Newspaper Page Text
MISSOURI
JUNE, 1963—SOUTHERN SCHOOL NEWS—PAGE 17
St. Louis Publishes Detailed Desegregation Information
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ST. LOUIS
etailed information on de
segregation of St. Louis pub
lic schools was published in May
by Supt. of Instruction Philip J.
Hickey. The document was called
“Replies to 136 Statements, Ac
cusations and Criticisms of De
segregation Policies and Practices
of the St. Louis Board of Educa
tion and School Administration.
It was compiled in response to charg
es of “resegregation” and other com
plaints brought against the schools by
a 500-member biracial neighborhood
sroun. the West End Community Con
ference. Association, and bv Negro
school b°a-d members, politicians and
others (SSN, May).
In a background statement the re
port noted that the board of education
adopted a desegregation program on
June 22, 1954, a month and five days
after the U.S. Supreme Court decision
outlawing segregation in public schools.
The program was carried out in 1955,
it said, and was implemented in accord
ance with the “neighborhood school”
concept.
“There is no indication that the Su-
Dreme Court, in its decision outlawing
racial segregation in the public schools,
had any intention of destroying the
concept of the “neighborhood school,”
the foreword said.
It contended that the January 1963
District Court ruling in the Gary, Indi
ana, case (Bell v. School City of Gary,
Civil No. 3346) held that the Supreme
Court decision “did not render the
neighborhood school illegal even in cir
cumstances in which residential pat
terns substantially precluded integrated
enrollments.”
Decision Quoted
The Gary decision, handed down by
District Judge George N. Beamer is
quoted in full in an annex to the St.
Louis report.
Much of the criticism of St. Louis
nublic schools, concerns the fact that
those in St. Louis’s West End—an area
of heavy Negro residential expansion
in the last decade—have become pre
ponderantly Negro in enrollment. Critics
have said board of education policies
have aided this process rather than
seeking to avoid it.
Supt. Hickey, Deputy Supt. William
Kottmever and the majority of the
board of education, which now has three
Negro members, have contended that
‘resegregation” is not the consequence
of school policies but of residential seg
regation patterns over which the board
has no control.
A communication to Hickey from
David J. Pittman, Washington Univer
sity sociologist, said the West End area
was more than 98 per cent white in 1950
and 36 per cent white in 1960. The con
clusion was made that “the situation in
the West End today is the consequence
of the basic problem—the containment
of Negroes in specified areas by dis
criminatory practices in housing.”
Vigorous Denial
One of the charges made by the West
End Community Conference was that,
while the conference was trying to
maintain an interracial community,
white parents were encouraged by
school officials to transfer their children
out of the district. The report made a
vigorous denial.
“White parents have never been en
couraged to transfer their children out
of the local district,” the report said.
“On the contrary, literally thousands
of requests for permits and transfers
have been refused. Not one transfer
has ever been granted when the reason
for the request has been racial prej
udice.”
The report quoted extensively from
the St. Louis study made by Wylie H.
Davis to the U.S. Commission on Civil
Rights in 1962. Davis said he had looked
over the elementary school transfers
granted in the period 1955-1961 and
that “the special transfer record does
not establish a pattern of abused dis
cretion, or even a significant degree of
resegregation in result.”
It was indicated in the board’s report
that in 1955, when schools first were
desegregated, Soldan High School in
the West End was 74 per cent white
and that the 12 elementary schools serv
ing the West End had white propor
tions ranging from 100 to 45 per cent.
By last year Soldan’s enrollment had
become 99 per cent Negro and the area’s
elementary schools all were more than
90 per cent except for two—where Ne
gro proportions were 52 and 72 per
cent.
The Report
The report contained the following
information on the present status of
desegregation, based on 1962 estimates
as to school populations and faculties:
“The assignment of teachers to
schools with respect to racial identity
is an extremely complex and difficult
problem. The Negro school population
is now densely concentrated in a broad
band through the central area of the
city, from the (Mississippi) river to the
city limits.
“In the 1962 racial count, there were
49,154 whites and 60,109 Negro students,
2,245 white and 1,796 Negro professional
(certified) employes in the St. Louis
public schools. There were 27 elemen
tary schools with no Negro pupils and
North Carolina
(Continued from Page 13)
with members from the North in voting
unanimously to eliminate the racial
clause.
Psi includes 4,000 members in
campus and 14 alumni chapters.
Miscellaneous
High School Track
moved to Greensboro this year. He is a
senior at Grimsely. Winner of a Gen
eral Motors scholarship. He plans to
attend Duke University.
★ ★ ★
The Governor’s School for the Gifted,
which will operate on a desegregated
basis this summer at Salem College,
will have a nine-member biracial
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Star Quits Team
h* Racial Protest
GrL, S ! ar sc kool athlete quit t
Greor, V’’ High School track team
tra^ boro May 23 on the eve of
Caj.f.1- me ? t sponsored by the Noi
afion. 3 School Athletic Assoi
Protest** ® oyte > who said he quit as
ex Plain segregation in state athletic
Greer,™ S stan d in a letter to t
«JJ boro Record. He said:
Ulent trwfb * re gret the disappoii
awolvej • 6 * earn ’ I feel that everyo
has been 3 part *h e system tl
Rcgro au,? erpetrat * ng 311 injustice
6ven t ir, one winning
r call y a \t ♦ igh can feel that he
Can, PeteH 3 e .champion unless he 1
men. a gamst all qualified trac
* Th
^ attemuf’ ' n on ^ er to emphasize a
'"ell as to j- to tke discrimination,
5*® Peopl e d ^. 3te to Negroes that soi
*hces f or ® Prepared to make se
l ° take thk ?'! a rights, I have decid
°Utributj on t 10n as the most definiti
R°yte, Ca , n ma ke at present.”
I 6 A ^San 6 f t ther ° nce worked 1
are d in r , s friends Service, u
arlotte, but his fam
Board of Governors.
The school is financed by a $225,000
grant from the Carnegie Corporation
of New York and $225,000 from foun
dations and industries in Winston-
Salem.
Dr. Alfonso Elder, president of North
Carolina College in Durham, is the Ne
gro member. Henry H. Ramm, a vice
president and general counsel of the
R. J. Reynolds Tobacco Co. in Winston-
Salem, is chairman of the board.
Oklahoma
(Continued from Page 16)
panist and a cheerleader. She was se
lected “Miss Basketball of 1962-63.”
★ ★ ★
Whitney M. Young Jr., executive di
rector of the National Urban League,
said in Oklahoma City May 27 that
Oklahoma started out in the forefront
of states that desegregated bot re
mained in the token stage and now
can expect a pushby Negroes for fur
ther goals.
Young said he is “distressed” by the
absence of qualified Negro citizens in
policy-making positions, “where they
can fulfill the responsibilities of citi
zenship.”
Missouri Highlights
The St. Louis Board of Education
released a bound document replying
to 136 statements, and criticisms of
desegregation policies and practices
of the board and administrative of
ficials.
The St. Louis Conference on Re
ligion and Race was organized as a
permanent association to combat ra
cial discrimination in education,
housing, employment and religion.
A review to ascertain whether St.
Louis public school districts can be
re-zoned “so that factual integration
will exist where factual segregation
is now the rule” was urged by Rob
ert A. Sedler, assistant professor at
St. Louis University school of law.
A suit seeking desegregation was
filed in U.S. District Court against
Deering Consolidated School District
of Pemiscot County, in southeast
Missouri’s “Bootheel” area.
34 elementary schools and two high
schools with no white pupils.
“Although there were 74 elementary
schools and 10 high schools with both
Negro and white pupils, there were
only 10 elementary and four high
schools which had substEmtial Negro-
white enrollment living in the local
district.”
(Under a program to relieve over
crowding until new schools can be built
thousands of children, chiefly Negroes,
are sent by bus in classroom units to
schools in less crowded districts, often
to otherwise all-white schools.)
A citizens advisory committee headed
by the Rev. Trafford P. Maher S.J.,
head of the department of education at
St. Louis University, is looking into the
“resegregation” charges and is expect
ed to make its full report in mid-June.
In an interim report, early in May,
Father Maher’s committee indorsed a
board of education proposal to move
Harris Teachers College from the West
End to the Vashon High school build
ing in the Mill Creek Valley area.
The proposal involves the closing of
Vashon High, which is in an area that
has lost population because of a massive
urban redevelopment project, and the
use of the present Harris building for
seventh and eighth-grade elementary
center.
Strongly Protested
The removal of Harris Teachers Col
lege from the West End Community
was protested by the West End Com-
Community Action
The St. Louis public schools “reseg
regation” controversy stimulated the
forming in April of a new biracial group
called the St. Louis Ministers and Lay
mens’ Association for Equal Opportuni
ties. The new group gave impetus to
the organization May 29 of a permanent
St. Louis Conference on Religion and
Race to fight discrimination in educa
tion, housing, employment and other
fields.
Headed by the Rev. Dr. I. C. Peay,
a Negro, pastor of Galilee Baptist
Church, the association has as its co-
chairman the Rev. William G. Lorenz,
a white minister, the pastor of Grace
Presbyterian Church. It has about 100
members including some six white min
isters, and is said to have representation
from all major Negro churches.
Picketed Board
The association was instrumental in
picketing the St. Louis Board of Educa
tion building April 23 (SSN May 1963)
and in bringing about inclusion of a
Negro minister, the Rev. Dr. Amos Ryce
II, pastor of Lane Tabernacle C.M.E.
Church, at the Sunday evening meeting
of the St. Louis Conference on Religion
and Race at Kiel Auditorium May 19.
In a signed statement, the group
headed by the Rev. Dr. Peay charged
the majority of the St. Louis Board of
Education with “resegregation of the
public schools, a violation of the intent
of the Supreme Court decision of 1954;
and that this act of resegregation results
in the reinforcement of the Negro
ghetto, with all of its attendant evils.”
The statement charged the board
of education with gerrymandering of
school districts, improper use of trans
fers, segregation practices in the buss-
munity Conference. The interim report
of the Maher committee was sharply
criticized by the Rev. John J. Hicks,
vice president of the board of educa
tion.
The Rev. Mr. Hicks said the Harris
proposal would “definitely add to de
facto segregation in the West End.”
On May 2, after the Maher committee
had approved the action, the school
board voted 8 to 4 to close Vashon High
and move Harris Teachers College to
the Vashon building.
What They Say
School Board Must
Help Minority
Child: Professor
An assistant professor at St. Louis
University school of law, Robert A.
Sedler, told the St. Louis chapter of
Frontiers International, Negro civic
club, May 14 that in the light of the
1954 Supreme Court ruling a school
board is under the constitutional duty
to do everything possible, within rea
son, to offer equal opportunities to the
minority child.
A school board is not required to
maintain a racial balance in every
school, and is not required to reshuffle
school boundaries to bring about de
segregation, Sedler said. But if the
school system can educate a child on a
desegregated basis, then, under the
doctrine of “reasonable alternative,” he
declared it must do so.
Sedler called on the St. Louis Board
of Education to reassign teachers in
such a way that children at predomi
nantly Negro schools are not taught
solely by Negro teachers; to review
school zones to determine whether they
can be re-zoned to permit factual de
segregation, and to permit Negro chil
dren in factually segregated schools to
transfer to desegregated schools where
space is available.
Legal Action
Pemiscot County
Parents File Suit
Suit was filed May 6 to desegregate
schools in Deering Consolidated School
District of Pemiscot County, in south
east Missouri.
It is charged that implementation of
the 1954 Supreme Court decision in
that area has tended to lag behind the
rest of the state.
ing of Negro school children to other
districts, discrimination in employment
and in assignment of teachers.
Also attacked was the board’s decision
to build an athletic stadium at Soldan
High School and remove Harris Teach
ers College.
“We are alarmed,” said the statement,
“that there seems to be a policy of con
tainment covertly discussed and de
signed by the power structure of the
St. Louis community to keep the Negro
in his proverbial place...and that the
majority of the board of education and
the public school administration are
instrumentalities to that end.
“We therefore, call upon the St.
Louis Board of education to adopt a
positive policy which recognizes inte
gration in education as a fundamental
concept and value in educational and
cultural development.”
Among other things, the statement
CEilled for “an immediate review by the
administrative staff of all school and
district boundaries and redistricting
where necessary to achieve the maxi
mum of racial integration.”
It called for avoidance of new school
sites that would contain pupils in al
ready segregated areas, the complete
integration of school children in the
bussing program, optional transfer poli
cies, changes in teacher placement poli
cies and the hiring of qualified Negro
personnel in nonteaching positions.
The statement called on the board of
education to provide leadership that
would promote “better human relations
among all St. Louisans.” It said:
“Education should be designed to
transmit a way of life. But the neigh
borhood school is not good enough for
America’s children if it does not fit
them for tomorrow’s challenge.”
The action (Earline Lewis v. Board
of Education, Consolidated School Dis
trict C-6, Deering, Pemiscot, Mo.) was
filed on behalf of eight Negro children
by their parents. Attorney for the
plaintiffs is Clyde S. Cahill Jr., Negro
attorney of St. Louis and chairman of
the legal redress committee of the Mis
souri NAACP.
It is alleged that the Deering school
system is operated on a racially segre
gated basis, with one “white” elemen
tary school at Deering and a two-room
“Negro” elementary school at Goblar.
It is alleged the Negro school has four
teachers and 100 students and is sub
stantially inferior to the white school.
It is alleged that there is a white
high school at Deering but that Negro
students are sent by bus to an all-
Negro high school at Hayti. A tempo
rary restraining order and permanent
injunction are sought.
South Carolina
(Continued from Page 14)
town; (pop. 1,504) announced plans to
build a private school in the event of
desegregation.
Clarendon Rep. Joseph Rogers, vice-
chairman of the state’s school (segrega
tion) committee, said on May 6 that
“the white people of the (Summerton)
community .. .will band together to
build a private school.”
The legislature said no formal plans
on the school will be prepared until
a tuition grants plans for private
schools becomes law.
But he added: “Even if the grants
bill should fail in the legislature, the
people of the district still plan to build
a school for their children.”
The Summerton area and Clarendon
County as a whole have more Negroes
than whites.
Miscellaneous
Advisory Group
Asks Extension
Of Rights Board
A member of the South Carolina
Advisory Committee to the U.S. Civil
Rights Commission went on record
May 24 before Congress as favoring
the extension of the commission.
In doing so, Cheraw weekly news
paper editor A. A. Secrest put himself
in opposition to the majority of the
state’s congressional delegation.
The current racial unrest, Secrest
told congressional committeemen, em
phasizes the need for continuing the
commission. He added that failure to
extend the hody would be interpreted
here and abroad “as evidence of con
gressional indifference to personal
freedom.”
Continuing, he said, “It would be
considered by the American Negro as
an indication that his elected repre
sentatives were becoming indifferent to
his aims and aspirations of first-class
citizenship.”
Secrest said he thought the South
Carolina committee had made “signifi
cant contributions toward racial har
mony” in the state.
He said that, despite initial appre
hension and opposition, he had heard
or read no criticism of the way the
South Carolina committee has con
ducted its business of “lessening racial
tension through understanding and
education.”
Legislative Action
Accounting Asked
Of Money Spent
In Gantt Action
Sen. John D. Long of Union County
introduced a resolution May 29 to re
quire an accounting of the money the
state has spent for measures surround
ing the admittance of Negro student
Harvey E. Gantt to Clemson College
Jan. 28.
“The taxpayers are entitled to know
how much money is being paid for this
damn silly foolishness that is going on
all over the country,” Long declared.
Sen. Marshall J. Parker admitted
that there still are five state highway
patrolmen and four South Carolina law
enforcement division agents on duty at
Clemson. Parker represents Oconee
County, which includes most of the
Clemson campus within its borders.
Parker objection failed the unani
mous consent required to take up
Long’s resolution.
Church Organization Charges
Schools Hit By Resegregation