to work peacefully for the
prompt and orderly desegregation of all
public facilities.”
A spokesman said the group’s efforts
would be directed toward desegregat
ing theaters, motels, hotels, restaurants
and other privately-owned businesses.
Most public facilities already are de
segregated.
Dr. James Colston, president of the
predominantly Negro Knoxville Col
lege, had this comment on the action:
“Here in Knoxville we have been in
a position to sit down and talk about
our problems. We can go in and talk
with the mayor, the chamber of com
merce and the merchants.”
“It looks like we’re going to have an
all-American city,” said the Rev. James
F. Reese, pastor of a Presbyterian
church on the college campus.
The Knoxville News-Sentinel earlier
in the week called editorially for full
desegregation of such facilities.
DUNCAN
to transfer to desegregated schools will
be permitted to do so by registering
at their schools on specific dates rath
er than applying to the board of edu
cation.
• The first year of desegregation has
gone smoothly for Calvert County in
Southern Maryland, according to Mau
rice A. Dunkle, county school super
intendent. The first three Negroes ap
plied for admission to a white school
last year and all three were accepted
at a new school last fall.
“The two girls in grade 10 and the
one boy in grade 11 have been making
better than average progress,” Supt.
Dunkle reported. “There have been no
serious or unusual incidents resulting
from these transfers.”
Additional transfer requests have
been received for the coming school
year but have yet to be acted on. Cal
vert is the only Maryland county to
have more Negro than white public
school pupils (as of last October, 2,457
Negro, 2,287 white).
• Plans in Carroll County to have
all Negro first-graders attend the de
segregated white schools closest to their
homes next fall eliminating the first
grade at the Negro school, will affect
about 36 beginning Negro pupils, ac
cording to Samuel M. Jenness, county
school superintendent. All the schools
the children will enter, with one ex
ception, previously have had some Ne
groes enrolled.
Supt. Jenness anticipates that the
Negro school will be closed out a grade
each year and the children absorbed in
formerly white schools along with any
additional Negroes who apply. Under
a voluntary transfer program in effect
since 1955, 85 of the county’s 514 Negro
pupils have enrolled in predominantly
white schools.
Community Action
Desegregation Pace
Issue In Cambridge
Negro Demonstration
School desegregation has been one
of the stated issues in Cambridge, Md.,
where Negro demonstrators vowed to
“fill the jail” in a situation described
by the press as Maryland’s “Little Bir
mingham.”
Eight weeks of demonstrations, which
resulted in the arrests of 79 Negro par
ticipants on trespassing and disorderly
conduct charges, ended in a truce on
May 18 when Chief Judge W. Laird
Henry Jr. of the Dorchester County
Circuit Court obtained an agreement
among white community leaders to help
bring about the Negro goals.
Under the direction of Mrs. Gloria
H. Richardson, head of the Cambridge
Nonviolent Action Committee, Negroes
in the Eastern Shore community (pop
ulation 12,000, of whom 4,000 are Ne
groes) have sought equal job oppor
tunities, public housing, faster school
desegregation and more access to pub
lic accommodations and recreation fa
cilities.
The Negro group at one point sought
to have at least 50 Negroes assigned this
fall to Cambridge High School.
Under terms of the truce, however,
the request was more general and seeks
to have all pupils assigned to the
schools closest to their homes and a
revision of bus routes.
In a new demonstration on May 27,
' Aider Survey
Maryland Highlights
The first Negro was scheduled to
be graduated in June from a former
ly all-white school on Maryland’s
Eastern Shore, as several Maryland
counties reported further desegrega
tion moves.
School desegregation has been one
of the stated issues in Negro dem
onstrations in Cambridge, an Eastern
Shore city.
Bowie State Teachers College, un
til last fall an all-Negro institution,
was expected to graduate its first
white student in June.
Gains of two to five years in
achievement levels have been re
corded at an all-Negro elementary
school in Baltimore among some pu
pils given a special enrichment pro
gram in reading.
A comparative study by Johns
Hopkins University of the employ
ment records of white and Negro
graduates of trade schools in Balti
more has found that Negroes obtain
fewer jobs and earn less money.
12 Negro high school students were ar
rested while picketing the board of
education in a return to the demand
that 50 Negroes be assigned to the high
school.
Cambridge is the county seat of Dor
chester County and the schools in
volved are operated by the county.
Under the county’s policy, a grade-a-
year desegregation program from the
12th grade downward began in the fall
of 1956 and reached the sixth grade
last fall.
Three Negro girls, including Mrs.
Richardson’s daughter, Donna, were ad
mitted to the white high school in
Cambridge last fall but left after two
weeks. They said they had been given
the “silent treatment.” Two other Ne
groes were admitted to the North Dor
chester High School and have remained
there throughout the school year.
Expected to Return
In answer to a query on behalf of
Southern School News, James G. Bu-
sick, the county school superintendent,
said he expects the Negroes at North
Dorchester High to return next fall and
that he also expects “to receive other
transfers for many of our schools.” The
county sets no transfer request dead
line and honors applications for the
designated grades (next fall, 5 through
12) whenever school space and staff
permit.
In its first public statement, the com
mittee established by Judge Henry re
viewed the developments in race
relations in Cambridge over the past
several years. Commenting on the fact
that senior high school grades were
open to Negro transfers by the fall of
1958, and junior high grades by 1961,
the committee said:
“The lack of applicants is not a fault
of the program nor is it in any way
the result of insincerity on the part of
the school administration in attempting
to implement the program.”
The Maryland branch of the National
Association for the Advancement of
Colored People honored Mrs. Richard
son, her daughter Donna and her
mother, Mrs. Mabel St. Clair Booth, at
its 23rd annual conference held in Bal
timore on May 25. The three were cited
for their “courageous leadership in go
ing to jail to arouse all citizens to
eliminate racial prejudices currently
practiced” in Cambridge.
Among the NAACP resolutions was
one urging the Maryland Board of Ed
ucation to enforce its policy of equality
of education.
In the Colleges
First White Student
To Be Graduated
At Bowie College
The first white student was expected
to be graduated in June from the State
Teachers College at Bowie, until last
fall an all-Negro institution with an
uncertain future.
The graduate is Sylvia Kaufman
Shelton, a candidate for a post-bacca
laureate certificate and one of approxi
mately 40 white students who have
enrolled at Bowie which has an enroll
ment of 366.
Most of the other white students are
freshmen.
In the demonstration elementary
school on the campus, 98 white stu
dents were among an enrollment of
257.
An article in May in the Baltimore
Sun quoted the president of the col
lege, Dr. William E. Henry, as saying
that white interest continues to mount
and as estimating that in 10 years the
enrollment of the college will be 80
per cent white and that the institution
will more than double its present size.
★ ★ ★
Baltimore School Report
Still In Preparation
A report that had been described as
critical of racial policies in the Balti
more public schools had not been made
public by the end of May. (SSN, April
and May)
In preparation for a year, the report
is the work of a predominantly white
group of parents believed to have de
veloped data indicating that school
policies affecting transfers, transporta
tion and district boundaries tend to
perpetuate racial segregation.
Melvin J. Sykes, a spokesman for the
group, said on May 23 that the group
had held “forthright and fruitful
meetings with a subcommittee of the
Baltimore Board of School Commis
sioners. The subcommittee is headed bj
Dr. William D. McElroy, a professor ot
biology at Johns Hopkins University
who in March raised the question 0
whether districting and transportation
policies were promoting segregation.
Sykes said that the school staff ha
turned over a large amount of date “
the McElroy committee which had,
turn, discussed it with his group-
group’s report was being revised, Sy
explained, in the light of the inform 3 ^
tion not previously available. It is **
ported that the group intends to P
emphasis on the way the city’s
dom-of-choice” policy works in ac
practice. _
“We do not believe the School
has been deliberately trying to
tain segregation,” Eykes told the
timore Evening Sun, “but some of
policies have had that result.
Study Reveals Whites Better Paid
Results of a comparative study of the
employment records of white and Ne
gro graduates of vocational-technical
high schools in Baltimore showed that
Negroes obtain fewer jobs and earn less
money.
The study, released in May, was pre
pared by the Department of Social
Relations at Johns Hopkins University
for the Baltimore Equal Opportunity
Commission.
Records of earnings and employment
were obtained from the Social Security
Administration for nine graduating
classes (1956 to 1960) from Mer-
genthaler Vocational-Technical High
School, which is predominantly white,
and Carver Vocation-Technical High
School, which is all-Negro. For com
parative purposes, data was used only
for those boys and girls who took trade
courses given at both schools and who
worked enough either before or after
graduation to have a Social Security
record.
As presented by Dr. Bernard Leven-
son, the project director, the report
showed in part: “During the first year
or two after graduation from high
school, the Negro females earned the
equivalent of about $11 a week; the
Negro males earned about twice that
much; the white males earned about
$38 per week, while the white females
earned more than $40.
“In percentages, the female Negro
graduate can expect to earn 25-30 per
cent of her white counterpart; the Ne
gro male can expect to earn about 62
per cent of his counterpart. In spite
of considerable fluctuations in both ab
solute and relative figures, in no class
and for no period did either male or
female Negroes equal comparable earn
ings for whites.” . th c
Most of the girls included
study were those who had 0 s
ness education courses in P re P aI ea d-
for office work. The boys
school had studied a variety 0 ^
from carpentry to television re *\L re e'
The study revealed that abou ^
fourths of both the boys and g*
the white school tend to e of
workers, whereas only about a 1 a#-
the Carver male graduates are
ly employed and a fourth of
females. . , em pW,
“Extreme differences m dent s 01
ment and earnings of the st ^r
the two schools would sugg e a ge”'
ential treatment by employm re poi'
cies, unions or employers, “Italic*
stated, “or that the vocational 8 ^
anH rVlanpment programs