Newspaper Page Text
PAGE 4—JULY, 1963—SOUTHERN SCHOOL NEWS
GEORGIA
Two More State Colleges Admit
Negroes; Total Rises to Five
MACON
wo more state colleges, lo
cated at opposite ends of
Georgia, desegregated in June.
Otis Samuel Johnson, a Negro, was
admitted June 10 to Armstrong College
in Savannah, in the southeastern part
of the state.
A 33-year-old Negro woman was
registered June 11 at West Georgia
College at Carrollton, in the north
western part of Georgia.
This brings to five the number of
public colleges desegregated in Georgia.
The others are Georgia Tech and Geor
gia State in Atlanta and the University
of Georgia in Athens.
Johnson, 21, attended two evening
classes for the first time June 12. His
name and other details were at first
withheld after the board of regents of
the university system requested that
no one not having business with the
college be admitted and Savannah
Police Chief Sidney B. Barnes Jr., took
the position this included newsmen.
Armstrong President Foreman Hawes
told summer school students at an
orientation meeting that any student
involved in campus disturbances would
be dismissed from the school.
Savannah police, state troopers and
fire department personnel stood guard
around the campus and roadblocks
were in evidence.
Later, Hawes commended the white
students for good behavior under “pre
sent conditions.”
The registration figure for summer
school students at the time Johnson
enrolled was reportedly 379.
Expansion Set
Armstrong will expand from a two-
year to a four-year college this fall
and a number of Negroes have ap
plied for admission.
Dr. James E. Boyd, president of West
Georgia, withheld the name of the
Negro woman enrolled at the Carroll
ton school summer session. Another
college official said she is the wife of
a Carroll County public school teacher
and plans to become an elementary
school teacher.
The campus was quiet and no inci
dents were reported. West Georgia en
rolled 1,159 students during the last
regular term but the size of the sum
mer school enrollment was not avail
able.
An effort to form a White Citizens
Georgia Highlights
Two more state colleges desegre
gated.
A Negro student was admitted to a
white vocational school in Macon,
and Savannah advanced a plan to de
segregate this fall.
By a 2-to-l decision, the Fifth U.S.
Circuit Court of Appeals refused to
grant a Negro request that Atlanta
school desegregation be speeded.
Negro students are in the majority
in 51 of 198 school systems in the
state.
Color bars in all Catholic parochial
schools in Georgia will be eliminated
this fall.
Council in Carrollton, so far reported
ly unsuccessful, was believed to have
stemmed in part from the college de
segregation. Noting moves to organize
the council, the Rev. Donald H. Har
rison of St. Margaret’s Episcopal
Church, said that where such organi
zations are active, “the result is an
atmosphere of separation, alienation,
fear and hatred.”
Schoolmen
Negro Admission
To Vocational
School Voted
The Bibb County Board of Education
on June 13 approved the admission of
a Negro into the white division of
Dudley Hughes Vocational School in
Macon.
And a plan to desegregate Chatham
County and Savannah schools this fall
was submitted to a U.S. District Court
judge at Brunswick.
The admission of Bert Bivins, 22-
year-old Macon Negro, was the first
desegregation approved in a school
operated by the Bibb board. The vo
cational school has a Negro division
but Bivins wanted to enroll in an
electronics course which is taught only
in the white division.
Negroes have filed several desegre
gation petitions with the Bibb board
and the board has asked Superior
Court to clarify its position in view
of a charter provision requiring school
segregation.
Judge W. D. Aultman delayed a
ruling but Negro leaders in Macon
said a school desegregation suit would
be filed in federal court soon.
Bivins’ application was approved be
cause the vocational school is a division
of the State Department of Vocational
Education and is only administered by
the local board, and under the cir
cumstances the charter segregation
provision does not apply, according to
Wallace Miller Jr., a member of the
Bibb County Board of Education.
Chatham Plan
U.S. District Judge Frank Scarlett
said the Chatham plan calls for de
segregation of Savannah schools be
ginning with the 12th grade in Sep
tember. Negroes had urged that at
least three grades be desegregated at
once.
There are six high schools and some
40 elementary schools in the Chatham
County system.
Judge Scarlett issued an order of
ficially dismissing a Negro injunction
plea to halt a group of white people
intervening in the original Chatham
desegregation suit.
But he also signed an order asking
Negro plaintiffs to show cause whether
the proposed school desegregation plan
would not satisfy an order of the U.S.
Fifth Circuit Court of Appeals.
The federal appellate court overruled
Scarlett’s order upholding an argu
ment for continued segregation in Sa
vannah schools. Submission of a de
segregation plan by July 1 was de
manded and the Chatham County
Board of Education went to work on it.
Scarlett said the proposal leaves
supervision of the desegregation plan
entirely in the hands of the Chatham
County school superintendent.
The present superintendent, D. Leon
McCormac, is retiring Aug. 1 and will
be replaced by Thord M. Marshall of
Fort Lauderdale,
Fla., In signing
the dismissal or
der, Scarlett said
his court was not
altogether bound
by the U.S. Su
preme Court’s
1954 school deseg
regation ruling
because the Su-
preme Court
could not have
reversed its own
separate-but-equal decision which
stood long before the 1954 ruling.
Miscellaneous
Catholic School
Desegregation
To Be Complete
Roman Catholic Bishop Thomas J.
McDonough announced June 23 that
elementary and high schools in the
Savannah diocese will be desegregated
this fall.
This completes lowering of racial bars
in parochial schools in Georgia.
The Savannah diocese includes 88
counties and a number of cities in
south and central Georgia. The Atlanta
diocese, which includes the city of
Atlanta and 71 north Georgia counties,
was desegregated last fall.
★ ★ ★
Lovell School, by unanimous vote of
the board of trustees, denied admission
to Negro applicants. The Atlanta school,
a private institution, has a church-re
lated status with the Episcopal Church
but is not controlled by the church.
Among the three Negro students
who sought to enter Lovell- was the
young son of the Rev. Martin Luther
King Jr.
★ ★ ★
Horace Mann Bond, a Negro who is
dean of Atlanta University, told a
United Nations committee in New York
that separate-but-equal school facili
ties have a ruinous psychological effect
on Negroes.
Mercer University President Rufus
C. Harris, in a speech at Waycross,
urged Southern educational leaders to
employ more determined effort than is
now being observed to avoid the neces
sity of federal supervision.
★ ★ ★
Delegates to the National Youth
Forum meeting in Atlanta were told by
the Rev. Andrew J. Young, a Negro
minister, that “A trick of the South is
to give the Negro good schools and
poor education. In some areas of the
North they try to steer all Negroes in
to trade schools, regardless of I.Q.,” he
said.
Southern School News
Southern School News is the official publication of the Southern Education
Reporting Service, an objective, fact-finding agency establishd 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 Chairman
Thomas R. Waring Vice Chairman
Reed Sarratt Executive Director
Tom Flake, Director of Publications
Jim Leeson. Director of Information and Research
BOARD OF
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-
Dl RECTORS
ern Education Reporting Service,
Nashville, Tenn.
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
ALABAMA
William H. McDonald, Chief Edi
torial Writer, Alabama Journal,
Montgomery
ARKANSAS
William T. Shelton, City Editor, Ar
kansas Gazette, Little Rock
DELAWARE
James E. Miller, Managing Editor,
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, Jackson 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
William 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
SUBSCRIPTION RATES
One year (12 issues), $2.
©roups: five or more copies to different addressees, $1.75 each per year; five
or more copies to one addressee, $1.50 each per year.
Add 50 cents to above rates for orders outside U.S., Canada and Mexico.
Single copies, any issue, 20 cents each. Ten or more copies, any one issue, 15
cents each.
MAIL ADDRESS
P.O. Box 6156, Nashville, Tennessee 37212.
Under Survey
White Students
Outnumbered
In 51 Systems
A survey by the State Board of Edu
cation disclosed the following:
Negro pupils are in the majority in
51 of Georgia’s 198 school systems.
Hancock County, with 82 per cent,
has the highest percentage of Negro
students.
Sixteen local systems operate no
schools for Negroes, either because
there are no Negro children of school
age or because there are so few the'
are sent to another system.
Negro pupils in Atlanta elemental
schools exceeded 50 per cent of tow 1
enrollment for the first time in !*»•
Negro enrollment was 37 per cent 111
1950. of
Negroes make up 28 per cent o
Georgia’s population and 33 per ce
of the total school enrollment.
★ ★ ★
One hundred teenagers from sta ^j
most of them white, met to study ^
discuss racial relations at the firs .
sembly of the Youth Forum ° j.
United Church of Christ as
College, a Negro school in Atlan
Court Refuses to Order Speedup by Atlanta Schools
The Fifth U.S. Circuit Court of Ap
peals, meeting in New Orleans June
17, refused to order Atlanta to speed
up its reverse stairstep public school
desegregation
The decision was 2 to 1. Judge Grif
fin B. Bell of Atlanta and Judge David
T. Lewis of Salt Lake City formed the
majority. A dissent was filed by Judge
Richard T. Rives of Montgomery.
The majority opinion said, “ . . . the
Atlanta plan is working. Progress is the
test, and the necessary transition in
taking place. There has been no trou
ble. All responsible officials and many
private citizens have cooperated to
make it work and to preserve public
education.”
Negroes had appealed after Judge
Frank Hooper of the U.S. District Court
in Atlanta had turned down their re
quest that all students be reassigned
on the basis of school districts and the
length of the desegregation span be
shortened from 12 to seven years.
Future efferts to speed up a court-
approved plan should first be taken up
with the school board, the decision
said. “The courts are ill-equipped to
run the schools.
“Litigants must not ignore school
officials and school officials must not
abdicate their functions to the courts.
They, like the courts, are bound by the
Constitution.”
Noting that the district court plan
is for the transition period, the ruling
said time will tell whether other ques
tions regarding discrimination in the
areas of extra-curricular activities or
leading from the assignment of teacher
personnel are rendered moot.
“There is no evidence to support a
charge of discrimination in extra-cur
ricular activities in the grades that
have been desegregated in Atlanta,”
the court said, “and the district court
did not err in postponing the consider
ation of the teacher assignment ques
tion.”
Judge Rives, in his dissent, called
the majority decision “a backward
step.” The essential fact, he said, is
that Atlanta schools do not have a
single grade, in either the grammar or
high schools, in which Negro children
are permitted to become students on
the same basis as are white children.
Negro students in the top three
“desegregated” grades, he said, cannot
enter such desegregated schools with
out being subjected to requirements
that do not apply to any white student
in the grade.
Continuing, Rives said that even
though the appellants did not appeal
from the original decision of the trial
court approving the transfer plan, this
did not foreclose the right of appel
lants to complain that, when the plan
was actually put into operation, it was
operated in a manner that clearly
discriminated against the Negro stu
dents.
The majority opinion, Rives said, is
requiring a prompter complaince with
the Supreme Court’s decision in New
Orleans and Pensacola than is being
recuired in Atlanta.
Eleventh and 12th grades in Atlanta
were desegregated in the fall of 1961
and the tenth grade in 1962. The ninth
grade will be desegregated in Septem
ber of this year under the grade-a-
year plan. Judge Rives said he favored
desegregating the eighth and ninth
grades in 1963 and the fifth, sixth and
seventh grades in 1964.
Four Questions
The majority opinion posed four
questions:
• Can the Atlanta plan be justified
in the light of results of its operations
to date?
• Assuming that it may, has it been
applied in a discriminatory manner?
• Was it error for the district court
to postpone consideration of the prac
tice relating to assignment of teachers?
• Did the court err in not speeding
up the plan as suggested by appe ^
“Gradualism in desegregation,
the usual,” the court said, is a ^
an accepted mode with the emp oe ,”
on getting the job of transition ^
The court went on to say the
board acted in “utmost S
throughout this litigation an
trict judge proceeded “in a pe
and wise manner to accor a P ^ jjje
their constitutional rights w .
same time preserving the „
process in the transition peri ^ 7-
There are now 41 all-b®S r °
all-white elementary schools jj*
ta, since the plan has not r i e '
elementary grades. There
segregated high schools, ' e coT d&-
and six all-white in Atlanta * ^
to evidence presented befo ^ Al
in commenting on the U t;P .
lanta School Supt. J ohn ' a l s co^
said: “We’re happy the ^ m ade 0
has agreed progress is he
Atlanta.”